I’d give anything to have my first rifle - a single shot .22. I went off to college without it and years later I found that it had been given away.
Sigh.....
Remington Nylon 66. Really nice.
I still have my first .22 rifle, a Sears branded Winchester 141 repeater.
Same here. My grandpa gave me his .22 pea shooter which I had learned on. We used to sit on the hill above his farm pond shooting snapping turtles.
It was an unbelievably simple no-name rifle made in 1906. It had the skinniest bolt you ever saw and the ejector clip was worn so it often wouldn’t extract the spent cartridge. I sharpened the extractor clip many times, but it was never reliable. I blind-drilled and tapped the barrel to add a scope (which probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do). I tried my hand at re-bluing it (with a cold-bluing chemical), but that didn’t turn out real well. It went with me to college where I also bought a modern Marlin single-shot bolt action rifle that was a lot more reliable, but not as much fun as shooting that bit of history.
I left the rifles with Dad in Pennsylvania when I graduated from college and moved west. When Dad downsized the old homestead in retirement, he sold my two guns at a garage sale without even telling me he was doing it. That really hurt. He also sold the Nazi ceremonial dagger he had given me (he had gotten from a friend) and that really hurt, too. I still can’t believe he did that 35 years ago!
That's just wrong - but it has happened to countless shooters. One of my hobbies is restoring crusty old single-shot .22 rifles that gather dust in the used gun rack at the gun shop. Winchester Model 67s are a particular favorite.