Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S • 21 I turned 110 this year. "I guess I've lived enough, and been enough, and done enough to know a few things. And to have heard a few things more. "How many times, would you guess? . . . 'If only this gun could talk . . .' "We do, you know. Like me, you've just got to have gone long enough, and been long enough, and lived enough of the sporting life to know. That we gain a life of our own. And, that most especially . . . when we have traveled that road together . . . we will speak to you. And the older you get, and the further we have come, the more clearly and deeply you will understand. You must remember that if you have respected me properly, I will outlive you. As I have outlived others before you. "I, of course, am but one of many. But, if you've lived a life so purely taken with scatter-guns, dogs, and birds that wings and wonder roost in your soul, slide that rocking chair over here a little closer by the fire. Me? Oh, I'll just sit here in the corner by the hearth. "Pour a finger of Glenfiddich, My Friend, to us both. And should you be patient enough to care, it's time I told someone my story. "Let us begin at the beginning. "Oh, my . . . so long ago . . . how far the journey . . . and then again, how short the row . . . "I was born in 1906, in the ninth month of the year, a light, 16-bore double gun of 6 lbs. 2 oz.—by grade, among the earliest of 58,000 siblings—to a large and celebrated old New England family in the industrial burg of Meriden, Connecticut. "It was the year Willis Carrier received a patent for the world's first air conditioner, the first time Dow Jones closed above 100. The era in which the National Football Rules Committee legalized the forward pass, Europe launched its inaugural aeroplane flight, and Victor manufactured its first Victrola. "Aside from my brother Trojan, I was always the most popular member of my family. "My father, Charles Parker, born January 2, 1809, died four first light by mike gaddis "IF ONLY GUNS COULD TALK" . . . A CENTURIAN'S LIFE STORY. years before I entered this old world, and my mother, that sweet and timeless "Dame of Invention," lives on. I hope forever. In 1868, 47 years before I arrived, my father's flesh- and-blood sons, Wilbur, Charles, and Dexter, founded the family marquee I was birthed under, and over the many years now I have been evermore humble and proud to bear the herald of "Parker Bros." on my shoulders. "But, of course, the story is much deeper than that. "While I was birthed in Meriden, I was conceived in the small borough of Brookfield, New Hampshire, the brainchild of my Godfather, Mahlon H. Tuttle. It was his idea that I be born. When we are custom- ordered, you see, there arises more than the biblical notion of 'immaculate conception.' "My Godfather was a barrister, who by avocation practiced law in Carroll County, but by vocation, folks declared, held court in the bird coverts of the Appalachian Mountains. His docket, forever full, was pursued extensively through the Green Mountain ranges, and the rugged hills of the Whites, from the Sandwiches to the Mahoosuc. Me, Bess, and The Boy. The Boy home from Fort Sill. Christmas, 1966.