iTunes Selection: "My Father's Gun" -Elton John
As Elton John’s song “My Fathers Gun” says, ‘...from this day on I wear my father’s gun...’ I’m sure he had a different take on it, maybe he was telling someone that he was taking up his father’s cause... I don’t know. I just thought the song spoke to me and this pistol.
This is my father’s Gun, a Norinco 1911. He purchased it back before some of the more interesting gun laws that restricted the sale of foreign made firearms. I got the call one day from him asking if I wanted it. His new wife had known some people that had lost a son from an negligent discharge and she didn’t want any firearms around. I offered to take it.
When the pistol arrived it was just bone stock, similar to what the 1911 looked like while it was in military service. It had a Blued finish, plastic grips, low sights, and small controls. Those many years ago I thought it would be a perfect pistol to customize.
Not knowing very much about working on them I found a local guy that said he might be able to add a few parts here and there, and hopefully get it to work. Not realizing what I was doing I gave him a few parts at a time to add on. Each time I enjoyed the slight changes and wondered what else could be down. After about 6 months I had a majority of the work down and it was looking good.
Some time later my wife (at the time) came back from a deployment and asked me what I had been buying while she was gone. I guess I should have explained it better, but at that point I didn't tell her about the pistol.
A few days later I came home from work to find my bag with my stuff in it empty and the contents of my range bag spread out all over the back porch. I'd been robbed! I started to panic.
Nothing. The rest of the house was in perfect shape, TV still in the living room, DVD’s still on the shelf, and doors still in one piece.
Eventually my wife came home and informed me that she had stolen it. She had taken my stuff to the police and turned everything in. I was frantic, I called the police department, sheriff’s office, everyone I could think of. No one could tell me anything. Holding onto what little mind I had left I calmly tried to speak with my wife and find out more.
Long story short our conversation did not go well. I ended up sleeping in the guest bedroom after a prolonged fight that exploded into an all out war. The next day I again called the proper authorities and asked if “my-soon-to-be-ex-wife” had turned anything in?
Half way through the next day at work I finally got a call, not from a police station, but from my brother in-law that lived with us.
“ah, dude, did you loose your stuff?”
I was like, “ah, yeah, you might have heard us yelling last night.”
“ah, dude, i think i found something... looks like a gun, its ah, all buried in the garden...” He said in between drags off his cigarette.
Speeding home I half prayed that what he had found was my stuff and half prayed it was something else.
When i got home I ran to the back yard. There buried in the flower garden was my father’s gun. There was the 1911, red with rust and coated with mud like it had just been pulled out of a French trench from World War I. Tossing it into the back of my jeep I was so full of anger that when my wife drove up smiling and trying to apologize I heard nothing of what she said and I turned and yelled at her “THIS IS ME FATHER’S GUN!!!”
I jumped back into my jeep and went back to work. A co-worker helped me out and took it home and dropped it off at a local gun store that promised to see what they could do to clean it up. A few days later I picked up the pistol, no longer red with rust, it was just pitted with spots from where the rust had gotten into the metal. It looked old, and not in a good way. A couple of days later my wife asked me, “what’s with this charge from the gun store?”
I calmly told her it was her cleaning bill.
I never brought out anything firearm related again, never discussed them around her, and always kept everything locked up and hidden from her. I no longer trusted her.
About a year later my father and brother came out to visit me and I took them to the range. My father was sickly looking, already starting to look and feel bad from what would later take his life. He commented on how old the gun looked. I couldn’t bear to tell him what had happened to it.
Less than a year later my father died. I hadn’t taken out the pistol since I'd seen him. Several weeks later I received some money from his estate and I promised myself I'd fix his pistol. I called Novaks Sights and asked for a quote. Sights, reliability job, and a new paint job. I mailed them the pistol and wrote them a quick note.
Enclosed is my father’s gun. He recently died and I want to fix it up.
Two weeks later I got a note on my door from UPS, I needed to sign for a package from Novak. I drove there after work, signed for it and went out to my truck. I couldn’t wait, I had to see it.
I opened the box and carefully opened the plastic case. Inside was a note that thanked me for my business, and one brand new looking 1911.
I actually was afraid to touch it, i didn’t want to smudge it. I didn’t want to harm it, I didn’t want to do anything to it. And then it happened, I started to cry. The gun brought back all the memories of my dad taking my brother and I to the range as kids. Showing us how to shoot, spending time with him and my brother.
I originally didn’t want to do anything to the gun, maybe frame it and hang it on the wall. But I finally decided I needed to shoot it. I cut out some skate board tape for the front grip, found some wood grips from a Colt and asked a different local gunsmith to smooth out the trigger for me.
I can’t say it’s the best pistol I own, but I can say its the most valuable pistol I'll ever have.
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