Lots of memories in passed-down gun

Outdoors in Alaska, by Howard Delo

Keepsakes passed from one family generation to the next are fascinating things. These keepsakes can be just about anything, but usually have some significant meaning to the older generation person who is passing the item on. Hopefully, the younger generation recipient will also value the item too.

I started thinking about this while my wife and I were visiting my mother-in-law in Homer this past weekend. Mildred, my mother-in-law, gave Debby and me a couple of firearms that had belonged to Debby's father.

One gun is your "average" pump-action shotgun. It is nothing special other than the fact that it had belonged to Frank, my father-in-law. Debby remembers a few times during her childhood when Frank used the shotgun while dealing with "pests." Frank didn't use it very often.

The rifle we received has much greater significance to my wife. The Marlin lever-action was her father's boyhood rifle, made early in the 20th century and was well used. Debby remembers her dad telling her about this gun while she was growing up, but she never remembered actually seeing the rifle until her mom gave it to us.

The rifle has fallen into a state of disrepair and is not safe to shoot. Some of the parts are "frozen" with rust and the stock has a few chips of wood missing. Debby has fond memories of her father telling her about the times when he used the rifle for things boys used 22's for nearly a century ago.

I have a friend whose hobby is restoring these types of firearms. I've talked with him already about this rifle and, in a week or so, he will look at the gun and let me know if it can be restored. Actually, the issue is not if the rifle can be restored, but to what level we want the gun restored: cosmetically, so it will look nice hanging on the wall; or a full restoration back to fully functional status.

Since the rifle is Debby's, she will make the final call. I hope she decides to go for the full restoration. Then she can actually use the rifle while remembering the stories her father told her as a child about his use of the gun.

We have other keepsakes from both of our dads. My father passed away over twenty years ago. While I was in college in Fairbanks, I had bought my dad a Buck folding knife and had his initials engraved in the brass bolsters. I gave him that knife and a Gerber brand sharpening steel for Christmas back about 1970 or so. He carried both the knife and the steel the last few times he went on his annual deer hunting trips to Michigan.

I now carry that same knife and steel as part of my regular hunting gear. While recreating outdoors, I also regularly use a Gerber fixed blade knife that had belonged to Debby's dad and was his "every day" wearing knife. Since both "Dads" were active hunters and outdoorsmen, the generational connection through the knives adds to the overall experience, I think.

Several years ago, my mother gave me the Elgin pocket watch her father had used daily from the time my grandmother gave it to him after he returned from World War I until his death in the early 1950's. When I received the watch, the crystal was broken and the watch wouldn't run properly. I took it to a local jeweler who specialized in repairing these types of watches and told the man to make the watch as good as new. The repair cost me some money, but I now have a fully functioning keepsake from two generations back in my family, not just a broken "thing" that used to belong to my grandfather.

In this current generation with the "got to have the newest technology" mentality, I think a lot of ties to family and days-gone-by are being lost. A lot of our history lies in the little things. Don't ignore them.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist.