WSF had a post up HERE about guns in vehicles that tripped the old hind brain…
So I borrowed the picture…
Back in the mid-60’s when I was in high school, this was the NORM in the ARKLATEX area… Usually the gun(s) in the rack reflected the hunting season…
And we drove those same vehicles to school, parked in the school parking lot, and most of the folks didn’t even bother locking their trucks! Folks with cars normally had the appropriate gun in the trunk…
And damn near everybody I knew had a pistol under the seat or in the glove box! And all of the boys and most of the girls had a knife in their pocket…
Most of us carried a variation of the old Sowbelly knife…
I also remember being pulled out of school, along with two friends, on the second day of hunting season in either 68 or 69 after the assistant principal found out we’d gotten deer. We took him to where we’d gotten a deer, since ‘he’ hadn’t gotten one yet (and we got the day off)!
Sadly, today we’d be arrested…
Sounds familiar. Younger folks really don’t have any idea about what has been lost.
In the late 60’s a class mate brought his dads 303 Enfield into history class and nobody batted an eye. Rifle team kids kept their rifles in their school lockers. The Vetter brothers brought their deer rifles to wrestling camp and blew off the morning practice for the opening day of deer season. They got grief for missing practice, not for the firearms.
Changed for sure.
Clear example of the divide between firearm owners and fearful gun grabbers. We know they are simply tools.
INDEED! I’m not a hunter, but know many who are, including those who brought their rifles to H.S for ‘Show-And-Tell’!
And most of the boys and about half the girls had a folding knife or pen knife with them IN GRADE SCHOOL!
NOW, make ‘a symbol resembling a gun’ with your hand will get you expelled!
SHAMEFUL!
gfa
It was the norm in Missouri, too. I was never without a pocketknife in school, either.
Looks like my old truck … and my old knife.
Yep. The ol’ Easy Rider Rifle Rack. It used to be a rite of manhood when a boy got his first truck and immediately installed that rack in the back window. I thought it was kinda mandatory, like learning how to shave. Now, even here in Utah, I’d be hesitant to put one in my current truck. Alas, what we have lost…
Even into the 70’s my pickup had the rack with a shotgun and a rifle most of the year. This was while I was in the Army stationed in AL. I drove everywhere like that – even on base. Never had a second thought about it.
I once found a old 22 revolver in an old abandoned house and a pal wanted to buy it. I took it to school and sold it to him for $5.00 in the cafeteria during lunch. No one panicked. No one called the media. No one gave a shit.
MC- Exactly!!!
Gerry- Yep… sigh
WSF- Yep, and thanks for the pic!!!
gfa- Yep…
Rev- Understood.
Tim- LOL
Six- And more to lose, if we don’t wake up!
TOL- Yep! Same here…
CP- Not surprised, course you’re an old fart like me… 😀
Back in my high school days, I built a gun in shop class from a parts kit. No issues on that but I got failed on it for a really bad welding job.
But compare all the violent crime of those days to now … since Those That Know Best have corrected our thoughts and actions.
(My newer truck doesn’t even have room to mount a rack …)
Q
Try explaining how to play “mumbly-peg” to kids today.
Forget the rules of the game.
Explain having knives in school to play the game.
They just don’t understand.
Here is a link for a refresher course of Mumbley Peg.
http://www.artofmanliness.com/2011/06/07/mumbley-peg/
The game outlined in American Boy’s Book of Sport most closely resembles what we use to play in Springfield, VA in the mid-1960s.
OMG, I totally had forgotten about playing mumbletypeg in the schoolyard growing up. Thanks for the reminder of the good old days.
Jon- You’re welcome 🙂
That’s a pretty sweet looking knife. I’m sure that Dad had one just like it.
Murph- Wha… FAILED???
Quiz- Urmmm… WHAT violent crime??? People shot back in those days…
Stretch- LOL… Point!
BP- That one is outta my carry drawer… 🙂
but Jim, when you went to school, wasn’t there an Indian threat?
We would all carry our shotguns from 410’s up to 12ga and line them upjust inside the front door of the school. Along with all our boots/overshoes covered in cow/horse/pig shit from doing morning chores before going early morning duck hunting and then on to school! And virtually every truck on the Island had a gun rack fully loaded with guns and ammo! Couldn’t be screwing around trying to load the thing when the geese were flying over your head right now!!
OBTW seeing as most of us were kids of fishermen and farmers, we all had six inch Dexter wooden handled knives in a home made sheath hanging off our belt all day long!
Everett, How did you learn anything with the constant threat of those guns firing themselves at any given moment?
I can remember playing mumbletypeg during grade school recess.
I can remember teachers and the principal going out
with a student to look at their new gun.
Then asking if after school to try out the new gun.
I used to hunt my way home from school, walking. Kept my shotgun in the Ast. Principal’s office during the day. It wouldn’t fit in my locker.
It was a different world. Honesty and integrity MEANT something. Nobody would have considered harming another person without cause.
My high school years are a bit more recent (graduated ’81) but that pickup window rack picture brings back memories. Yeah, bolt and lever guns in the rack in the school parking lot – no biggie, pretty common really. The ‘Kicker’s (country folk) carried a Case or Schrade folding hunters in leather pouch sheath around classrooms, again no need for alarm, they were hardly ever pulled out.
I didn’t have a pickup during my high school years, I drove an old ’66 VW bug. But I did have a AR7 Charter Arms stashed in the compartment below the back seat (where battery was), just in case I was out in boonies and wanted to do some plinking.
Thanks for the picture, it brought back some pleasant memories.
Ed- Shaddap… 😉
Ev- Yep, different generations did it differently, and you were literally on an island… 😀
Jon- Yep!
Rick- For us it was fighting over WHO was going to BUY the gun…LOL
Art- Oh so true!
j.r.- Yeah, now that you mention it, I do remember seeing those leather pouches later… And probably a good thing you didn’t hit any bumps, that old Charter would have done a NICE job of shorting the hell outta the battery!!!
Not skeered about that battery shorting out. :^)
Actually, I was pretty stupid and had no idea that was unsafe back then, my Guardian Angel must have worked overtime when I was a kid, I thought I was indestructible! :^)
Hi Ed, well only the pump guys had the tube loaded, but some of we dumb ones like me used to leave two in the side by side but with it broken open and laying on the seat with the muzzle pointed where it would kill the tranny if it went off! A couple of kids had bolts and the bolts left open but the shell was in the chamber. I didn’t say we were PARTICULARLY smart!
Thanks for the jog down memory lane. I grew up in Boondockia, PA (in the mid 70’s) and remember all the pickmeups with gun racks. One of my childhood friend’s older brother had some old beatup Chevy (it ran), with a rack, that he use to haul us around in, without seatbelts…yikes! The fun part was shooting whatever he had in the rack at their farm. Good times. I always had my pocket knife on me, it never came out of my pocket at school. Couldn’t do that today.
I remember being I think 7 or 8 years old walking around the town square of Salem Arkansas with an old Steven single shot .22 boltie and going into Western Auto to buy a box of .22 LR for if my memory is correct I think I paid 35 maybe 50 cents for it. And no one batted an eye.
Mark’s recollection jogged another from my noggin, of when I was in elementary school and had to wait for Mom to pick me up. I used to go to Sears, where the gun rack was in middle of store, completely accessible to anyone wanting to handle the rifles or shotguns (no handguns). Gun shells were in bottom of cabinet shelf immediately under them – anyone could load up and not a store employee was present to stop anyone from handling them.
Browning Citori SxS for $109 iirc – oops, my heart rate just skipped a beat!