SNAP, great story, thats the stuff pre 64 M70's are made of......
Chapter 2.
It was the late 60s, I was 22 and all my friends were enrolling in the new college near my home, so, in a weak moment, I SOLD my beloved .338 back to the old dealer along with my Browning Safari LE .30-06, which had been my working L-O rifle.....what can I say, I was a kid......
I tried, over the next many years, to buy it from him again, but, no success and then, I moved to the BC coast to get married. I went home sometimes, but, lost touch with so many I had known as one does in life.
In autumn, 1987, my favourite aunt died and I drove the 450 miles to Nelson, BC, to then go to Trail, BC, to her funeral. I stopped at the sign for a small gunstore run by a guy I knew slightly and looked in the window, to see an old 70 on the rack.
It was almost closing time and I went in and asked to see this rifle; he said it was HIS and NOT for sale. I then noticed a closed guncase on the rack beside it and somehow, I just KNEW what was inside, when he said, proudly, Dewey, look at THIS one and pulled MY Alaskan from the case......
I went rigid with surprise and desire and then told him of my former ownership of this rifle and HOW I would LOVE to buy it back. He said that Al Biesen, from Spokane, some 170 miles south of Nelson, has heard of its presence here and offered him serious coin for it, but, he was not sure.
I said I would call once the funeral was over and I wss back in Vancouver and he told me that he would wait for my call. Christmas passed and I could NOT get this gun off my mind, so, called and offered him $1250.00 whereupon he insisted on $1400.00, at that time a high price for this model.
I worked a deal to pay in installments and sent him a large cheque, then, somehow, managed to talk my wife into paying the rest forthwith. Later that week, at 08:00 one grey and GREAT morning, the rifle arrived, 20 years to the day after I first bought it and at seven times the original price!
Big Tom Tom, named for my brother who had died of Diabetes in 1982 and for its thunderous report was HOME and has NEVER left my side again! I have many fine rifles, custom Dakotas worth several times the value of this old Alaskan, an original Oberndorf 9.3x62 from 1936 and so on and on and on.
But, there IS really ONE rifle in my elderly heart and not even a Weibe, Martini, Echols or Purdey could-would take its place...............
