How old was you when you bought your first Parkers ?

[Garth Gustafson]

[QUOTE=Rich Anderson;299481]I heard about Parkers long before I ever had one from my mother. My Grandfather was a double gun guy and Parker's were his favorite especially for shooting trap. I have a trophy he won at the Detroit gun club for breaking 200 straight from 16 yards to win the class C championship in 1936.
He shot both trap and skeet and I was lucky enough to find some old photos of him both hunting and target shooting with a PArker.

Mom said the Parkers were his favorite. The family story is that he bought an A1 special at Abercrombie & Fitch in Chicago while he was on his way to Mayo Clinic. He picked up the gun on his return. It would have been used as this was 1948 or so but Mom still remembers the argument over the $600 when there wasn't any discretionary funds.

Rich, the Chicago A&F store your Grandfather visited must have really been something special. At that time they were still doing business as Von Lengerke & Antoine at 9 N Wabash St in downtown Chicago. In fact, VL&A didn’t rebrand until 1959, more than 30 years after the A&F purchase. Such was the strength of the VL&A brand in the Midwest. What a sad day when A&F filed for bankruptcy in 1976. The Chicago store ran their going out of business sale in November 1977. Truly the end of an era. I wish I could have visited that store back in its heyday. Ed Muderlak wrote that he went in there as a kid and was in absolute awe of the place. Today, the old A&F storefront is a jewelry store.