The Shooting of Bucky Nelson

Of all the people I have shot (almost 2 that I know of) Bucky Nelson was the first.

Let's go back in time to Labor Day weekend 1963. Mom and Dad decided to go out of town to visit friends and left Bonnie and me at home to fend for ourselves. Before you start thinking child neglect, she was 15 and I was 14 and perfectly capable of feeding myself except with my left hand. As they were going out the door my Dad said, "Ike, (he called me Ike) DON'T MESS WITH THE GUNS!" He didn't yell or anything he just spoke in upper case letters most of the time. Now the thought of messing with the guns hadn't entered into my puny little head until then. I had my 22 caliber rifle out of the gun cabinet before they cleared the driveway. Not wanting to be alone in this activity, I drove (yes I could legally drive at 14, in Idaho, in the daytime only) over to pickup Bucky, knowing he would have .22 shells or the money to buy them. He had neither. We stopped by Fackrell's Texaco gas station/store/bar/cafe/motel/post office so he could tell his mom (drinking at the bar) that we were going out to the dump to shoot some rabbits thus distracting her, the other patrons and Quentin, the proprietor, while I stole a box of shells (I had no money and less morals then, okay). Off we went to the town dump mentioned in a earlier blog. We had a passel of fun shooting up the countryside and even a couple good-for-absolutely-nothing jackrabbits. Having expended the entire 50 round box of shells (or so we thought) we headed back to my pickup.

This is a good time to describe my rifle. It was a bolt-action single-shot .22 caliber. That means that before you (or I) could shoot this sucker, you had to open the bolt, put a shell in the chamber, close the bolt, pull a little knob at the back of the bolt to cock it, then pull the trigger and voila, whatever happens to be in front of the barrel receives a small chunk of rapidly moving very hot lead.

Okay, we're walking back to the truck. I am carrying my rifle much like a loaf of bread down at my side with, for no known reason unto mankind, my finger inside the trigger guard. While thus strolling along, my innate ineptitude came to fore and I tripped over some sagebrush and fell flat on my face. Oddly enough, as I was falling I heard my rifle discharge. Being quite sure we had used up all the ammo, as I got to my feet I said, "Bucky, we could have shot another poor defenseless rabbit." "I had another shell in my gun..." "Bucky?" Bucky?" Where the heck did he go? Oh, there he is. Why is he lying on the ground writhing around holding his thigh? Hmm, perhaps his thigh was what was in front of the little opening in the end of my rifle barrel when that little piece of rapidly moving lead came out. Yes Virginia, that's what happened. I picked him up (adrenlin, baby), carried him to the truck and drove like a young madman back to Fackrell's. I went in the bar and told his mom that I had shot her son in the leg. She concealed her hysteria rather well I thought by running around in circles screaming "He shot my little Bucky!" "He shot my little Bucky!" at the top of her ample lungs. Cooler heads prevailed and they loaded Bucky into the back of her car and sped off to the hospital in Blackfoot (30 miles away). There was nothing left for me to do but drive home. I walked into the living room where Bonnie was watching TV, flopped onto the couch and announced, "I just shot Bucky." She said, "I'll help you pack." "You could probably be a state or two away before Dad comes home and kills you."

Dad didn't kill me. I don't even remember what my punishment was. Bucky had a semi-small hole through the meaty part of his thigh as a memento of our adventure. Thirty years later he showed up at my mother's funeral and told me he remembers me every winter when the weather turns cold...and his thigh begins to throb.