Do we have any hunters out there – mighty or otherwise?
If you're the hunting type, then you'd probably like the ad for Willow Hardware below, which ran in the Lorain Journal back on September 19, 1953. It has a pleasantly nostalgic hunting theme, with a man holding two pheasants, while his female companion (touting her own rifle) looks on. Both are sporting nifty Fuddsian caps.
Willow Hardware, which was still in its early days back then, apparently could outfit the hunter with everything needed, including guns, shells, gun cleaning rod sets, hunting knives, as well as the shell & game vest – and the hunting license too.
The ad notes that Double Owl Stamps were available on Friday & Saturday, perhaps triggering (no pun intended) thoughts of blasting away at the nocturnal, hooting birds of prey.
We never had any hunters in our family - just fisherman, including Grandpa (Mom's father) and my own Dad. No one even owned a gun.
I don't hunt or own a gun either, but I subscribe to American Hunter as part of my NRA membership. The magazine is always interesting, despite the fact that I don't think I could ever shoot anything – not even a squirrel.
However, one of my good friends (that I met in college) has been a hunter all his life. His family built a small cabin on some wooded acreage they own south of Akron, and he hunts there sometimes. It's his little oasis, a place to get away to once in a while.
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As a parting shot, here are some more 'hunting'-themed ads and articles that I've posted over the years: this 1946 ad for Spaid's Sportsmen's Shop in Lorain; this matchbook cover for Grandview Motel; a 1958 for Welch's Sports; this 1962 article about Lorain County moose hunters in Canada; and this 1962 ad for Pic-Way Shoes.
4 comments:
No hunters in my family.
Dad's side, I don't think since we arrived in the early 1800s. Mom's side, probably since the early 1900s, when her mom was a farm-girl. I have a kid who target shoots and knows a crap-ton about all kinds of weapons. I would call an "enthusiast," I guess, but he once said that if the gov't offered a buy-back he'd take the cash, no problem.
My father's war experiences caused him to ban firearms from the house. In fact, he'd chew us out if he caught us "playing war," so we did that at our friends'. I had a young-teen cousin that killed himself with a birthday-present shotgun from his grandpa. That certainly cemented the rules.
Where I lived in Pennsyltucky, almost everyone I knew hunted: Shotgun, rifle, bow. Heck, The First Day of Deer Season was an actual skool holiday. But, despite having plenty of invites, I never stalked game. I can hardly stand to kill a spider, and I despise those 8-legged horrors. No way could I drop the trigger on something warm-blooded. I can't even fish because I feel sorry for what I hook.
Don't get me wrong and call me a hypocrite...
I'll eat Bambi and Thumper and Nemo, I just ain't doin' them in!
DAN: I think I just missed you on Friday; Nate said he had seen you at the Library Book Sale.
Even Amherst in the 1960s was rural enough to have kids take off on opening day. A shotgun in the back window of a pickup truck was a common sight, no problem at all.
One Thanksgiving as we sat down to eat at Grandpa's house near Grafton a turkey walked across the far end of the small farm. Grandpa ran downstairs and got the shotgun and headed out. No shots. Just a hungry grandpa back at the table a half hour later.
A seamless basketball and a football. Just what the avid hunter needs in the great outdoors.
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