Shelly called me up one day and asked if I would be willing to take a couple of days off work to "ride shotgun" (you choose the pun) with him while he took the best of the best of his collection up to Del Grego's for a photo shoot with some other Parker Guns for "The Parker Story". Guess what my answer was.....
He told me to be at his house at 5:30 AM to help "list and load" the guns. "List and load" was a term I had become very familiar with over the years of our friendship - every time he went to a show, the guns he put into his car were listed by SN and counted; when he got to the show he did the same thing as he unloaded and set up. At the close of the show loading for the trip home, the process was repeated. Also, there was no need for the term "sharp" with Shelly - if he said 5:30, 5:35 was a "lost target".
So I showed up a few minutes before the appointed time and ran through the SNs on his pre-printed inventory list - check? We wound up taking 29 guns and 2 extra barrels up, and yes, that included the two Invincibles he owned at the time. I topped off my coffee as we ran by the local Sheetz (Shelly always drank tea) and we were off.
As we broached the main pass in the mountains just north of Hazelton PA, well before daylight, Shelly said, "Lets have a smoke." Both cigar lovers, I remarked that it was a little early in the morning for a robust, high-character smoke. He replied, "Don't try to tell me you've never fired up a "primo" before daylight in a duck blind, or out on the Chesapeake trolling for rockfish (striped bass). It was hard to argue with a guy that savvy.....
About 10 puffs into our smokes, he asked me, "What would you like to listen to?" His son Gabriel was an orchestral musician (French Horn) and he knew I was a classical music fan. I asked him what our options were. He said, "Mahler or Vivaldi, your choice" Since it was coming Halloween, I offered; "Why don't we start off with Vivaldi's 'Autumn' and segue into Mahler's 5th symphony as the sunlight rises and bathes the land?"
So he plugged in the CDs, we drew on our fine cigars (Shelly always smoked Monte Cristo Churchills), and watched the fiery sunrise come up , washing the mountainsides like case colors.
The photo shoot was intense and fast-paced; unknown or unseen guns coming out of the closet for 'glam shots', everyone there remarking on their rarity, craftsmanship, or in some cases, "funkiness".
A day later and on the way home to Shelly's house late that afternoon, we passed the decorated hay bales, scarecrows, ghosts and goblins festooning the fields and farmhouses leaving the Mohawk Valley south of Ilion, and after dark, saw the goblin lights of a hundred jack-o-lanterns leering out at us with their feral grins.
It was the night of "The Perfect Storm", when the swordboat Andrea Gail out of Glouchester MA was lost with all hands off the Flemish Cap. It was the night after the days that we "shot the big ones." Both are burned into my memory still.
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