Reviving an Old Friend

This story goes back to the spring of 1964, when I was 13-years old, and the spring muskrat and mink season had just closed. My muskrats and one mink were dry and ready to come off the stretchers.

- Robert E. Sellers

That Saturday, a neighbor, who was 16 and could drive, took me to Stanley Hawbaker’s fur shop to sell my catch. Going to Hawbaker’s was something I looked forward to, it was like stepping back in time. I’ve always felt I was born in the wrong time. I’m most comfortable outside, on the Earth, doing hobbies from a distant era.

That spring, I had a specific plan. I’d sell my furs to get the last dollars needed to buy a .22 rifle at Gale Diehl’s Sporting Goods in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania.

I’d hunted with my dad’s old Mossberg single shot .22 since I was 8, but felt I needed my own rifle. I wanted a Remington 511X Scoremaster bolt action .22 with a six-shot clip. From 1964 -1966, the 511x had a rear sight was adjustable for windage and elevation.

Where I grew up, having your own .22 rifle was almost as important as owning a flintlock rifle 200 years earlier. For a teenager who spent all his spare time hunting and trapping, this was my goal.

That spring, the $45 price was finally within reach due to my careful saving the previous summer. I never considered asking my parents to buy me a rifle. I wanted the satisfaction of using my own money.

To reach my goal, I worked summers and diligently saved my earnings. I worked on local farms stacking small square hay bales as they shot out of the baler, an achievement for a skinny 12-year-old.