Well as I got older, my best friend and I would go shooting in his grand parents Grape Vineyards. He had a Winchester 72, with a tube magazine that held 15 rounds...I coveted that rifle...and began saving $$ for one of my own. But my stepdad nixed the idea. So the $$ went for car and girls and other stuff.
Years later I was in a gunshop and saw a Winchester 72 on consignment...it needed some TLC...it had been dripped with paint from a closet getting painted around it, it had a bent mag tube. The seller said it was her father's and when he died, her mother just kept moving it around in the closet, but now she was gone and it was being sold. I got it cheap and it was my first Winchester 72. I cleaned it up and replaced the mag tube and it shoots like a dream. About a year later, I was looking at Winchester 72s at an online auction. I made a bid on what looked like a very used and filthy rifle. When I got it, I asked the seller if she had any history with it. She said that it had been seized by a police department in California, and that the rifle had been ordered to the department's use and ownership for use at the department range by the range manager to address the ground squirrel problem. He was the sellers father and he had used the gun for many years. It sat in the corner of his office at the range. He was a very heavy smoker and he didn't take great care of the rifle, but other than the smoking residue, he didn't abuse it either. When he retired the police department gave him the rifle. He continued to shoot it until he passed. I stripped it down, and cleaned and scrubbed and cleaned and got the gunk cleaned off and I replaced the old 2X weaver .22 scope with a classy Weaver J4 scope and it is a great shooter.
I wish both of these rifles could talk and tell me their stories... These are OFG .22 rifles if ever there was. Both of them have seen lots of rounds since coming into my care, and while I did clean them up, they still have some of the signs of their former lives...I figure they earned every mark.
