OLD-TIMERS, HEIRLOOMS AND VAN'S RIFLE

04/28/00

Recall that 25th Annual Meeting of the Rocky Mountain Bighorn Society. As an "old-timer," a founder from the "early days" and the longest-serving president, I was in Denver two weeks ago to receive an award of recognition. During my time at the helm, we reached a membership of 250. There were 500 at this banquet, and a lot of them I hadn't seen in a decade or more.

I even ran into Joe Zufall, the guy who bought my "heirloom" shotgun during a very lean first year teaching at the University of Colorado. As I explained in Wild Winds, Joe later helped me get it back from the crusty old bastard to whom he had sold it. Anyhow, we spent the latter part of the evening regaling my son Edward with tales of the ways special firearms found themselves in our hands, becoming our heirlooms. We figured maybe "old-timers" were heirlooms, too.

Back home, I stumbled across my Uncle Kenneth's scrapbook. It covered his days as a Marine in China. My aunt Betty recently passed it to me.

I started thinking about heirlooms again. One of mine is known as "Van's rifle."

I heard about Van's rifle in the late 40s. I was eight. Already disappearing for hours, making arrows from long cedar shingles, and turning apple boxes into rabbit traps, I was showing signs of squandering my life on the outdoors. My mom's sister Veva watched this with trepidation.

One day, she and Uncle Vic drove into East Wenatchee from their San Francisco home with an old single-shot .22 rifle. Made around the turn of the century, it was the about the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. The Old Man immediately enrolled me in an NRA shooting course.

Aunt Veva explained, as I recall, that this little rifle had belonged to her first husband, Van. He would have wanted me to have it. I was ALWAYS to handle it safely. When I was grown, there was a "real" rifle I might receive..."A very fine gun," she said, "Van's favorite." Her brother Kenneth had the rifle, since Aunt Veva didn't want any guns around her house.

Everybody said Uncle Kenneth was a quiet man. He had his reasons. In 1941, Marine Pfc. Kenneth Davis was stationed at the American embassy in Peking. 180 Marines were surrounded by 40,000 Japanese troops. Unable to evacuate China before Pearl Harbor was attacked on December 7th, they became prisoners of war. For 45 1/2 months, they were shuttled from prison camp to prison camp. They worked the mines for a watery millet soup, rice and fish heads. My 170-pound uncle weighed 100 pounds when he was liberated on September 12th, 1945. He was a quiet guy, and maybe most things just weren't worth the talk.

But how he loved to hunt. And how he loved to talk about it, with me. I many times wondered why he ignored adults to talk to a silly boy who spent all his time afield. I saw less of him as I became an adult, but when I did see him we might talk for days about the things outdoor people never tire of reliving. Such talk always came easily.

I taught my kids to use the little .22. In time, I forgot about Van's rifle, still in my uncle Kenneth's care.

One morning, my mother called me in Denver. Kenneth was dying... Could we find go to Franklin (Nebraska) to see him?

As weak as he was, Kenneth and I talked and talked. This time more about Van. Herman Van Temmon was a hunter, like us. In 1938, he and a buddy were in the woods, out of San Francisco, shooting at pine cones with a new .22 automatic pistol. Somehow, Van walked from behind a tree and into a bullet. He told me Veva was totally devastated, but never blamed the guns.

Van's rifle was a Remington Model 30, 30-06. In my uncle's care for well over 50 years, it still looked new. He handed me the rifle. "I promised Veva. And Van, too, I guess. It's been yours for a long time," he said. "Take it home."

At the funeral, Reverend Barbara mentioned that he was a quiet, well-loved, man, and a lifelong outdoorsman. I wanted her to say something like, "And, oh, how he loved hunting!"

And maybe something about heirlooms.

[Copyright James L. Huckabay, 2000]

Jim Huckabay teaches in the Department of Geography at Central and is the author of "WILD WINDS and Other Tales of Growing Up in the Outdoor West." He can be contacted at wildwinds@cleelum.com
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