19352012:
Good day to you sir, I hope the week treated you acceptably and this finds you and yours as well as can be what with all the vagaries of life surrounding us.

Thanks for the thread and thanks to those who've responded, it always makes for an entertaining read.

The stories that I'll relate took place in Spence's Sporting Goods in Oroville, WA, a place where a lot of us Canucks used to cross border shop for all sorts of stuff before changes in US law post 911 made it unlawful for us to do that. I'll note that in searching out details for my story I found that Spence passed on in '17. He was a true gentleman and I had the utmost respect for him.

On this particular morning my hunting/fishing partner and I were down in Spence's looking at the latest bass lures as he always had a good stock and stores on our side of the medicine line didn't know anything other than trout existed in the universe.

Naturally since we were there anyways we'd peruse the gun counter to see what was new, I want to say I bought at least 2 firearms from Spence over the years, it wasn't that tough for us Canucks as long as everyone did the paperwork. So into the shop comes a bit of a tough looking chap, hiking boots, denims and the ever present checked heavy flannel "bush" shirt everybody wore back in the 90's as an outer jacket.

He greeted Spence and Spence him back so we knew all was well and weren't totally surprised when he pulled his right shirttail and pulled out a very nice S&W 686 snubbie, opened the cylinder, emptied it and placed it on the counter mat.
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When he did that I noticed a Ferry County WA Deputy Sheriff badge clipped to the left of his belt buckle as well. Spence introduced us as "Canadian friends" and he relaxed and asked Spence if "that thing they'd talked about was in" as he was reluctantly ready to trade in his new 686 on it.

Spence then went into the back room and we talked with the Deputy about fishing for a wee bit, whereupon Spence returned carrying the one and only one of these I've ever seen.



While we looked on, Spence ran through the features of it to the Deputy, after which he handed it to him. The Deputy, looked at the shotgun, looked at us all and said, "Well now when I kick down a door to one of them grow ops up back of Chesaw this'll get their attention!" laugh

The other story involves law enforcement as well, which makes sense if one realizes that agriculture was the primary employer around Oroville then and law enforcement a close second as it's a border town so there were all sorts of agencies working in and around.

This day we were likely looking for fishing gear again, but encountered a chap who was about the same size as my hunting partner's older brother, which is 6'7" and a tad north of 400lbs. I want to say this chap might have been only 350 as he wasn't fat, but he was large.

He was an Oroville City LEO and was carrying a 6" barrel revolver, I believe a Smith, but can't recall that detail just now. His size was such that it looked as small as a 4" duty arm looked on "regular" sized folks.

When I asked him about why he'd chosen to stay with a revolver when most of the LEO had switched to auto loaders, his reply was that if it was needed as a blunt force multiplier he knew it'd work afterward for it's intended purpose and that he wasn't so sure about auto, for sure plastic framed autos as yet.

I'll refrain from quoting his exact phrasing, but suffice to say that buddy and I still laugh about it today when we get together. We always agree that getting a 6" barrel revolver applied to any portion of our anatomy by that chap would have been a deterrent of memorable proportion!

In the spirit of cross border shopping both ways, it turns out this chap was dating the ex-wife of an acquaintance of ours, proving once again how small the world can be in rural areas! laugh

Thanks again for the thread and for allowing me to wander down the sunny slopes of yesterday with you all.

All the best to you as we head into winter and Happy Thanksgiving.

Dwayne

The most important stuff in life isn't "stuff"