steve ypsi
01-02-2003, 10:48 AM
the year of 1953 I was 12 and my brother was 15 and he knew every thing. when I say he knew every thing here is a example of his superior knowledge and I knew he had to be the smartest person I knew.
one of the first time's he impressed me with his superior brain power was I think the year was around 1950 and I was 9 years old and he was 12 and we were walking to school on Spencer lane at Michigan ave in Ypsi township, we lived on Pasadena at Holmes in Ypsilanti township, we still had a out house and a hand pump and hadn't gotten electricity yet.
As we were walking along I asked him what a T.V was, I had heard from another kid that some one had a radio set that had pictures on it and he called it a T.V , I thought the kid was making this up, well my brother explained it in great detail to me, he said they have a way of sending picture's over the air now just like a radio and if you have one of these box's you can see them, I pondered over this for a few minutes but it was beyond my comprehension what he had said about over the air so I asked him to explain this again , He said it comes thru the air up in the sky dummy, well rather than risk questions that would show my ignorance I just shut up and for the rest of that day and the next few days I kept looking up into the sky hoping to see these pictures in a long stream going across the sky, I didn't see any so I figured they must not send many out so I was just missing them when they did send them .
Well back to 1953. I was a lot smarter by now that 3 years had passed and I was 12 and my brother was a genius in his old age of 15.
Over the past years there was a guy on Holmes rd that had 5 kids we played with,and every winter he went up north to the wilderness, to me it was like Alaska when he told about hunting and staying in a old army wall tent. well the year before he had killed a deer and it was hanging in a tree in his yard, every one within a mile came to see the deer. When I looked at it I thought this must be the biggest deer ever killed, it looked 10 feet long, I touched the hair and remember how coarse it felt and how yucky the empty cavity where the guts were looked and how it would take a big gun to kill some thing like that.
in the fall of 1953 my brother Some how had some how gotten a old Stevens 311 double barrel and a 1/2 dozen shells or so with it, he let me hold the gun and it was heavy, I heard they could break your arm when you shot it so there was no way I was going to shoot it and break my arm. I still remember the shells and that they were paper and they said number 8 on them, I had no idea what this meant I just knew they were big and probably would kill a elephant.
this was late oct 1953 and my brother was going out hunting for the first time with this old double barrel Steven's, I asked if I could go? he said he didn't think so since I didn't know any thing about hunting and would just get in the way. well now looking back he had never been hunting either but that didn't enter my mind at the time, I just knew that he was smarter than me, I followed along behind him begging him to let me go, He caved in said all right but stay out of the way.
We had walked around for a hour or so when a cock pheasant took flight, My brother pulled the old double Stevens up and fired, I was standing about 10 feet to the side and the blast made my ears ring.I expected the pheasant to fall to the ground in pieces from the power of this double barreled gun, He missed. I remember looking at his shooting arm expecting to see bone protruding from his skin, I was in awe that my brother could shoot this big gun and it didn't break his arm.
as we were walking up to a farm fence that enclosed some ones back yard that had some old apple trees and they used it for a garden in the summer, this fenced area was about 100 ft across and maybe 1000 feet long. All of a sudden we both saw a deer, a really big Buck start running down this fenced in area, he had a big rack about 10 or 12 points, it was way bigger than the one I saw at my friends house that I thought was a giant of a deer, when we saw the deer we were probably over a 250 yards from the fence walking toward it and the deer was running the length away from us, My brother Raised the old double barrel and I screamed " No don't shoot it at the top of my lungs", The reason I screamed don't shoot it was self preservation on my part, I just knew if he wounded it that it would come after us and kill us with those huge horn's, in mili seconds I envisioned me being impaled on the horns of that wounded deer and my guts and blood flying all over as the deer shook his head with me in the air arms and legs flailing impaled thru my torso. I quickly looked for a tree to climb to keep from being killed by this monster deer but thank God it kept on running away from us. It must have took me 20 minutes to stop shaking thinking how close to death I had been.
That was my first experience of Deer hunting and when ever I think about how afraid I was that day and of course now I know that number 8 Bird shot wouldn't have penetrated the hair at over 250 yards much less the skin but that day and my limited knowledge about guns I thought that old Stevens double could knock a air plane out of the sky at least a 1/2 mile or better.
Back in 1953 it was rare for a deer to be seen at all in the county.
Steve Ypsi
one of the first time's he impressed me with his superior brain power was I think the year was around 1950 and I was 9 years old and he was 12 and we were walking to school on Spencer lane at Michigan ave in Ypsi township, we lived on Pasadena at Holmes in Ypsilanti township, we still had a out house and a hand pump and hadn't gotten electricity yet.
As we were walking along I asked him what a T.V was, I had heard from another kid that some one had a radio set that had pictures on it and he called it a T.V , I thought the kid was making this up, well my brother explained it in great detail to me, he said they have a way of sending picture's over the air now just like a radio and if you have one of these box's you can see them, I pondered over this for a few minutes but it was beyond my comprehension what he had said about over the air so I asked him to explain this again , He said it comes thru the air up in the sky dummy, well rather than risk questions that would show my ignorance I just shut up and for the rest of that day and the next few days I kept looking up into the sky hoping to see these pictures in a long stream going across the sky, I didn't see any so I figured they must not send many out so I was just missing them when they did send them .
Well back to 1953. I was a lot smarter by now that 3 years had passed and I was 12 and my brother was a genius in his old age of 15.
Over the past years there was a guy on Holmes rd that had 5 kids we played with,and every winter he went up north to the wilderness, to me it was like Alaska when he told about hunting and staying in a old army wall tent. well the year before he had killed a deer and it was hanging in a tree in his yard, every one within a mile came to see the deer. When I looked at it I thought this must be the biggest deer ever killed, it looked 10 feet long, I touched the hair and remember how coarse it felt and how yucky the empty cavity where the guts were looked and how it would take a big gun to kill some thing like that.
in the fall of 1953 my brother Some how had some how gotten a old Stevens 311 double barrel and a 1/2 dozen shells or so with it, he let me hold the gun and it was heavy, I heard they could break your arm when you shot it so there was no way I was going to shoot it and break my arm. I still remember the shells and that they were paper and they said number 8 on them, I had no idea what this meant I just knew they were big and probably would kill a elephant.
this was late oct 1953 and my brother was going out hunting for the first time with this old double barrel Steven's, I asked if I could go? he said he didn't think so since I didn't know any thing about hunting and would just get in the way. well now looking back he had never been hunting either but that didn't enter my mind at the time, I just knew that he was smarter than me, I followed along behind him begging him to let me go, He caved in said all right but stay out of the way.
We had walked around for a hour or so when a cock pheasant took flight, My brother pulled the old double Stevens up and fired, I was standing about 10 feet to the side and the blast made my ears ring.I expected the pheasant to fall to the ground in pieces from the power of this double barreled gun, He missed. I remember looking at his shooting arm expecting to see bone protruding from his skin, I was in awe that my brother could shoot this big gun and it didn't break his arm.
as we were walking up to a farm fence that enclosed some ones back yard that had some old apple trees and they used it for a garden in the summer, this fenced area was about 100 ft across and maybe 1000 feet long. All of a sudden we both saw a deer, a really big Buck start running down this fenced in area, he had a big rack about 10 or 12 points, it was way bigger than the one I saw at my friends house that I thought was a giant of a deer, when we saw the deer we were probably over a 250 yards from the fence walking toward it and the deer was running the length away from us, My brother Raised the old double barrel and I screamed " No don't shoot it at the top of my lungs", The reason I screamed don't shoot it was self preservation on my part, I just knew if he wounded it that it would come after us and kill us with those huge horn's, in mili seconds I envisioned me being impaled on the horns of that wounded deer and my guts and blood flying all over as the deer shook his head with me in the air arms and legs flailing impaled thru my torso. I quickly looked for a tree to climb to keep from being killed by this monster deer but thank God it kept on running away from us. It must have took me 20 minutes to stop shaking thinking how close to death I had been.
That was my first experience of Deer hunting and when ever I think about how afraid I was that day and of course now I know that number 8 Bird shot wouldn't have penetrated the hair at over 250 yards much less the skin but that day and my limited knowledge about guns I thought that old Stevens double could knock a air plane out of the sky at least a 1/2 mile or better.
Back in 1953 it was rare for a deer to be seen at all in the county.
Steve Ypsi