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To be factual, I am an old man. I'm not sure when it happened, but it did and now I find myself ruminating. about the way things were. My dad served in the U.S.Army, as a tank crewman in Patton's 2nd Army. He landed at Normandy and fought his way across Europe until the germans gave up. He ended up in Germany at the war's end. So he comes home and my mom (a Welsh war bride) met him at the train station. They had me and another child and I grew up listening to my dad and his friends and how they had done this and that during the war. It was all very exciting to a young boy. Each of my dad's friends had brought home an assortment of war souvenirs. Mostly uniforms or parts thereof, helmets and a wide assortment of guns. Now after several years, my dad and his friends moved on to other subjects and I had to ask to hear the war stories. One day, my dad's friend Art asked me if I wanted a German Lugar. Of course I said yes! Eventually, pop's friends found a repository for their old war trophies in me. By age 12 I was the proud owner of several Lugars, a couple of P-38's, an HSc Mauser, a couple of Radoms and many 1911a1's that were "lost in combat." Now my dad was not an idiot and had taken all the magazines and put them in a sack. I also had a bunch of Nazi armbands and a few helmets. By the time I was 18 I had traded all of that stuff for Chevy engine parts! During those early years, GI Joe's had a huge G.P. Tent over off Vancouver avenue in Portland. It smelled of cosmoline, gun oil and all things military. It was filled from one end to the other with every imaginable thing that the military had during WWII. I remember the barrels of rifles. Mauser K-98's and British .303 "Jungle Carbines" in particular. They were $10.00 each. Bayonets were $1.00 extra. dad was a member of the NRA and got their monthly magazine "The American Rifleman." On the back page they would always have guns for sale. .30 Cal M-1 Carbines were $20.00 each as were their 1911a1's. Everything was sold as NRA condition "good." Pop bought two carbines and two pistols. When they arrived through the mail, they were all brand new. There was even an ad for a 20MM antitank gun for $100. It was functional since you could by shells for $1.00 each. America was so different then. Portland was different. I don't remember any street violence and the "homeless" were arrested for being vagrants. So now I'm an old man with lots of memories about the communities that I lived in and the sound reasoning that was used by our civic leaders to govern them. It is a bygone era, but a wonderful time to grow up.