Australian reader amazed by guns in Father Hardy Mysteries

A letter from an Australian reader.

Today I received both a very nice review and a note from an Australian reader. With a surprising comment. 

First a bit of information. My Father Hardy Alaska Mystery Series takes place in the Territory of Alaska, circa 1955. For the most part, it's what I remember from growing up then in the tiny river town of Nenana. 

The reader said ... "(for me) the most exotic thing about the book isn't the setting or the weather (even though it was +95F here when I read it). It's the guns. Huge numbers of them. Armories in every home. I've heard of places in arctic Norway where it is illegal to go outside without a gun because of the polar bears, but Alaska..."

Raise your hand if you grew up with guns!

Here's what I told him. I'll bet this is also true for many of you. 

"As to the guns .. it probably seems strange from there, but when I was a kid … the 1950s in Alaska … every home had a gun rack, and most pickup trucks. 

My father … a priest like Father Hardy, owned a .22 pump, 12 gauge J.C. Higgins (Sears in the day) shotgun, and a WWI surplus Springfield .30-06. So yes, lots of guns. They didn’t lock them up like they do today. 

The .22 was mostly to teach us to shoot, the .12 gauge was for birds, and the .30-06 was a moose gun. I think he usually had a pistol, too, for berry picking and such. We were too far south for polar bears but it was a rare year someone didn’t get mauled or killed by a grizzly. 

I do remember that if we didn’t get a moose, we had a lean year, though in the village, many shared." 

Comment if you, also, were raised with gun. 

I told my reader it was a fairly normal Alaska experience, then and probably now. Comments? I'd love to hear 'em. And I'll pass them along.