But, in the case of Parker Bros., the top stock checkerer for many years was a lady named Mrs. Hanson (Hansen) I loaned my Peter Johnson Parker book to a friend, that's where I recall reading this fact.
skeet-originally called 'shooting around the clock' I think it was Remington, sponsored a contest to name this new clays shopgun event, and a Mrs. Gertrude Hurlburt (Hurlbert)? from MN won- the used the Scandanavian word for 'shoot", that word being skeet.
Here's a man who should read my books and articles.
I interviewed Peter Johnson in 2004; he passed away in 2005. (See my Winter 2005
DGJ article.) Mrs. Hanson has no provenance as "Parker's top stock checkerer." She was simply a surviving Parker employee who answered an ad in her local newspaper. What happened was that in 1958, Peter, then a young English teacher at the University of Virginia, decided to start writing a book about the Parker shotgun. He placed an ad in the Meriden CT newspaper, soliciting letter post communications from anyone who had Parker-related information. Mrs. Hanson sent him a letter telling her story of being hired for nothing-per-hour till she learned her trade, and then 50 cents per day; at the time, "contractors," who would have been skilled team leaders, were making 25 cents to 35 cents per hour, and she would have worked for one of the more skilled checkers. (They called the process "Checking," nor "Checkering.")
As to another story well-told, it is true that Mrs. Gertrude Hurlbutt of Dayton, Montana, won a contest to name Wm. Fosters new shotgun game. Foster was the editor of the
National Sportsman magazine, which ran the contest. The contest form was the two facing pages at the center of a 1926 issue that I once had in my collection. Turning the page, the the big bold title of the next article was something like,
"Skeeters in Missouri," referring to mosquitoes. A little imagination coupled with seeing a picture of old Gerttie and the true story becomes clear.
She was a perfect clone of Granny on the "Beaverly Hillbilies." She lived in the middle of Nowhere, Montana, in the 1920s. No doubt her husband subscribed to Foster's "National Sportsman." Reading materials served a dual purpose in the days of outdoor plumbing. If ol' Gerttie started at the middle of a magazine, she could get two sheets off the staples without tearing. But in a seminal moment, while poised and ready to wipe, she saw a chance to make $100. So she saved the contest form and pulled off of the staples the next two shests...and
Viola!
There it was: "
Skeeters in Missouri," and the rest is over-embellished quasi-history.
As to the word "skeet" being an old Scandinavian word for shooting, this was debunked in the magazines of the day. Once Gerttie's story was told there was a barrage of letters to the editor from sportsmen of the various Scandinavian countries disclaiming the word derivation. See p.73 of my
Parker Guns; The "Old Reliable" (Safari Press 1997, 2004).
EDM
