Dad, the Gunslinger

I've been doing some genealogy research on my family and was looking for newspaper articles. I found some cool ones that mention my grandmother. They are mostly in what I would call the local gossip column. One mentions that "Mrs. William Stewart and son Raymond, visited in Oxnard Saturday evening." The date of the paper is May 4, 1917.

I found a cool article that mentioned my dad dated September 23, 1963. The headline reads "Gun-wielding robbers get $350 from liquor stores" and mentions the two stores that were hit. The portion that mentions my dad is quoted below.

"William M. Stewart, owner of the store, chased the robbers, firing a gun shot at one of them, but they rounded the corner of the building and escaped, he told deputies.

The two men entered the store about 9:20 p.m. and walked up to the cash register, Stewart related. He said one of the men pointed a small automatic pistol at him and demanded all of the money in the cash register.

Stewart handed over about $150 from the register and was told to get down on the floor, he said. He began to crouch, pushing a burglar alarm button at the same moment, and the two robbers fled.

He told deputies he ran to the door and fired one shot from a .38 caliber pistol before he lost sight of the robbers."

When I was a kid, this sort of thing happened a time or two each year at my parents store. Back in the 'old days' the bad guys would run instead of opening fire on people just for the sake of killing. The alarm mentioned was wired up to our house, so when it was pushed it was the job of whoever was home to call the police. I remember doing it several times. Then we would drive the 3/4 mile to the store and hope we didn't run into any bad guys or dead bodies. I remember one time in particular jumping out of my mother's car well ahead of her and running into the store (yeah, I was THAT stupid...) to find my brother Bill and Chuck (an employee) laying face down on the floor. Billy looked up at me with his huge eyes and said "are they gone?" I must have missed them by seconds. I sort of gave up my Annie Oakley ways after that and was a little more careful. Billy had kids by that point so I must have been around 12.

Ah, memories...