I lived in a nice little house right on the river. This was in a place with more actual liberty, and I enjoyed that liberty a lot. I wore a gun openly probably 75% of the time-- or more. And I carried concealed 100% of the time. I also wore buckskin clothes along with my Bowie knife most of the time, not that it matters.
One day, a gravel truck and front-loader (is that what they are called?) rumbled down my driveway and into the river, and started loading up on gravel. I didn't own the riverbed, so I didn't get too bent out of shape over it. It was pretty noisy, though, and my wife-at-the-time did medical transcription from home and was having a hard time hearing the dictation through the earbuds over all the noise. Plus, the gravel truck began tearing up my driveway.
So, I went out to talk to the guy. I was nice and told him the problems I had with his operation. I suggested some compromises that I thought would work for both of us. He wasn't amenable. He got very excited and angry and started saying he had all the permits (or whatever) to collect river gravel, and it wasn't my property, he had the right-of-way, etc.-- I actually wondered if he was going to shove me or something. I went back in the house.
The next day I was out in the yard messing around (I pretty much lived in the yard) when the truck came back. But this day, as usual, I had my gun on my hip-- not because I was thinking of him or anything, but just because that was how I dressed most of the time. I nodded at him, then went back to whatever I was doing.
He sat in the cab of his truck looking at me for a couple of minutes, then left. The next day the front-loader was gone from the river bed and I never saw him again. When he left without doing any loading, I wondered what was up. Then I remembered my gun.
I wondered if he thought I was wearing the gun as a threat to him. I'm just glad I had gone out of my way to be polite when I spoke to him the day before. His quick exit made me wonder if his "permits" and whatnot were maybe not as ironclad as he had claimed. Not that I really cared one way or the other. The problem was solved and never cropped up again. Of course, it could have gone differently.
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| Me, from around that time |
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