The War at Home

It was no surprise when I discovered this photo from an National Rifle Association shooting club amongst my grandfather's collection. I remember him taking me on many drives that ended up at the Anderson Gun Club when I was 8 years old or so in the late 1950's. He was an active participant in NRA shooting matches and I remember clearly his unusual bench rifle and equipment for reloading ammunition. The bench rifle, the only name that I know it by, was mounted in a vice on a stand and the shooting competition focused on the tremendous accuracy and repeatability that could be obtained from hand-loaded ammunition that was carefully weighed, measured, and assembled to obtain consistent velocity and ballistics.

My grandfather was a few years too old to fight in World War II but he served at home as a civil defense warden. So, I suspect that there may have been a relationship between his membership in the NRA and the war, and that is suggested by the photo which appears to be the early 1940's but I cannot date it with any confidence. From A Brief History of the NRA, union veterans Col. William C. Church and Gen. George Wingate were "dismayed by the lack of marksmanship in their troops" and formed the NRA in 1871 to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis". The NRA actively promoted shooting sports programs among American youth and in 1906, 200 boys competed in matches at Sea Girt New Jersey, less than an hour from my home. Naturally, I grew to become interested in marksmanship and through the NRA and Boy Scouts of America I took several gun safety courses and became a pretty fair competitor myself, eventually joining the Purdue University Rifle Team for a brief period.

One aspect of the NRA's history that I found interesting and relevant is that during World War II the organization actively promoted firearms safety and marksmanship among police forces and industrial guards and even reloaded ammunition for guards and police officers. "The NRA's call to help arm Britain in 1940 resulted in the collection of 7,000 firearms for Britain's defense against a potential invasion from Germany. (Britain had virtually disarmed itself with a series of gun control laws enacted between World War I and World War II)."


This particular photo does not look like the Anderson Gun Club as I remember it. Perhaps it is the Cicero Gun Club as indicated on the gun case in the foreground.

A Farm House Then and Now

This farm house is on 900N in Alexandria Indiana. When this picture was taken in the 1930's it belonged to my great Aunt Alma and Uncle Alvie. My grandfather took this picture and that is his automobile in the driveway.

Now, I spotted the house from some distance. I think the barn and its relationship to the house is what gave it away. There was no doubt in my mind at all, so I wasn't the least surprised when my mother pulled-over to the side of the road.

When I eventually got around to looking at the photo and having a minute to contemplate it, I thought that we might have stopped at the wrong house! I brought-up the original 30's picture on my display and at first I wasn't sure. The house looked a lot different and where did those big old trees come from? If, this picture was taken in, say, 1935, then those trees are only 70 years old. They looked bigger and hence, older than that to me, but I am wrong.

I live in New Jersey now and this photo reminded me of one of those little astounding facts that you hear now and then. They were discussing the growing conflict between civilization and the exploding deer population on the local radio. I know first hand that whether you are talking about New Jersey or Indiana, the carnage on the highways is ample proof that our deer population has made a tremendous recovery in the last few decades. Anyway, someone said is was surprising given the urban sprawl, in general, but especially because New Jersey has the highest population density in the world. The authority that they were interviewing corrected them and said that it really wasn't that surprising because today there are one hundred times more trees in New Jersey than there were in 1776. Now I doubt that there are exactly one hundred times more trees, but the image was clear enough. The settlers and colonalists had strip-mined the trees so they could build their houses and farm the land.

In the past we would fly to Indianapolis for the holidays and get on that long straight stretch of I-69 that goes to Anderson. My wife would always make a couple observations as if the realization had just hit her. Right after "It's so flat!" would come "And there aren't any trees!". Completely predictable. When you drive to Indiana it doesn't have that much impact because the scenery changes so gradually.

I assume the same was true in the mid-west where farming was on a larger scale and much more recently than in New Jersey. Still, I am surprised at how big those trees have grown in the last 70 years.