My pulse quickened, and I knew the dance was about to begin. The gun store owner slid down the counter to me, and we took our first steps. (I could hear the ominous music playing in my head)
“Whatya (translation: “What would you”) take for that old Model 12 back there?”
I said it with as much indifference as I could muster.
The gun store owner looked over his taped-up, smudged, dirty reading glasses and said with a half-smile: “Oh, that gun is gonna go high. It’s all original, you know, hardly been shot, and the barrel is bright as a bugle.”
The thought passed through my mind that he might have said the same thing if we were talking about a cheap SKS rifle with tape and wire holding the stock together and looking like it had been through the 1977 flood in Williamson, West Virginia.