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Memories Gary
McCraw, in his article, related his memories to the smell of Hoppe’s #9.
I can relate to that because the odor of Hoppe’s #9 is a memory
triggering odor to me too. However, I’d have to say that the one fragrance (it
IS a fragrance to some of us) that brings back some of my oldest memories has to
be 3 in 1 oil.
You don’t see it being used today like we did back in the late 40s and
early 50s but it’s still around. We
used it for just about everything that needed a little lubrication….Mom’s
sewing machine, squeaky door hinges, the hair trimming shears and, MY BB GUN.
(Link
to "Hoppe’s #9" Article) Unlike
the politically correct world of today, back then, kids and guns were accepted
as a common sight. I don’t
remember any kid that I know who didn’t have a gun of some sort. Mostly though, we all started out with Red Ryder BB guns.
Nearly every boy had one….and some of the girls too.
During
those years we lived in a kinda rural setting just outside of the city limits of
Des Moines, Iowa and there were open fields and plenty of hills for us to roam
and roam them we did. We knew every
rabbit hole, every good climbing tree and every good “sliding” hill in the
area. There were usually four of
five of us boys who hung out together and we always had our BB guns with us.
We never knew when we’d run into one of the farm kids and get invited
to shoot Pigeons out of their barn. In
those days the Daisey Red Ryder BB gun was a lot different than those available
today. A chest –on shot on a pigeon at 15 yards or so was nearly
always a clean kill. Today’s
version would just bounce off. We
liked to think that we performed a service around where we lived.
We kept the Sparrows thinned out and the Black Birds out of the grain.
Any mouse that had the bad judgement of showing it’s self around the
corn crib was in real danger. In
fact, the reason that I got my BB gun in the first place was because Mom got
tired of having the Sparrows leave their “calling cards” on her freshly hung
laundry. Her clothes line was in
the back yard (remember that these were the days before electric dryers) under a
rather large tree and the Sparrows would congregate in that tree and got quite
accurate at “bombing” anything on Mom’s cloths lines.
Well, it wasn’t long before the Sparrows decided that that particular
tree wasn’t a safe place to land and I had an almost endless supply of BBs
thanks to one grateful Mom. What
didn’t make my Mom too happy though my use of all that 3 in 1 oil. It wasn’t
because it cost a lot. It was
because she could never get the spots out of my Jeans.
For some reason you could always see every spot, even after some
aggressive hand scrubbing. Whenever
the bunch of us would hold a gun cleaning party on my back porch Mom would hide
all the kitchen towels and throw us a couple of Dad’s worn out
undershirts.(This was before Paper towels too).
Usually, by the time that we got done we had oil form one end of the
place to the other. We had no
concept of how much oil was enough. Our philosophy was, if a little was good
then a lot must be better. I
should point out too, that my Dad was a hunter and his philosophy was that you
don’t shoot anything that you aren’t going to eat. Even though the Sparrows and Black Birds were pests I
wasn’t allowed to just waste them. If
I shot them, I had to eat them. Now
that may sound kind of hard to stomach but, in Europe, Sparrows are considered a
delicacy and are really quite good.
Black Birds too. I gotta hand it to my Mom.
She cooked many a Sparrow for me and never once complained. Pigeons and
mice, of course, were the exceptions to Dad’s rule. When we shot Pigeons or Mice there were usually enough
“barn” cats around to take care of them.
Those
were great times. I used to go with
my Dad on Pheasant hunting trips long before I had my own shotgun.
I had a .22 for Squirrel hunting and was well trained in safe gun
handling but Dad felt that I needed a little extra experience before I was
allowed to carry a shotgun. Muzzle discipline was the key here. Swinging on a rising Pheasant safely was a lot different than
shooting at a stationary Squirrel so I was encouraged to bring my BB gun along
on those Pheasant hunting outings and to take a shot at the rising bird if I was
in position to do so safely. I also
learned a lot about wing shooting. Because
I could actually see the BB in flight I learned about “leading” the target.
I learned how far I could safely swing on a bird without endangering
others in the party. I was always
right beside my Dad but he’d ask me “where’s Herb?”, or “where’s
Jim?” and I was expected to know. When
we’d get home, out would come the Hoppe’s #9 and the 3
in 1 oil. Mom would be busy preparing the Pheasants for dinner. There was no such thing as a freezer in those days.
It was Scald ‘em, Pluck ‘em and Cook ‘em.
I’m
sure that MY Dad didn’t marry my Mom because of her love of the smell of
Hoppe’s #9…or for 3 in 1 oil
either for that matter. She’d
run us both into the basement or out onto the back porch and we knew
better than to come into her kitchen without first making sure that there was no
trace…or smell…of either solvent on us.
She had a nose like a Blood Hound. She
could “bite” like one too. She
had this wooden spoon and she could raise a knot on your head with it if you
made her mad. Mom
and Dad have been gone for a long time now but I’ve never forgotten how I was
raised. I had a really good
childhood, full of love and caring….and 3
in 1 oil. It doesn’t get much
better than that Tom
Kampert Surprise,
Ariz..
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