Doc Taylor* had a little gun shop out on the main highway outside of town back in the hills of western Virginia.
Every day I was at work I’d make my rounds to “Doc’s Gun Shop” to stand around with other town notables to catch up on the freshest gossip. I was the newsman at the local radio station and Doc’s Gun Shop was where I got a lot of my news tips.
Doc got his name from being a medic in the Vietnam War. He spent a lot of time in government work after he got out of the Army. He’d been a policeman, he’d been a county deputy, he’d been a volunteer fireman and now he was the local volunteer fire chief.
Daily trips to Doc’s Gun Shop would mean time spent shooting the breeze with Doc and some of the other folks who dropped in. Maybe a working guy who had the day off, maybe the chief investigator of the town police force, maybe the owner of the local Chevy dealership.
They didn’t mind me sitting there and listening to the talk. If they were too worried they’d lean over and say, “Now you didn’t hear this from me…”
I never broke their trust.
If there was a story to be had I’d start from scratch. And if anyone asked where I heard it I’d just say, “Folks are gossipin’.”
One time there was a fire at the radio station.
Grumpy Dave the general manager was a smoker. This particular morning he dumped his ashtray into his trash can. Next thing any of us knew, Grumpy Dave was yelling “Call the fire department!” He was standing at his office door, big flames dancing behind him.
I got on the phone and called Doc’s Gun Shop.
“Doc’s Gun Shop,” said Doc on the other end.
“DOC!” I yelled over the phone, “It’s the radio station, there’s a fire here!”
Doc laughed.
“Daggone it,” he said, “You call 911 first! Not me personally!”
Doc laughed some more.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll call dispatch for you.”
A few moments later the siren to call the volunteers to the firehouse sounded across the town.
By the time the fire truck got to the radio station Grumpy Dave had found the fire extinguisher. The blaze was out. Doc and his guys went into Grumpy Dave’s office to make sure the fire was dead.
There was Doc in his fireman’s outfit talking with me and Grumpy Dave and laughing at me calling the gun shop first.
It would be years in the future, it would be miles from western Virginia, gone were the days of land lines and faxes to be replaced by the time of cell phones and The Internet…it would be in this time and space that I would query the computer as to how things were getting along at Doc’s Gun Shop only to learn that Doc is dead.
Doc died in 1999.
Doc went into the woods near his gun shop, put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. He left behind a family, left behind friends who no doubt tried to make sense of what he did.
I was stunned at the news.
I leaned back in my chair in front of my computer years and miles from where it happened.
If you’d had asked me such a thing I would’ve told you Doc was one of the last guys I’d ever suspect of taking his own life.
Doc was there in my memory, holding court at his shop, sharing the local gossip, talking about hunting season, chiding me about my news work, saying it’d get me in trouble with the wrong people someday and I’d end up in the county jail. “But don’t worry,” he said, “I’ll bring you smokes and gum.”
Doc killed himself.
And I wonder why.
-30-
*Name changed
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