I was born the youngest of four boys, boys spread out over a 14 year period. There was my two oldest brothers, then a big gap, then my next brother and then myself. It's in many ways like there were two different families, two whole different experiences growing up.

My older two brothers knew a vital active engaged father. A man with a sense of humor, a family man, a man engaged in politics and the community.  However, I grew up with a father who'd pretty much closed himself off, had a number of strokes and a heart attack. A Dad maybe having second thoughts about his marriage, and struggling with a world changing quickly around him. A man who probably saw his best years behind him. 

My Dad passed away when I was only 13 from a last fatal heart attack. I realized later that I actually knew very little about my father. His strokes had actually affected his personality from one attack to the next so the Dad I thought I knew would come home from the hospital at times a whole different man. He'd be quiet and reserved at times, then suddenly as if a switch had been thrown, he'd be oddly emotional.

One key aspect of my father was kept put away in a trunk at the end of our hallway. The top shelf was old family photographs, letters, and report cards. However, if you took that top shelf out, underneath was all of Dad WWII stuff. His uniform, odd mementos, photos of strange places and men. There was pictures from the front lines of Germany and Italy where he'd served as a Sergeant for a Bazooka squad on the front lines. There was pictures of my Dad as a young man in places I didn't even understand as a child, buildings with rooms full of emaciated bodies. I would learn later these were concentration camps that my Dad had helped to liberate. 

My Dad though never talked of the war. Though looking back I can see that it had dramatically shaped him. Taking a rural NC farm boy and making him a bit of a world weary man war hero. It had also launched him financially, from the steady work and GI benefits to the extra money he made selling the home-made cigarettes made from the tobacco and rolling papers my grandfather would send him.

There is something though that I learned about after his death though that I now find very troubling yet humanizing. It was this deal about the gun. Now we lived in a big hunting family, one of my older brothers even raised and trained rabbit dogs. There were lots of shotguns of all types secured away in the house. I got my first bb-gun as a kid, my first 410 shotgun when I was 12. So guns were never a big deal in the house - except for some reason - this one that was only whispered about.

It came up during the settlement of the estate, that was the first I'd heard of it. Talk of what to do with Dad's pistol. A pistol I'd certainly never seen or knew anything about. It was talked about in low whispers though, so I picked up immediately there was some sort of story behind it. It seems that my Dad had bought this pistol perhaps covertly under a fog of suspicious circumstances.

Over the years I'd hear more about it. That my mom had found out about it, that she was concerned enough to call my older brother, now married and living on his own. My brother came and took the gun, I'm not sure if it was with my Dad's knowledge or permission or not. It finally dawned on me that what was causing so much concern was the possible intent of the gun.

However, looking back at it now, I think how absurd it is to take a gun away like that and somehow think that that "fixed" anything. But it was the 60s I guess and people didn't talk about stuff like that, about why someone might buy a pistol and why it would have to be hidden away. Again, what was the deal with that pistol, when we lived in a house full of shotguns and rifles. There was obviously some worry on intent. Perhaps the repeated strokes and heart attacks, the ever increasing periods of convalescing were having their toll. I'd find out later that there'd been talk of divorce, maybe that figured in, yet I never saw any overt problems, but only a huge lack of intimacy and love in the house.

But whatever, the gun was taken away, no one ever seemed to talk about it, or talk about anything to do with it or around it again. Then later my Dad would have his last final massive heart attack.  Yet it still haunts me, since I lived in that house, with these people. Should I have known something, picked up something? What was the deal with the gun?