Seeking still more of my father's frame-of-reference, I found an ad (left) depicting Winchester's Model 67. The single-shot .22 was promoted as capable and (most important, considering the times) inexpensive.That ad appeared in Boys' Life when my dad was 11 years old, about the age I was when I first fired his Model 67. He wasn't a Scout, however, and his family was dirt-poor, so the only way he might've seen the magazine would've been at school.
The Model 67 was produced from 1934 through 1960. I managed to dig up print ads for the rifle through the mid-1950s, all characterizing it as low-priced but every bit a Winchester.
Pushing further toward the turn of the century, I traveled back one more generation. I shifted my attention to my grandfather -- Depression-era dairy farmer, son of a hard-working Scottish-immigrant coal miner.He was 20, not yet a dad himself, when Remington gave us "Father Will Show You How to Handle Your Rifle" (right). The ad is charming, practically outlining a father-son talk -- from taking care of the gun to accepting responsibility.
(Something tells me that dads in those days didn't need a script for that stuff.)
A few years earlier, Forest & Stream magazine had published "Give the Boy a Twenty-Two" (below -- click on the image for the full article). George Brown wrote the piece almost a century ago, and yet I don't think I've ever read a better primer on introducing a young person to a rifle. It rings of Heartland tradition, capturing principles of both mentoring and gunhandling that are as relevant now as they were then.
In my imagination, I can see a father and his son traipsing through the woods toward a quarry. I can hear my grandfather instructing my father just the way that Mr. Brown suggested.
I'm pretty sure that's how it happened because, decades later, it's the way that my dad schooled me.
(The Winchester ad above dates to the October 1937 issue of Boys' Life, page 24; the Remington ad comes from the July 1920 issue of Boys' Life, page 45; and "Give the Boy a Twenty-Two" was published in the August 1917 issue of Forest & Stream, pages 344-345. All can be viewed on Google Books.)
