My Dad, Neal Justus, was a farmer who loved to hunt foxes, squirrels, rabbits and deer. Most people even in hard times were honest and many families attended church services. It was also normal for most homes to have shotguns, rifles and sometimes pistols. In the corner beside the front door, Dad usually kept a shotgun and a 22 rifle, but none were ever stolen. Once while home on leave from the Air Force, Dad said he never locked the front door when leaving the house. Yet in those sometimes fearful, hard times of the Great Depression, most country people were poor and some went to bed hungry! Breaking in and robbing homes began later when drugs were spreading everywhere.
Our Blue Ridge valley folks usually farmed or worked in a mill or store in town. Dad somehow carried on three jobs: doing farm work, driving a school bus, and working in a feed store in town. I had chores to do from an early age, helping mother clean floors or wash dishes, and care for younger siblings. As we got older we began doing chores around the house, gardens and in the fields where we grew corn, beans, hay and other crops. My last and best learning experience was with horses, learning to feed and care for them, and finally driving a wagon or riding one. Papa Jesse Justus, my grandfather, first showed me how to use a two-horse team hitched to a turning plow. He watched me go one round and then left me, saying the horses would show me the rest!
Many farm teenagers, like me, collected and read comic books, mostly western and adventure stories. In my teens I began to see western or adventure movies in the theater in Clayton on Saturday afternoon. I dreamed of becoming a cowboy or gun fighter and tame some wild western town. Little did I know that later in life I would see a lot of the west, live there, and in retirement go on two-week fishing trips, usually to Wyoming.
While we read war stories and saw war movies and had an abundance of guns and reading material emphasizing violence, I don’t recall any wild outbreak of violence in my youth. My military career did involve guns as I had tours in Korea and Vietnam. Being familiar with firearms from a young age I had no trouble using the military weapons.
Being a lover of the American West, my daughter Amy gave me 30 or more paperback westerns this past Christmas! These books won’t give me any desire to go wild with a gun. People with common sense and stable mind who read such books live a normal, safe life. There is both good and evil in the world. Stable homes, moral and loving parents, purpose in life, sound education and belief in God are helpful aids to a decent, balanced life.
