My very first gun ever was an Ithaca M-66, 20 gauge, "youth model" with a 26" barrel, and a Modified choke. I got it for Christmas when I was about 13 or so I guess. I remember poking around the house a few weeks before Christmas, and looking under my folks bed and seeing this long box. I pulled it out, and thankfully it had already been opened. I lifted the top and saw that gun laying there. I didn't dare take it out, so I just feasted on it with my eyes. I was pretty sure it was for me, I doubted my sisters were going to get it.

Come Christmas morning, sure enough, that gun was on the chair where "my" stuff was piled. The gun, a couple boxes of shells, and I don't know what else. My mother gave me a quick lecture. "Don't shoot yourself or anybody else, and don't ever shoot anything you can't brag about." Good advice that has stood me to this day.

I ran out onto what passed for a "back porch" on the house, loaded a shell and just fired out across the back yard. Not really "at" anything. We lived WAY out in the country. You could have fired a cannon and not hit anything. Then I pulled that empty paper shell out, held it to my nose and for the first time breathed in that fantastic aroma of burned powder and gun oil. I think I shot it three or four more times, then being mindful that shotgun shells didn't grow on trees, went back into the house.

I used that little 20 for a year or so, then graduated to a 12 gauge Sears double I bought with my pay from my first job, working on a farm.

Looking back, that 20 kicked like a mule, but I didn't know it at the time. I'd never shot anything else. I know now the short "youth" stock was too short for me.

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John 3:16 .