Originally Posted by teamprairiedog
Originally Posted by BangPop
Originally Posted by teamprairiedog
Originally Posted by Torqued
Going to John Walls in Blairstown Mo. with my dad and grandad. The shop used to occupy most of one side of the main street through town. Remingtons in one building,Winchester's in another,Ruger in another and so on. Go to the appropriate building and start looking for the caliber,model,grade,etc that you wanted til you found the one you liked. Then go see John and make a deal. It is long since gone now,but it used to be the best place around to buy guns.


I was there once when there was a Remington semi-truck sitting out front delivering pallets of new Remingtons.... it was the only Remington marked semi that I've ever seen.
When I entered the store that day, there was only a path through all of the boxed guns back to John's desk. That old squeaky floor.
I got to go upstairs a couple of times and was in the building a couple of doors north picking up ammo many times but I never was down in the basement... I always heard that was interesti
Remember when he had the fire? They had personnel from the Base respond because of all the ammo so I've heard.

I went there many times as a young fellow over 50 years ago, back when his wife still sold groceries on the left side of the store. The right side had used guns. The dialogue always went like this, "John, what do you want for this gun? Well, you look like a pretty good boy, you can have it for XXX.00." He had it all in that place.


That's exactly right. I don't know how many times that I picked something from the sliding glass door cases to the right of the room or something that had just came in leaning onto to post at the corner of his desk and he'd say something like" I gave Joe Bob $400 for that but you're a good customer and I'll take $300 from you".
I don't remember buying a used gun from John ever for less than what he gave for it. Did I ever believe it? NO! That was just John and when you payed cash, he'd pull a wad the size of a soup can out of his pocket. People would bring him in meat from critters they had killed from everywhere and he had an old electric skillet "that looked like it had never been washed", sitting on a spool or table next to a fridge by his desk and the boys would cook mystery meat and sometimes offer some... I never tried any.
I remember going to "Wall's Store" when Sako Riihimaki's and Browning Safari's and Ithaca 4es' were wall to wall in the glass doored used gun cases.

We are all the poorer for the loss of businesses like John''s!

I had fresh catfish from that skillet on more than one occasion, caught out of the Grand River that morning. Right behind that old desk was where all the Browning 4 barrel sets were. He had 2 dozen of them one time I was in there. He had a fellow that stayed in the store at night since it had been broken into several times. The guy slept on a cot up on the loft right above Johns desk. A couple of loaded shotguns were on the cot during the day. I was told he had shot the front doors off the place more than once.