Sixty and sixty. It was sixty years ago, the year was 1960, and all these Christmases later, no gift has been more memorable than my cornerstone present that year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had read the work of Col. Jeff Cooper and told my parents the only thing I wanted for Christmas was what the good colonel had characterized as the ultimate handgun: the Colt .45 automatic. I had been shooting since age four, pistols since age nine, and already had my own .22 handgun and a Beretta .380, but my dad was a bit skeptical about a twelve-year-old shooting an \u201carmy horse pistol.\u201d He was an open-minded guy, though, and we hied ourselves hence to Stan Sprague\u2019s Gun Shop in Hooksett, New Hampshire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mr. Sprague (as I always called him) showed us a 1911 Colt that had been produced in the year 1918. We went out behind the shop with a magazine full of 230 grain lead bullet handloads. I extended it to the length of my right arm (two-handed pistol shooting was considered wimpy then), and I touched off my first of countless thousands of .45 rounds. Carefully keeping the muzzle downrange I turned my head toward my father and said, \u201cI like it, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was under the tree on Christmas morning. That Colt had become a family project: my sister bought me a GI chest holster for it at the Army-Navy store, and my Uncle Whitney wrapped up a yellow box of Winchester 230 grain full metal jacket .45 ACP. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
All these long years later, there is no gun I like better (or shoot better, really) than the 1911 .45. That one no longer looks like it did on that Christmas morning in 1960. In the \u201870s, I put in a new barrel and bushing, had better sights installed, and paid for a new blue finish to replace its battle-worn patina. The original diamond-pattern walnut grips, the checkering almost worn away from decades of carry by right-handed soldiers, would be replaced by a succession of new stocks. My gunsmith friend Nolan Santy roughened the grip-frame for a better hold, and a more modern grip safety and better sights improved its shootability, even if they ruined its collector value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Today it maintains an honored place in my collection, and even gets shot every now and then. It and I built our own additional memories. But it remains a symbol of a father\u2019s trust in his son\u2019s responsibility, as gift guns do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019ve written about this before. Hopefully I\u2019ll live long enough to do so again. For now, I invite you to share here your<\/em> memories of Christmas guns that had meaning for you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sixty and sixty. It was sixty years ago, the year was 1960, and all these Christmases later, no gift has been more memorable than my cornerstone present that year. I had read the work of Col. Jeff Cooper and told my parents the only thing I wanted for Christmas was what the good colonel had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":6620,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6614"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6614\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6615,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6614\/revisions\/6615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/MassadAyoob\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}