Chuck Hassler

Powell High School wasn’t necessarily a kinder, gentler school 55 years ago than it is now, but times were a lot simpler, and so were us kids.

Guns were a  prevalent part of our lives. You could commonly see them in gun racks in pickup trucks parked in the student parking lot in front of the natatorium. The guys who were competent in wood shop (which didn’t include me) brought them in for restocking. 

School shootings were unheard of and inconceivable. Columbine was a quarter century into the future.

Fights were conducted with fisticuffs or rolling around in the dirt behind the barracks, and as often as not combatants ended up being friends. 

Elk hunting and getting your elk was a big deal to many of us and having to wait until you were 15 was galling.

Passing hunter safety was prerequisite to getting your tag and was actually something I studied for, unlike geometry and all that crap. And you were proud when you got your card, signifying you were one step closer to being a man.

So the day Tim approached Principal Sherb Blake asking if he could bring his dad’s 1911 in for a public speaking assignment, affable Sherb agreed.

Tim had decided to tackle the unenviable assignment of having to stand in front of his snickering classmates by demonstrating how to safely field strip and rack the magazine of his dad’s World War II sidearm, something his dad had taught him to do. 

That’s what everybody’s dad did: teach their sons how to handle and clean their firearms safely. I’d venture to guess there was not a boy in my class who couldn’t immediately identify the smell of Hoppes No. 9 cleaning solvent with a blindfold on. Everybody knew guns were lethal and never to be pointed at another person. But they were how we had fun too. My buddies and I hunted cottontails every Saturday even before we could drive. I rode my bike out to Garland from town if I couldn’t talk Mom into giving me a ride, and we hunted in the sand-hills above Garland.

I do recall a terrible accident in which a brother accidentally shot and killed his brother, who was a classmate of mine in junior high. He is deceased now too, and I think the accident haunted him all his life. 

So we knew guns were lethal and cars too, which claimed the lives of several kids. 

But something fundamental changed in the ensuing years. Something broke in the social order, and I wouldn’t pretend to understand or try to quantify it.

I remember when my son, who wouldn’t ever knowingly inflict harm on anybody, who didn’t have a mean bone in his body, received a three-day suspension for bringing a plastic foam disc shooting gun to PHS in the 90's. It didn’t even resemble a firearm, but looked like a ray gun in a sci fi movie. But times and society and PHS had changed forever and not for the better.

This past fall a young man I know and like made a foolish mistake and made a “bomb” out of some firecrackers with his friend, for which he was kicked out of school for the semester. Rules are rules and he learned the consequences of such foolishness, but he paid a pretty heavy price. He’s just a kid, and we’re making it harder and harder to be a kid. That’s not something any of us should feel good about.