My Mom loved to go to Center City Philadelphia (you Philly folk know what I mean) from our home in Springfield Township to shop at Strawbridge & Clother, Gimbles, and the like. On one such shopping trip in 1960 she happened to pass by Wanamaker's (Department Store) sporting goods department and spotted a barrel of rifles, looking much like a martial umbrella stand. All you could see were the stocks protruding from the barrel. The price on the barrel of rifles said "$9.95 each."
The famed Wanamaker Eagle; as a child I was fascinated by it.
Mom was a very giving sort, always accumulating gifts for friends & relatives, things she thought each person would like. She mused, "Walt would like one of those!", so she popped into the department and had the clerk pull a rifle out of the barrel. For less than ten bucks, how could she go wrong? She so loved a bargain. Mom likely used one of those old Addressograph-Mulitgraph charge plates to pay for it, and had the clerk wrap it in brown paper for the ride home.
Forty years ago it was the habit to use public transportation whenever practical, even if you had a car. Mom never learned to drive, but that didn't matter as her beloved shopping in Philly was still readily accessable. She would hike down the hill from our home to the Red Arrow trolley stop and ride the interurban trolley to the 69th Street Terminal in Upper Darby, just outside the western border of Philadelphia.
The Scenic Road Trolley Station; could that be my Mom?
The Philadelphia Suburban Transportation Company, now SEPTA (Southeast PA Transit Authority), still runs an interurban service from Media, the county seat of Delaware County, to the 69th Street Terminal.
69th Street Terminal, as seen from the west. The trolleys entered this end of the terminal.
Once at 69th Street she would cross
The concourse between the Red Arrow Lines (west) side of the Terminal and the Philadelphia Transportation Company/Philadelphia & Western (east) side.
to the other side of the terminal building.
69th Street Terminal, as seen from the east. The Market Street Subway Elevated left for Center City from the right-hand end of the building.
There she would take the Market Street Subway-Elevated to "Center City" Philadelphia.
The Market Street line exiting the Terminal.
The Market Street line runs as an elevated train from 69th Street to 40th Street in Philadelphia. Then it dives underground and becomes a subway just before crossing under the Schulkyll River.
Here the Market Street elevated is crossing 60th Street heading east; this is the western border of Philadelphia.
Having completed her purchase, and with rifle in hand, Mom retraced her steps.
The Market Street subway-elevated is the blue line running from the 69th Street Terminal (on the left) to 13th. street on the right and off the map to the Delaware River. Scenic Road is the 16th stop on the Media Line running to the lower left.
First, out to 69th Street from Center City on the Market Street Line, then to the Scenic Road stop of the Red Arrow Interurban, finally up the rather steep hill to our home on Claremont Road. Mom had a damaged mitral valve from juvenile rheumatic fever and would have to stop periodically to catch her breath. Eventually she returned home with Mom's Gun and presented it to me.
The hike up the hill.
I was fifteen at the time, and quite astonished at what I saw when I unwrapped the package: an old Lee-Enfield! Imagine Mom carting that thing home on a whim; imagine carrying a Service Rifle on public transportation for an hour in today's culture! But 1960 was a kinder, gentler era; thanks, Ike!
The rifle was coated in some kind of hard, brown, paint-like substance. I painstakingly chipped it off the visible areas with my fingernails, wanting to avoid scratching the nearly pristine metal. I worked the bolt, flipped the aperture sight up and down, totally disassembled it, and just plain had a ball. Sounds pretty much what the grown-up Crufflers on the C&R maillist do today!
The profusion of proof marks on Mom's Gun.
Somewhere I was able to buy a box of Winchester 180-grain soft points, and when I got my driver's license I took Mom's Gun out to the Delaware County Sportsmen's Association range, where I was a member. I fired two sighters, but without a spotting scope I could only see one hole. I safed the rifle, hiked downrange, and found... one hole! Actually, two holes overlapping. Needless to say I was flabbergasted. I went back to the bench and fired another round. I couldn't quite trust my eyes, so I hiked down again. The three shots had gone into a cloverleaf.
The serial number on Mom's Gun.
So when you have an old military rifle--in my case, your first centerfire rifle--that performs so well? what do you do? In 1960, you sporterized it, of course! So out came the saw and off came the handguard and out went the metal. It looked pretty slick! A year or so later I got a copy of the NRA "book" on Lee-Enfields, and suddenly I was pretty sick! I'd Bubba-ized a pristine SMLE No I Mk V, one of 20,000 service test rifles constructed in 1922-23. What had I done?! Into the back of the closet went the evidence of my youthful indescretion.
The aperture rear sight is the more salient feature of the Mk V.
Fast-forward to 1996. I'd just gotten serious about the Internet, and somehow stumbled across Skip Stratton. Skip was, and is, a stalwart of the "Enfield Research Associates"; it struck me that perhaps he could appreciate Mom's Gun, and even somehow restore it for himself. A few e-mails later and Mom's Gun was off to a new home in Idaho. Skip put some Mk III furniture on it and included a picture of it in his first book "British Enfield Rifles Volume 1: SMLE (No. 1) Rifles Mk I and Mk III." I thought that would be the end of the story.
Figure 5 from "British Enfield Rifles Volume 1: SMLE (No. 1) Rifles Mk I and Mk III" by Skip Stratton; Mom's Gun!
But, it wasn't. A few years later an outfit in MD ran an ad offering a few Mk Vs; by that time I had my C&R FFL so I got one! Then Adam Firestone, I believe, offered one for sale, and I bought that one!
Neither one is Mom's Gun!
So, now I had two Mk Vs, but something was wrong. Neither was Mom's Gun!
The other salient feature of the Mk V is the special nosecap with an additional band; the wood is different in consequence.
A wacky idea came to me; perhaps Skip would be willing to trade my two Mk Vs for Mom's Gun, using the parts from at least one to bring Mom's Gun back to its original military glory? By George (Rex?), he was!
George Rex; there's a "V" under there!
He went far beyond the call of duty, installing a magazine cutoff and a regimental disk. Mom's Gun was back, this time to stay.
Mom's Gun.
