There was once a gun in my house.
Somewhere; I never actually knew where.
Hidden; long gone; and forgotten until an abrupt reminder this week by innocent mistakes of the young; errors resulting in their death or injury from adults who had a gun; all victims at a wrong house, a wrong driveway or a wrong yard.
One more deadly alert America is drowning in guns.
So we look for reasons … or find excuses: Mental illness; bad policing; our country’s long battle with COVID accompanied by depression, fear and withdrawal; a fascination with aberrant war weapons.
Then I thought about my father, Richard E. Sneed, who also owned a gun; a rifle kept locked away in our home.
Dad returned from World War II as a ribboned marksman; a skilled U.S. Army gunner on a B-24 Liberator in the war’s Pacific theater; the recipient of a cushioned box containing the Distinguished Flying Cross and awash in gunnery ribbon.
Just beginning to walk when Dad finally came home to us; I became his “little-girl-in-a-dress-and-bonnet” fetching the pheasants he hunted with my grandfather on the avian abundant Dakota prairie. It was always a formidable pile of quivering, dying birds. I felt sorry for them but it all had to be OK because … well, just because.
There were times my young father would suddenly stop the car; morphing back into a skilled U.S. army marksman; targeting a shooting gallery of crows lined up on a farmer’s fence.
Yet, at some point, my tough, young dad stopped hunting; his rifle disappearing; metamorphosing into an avid gardener who rescued crippled ducks and Easter chicks; shooed away raptors stalking birds in our backyard; and admired the fauna of the world as much as the flora.
Shortly before my ailing father died, he watched a squirrel electrocuted on a high wire fall into the street next to our house; asking me to move it into the woods near our home so it could be back near the trees where it belonged; adding how much he regretted killing animals when he was young.
Later, I wondered if he was thinking about the war he never talked about; the soldier who told my mom about all the bodies he saw floating in the water of the Pacific war; men he knew; men he didn’t; all dying in a place that was not their home.
Dad’s hunting rifle had long ago disappeared; replaced by a hoe and a vegetable garden and a hatred of war.
Our children are surely now dying in the midst of a war of words letting animus divide us over a right to have a gun in our lives.
If soldiers can surrender instruments of war, why can’t we as a nation do so for the safety of our children?
Tweedledee & Tweedledum …
Last Sept. 16, Sneed reported it was “looking more and more likely the (Democratic National Convention) event will come to Chicago.”
It looked like New York was the most worrisome combatant, with Atlanta and Texas in the bottom of the mix and “the mega cash trove of wealthy Gov. J.B. Pritzker is considered a big factor in Chicago snagging the convention site.”
It’s pretty clear Pritzker would love the nation’s No. 1 desk job contingent on President Joe Biden exiting a rerun; and it’s pretty evident a whiff of GOP presidential smoke seems to already be wafting out of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s smokestack; both big guys who know how to play tough.
Gosh! Imagine a side by side presidential debate between two candidates wider than their lecterns; big guys belting it out; Tweedledee and Tweedledum on the scrum.
Stay tuned.
A Lindell looney tune …
Sneed’s “Dumber than Pillow Fluff” award goes to MyPillow founder/election denier Mike Lindell, for his audacious $5 million bet in 2021 to prove his data wrong proving the 2020 presidential election was rigged.
He was disproven. Will he pay up?
How very Trumpian.
The police blotter …
Top cop shop: Although retired Chicago deputy chief Ernie Cato and Chicago deputy chief Larry Snelling keep surfacing as possible new top cop picks by the new mayor, Sneed hears former Chicago top cop Eddie Johnson, who was very neighborhood popular until he ran into a tactical error on Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s watch, is also being pitched. Chat or more than that?
Sneedlings…
A music note: A two-hour rock show composed of teenage musicians from various Chicago High Schools are hitting Billy “Smashing Pumpkins” Corgan’s Madame Zuzu ‘s tea room in Highland Park on April 29 to raise funds to support victims of the village’s horrific July 4th shooting last year….Saturday birthdays: actress Amber Heard, 37; actor Jeffrey Dean Morgan, 57, and actor Jack Nicholson, 86. Sunday birthdays: actor Dev Patel, 33; comedian John Oliver, 46, and actress Valerie Bertinelli, 63.
