After we (oh, how I hope) fixed the well pump, Ian and I went to Landlady’s with his pickup and the Jeep trailer and loaded up all the broken bits of stucco wire (stucco included) and headed out to the city dump. A little under 1400 pounds worth, according to the scale. And so to lunch.
I used to open-carry around town all the time and nothing really bad ever came of it. But since the law changed, making unlicensed concealed carry legal, I perversely started wearing at least a figleaf of a gun burqa most of the time. In winter your pistol is pretty much concealed whether you want it to be or not anyway, so I’d kind of gotten out of the OC habit. (In public, that is. Obviously the pistol is there for God and everybody to see day after day, but most of the time there’s nobody there to see it.) But today I was in a t-shirt, and in public. And my every-day holster is not merely OC, it’s really quite sincerely OC. Also, I was completely filthy.
Point is, I was feeling a bit self-conscious.
Turns out we arrived right when everybody else in town thought it was lunchtime too, so the little Mexican place was packed. I was hitting the salsa bar when a young voice behind me said, “What kind of gun is that?”
I turned around. It was a kid, maybe twelve. “Is that a .357?” The tone of the question seemed to indicate that it would be really cool if it were a .357.
“No, it’s a .44.”
The kid’s eyes got wide. “A .44!” He ran back to a booth where a man and woman were looking on. “Hey, Dad!” he positively shouted. “It’s a .44!” Clearly, .44 was even cooler than .357.
I don’t get to be cool very often.
As a guy who has read your blog for a long time I can say that you get to be cool more that you will ever know. If I were to carry that way when the kid noticed me the next thing I would be doing is dealing with a TRU* team. I hope the pump repair works out. Have as much fun as you can.
MJR
*Tactical Response Unit aka SWAT
Wot MJR said
I always liked guns, especially when I was a kid, though I don’t know whether my liking of them adds to or takes away from the normality of kids in general liking guns.
I enjoy that situation every once in a while. 🙂 It’s fun. I do carry CC now, much more than ever, and sort of miss that kind of encounter, but most of the kids here are used to seeing guns of all kinds already and aren’t much impressed one way or the other.
No TRU or SWAT here… even the sheriff’s deputies enjoy talking guns with the old lady sometimes.