Ned Crossman- a "Parker man??""
Last weeks "recon" yielded two copies of the National Sportsman magazine: June 1934 and January 1930- also the 1940 "Sportsman's Year Book"--Great articles by Wm. H. Foster on both grouse shooting and also skeet, pheasant hunting by Capt. Paul A. Curtis, and Ned Crossman's gun columns. I assume this is Ned, they are signed E.C.C.--
Page 26- He mentions a Harry Fleischmann- All American First Five in 1935 Skeet, also a Fox with a ventilated rib (grade and guage not specified however)
Page 27-'The other day I am patterning two guns. One of them is the finest 20-gauge I have seen barring a 20 bore Parker made some 20 years ago for my friend Ed Hedderly--"
!940- sort of a "watershed" year in hindsight- Ned Crossman passed, I believe Mr. Foster a few years later, Paul Curtis by his own hand in 1945- last good year to get a new Parker, albiet from Ilion and not Meriden, and FDR's promise not to send American boys to fight in Europe- Wendell Wilkie the "Barefoot Boy from Wall St.) and Charles Lindberg and the German-American Bund. Some history from that time and place indeed.
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