How I miss the good old days of the early 70's. I was in several clubs in high-school. Debate team, chess club, and gun club. I don't remember how often each one of those met, but it was probably something like once every two weeks. All the meetings were right after the last class of the day. Each club had a specific room they almost always used. And when the gun club met, about half of the members would bring in a gun, in a case, and never with any ammo. I remember walking into school with a leather gun case that would either have a shotgun or a riffle in it, and putting it in my locker in the morning and taking it out of the locker right after the last class and taking it to the gun club meeting. A few teachers gave me a second look as I walked down the hall with a gun case, but not one ever said a word to me. There were probably something like 2500 students attending that school back then, and no one ever gave a gun a second look. The girl majorettes had about ten old WWII riffles that were white washed. At the football games those girls could spin those riffles like batons. I don't think I ever saw one of them get dropped. And when their fathers marched in parades some of those same riffles were fired for the 21 gun salute in front of every cemetery the parade passed, in honor of he veterans who are buried there, so those guns still worked. Of course the Vietnam war was still going on, and every boy in high-school knew he had to sign up for the draft and pray his number (it was done by you birth day, for those of you too young to know) did not come up in the draft lottery. Maybe because all the men (teachers, to custodians) knew that graduation for every boy in high-school meant a chance of being picked via the draft lottery, no one ever though anything bad about having a gun club with members who actually brought guns to school so they could show them to other members at the meeting. Sure the guns were locked in the lockers all day, and they stayed in their case until inside the room when the meeting was being held. But we really did give about the same attention to bringing a chess board and chess set to school, as we gave bringing a gun in a case. And we rode the public buss to school with the gun in a case, and came back home on the bus with the same gun in a case.
It certainly was a different world than today.
