[Jeff Higgins]

I found that Sheridan in a ditch, underwater, at a local park in 1972 - when I was 12 years old. My dad said I could keep it if I could make it shoot. My mom couldn't have cared less. I took it apart (no instructions), dried it out, oiled it up, and lo and behold - it held air and shot. Pretty damn well, as a matter of fact. I was the envy of the neighborhood, all of whom were armed with much inferior Daiseys, Crossmans, and the like.

I roamed freely about with that rifle as a kid. No one even looked at me when I was walking down the street with it. Even the police. And this was in suburban Bellevue, Washington - one of the worst enclaves of liberal, hand-wringing ninnies one will ever encounter today. This was my "city gun" back then; when we went to visit my uncles on their farms, it stayed home. That was time for the .22's, .45 Colts, .30-'06's, .45-70's and the like.

I have long since lost track of the nuisance animals that old Sheridan has killed. The new RWS or Benjamin will simply never catch up, at least not in my lifetime. I only hope that whoever winds up with them, generations from now, remains as free to use them as I am.