Your first firearm

[Grantham Forester]

Originally Posted by Rich Anderson

I remember my first real gun like it was yesterday. There was a sporting goods store a short bike ride away called Beech & Heuman's in Jackson, MI. It was a place where in the mid 60's a kid could look at guns and big game mounts on the wall. I wanted one of those new plastic stocked Remington Nylon 66 .22's. A friend of my fathers who was a shooter and a hunter went with me on several occasions and he suggested a real gun with a wood stock, preferably a pump as I knew when it had a live round as I had put it in the chamber. I bought a Remington Field master 22 pump. I still have that gun. When it was time for my little brother Joe to get his first gun he got one also and now I have that as well. Today the Nylon 66 might be worth more than the pump gun but I wouldn't trade it for one.

I grew up in Parma, MI. I remember Beach & Heuman's, out on the Western end of Jackson "The City of Action"--Old Ralph "Woody" Woodhurst worked there, after the downtown Smith & Winchester Hardware Store & Mill Supplies down their gun and sporting goods dept. I bought a Winchester M77 .22 LR repeater from B&H, shot a lot of junkyard rats with it on Saturday afternoons too!!

[C.O.B.]

Parma isn't far from Jackson. My parents are still there but there's no action in Jackson anymore. I only go there to see the folks. I used to do some Pheasant hunting around Parma back in the day.

[Grantham Forester]

Originally Posted by Rich Anderson

Parma isn't far from Jackson. My parents are still there but there's no action in Jackson anymore. I only go there to see the folks. I used to do some Pheasant hunting around Parma back in the day.

We hunted the Bradley farm, and also the farms on Stepladder Road- near the Mullican meat packing operation, also the Glasgow farm- but as my father was a machinist at Aeroquip in Jackson, and his boss, Mr. Hurst- was good friend of the Deputy Warden at the Jackson Prison Farm- so we got permit passes to hunt there every Fall-

My father did a lot of "government work" for Mr. Hurst, who was a mechanical genius and was always "inventing" new fittings for the aerospace industry. His parents came over from Germany after the war, and he had a fine collection of Merkel and Krieghoff shotguns. I doubt if you could even find very many in the Jackson Co. area that remember Aeroquip, or Sparks- Wirthington, Crankshaft Machine, Lefere Forge or the big Goodyear tire plant- the old saying "The world takes what Jackson makes" is now ancient history.