Posted on July 3, 2009 - by Hubba

Learning Handgun Safety the Hard Way

We have got a lot of clover here in Western South Dakota this summer.  It looks like a thick yellow carpet all over the ground, partly because it stands five feet tall in places.

All this clover got me to thinking about the summer of ‘87.  There was yellow clover all over that summer too.  A lot of things happened that summer.  I started chewing tobacco, and started drinking (coffee) and me and Nick and Al started haying that summer.

Mostly we just drove an old dump rake around picking up the leavings that the sweep missed.  The International tractor had a heavy duty clutch that we couldn’t engage, so when we were done we’d just run the damn thing into a haystack to stop it.

We had two hired men that summer.  They were young, maybe about to start college, and for the purposes of this story we’ll call them Ben and Jasper.  Ben was a decent worker on his own, but Jasper was plumb worthless.  If he hadn’t been so heavy, maybe we could have used him for an umbrella or something.

When we were out working, he would spend all of his time beheading Mexican Lubbers with his Swiss Army Knife.  A “Mexican Lubber” is an unusually large grasshopper with striking markings, or that’s what we called them anyway.

When Jasper wasn’t executing grasshoppers, his other favorite passtime was playing with Dad’s Colt .38 Police Special revolver.  Jasper unloaded it and would spend hours dry firing it.  I got to where I kind of liked to play with it too.

One day Dad Nick and I went to the hay field.  Nick was riding with Dad, and we didn’t have any raking to do, so I sat in the 60’s Chevy pickup and waited for them to get done.

I must have sat there for a couple of hours, and I got bored, so I pulled the Colt out, pointed it at the passenger side door, and pulled the trigger.

When the hammer fell, I realized that at some point Dad must have reloaded it.

There was the deafening report inside the all-metal cab, immediately followed by the sound of the rolled down windshield disintegrating into the bottom of the door, and then 20 odd years of dust exploded out of the seat.

When the dust settled and I remembered what my name was, I looked down and there was a neat little hole by the door handle.  I got out and discovered a corresponding hole on the outside, with a little pig-tail of torn away metal sticking out.

I decided that I better walk across the field and tell Dad about this one.  And so I walked, sobbing and saying Hail Mary’s and Acts of Contrition like I’d just seen the Gates of Hell.

When I got to Dad, the message was so garbled by Hail Mary’s, Acts of Contrition and promises to “never do it again” that it took him ten minutes to figure out just what I’d done.

About all that could be done for the time being was hammer the pigtail back in the outside hole.  Later we got a different window for the pickup.  And I never did it again.