John Boon Kolojaco
I seriously doubt there would have been anyone who could have argued an Americans right to bear arms any better than my Father could have. The photo of him above was taken in the 1920's...he was 18. He was still hunting for food for his family's dinner table and had been since he was eight years old. He used to tell us the story of his Dad allowing him only two 22 caliber bullets to go to the woods to find food for his poor sharecroppers family of seven. Dad laughed when he told the story and said he could always find something for supper out in the woods and learned not to miss because he didn't like to hear his younger brothers yell at him...or go hungry himself.
My Grandfather sharecropped and raised cotton for the same man for over seventy years. He had to pay the landowner half of what he produced so they never had much of anything, especially during the Great Depression.
Dad said he was very lucky to have been hired by a prosperous sulphur company he worked at for over 42 years...taking only one sick day off with the flu in all that time and he resented having to be sent home that day intending to have a perfect work record. He started the job on his 21st birthday, a month before the crash of Wall Street in 1929. He claimed he got the job due to his excellent baseball skills and was able to help his family survive the Depression. The company hired him to play hind-catcher
on the company team, baseball was something else Daddy was very good at
.
Dad also raised cattle and baled hay and made more money at that than he did at the company so my siblings and I were much better off than he and his had been. We got most anything we asked for whether it be a fast quarter horse or a hot-rod Ford. My parents rose from dire poverty to the very successful Middle Class using good
common sense and a lot of hard work.
common sense and a lot of hard work.
Daddy never did give up his love of hunting and the woods is where he spent every vacation in the fall and early winter all his life. I used to hear him say he wouldn't kill anything he didn't intend to eat except rattlesnakes and that's only because Mamma refused to fry them. Mamma did have her limits...but not that many. We found
out Mom was almost as good a shot as Daddy.
out Mom was almost as good a shot as Daddy.
Martha Rose Kolojaco
I remember Mother crying most every one of her wedding anniversaries in October for years because Dad would be off hunting on it. Daddy had a terrible wreck in 1971 and almost died spending three months in intensive care and when he finally recovered, Mom made him retire. She said she had enough money saved and Dad was 62 and still had his cattle and hay business and a great pension so he decided to quit his "day job" and focus on what he really liked to do...hunt, bale hay, and tend his cattle.
After dad "retired" is when Mamma decided the only way she would ever get to spend
their anniversary with him was to join him and she began to bag her limit also. They traveled all over Texas, Wyoming, and Colorado big game hunting every fall.
Daddy had a number of his prize animals stuffed, white tail and mule deer, a couple of elk, a bear, and an antelope.
My Father was one quarter Native American Apache
and looked it, acted it, and was very proud of it.
This photo of Dad was taken in West Texas just a couple of years before he died at the age of 84. He had to have a hip replacement after the wreck and it bothered him as he got older...but never enough to keep him out of his beloved woods or make him miss a shot.
We often ate wily wild turkey for Thanksgiving when we were growing up. Dad was very good with a turkey call.
********
Daddy would have never thought of buying an assault rifle with a large
ammunition clip for any reason because he never wasted bullets.
He learned not to at a very early age. In fact, he would have been
the very first one to shout they should never have been allowed
to be sold to the public any more than a nuclear bomb should be
and should be banned except for soldiers and law enforcement.
No REAL hunter ever needed an assault rifle and mass murderers and drug
lords are non partisan and this should not be a partisan issue!
Common sense is what that is and my Father was
a legend in his own time because he had
an abundance of it.
