Favorite Firearms: A Little Stevens From Chicago

In 1959, in Lansing, Ill., a southern suburb of Chicago, I bought this little Stevens .22 bolt-action, single-shot rifle from my neighbor for $9.50. I used money saved from my local paper route. My neighbor was a gun enthusiast; I was 13 at the time.

Over the next five or six years, and before I went off to college, I fired hundreds and hundreds of rounds of .22 BB Caps, CB Caps, Shorts and Longs through this rifle. You could buy all this ammunition at the local hardware store, no questions asked. I kept the rifle well-cleaned and oiled with a cleaning kit housed in a red metal box from Sears Roebuck and Co., which I still own. The rifle was very accurate, even with iron sights.

I would hang up tin cans in trees about 100 yards or so downrange from my house and practice hitting them using only the iron sights on the rifle. I got to be pretty good at it. Later, when I could drive, I drove south of town and sat on railroad tracks and shot to the far side of a pond about 150 yards or so away using only the rifle’s iron sights. I could see where the rounds landed in the water or mud at the water’s edge. This is how I learned about trajectory.

Since it was a single-shot, you had to take your time to unload, reload, pull back the knurled cocking knob, aim and fire. Great training and a good lesson in patience. In Army basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri, I shot expert with the M14—one of only two in my training company. I attribute that success to my early training with this little Stevens bolt-action .22 rifle.

The rifle is currently in my son’s and grandson’s possession. The inside of the well-cleaned barrel and its full rifling still gleam like new.

—Kermith “Kit” Werremeyer