OutAtTheEdge
Member
Sorry up front for the long post.
When I was about 14-15 back in the early 70s I received for Christmas a Remington M581 .22 rifle. Happy as I was with it, I fancied myself quite the guntrader already, and swapped it with my uncle who lived across the road for an old Remington M12 .22 pump. Fast forward almost 30 years, said uncle has passed, and then my estranged aunt. With no children, her entire estate was left to my mother and her brother. When cleaning out the house, no guns were found....until the day of the estate auction. When the last item had been sold and the house was empty, my mom was cleaning the bathroom one last time, when she found a tiny hidden closet behind the bathroom door. Inside was nothing but empty dry cleaning bags, and behind those, my old .22. Mom, of course, restored it to my possession. That was over 20 years ago.
Along about that time, my father-in-law passed and left my wife an old Savage 3C .22 single-shot rifle that had belonged to her long-deceased mother. That gun ended up on long-term loan to my mom for rabbit reduction duties in her vegetable garden. In the years since, Mom remarried and somehow that little Savage disappeared. About 6 months ago, the husband - a dedicated packrat - was moved into a nursing home, and since then we've been helping my aged mother restore some order to her house. The husband had possessed a number of dubious-quality firearms and they were passed to his son from a previous marriage. Between us, my brothers and I scoured that house pretty thoroughly, and assumed we had found everything of interest or particular value. Until yesterday, when we were over there doing some cleaning. In an out-of-the-way closet we located a vacuum cleaner that presumably still worked, and when I dug it out...there was a blue cloth gun sleeve, leaning up in the dark corner. And I knew immediately what it was.
Two homes, across the road from each other. Two .22 rifles, one my first gun and the other an heirloom of my wife's mother, both long since assumed lost, and both rediscovered in an obscure closet after any thought of recovery was long gone.
When I was about 14-15 back in the early 70s I received for Christmas a Remington M581 .22 rifle. Happy as I was with it, I fancied myself quite the guntrader already, and swapped it with my uncle who lived across the road for an old Remington M12 .22 pump. Fast forward almost 30 years, said uncle has passed, and then my estranged aunt. With no children, her entire estate was left to my mother and her brother. When cleaning out the house, no guns were found....until the day of the estate auction. When the last item had been sold and the house was empty, my mom was cleaning the bathroom one last time, when she found a tiny hidden closet behind the bathroom door. Inside was nothing but empty dry cleaning bags, and behind those, my old .22. Mom, of course, restored it to my possession. That was over 20 years ago.
Along about that time, my father-in-law passed and left my wife an old Savage 3C .22 single-shot rifle that had belonged to her long-deceased mother. That gun ended up on long-term loan to my mom for rabbit reduction duties in her vegetable garden. In the years since, Mom remarried and somehow that little Savage disappeared. About 6 months ago, the husband - a dedicated packrat - was moved into a nursing home, and since then we've been helping my aged mother restore some order to her house. The husband had possessed a number of dubious-quality firearms and they were passed to his son from a previous marriage. Between us, my brothers and I scoured that house pretty thoroughly, and assumed we had found everything of interest or particular value. Until yesterday, when we were over there doing some cleaning. In an out-of-the-way closet we located a vacuum cleaner that presumably still worked, and when I dug it out...there was a blue cloth gun sleeve, leaning up in the dark corner. And I knew immediately what it was.
Two homes, across the road from each other. Two .22 rifles, one my first gun and the other an heirloom of my wife's mother, both long since assumed lost, and both rediscovered in an obscure closet after any thought of recovery was long gone.
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