Rifle Team

Especially for Brook, who asked me about this:

     Unbelievably in today’s climate, my high school sponsored a competitive rifle team, and I was a member of it.We shot .22 rifles, most of which were military surplus with open sights. We practiced once or twice a week, shooting at paper bull’s eye targets ( the center one for sighting in, 10 surrounding spots for firing at) across a 50’ range.  Our range was the stage in the school gymnasium/auditorium. While we were shooting, we had to lock the doors to assure that nobody came in from the downrange end of the gym. Then, on some weekends, we bused around the state, as far as Roseburg and Portland, to take part in interscholastic competitions.

     At first, I was an abysmally poor shot. However, we did part of our training at the University of Oregon’s ROTC center. One evening, the range master watched me wasting ammunition, then had me hold my forefinger at arm’s length in front of my face. “With both eyes open, put it on the target,” he said, and I did. “Now close your right eye.”  My finger appeared to stay stable.“Now open the right eye and close your left eye.” My finger appeared to jump far to the left. The range master announced, “You are left eyed.”  

     It turns out that people have dominant eyes like they have dominant hands. It has nothing to do with the visual acuity in either eye. Most people match eye to hand, but I was a weirdo who was right-handed, but left eyed.(One of my friends claims to be neither-eye dominant, and claims that he "qualified" with a rifle in the military when his sergeant punched through his target for him with a pencil.)  I switched to shooting left-handed, and that’s when I became sort of a hot shot. At one point, I had 14 trophies (little plastic guys on top of a hunk of wood) and 14 medals, thick brass disks on ribbons, that looked the medals on Russian leaders, as satirized in political cartoons.

     When it began to look like I knew what I was doing, my folks got me a Birmingham Small Arms, Martini Action, rifle of my own, with peep sights. Dad probably ordered it through an ad in the National Rifle Association’s magazine—he was a life member—and was delivered by train to Cushman, OR, where the freight train could stop, although that was rare.  It came in time for Christmas, and Dad and family friend John Stoner could hardly wait to see it, so I opened it on Christmas Eve, instead of waiting for our usual Christmas morning ritual. 

     Our first coach was Robert Evans, who had been a flyer in the Berlin Air Lift. He drove us around the state in a school-bus yellow van like that logging companies use to haul loggers into the woods. In Oregon parlance, that's a "crummy." He drove as fast as if he were still flying.  His wife Janet was the office assistant at the high school, but when President Kennedy established the Peace Corps, the two of them took off for Africa.  We, the team, sent him on his way with a pith helmet, made of Styrofoam, from the $.88 cent store in Eugene. Then our U.S. history teacher, Dave Rankin, took over as coach.  First off, he wanted us to clean the rifles, but we all protested.  We had been trained that you never mess with anything that changed the dynamics of the rifle in competition. 
      I got my own left-handed shooting jacket, but they were made only in men's size large, so I swam around in it.  About three years ago, I gave it to a Seattle policeman sharpshooter whose son is beginning to shoot competitively, and who is left-handed.  I still have the rifle.  

     After I had graduated, I heard that a Turkish exchange student joined the rifle team, because Turkey was at war with Greece at the time over the island of Cyprus, and she wanted to “Shoot Gricks.”  She let a stray shot go through the roof of the school.