The Legacy Model 12

A few weeks after my Grandfather's funeral, I drove over to spend an afternoon with dad (and to scam a meal off of momma!), and upon getting there, he took me to the guest room. He reached into the closet, and pulled out a gun. As he handed it to me, I could feel the years and stories tied up in the old workhorse. From the chips in the stock to the worn-away bluing on all the angles, I just knew that I was holding decades of history. It was easy to see the hard use the gun was put to, but you could also see the love that was put into the care of it.

"That's your Grandpa's duck gun" my dad said. "It's yours".

It was a solemn moment. I didn't really know what to say. After a few moments, I asked where he got the stock. It's a dark cherry red with a thin wrist, and it has a duck on the wing carved into the right side.

"Your grandpa made it. A friend of his carved the duck."

My grandfather was an excellent woodworker. As I type this, my feet rest on an oak coffee table he made, and the cherry gun cabinet that resides in my brother's home is a true work of art. Still, I never fathomed that he could produce shotgun furniture of this quality.

"It's Beautiful." I said.

"Yeah, he always used one of those slip-on butt pads on the gun, and after 20-odd years of hunting in the swamps of Louisiana, enough water had pooled under it to rot the bottom of the stock. So he made a new one." said dad.

Some time passed, and last Thanksgiving, we had our annual after-lunch shoot. I brought the duck gun along, and as my brother was shooting some skeet with it, my Grandmother walked out.

"Is that Papa's gun?"

"Yes Ma'am."

"Would you like to know why he bought a 16 gauge?"

"Yes Ma'am!"

At this point everyone around fell quiet. My brother lowered the gun and set it on the table. There was 10 or 12 of us, bothers, cousins, dad, and uncles. We were all listening as the matron of the family spoke.

"His brothers had 20 and 12 gauges. He bought a 16 because he was tired of them always borrowing his shells."

There was dead silence for a moment. Grandma's lips curved up into a faint smile.

The field filled with our laughter.

Yeah, that sounds like something Grandpa would do.