What Happened to the Gun?
By Arlene Levin (c) 2020
I had no opportunity or interest in guns but guns held a special place in our family folklore. My dad brought home a gun from the war. It was part of the stories he told and retold over dessert to family and friends that came to dinner.
When the U.S. entered World War II my dad enlisted in the Army Air Force. His group was the first that flew into China to replace the legendary Flying Tigers.
As one of his stories goes, returning from a mission, my dad, the bombardier and the rest of the crew had to bail out. Why? My dad explained, “The navigator was an incompetent. He cheated his way through training. On this mission he sighted the wrong star so we ran out of gas” I was never sure exactly where they were, but my dad said “ If we’d walked in the opposite direction we’d have been captured”.
In our apartment building the gun was
stored in our basement locker, dismantled, the pieces were wrapped
in oil soaked rags to preserve and protect them. These were then
tucked into different
boxes. My dad,
with his overly thorough approach to everything, wanted to be
absolutely sure his gun was out of commission. A few times I stood
in the locker and looked around the mess of boxes and family remnants wondering where it could be stashed.t I never saw the gun or any
of its pieces. I only heard about it over idle conversation.
November 30,1965, it was the eve of my wedding. Tired and anxious, I went to bed early. Amazingly enough I fell asleep but slipped into a disturbing dream. There was lots of yelling and crashing. All I could hear were the sounds but for some reason I imagined my father, with a baseball bat in hand, battering cars parked along our street.
Jolted awake I hear my mother screaming “Call the Police!...Call the Police”! I jumped out of bed still caught in disturbing pieces of my dream. My sister was making the call. I ran to her and grabbed for the phone. “Phyliss you can’t call the police on Daddy”. She gave me a weird look, waved me off and continued the call. At this point my mother was leaning out the bedroom window of our first floor apartment. She was yelling at someone on the street. I thought, “What was going on?”
It was late in the evening. My dad, a compulsive type “A” personality, decided he HAD to go to his car to fix something. So there he was out stretched on the front seat of his car fussing with something under the dashboard. Enter an off-duty policeman returning from our neighborhood laundromat. He sees my dad and thinks there is a robbery underway. I guess he thought “This guy is hot wiring the car.” The policeman yells at my dad “What are you doing? Get out of the car.” Enter my mother. Hearing the disturbance she opens the bedroom window of our 1st floor apartment.
All she knows is that a man is pointing a gun at my dad! “Call the Police! Call the Police!” she yells to my sister. The man on the street shouts back “I am the police!” Then she yells, “What are you doing? That's my husband, he lives here!” The policeman, understandably flustered, realizes his error, but at this crucial moment he is still holding his service revolver and pointing it at my dad.
Once out of the car and back on his feet my dad, an affable character and smooth talker, was able to defuse the situation. “Here is my ownership and you can see I live right here”. Later my dad said, “What made me the most nervous was the fear I saw in his eyes. Well that...and the fact he was pointing a gun at me!”
Meanwhile, the bride-to-be stood in the hallway still not knowing what was happening. “What is going on?” By this time I was wide awake. “Will someone please tell me WHAT IS GOING ON? Why are you calling the police? Where is Daddy?”
Knowing my dad was safe, my mother slipped back through the window and brushed herself off. Then, finally, she told me what happened. “It was a big misunderstanding, I didn’t know he was a policemen. All I saw was a man pointing a gun at your father...and the policeman thought your dad was trying to steal our car. I’m sure he thought ‘Who would be out at this time of night fixing something under the dash...in the dark!’” Stunned into silence I stood in disbelief. The whole incident took just a few minutes but the agony of not knowing what was happening seemed to last “forever”!
My mother smiled gave me a big hug and said, “You should go back to bed Arlene, tomorrow is a big day and you need your rest”. As I tried to sleep I thought, “This could have so easily ended in tragedy.” Feeling truly blessed, the bride-to-be eventually fell into welcomed dreamlessness.
Meanwhile back on the street, the policeman put away his gun and apologized. Sharing their misunderstandings, my dad and the policeman had a bit of a laugh that totally released the tension. They started talking about things men talk about, the war...guns. That’s when my dad mentioned “the gun”, the one in the basement...the one dismantled and stored in oily rags.
What happened to the gun? A few weeks later the cop came back and bought it!
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