From The Hip

One of our favorite pastimes was to go shooting, and we spent a lot of time pursuing that activity. Daddy, Wallace, Matt and myself would pile into that old Ford pickup truck and we would head out to the gravel pit near the airport in Bennettsville and spend the day shooting at bottles, cans, targets, pieces of wood....whatever we could find to lay a bead on. "Plinking" was a long standing family tradition and we would take an arsenal of rifles, handguns and shotguns when we would head out.

One Saturday when I was 13 or so we were at the gravel pit doing our thing. We were standing on the west rim of the pit, tossing bottles into the water and sinking them via a barrage of .22LR rounds. I'd find a bottle, toss it and before I could draw that Ruger Mk II, Wallace or Matt would pop the bottle and it would sink out of sight.

My frustration was mounting with each bottle sunk and to make it worse they ganged up and started the taunting...."what's the matter? Can't hit the bottle? Aw, Juubie Juubie can't hit the bottle! What a shame! Maybe you can wait til we run out of ammunition and then you'll get a chance!"

I had heard enough! I had an old Teem bottle in my hand that I flung skyward and hauled off a shot from the hip that shattered the bottle at it's apex. I was dumbfounded that I nailed it and JB, whom had quietly been observing the proceedings while puffing a Kent Golden Light broke out into a full-on "Waa haa haa haaaa!" and rushed over to celebrate the one-in-a-million shot he just witnessed.

Wallace and Matt sat in dumbfounded silence, too. Their attempts to recreate my feat fell flat, and resulted in a bunch of targets I got to pick off when they hit the water, as they both had emptied their magazines during flight.

Careful what you wish for.

Have a Rice day!