All the way from Iwo Jima


I wish my Grandpa was still here to tell us the story himself but this gun has a lot of history.  The story goes that during World War II my Papa was stationed on a Navy ship off of Iwo Jima.  One night he and a few of his friends snuck off of their ship to go exploring.  (Now I don't know too many details but I would have to assume this was after the famous battle if they felt like this was a good idea.) They are exploring caves during the night and run across a stock pile of weapons and they each steal one.  On the way back to their ship that night they are fired on by their own ship because the don't know it's them since they had snuck off. Nana told me that she asked him how he got it home without ever being caught and he simply said he had it in his locker on the ship and then stuck it in his bag.  That would never happen today but that was before everything was so regulated.  So the gun that was used to kill our rabbit dinner yesterday (which I was surprised at how much I liked) came all the way from the island of Iwo Jima over 60 years ago.  Papa never really used it but my Uncle duck hunted with it a lot but that was over 15 years ago.  It's on its 3rd generation.  That history is so cool to me.  

And today Matt took the 2nd gun my uncle gave him last year hunting too.  This one belonged to Nana's dad and was "his baby" according to her.  He would go out hunting rabbits with that gun and their beagle every weekend.  So Matt decided he had to go get a rabbit with that one too.  I know both of my grandpas were smiling down at them being used one last time before Matt hangs them on the wall at the camp.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summertime!

Image
Yesterday was Bossier’s last day of school, but we’ve been in summer mode since they got done LEAP testing a couple of weeks ago. It’s honestly so dumb that they had 10 days of school after testing because they did NOTHING. There was a whole lot of movie watching and playing on computers. On top of the fact that grades were due over a week ago, so it’s not like there was much they could have done. We stayed out on school nights, had pool days and skipped half days to hang with Pops, or friends or just to bake.  Katie had her awards and field day last Wednesday. She ended the year with Straight A’s and a member of National Honor Society. It was so fun to watch her compete in field day events and get to meet some more of her school friends too I checked Katie, Madison and Britney out of school when it was over, and they spent the afternoon in the pool and then we all (with Koy and Lil) went to Josie’s Tball game that night. It was the second one we’d been to in a week and I swear it’...
Read more

Last Day of Summer

Image
That’s a wrap. Summer 2019 is done and tonight is a school night. It’s been a great one. We went to the beach, Did lots of swimming, spent time with all of the cousins. But it’s time to go back and they are excited. We had Shaleigh and Lily over and went to the pool for a few hours. They had it to themselves and it was fun to spend several hours swimming and getting in one last day of play. It was also meet the teacher. Katie has Mrs. Wilhelm (top) but she is still on maternity leave until Labor Day. So for the next month she has Mrs. Huckabee who she knows because she subs and she had her several times in kindergarten. Both of Lillian‘s teachers are new to Apollo this year so we are not sure what to expect but they seemed very nice. Mrs. Winans is her homeroom and then she switches for math and science. It’s a welcome change to only have two teachers this year. Three teachers in third grade was a little much and in fact they’re not even doing that anymore. Back to school also means ba...
Read more

Bar-J and More Baseball

Image
For Christmas last year, Pops and Honey gave his 3 daughters and 4 granddaughters a weekend at a “dude ranch” for a gift. We picked the weekend because it was Anna and Piper’s spring break and it’s harder for Anna to miss school as a Junior than the other 3. The weather couldn’t have been anymore perfect and the timing worked out perfectly for us to celebrate Allie’s 40th birthday on the 4th too. They came in Thursday and Matt grilled steaks for her actual bday. I didn’t get one picture that night but it was a nice evening. The next morning, we got up and drove to El Dorado to the ranch. It was the “rancher’s experience” and we got in 3 rides, plus the kids got to help care for all the animals Dad has his own cabin and all 7 girls were in a bunk room together. After we were settled, we went to catch the horses in a field to take them to the stable to be saddled  The wranglers were very patient considering there were 8 of us and none knew how to help very much. But there was lots of...
Read more