C’mon Back!

We may like to think we’re in control, however we are pretty much controlled instead by our senses and emotions. Consider our sense of smell and see if your experience is anything like mine. I became very interested in guns long before I was ever able to personally have one. Just after my 17th birthday I bought a Ruger Single-Six Flat-Gate .22 and for the next two and one-half years my life was controlled by the companion smells of gunsmoke from dozens of sixguns and Hoppe’s #9. Nothing could ever top these wonderful smells — or so I thought at the time. Then one day I caught a whiff of perfume emanating from an 18-year-old blonde. Gunsmoke and Hoppe’s #9 were forgotten until we were married less than four months later.

For about a year and a half we smelled gunsmoke and Hoppe’s #9 together and then the inevitable happened, our first child arrived. We were wonderfully blessed with two more children over the next two years and by then I rarely ever got to smell gunsmoke or Hoppe’s. I had been a reloader since I graduated from high school, but now there was neither time nor money for such things. As the kids were growing up I found myself usually working two jobs with little or no disposable income for anything except necessities. With three kids to raise, reloading equipment and components, let alone space for using them, we’re definitely not necessities. From the time that first child was born until the last one left home seemed like a long time at the time, however as I look back it seems like a very short period now.

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