Chapter III

The next day at work I kept thinking about that stupid pistol. Where had I seen it before? Nothing came up on Google and I spent my lunch hour searching eBay and all the gun sites I could find. Nothing. If I hadn't seen the one Granma had, where had I seen one? being distracted the rest of the day by this puzzle, didn't produce any results, either in my work, or in my memory.

Driving home, I stopped at the office supply stor to grab some CD's. I was just about done with the museum photographs and I needed to get some CD's, jewelcases, and labels so that mom could sell the CD's of photos at the museum. When I had first scanned the photos in the museum, rather than scan them one at a time, I put as many photos as I could on the scanner and did mass scanning. Dalla had her computer there as well, and she was scanning right alongside me. My aunt Marge and mom were running back and forth from the archives room bringing us the photos. In retrospect, we should have set the computers up in the archive room, but it was such a mess after the storm. Setting up at least on the same floor as the archives room would have at least been easier on mom's and Marge's knees since the museum didn't have an elevator.

Once we had all the photos scanned, I pulled Dalla's hard drive, put it in my PC, copied all the phots and then once I got back to Oklahoma, I would seperate each photo and save it as a seperate file. Eventually, we would have all the photos on CD and thought we could sell copies to visitors. Also, during the whole scanning process, we assigned a number to each photo and we wrote down all the information we could find about the photo. Some pictures had writing on the back, others that were displayed in the museum had a small framed text that went with the picture. Still, others had just what Marge or mom could tell us about them, which may or may not have been accurate. When I saved the file for each picture, I also added all this information in the description of the file, that way the entire collection of photos could be searched on the PC. If you wanted all the pictures of the Truman visit, type in TRUMAN, and the search would fiind all of them. I also listed prominent buildings and locations and people, however, the bulk of what we had fell under the category of UNKNOWN. Our unspoken hope was that someone would recognize a photo and give us the history behind it.

Walking through the store, I grabbed what I needed and then tooled down the software aisle seeing if they had any special or closeouts. As I walked down the aisle I had one of my flashes. Some folks call it Deja Vu, but it wasn't exactly like that. I can only explain that it's like someone taking all the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, throwing them in the air, and miraclously the picture forms in midair, complete and recognizable for a split second before it crashed to the ground, back into the jumble it started as. The flash hit me, but I wasn't able to see the picture, wasn't able to recognize what I was supposed to know.

I turned around and started down the aisle again. I once heard that if you think of something, and the forget it, go back to where you thought of it. Our mind is strongly triggered based on what we see, hear, or smell. If you return to the origin of the thought, the trigger might still be there. I walked slowly down the aisle, hoping the trigger would hit me again.

There it was. In the geneology software, the package had a collection of old photos on the cover. The picture in the upper right corner was a sepia-tone of a cowboy with his arms crossed, holding two pistols. I know what you're thinking. The pistols were "Jake's Best". Nope, wish it was true, but no. I didn't recognize the cowboy, the pistols, the background or anything like that. It was the stance. I recognized the stance. Big deal. Arms crossed, pistols pointing upwards, chest thrust out and the hat back on the head, it could have been from any western I had ever seen. But still, it was a flash and those only happen when my brain is trying to solve a problem I've been working too hard on. It was signal to stop working on the problem and let the pieces fall into place.

Table of Contents

Chapter I (complete)

Chapter II (complete)

Chapter III (in progress)

Chapter II

The background of the pistol goes back several years, all the way back to the 1840's when Jacob Painter developed a pistol that was called "Jake's Best" locally, but was generally known as an undershot pistol. An undershot pistol differs from a regular pistol in that the hammer, or the part that a person "cocks" is underneath the barrel and in front of the trigger rather than on top and behind the trigger. Needless to say, an undershot pistol is very distinctive and easy to recognize. When a photo of the pistol found by Dan Swiftfoot made it's way into the paper, it caught my Mom's eye and she sent me a copy of the paper.
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After getting the article in the mail, I called my mom to see what the big deal was. She likes sending a newspaper article and nothing else, no note of explanation, nothing.

"Hey, mom, what's up with this pistol article that you sent me?"

"You got that? Good. I thought you might be interested. That's one of your relatives."

"Dan Swiftfoot is related to us? On what side of the family?"

"No, not Dan. Jacob Painter, the guy that made the pistol, was one of your relatives way back. Dalla did all the research and found some info about him. I thought you might get a kick out seeing that article.

"You'll have to talk to Dalla to get all the details about how he's related, but that was neat to see one of those pistols again."

"Again? You've seen one before? This article says something about the pistol being made in the 1800's"

"Oh, yes. I've seen one. Dad had one of those pistols. I don't remember where he got it of what ever happened to it. I might have to ask Granma to see if she still has it. Anyway, you've got the article and that's a little bit of your history. I need to get out an get the lawn mowed, love you."

"Love you too mom." I hung up the phone and looked at the article again. It had a photo of Dan Swiftfoot holding this weird looking pistol with the hammers under the barrel. It was weird, but I remembered seeing something like this before. I'm not a gun collector, I've shot a couple of times with my freinds, but I don't even own a weapon. This was really bugging me. I decided to call up my sister.

She picked up the phone on the third ring, "William's Wanch where we waise wabbits, wascally and otherwise." My sister is such a goofball. Folks say I'm the funny one in the family, but that's only because they haven't met my sister.

"Hi, Dalla, mom sent me this newspaper article and I was wondering if you could tell me more about it."

"Sure can, little brother. Is it the one about the pistol?"

"Yea, mom said you could shed some light on this. I guess we're related to the Painter's?"

"In a weird round-about way. You remember that Dad's mom was Grandpa's third wife?"

"Yeah."

"Well, before she married Grandpa, her parents were killed in a wagon accident in Colorado when she was 10 and she drove the wagon back to Missouri, bringing her younger brother and sister home."

"Ok, what does that have to do with the Painters?"

"Well, when Grandma came home, she moved in with HER Grandma & Grandpa, our great-grandparents. Turns out, these two weren't very highly thought of in the county and when she was 15, Grandma went to court to seek seperation from them and take her brother & sister along as well. The court, not thinking very highly of our great-grandparents either, granted her request on the basis that she find a suitable home or one would be appointed for her."

"Like a foster home?"

"Kinda. Turns out she couldn't find one and she was placed with a family by the name of Painter. Eventually, she took the name, but was never legally adopted, so we are kinda related to them."

"What is really bugging me is that photo of the pistol."

"Weird isn't it? Seems like it was a big thing back in the 1840's. Jacob made a ton of cash selling these to folks headed to California for the gold rush."

"What's bugging me, is that I've seen one thse before."

She stopped for a second. "You what?"

"I've seen one of thse before."

"That's hard to believe, little brother. Of all of them that Jacob turned out, there are probably only three left and one of them just got itself dug up.

"One is in the Springfield Museum..."

"Never been there."

"..and the other belongs to some private collector in Arizona. It's never been on display and never photographed. And the museum here doesn't allow photos either. I've got no idea where you might have seen one."

I shrugged, even though she couldn't see me through the phone line, "I don't know either. A photo somewhere, but doesn't seem likely. Mom said something about her dad owning one."

"What? She never told me that! Dang her. I hate it when she just randomly remembers stuff like that."

"Why would her dad have one? The time frame wouldn't be right, I mean, he wasn't around in 1849 and he wasn't a gun collector."

"Well, you never know with that side of the family. They were always wheelin & dealin. Maybe Granpa got it in some sort of trade. I'll quiz Granma and see what we come up with."

"Any idea why the gun was buried in that guy's back yard?"

"Who knows? It could have been laying in a brush pile for all these years. That's a mystery that will probably never be solved. All I do know, is that Dan Swiftfoot is putting it up for auction and it'll probably not only pay for his pool, but his kids college as well."

"Well, if that's the case, I sure would like to find the one that Granpa had."

"If he had one. Mom might be mistaken, but I'll check with Granma. Well, I gotta run, Sweet Pea."

I hate when she calls me Sweet Pea, "Ok, thanks for checking that out. Take care."

"Bye."

"Love you, bye."

I hung up the phone, smarter, but not really wiser. If I was wiser, I might have left the whole thing alone.

Chapter I

It's sometimes really odd how just a few unrelated things can lead to a whole chain of unusual events. Looking back, none of this would have happened if the high school hadn't sprayed the football field for weeds, or if lightning hadn't hit that tree at the museum and sent a branch through the window, or the President of Venezuela had missed his flight. Like I said, unrelated things creating a very unusual chain. I live in Oklahoma City, but this entire story takes place in Bolivar, Missouri, the county seat of Polk County, firmly placed in the Ozarks, just thirty miles north of Springfield in Highway 13.

My connection is that my entire family is from Bolivar and has been for generations, at least according to my sister who has tracked our geneology clear back to Charlemagne. Not only has my family been in Bolivar for years, they still are in town, even though several of my generation have moved on and moved out. Our name isn't as big in town as it used to be, on my dad's side, my grandpa owned a hardware store as well as the first car in town, one uncle owned a gas station and another uncle was the post master. Currently, all that is left is an uncle on my dad's side, my mom, her brother and mother, and my sister.

I get back to visit about three or four times a year since I only live four hours away in Oklahoma City. It's just a quick drive up Interstate 44 , at seventy-five M.P.H. of course, and you're there. Usually, my trips back are of the honey-dew variety. My mom & grandma have a big list of "honey-do's", everything from rehanging a sticky door and building a brick sidewalk to setting up my mom's computer and cleaning my grandma's gutters. My whole family, wife and both boys would go and we would all pitch in, but since the boys are grown and off to college, it's just Barb and I. There are a lot of times I wish I lived closer so I could do more, but my sister Dalla reminds me that she and her husband are close, so I shouldn't worry so much.

Another of the chores that I really enjoy, is helping my mom with her work at the museum. Mom's sister-in-law, Marge, is the president of the Polk County Historical Society and the curator of the Polk County Museum. The museum is located in the old North Ward School built back in 1903 and it's only open a few months out of the year. Mom helps out with fund-raisers, tours, and research in the archives. She and Dalla have been busy transcribing several of the census records and probate records so folks can read them more easily and I have been working with them, training them on all the things that their PCs can do.

Last year, during a huge thunderstorm, lightning hit a tree in front of the museum, sending a huge branch through a window in the archives room. Next morning, Marge found the archives room about half flooded so she, Mom and Dalla spent the week-end drying out all kinds of books and photos. I was in town, putting in some shelves for mom, so I jumped in and helped out. That was when I got the idea of scanning all the photos, just in case they ever get destroyed. Marge & Mom thought it was a good idea, so an obsession was born.

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The museum really never had a listing of the photos that they had or any information about them, so the scanning was really haphazard. I would just put as many photos as I could fit on the scanner, scan them in and then seperate them later using photo editing software. Quite a few times I would run across copies of the same photo that had obviously been made and then misplaced, so I was also trying to catalog these as well to get an idea of just how many photos we had and what they were of.

Along the way, I was also cataloging all the comments written on the back of the photos or any information that was displayed alongside the photo if it was displayed. With all of this information, even though it was very scattered, I was getting a vague overall picture of the history of Bolivar. There were several pictures taken from the Standpipe, a watertower that was only a tall cylinder and for the longest time it was the tallest structure in town. There were a lot of pictures of the local college and the fire that burnt it to the ground. The town was hit by a tornado once and for some reason, we had about a dozen pictures of a cow with a 2x4 ran clean through it.

The topic that encompassed the most photos, however, was the visit by President Truman and the President of Venezuela back in 1948 when they dedicated a statue of Simon Bolivar, the Liberator of Venezuela. It seems that back in 1948, the people of Venezuela wanted to present a statue of Simon Bolivar to the United States of America and they felt that the proper place would be the largest town in the U.S. that was named for the famed Liberator. Turns out, that Bolivar, Missouri was the largest at the time so they received a visit from Truman and a whole bunch of dignitaries from South America. There was a huge parade with home-made floats, marching bands and there was even a photo of a flyover of several fighters that buzzed the courthouse during the parade. Bolivar hasn't seen that much excitement since, at least until this past summer when all the geese died in the community pool.

The local High School had been re-working the football field in early June and had sprayed a heavy-duty weed-killer all of the field. Late that night, a flock of Canadian geese landed on the field to graze, ate a ton of the weed-killer and then took off. Several of the geese, it appears, died in flight, or at least passed out, and landed in the community pool. The worst part were the ones that didn't exactly hit the water, but made a nice big splat on the concrete, split open and then bounced in. Of course, they had to empty the pool to clean it, and then things just went from bad to worse when one of the workers slipped near the diving end and fell eight feet to the bottom, broke his neck and died. The insurance company conducted a huge investigation into the cause of the slip and by the time they were done, it was late August and the town had been without a pool for the whole summer.

A lot of folks were mad since it ended up being the hottest summer in sixty some years. Some folks called the local radio station complaining, some complained to the city council, but others, like Dan Swiftfoot, took action. Once the word was out about the dead geese in the pool, Dan decided to bite the bullet and put in the pool that his wife had been bugging him about for years. It was during the construction of that pool, that the first big piece of the puzzle was unearthed. If it hadn't been for the geese dying, Dan wouldn't have been digging in his yard and he wouldn't have uncovered that pistol.