The Coveted Toy Gun

About a year before we moved to Barstow, my husband, who was ill handed me a little clipping he had torn from a magazine of a buckshot gun and asked me to order It for him. It cost only two or three dollars.  He said he wanted it to pop the stray dogs who daily made deposits on our front lawn.

So I ordered it for him. It came in due time. It was a well made, pretty little gun about twelve or fourteen inches long. but more of a toy than a gun. I suppose. Our grandsons Ed and Ronald admired it so much when they came to see us.

Grandpa used it a few times, then put it away, and I thought no more about it. In a few months we moved to Barstow and although the contents of his shop were moved no one discovered the gun. Four months afterwards he passed away and was taken through Mesa where we had lived  to Thatcher for burial. Grandsons Lloyd, Ronald, and Ed rode in the hearse that Lloyd owned, with the body. As they passed through Mesa, they stopped at our place there, parking the hearse under our car-port. Ronald remembered the little gun and hurried around the house to the shop to get it, only to meet Ed with a big grin on his face and holding the gun in his hand saying. "Look what I found".

Ronalds countenance fell for he knew in this instance "Finders were keepers." He had wanted that little gun so badly. Grandpa was there but he was unable to settle that argument.

added by Karen McGrath Nay...

At this point Ronald must have been upset enough that he didn't want to ride with them any further.  At that point, I (Karen) was offered the place to ride in the hearse with Lloyd and Ed.  We drove late, late into the night.  Turns out Ed promptly fell asleep, so it was my job to keep Lloyd awake during the drive. I did so by asking him about stuff he was interested in.  Most of which was car related and I didn't know much about. But it worked to keep Lloyd awake. I do recall learning al labout tork in an engine.  He loved his dune buggy!

This was in 1974 right before I left for my final semester at BYU.  This is easy to pinpoint the date exactly because I was a couple of days late getting back to school.  I missed the introductions of people in our FHE groups.  One of those people was a tall, lanky guy from Idaho (Bruce) that I ended up marrying and whom I had to keep awake on many, many driving trips!