PREV: Part 2 - The Banjo

I did have one other bit of estate business to deal with.  For as long as I can remember, a cousin of mine from central Pennsylvania has commented on how much he loved one of my dad’s hunting rifles. I called this cousin to ask which gun it was so I could set it aside for him. 

He first expressed his condolences at my father’s passing and then said it would not be necessary, as my dad brought him the gun a year earlier when he was up north. My father told him his eyesight was failing and he couldn’t shoot it anymore, so he wanted to pass it on now to make sure he got it. While they were not often public knowledge, I came to learn and was glad to hear that my father had a surprising number of thoughtful and generous moments on his life’s ledger.

I was thankful my cousin had the gun, but it created a small problem for me. In my mind, I had already worked out that after my father passed, I was going to get this gun to my cousin and then deliver the banjo to the boy. My working title for this endeavor was the Guns and Banjo Tour. The structure of the campaign was this. I was going to drive from Saint Louis, Missouri, to State College, Pennsylvania, to give my cousin the gun. I was then going to drive from State College to Eugene, Oregon, to give the boy the banjo. And then, of course, there was the return to St Louis from Eugene. 

All told, this was going to be about eighty-five hours of driving. My plan was to use this time to ruminate on this new parentless chapter of my life. Keep in mind, both of my parents have now passed, I have no siblings, and reasonably distant relationships with my extended family, as I grew up in Colorado and they all lived on the East Coast, which means I only saw them a handful of times. Given the sum of this, I thought I might need a minute, or eighty-five hours, to process my new place in the world. 

But now that my cousin already had his gun, it wrecked my multi-year vision. Realizing this, I scanned the other guns in my dad’s collection. I knew he had a .22 caliber rifle because my kids shot it once while my mom and dad still lived in the woods of Missouri. I located this gun and told the estate accountants this was the one thing I wanted of my fathers.

My modified plan was now, instead of driving a hunting rifle to Pennsylvania, I would find a place somewhere on my drive to Oregon where I could shoot this .22 rifle and, in doing so, save the Guns and Banjo Tour.

NEXT: Part 4 - The Tour