My Grandfather must have had a vision about his family's future in bird dogs, bird guns, pigeons, you name it. He was born in 1856 in Mauch Chunk, PA., four years after my Great Grandfather and his family came over. Well, actually, I don't know when they came over, let's say Granddad was born four years after members of our family earned their citizenship. Granddad had a "cafe" on Hazleton Heights with a pigeon ring in the rear. I'm sure you know what kind of "cafe" it was. He distributed wholesale beer until 1927, eight years into the "experiment". Granddad had some guns, according to my Dad, but lost them in a burglary, leaving him with his 1887 E Grade Lefever Pigeon Gun, serial #10,130 and a DWM 1916 Luger that was walked out of the New York Customs House and given to him by a friend. According to Dad, the Lefever was the only gun Granddad shot as long as he remembered. When I was about ten or eleven, my childless Uncle Norbert shipped me the Lefever with instructions to watch myself bumping into trees and fences because of the "soft" barrels, but no warning about ammunition. Granddad had shot it until his death in 1929, probably with any load available at the time. It had not been fired since. Uncle Norbert lived in Brooklyn, worked for REA, and never hunted after leaving Hazleton. He had sold his Fox years earlier. Granddad ran the pigeon ring until 1927 when he retired from the "cafe", bought his last hunting license in 1928, at least it's the last one I have. Dad's story is another story entirely, to be told at another time. Bill Murphy
