Your Social Security Number has become the de facto seria; number for virtually EVERYTHING.  Although I have noticed the medical profession has started asking for your birth date instead of the last four of your SSN.

But don't complain too much about it or O'Brien will be looking you up.  (I know Sue will pickup on that).

Noel

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

WNA stands for Word Not Allowed.  I had to sanitize the story to publish it here.  It stands for a four letter slang term for excrement.

Noel

This WNA stuff is out of control. Does this mean that members of Warga Negra Asing, the World Nuclear Association, the Wisconsin Nurses Association, the Women's Network Alliance, the World Nagashisomen Association, The World Ninja Association, The World Nunchaku Association, The Wisconsin Newspaper Association, The West Nottingham Academy, and the Westcott Neighborhood Association can't post here?

11 minutes ago, W2DR said:

This WNA stuff is out of control. Does this mean that members of Warga Negra Asing, the World Nuclear Association, the Wisconsin Nurses Association, the Women's Network Alliance, the World Nagashisomen Association, The World Ninja Association, The World Nunchaku Association, The Wisconsin Newspaper Association, The West Nottingham Academy, and the Westcott Neighborhood Association can't post here?

I bet you're glad you slaved over that post and not one single 'like'.  😄

EDIT: There ya go, one like at least.

Edited December 4, 20205 yr by Ron Attwood

4 hours ago, birdguy said:

WNA stands for Word Not Allowed.  I had to sanitize the story to publish it here.  It stands for a four letter slang term for excrement.

Noel

Thanks, didn’t realize you had already put that in the beginning of the post. Somehow missed it the first time.

Great story btw.

12 hours ago, cmpbellsjc said:

@birdguy

Noel, forgive my ignorance but what doesn’t wna-bird mean and how is it pronounced? I googled it and couldn’t find anything on that term and I’d never heard it before.

PM sent, Sean!  Sorry, should have read a little further!

19 hours ago, Penzoil3 said:

My Dad taught me the Rifleman's Creed when I was 8. We were on the range, and I referred to my single shot .22 rifle as a gun. I only did it once. Dad was a retired Army Master Sargent, WWII vintage.

 LOL

 Sue

Still have my Winchester single shot .22 rifle in my bedroom closet.  Also still have 100 round of long rifle ammo for it.  Bought it in 1963 from a gunsmith for $13.  Hasn't been fired sine I was 13 years old! 

Charlie

If everyone remembers "An Officer and a Gentleman"  with Gunnery Sgt. Foley telling the new recruits to fall in then asking a couple of newbies where they were from.  Of course the response from him was..."Nothing there but WNA and steers".  Heard that aplenty on "first day".

Well, guys and gals, that brings up another story.  I've written over two dozen about growing up in San Francisco.  Here's one of them that follows the thread here.

My first gun was also a Winchester single shot.  As I recall you had to pull the firing pin knob back to cock it and the safety was a tab you rotated up to block the firing pin.

My First Gun

I was 13 years old when I got my first gun.

There was a small sporting goods shop on Polk Street near California.  I'd stopped by there several times after school to look at the Winchester Single Shot .22 behind the counter.  It cost fifteen dollars.  I wanted that gun.

Earlier that summer, when Lee and I were on one of our trips to Salinas,  Uncle Bob let me fire his shotgun.  

My friend Rich had his own .22 rifle.  I wanted one too.

It was near Christmas.  I asked Mom to get me that rifle for Christmas, but she refused, saying I wasn't old enough yet, and besides, what would I do with a gun in the city?

Christmas was going to be spent at our house this year.  Uncle Bob and Aunty Mit would be there, and the day after Christmas they were going to take Lee and I to Salinas with them.  Mom and Dad would go down on the bus New Years Eve, and we would return to San Francisco with them the day before school started.

I counted up the money I got for Christmas, twelve dollars.  I had two dollars saved and my allowance was a dollar a week.  If I got my allowance a few days early I would have enough to buy my gun.

The day after Christmas I pleaded with my Dad to let me buy the gun so I could take it to Salinas with me. Mom objected, but Dad and Uncle Bob thought it would be alright.

Dad took me to the sporting goods store right after it opened.  I bought the gun, and Dad sprung for a cleaning kit and a box of ammunition.  The store clerk wrapped the gun in brown paper, but you could still tell what it was.  Walking next to my Dad, I proudly carried that gun down Polk Street and back home.
An hour later, Lee and I were in the back of Uncle Bob's Pontiac heading down the Bayshore Freeway toward Salinas.  That very day I would be hunting with my own gun.

After lunch I unwrapped the gun and held it.  I turned it over and over in my hands.  I worked the bolt back and forth.  I held it up to my shoulder, pointed it out the window, and looked through the sights.

Then Uncle Bob took Lee and I outside and gave us our second lesson in gun safety.  We gotten our first when he let us fire his shotgun the previous summer.  He told me never to have it loaded unless I was actually going to shoot.  I was never to point it at anyone, even when it was unloaded.  He showed me where the safety was, and how to use it.  And under no circumstances was I to take the gun outside alone.
Then he put some cans on the fence posts behind the house and we got to business.  He showed us how to put the bullet in the chamber, close the bolt, pull back the firing pin knob, and turn the safety lever.
Then he brought the rifle up to his shoulder, turned the safety back down with his thumb, and fired.  The first can flew off the fence post.

By the end of the afternoon Lee and I had fired a half box of ammunition at a dozen cans, hitting about half of them.

After we finished shooting, Uncle Bob got out the cleaning kit and showed us how to take the gun apart and clean it.  He cleaned it the first time, and then I repeated the process.

I took the bolt out of the receiver and wiped it down with an oily rag.  I put a patch through the slot at the end of the cleaning rod, dipped it into a small bottle of Hoppes Number 9, and swabbed the barrel several times. The smell of the solvent was like perfume.  I ran another patch with a dab of oil on it through the barrel and replaced the bolt.  Uncle Bob told me to always leave the bolt open when storing the rifle.

Twice that week Uncle Bob took us out with the gun.  The first time we shot cans off the fence post again. The next time he carried his shot gun and I carried my .22 as we walked the tree line looking for quail.  We didn't see any, but I was hunting with my own gun.  When we got back, Lee and I, under Uncle Bob's supervision,  shot the remaining rounds of ammunition in the box at tin cans.

About 2:00 o'clock in the afternoon on New Years Eve, I got in the Pontiac with Uncle Bob and we drove up the road to Highway 101 at Prunedale.  We waited there until the Greyhound bus from San Francisco came down the highway, stopped, and let Mom and Dad off.

I got in the back seat of the Pontiac with Mom, and Dad got in the front with Uncle Bob.  I immediately started talking about our adventures with my new gun, how good a shot I was, how I learned to keep my gun clean, and how I went hunting with Uncle Bob.  I could see it wasn't something Mom wanted to talk about, but Dad was listening.

When we got to the house, I got out of the car and told Dad I wish I had some bullets left so I could show him how well I could shoot.  But Lee and I had fired the last rounds at some tin cans.

Dad reached into his pocket and pulled out another box of ammunition.  He said we'd go out and shoot as soon as he rested up and changed his clothes.

I was so proud.  I had my own gun, and I knew how to use it and take care of it.  It would be another year and a half before I was allowed to take my rifle out alone.  By then I would have walked many miles along the tree line with Uncle Bob.  I would have demonstrated responsibility in caring for and handling a firearm.  And I would have earned the trust of both my mentors, Dad and Uncle Bob.
 

Noel

 

 

Edited December 4, 20205 yr by birdguy
I misspelled my name

I have that very same Winchester, Noel! 😀

On 12/3/2020 at 12:49 PM, birdguy said:

We heard an airplane coming down the runway.  A United DC-3 was taking off.  We all stopped to look at it; every one of us wishing he was one it.

This is the point where I would have thought “wna, I should have joined the Air Force” 🙂

Great story, thanks for sharing.  Looking forward to the rest.

Beautiful story, Noel. Another thing I realised after re-reading it is that although you saved your allowance and pooled it with your Christmas money to buy your gun, you lovingly SHARED it with your brother - both of you learning how to shoot with it. I was an only child so I guess that I will never know that sibling bond ... or rivalry 

16 hours ago, birdguy said:

It stands for a four letter slang term for excrement.

I read the whole post substituting a different four letter word  🙂  I'll read the next one correctly!

7 hours ago, HighBypass said:

I was an only child so I guess that I will never know that sibling bond

From my perspective you missed out on an important part of life.  My brother was two and a half years younger than I was and we were very close.  After we left high school we lived very different lives.  He stayed in California where we grew up and I always lived far away from him.  But we always communicated via telephone and later via e-mails.  Whenever I travelled in the Air Force and National Guard stopping over in California to visit him was a must.

Then when he started to have medical problems and the onset of dementia his sister-in-law sent him here to live with us.  He spent almost a year with us and then had to be admitted into a nursing home.  He was a widower and had no children.

When I started writing my boyhood memoirs I titled the collection of the stories "Me and Lee and Larkin Street".  That was the street we grew up on and he was a constant companion and partner in all of the adventures we had.

We were lucky to have each other and to both have lived into out 80s.

It broke my heart to watch him fall into dementia.  And when he contracted the virus and died a few days later I think we were both relieved.  It saved him from wasting away for the rest of his life in that nursing home.

What can I say about our relationship?  I guess the best way to describe it is to say that whenever we were together we laughed a lot. 

Noel

Edited December 5, 20205 yr by birdguy

15 hours ago, birdguy said:

An hour later, Lee and I were in the back of Uncle Bob's Pontiac heading down the Bayshore Freeway toward Salinas.  That very day I would be hunting with my own gun.

Another great story Noel. When I was 11-12 years old I spent many hours with my .22 rifle hunting crows in the lettuce fields outside Salinas. Back then crows were a plague on the lettuce crops and there was a bounty on them. Take two crows feet and a beak to the local Fish and Game office and get 15 cents. Good times indeed.....

Making everyone watch you eat with a knife and fork LOL Nothing like being put in your place, College Boy! Good one. Hmm... Navy OIS is called "knife and fork school," the joke being potential officers go there to be trained how to behave in polite society (the Navy being the most polite of all branches of service.). That's not far from the truth. Now, when I was in Army Basic Training as a youngster, I was caught talking in formation by the Drill Sergeant and was ordered to go talk to a nearby bush, no LOUDER. That went on for a long time...