THE ART of SHOOTING the Life and Times of Arthur C. Jackson Being
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THE ART OF SHOOTING The Life and Times of Arthur C. Jackson Being the True and Accurate Accounting In his own words Of the Great Rifleman's Life and Adventures In The World Wide Arena As a Youthful Marksman National Champion World Champion Olympic Medallist And Elder Statesman In The Great Sport of Rifle Shooting And The Rich and Exciting Times In Which He has Lived As told to Hap Rocketto His Faithful Amanuensis THE ELUSIVE ART JACKSON AND ME As a young lad in the early 1950s I became interested in rifle shooting when my brother Steve was a member of the New London High School Rifle Team. Our father had done some shooting in his youth and passed the interest on to us. From time to time Steve would bring home things that only served to stoke the fires of my curiosity. An empty dark green pasteboard box that once held Director Of Civilian Marksmanship issued Remington Kleenbore, a few expended cartridge cases, or a tattered target were like trash to some, but to me they were the wonders of Aladdin's cave. The real treasure was the tattered copies of The American Rifleman Magazine that Coach George Gregory would allow members to check out for a few days. After reading it, my brother would allow me a look. I recall having to do his turn at raking leaves, taking out the trash, and other household chores to earn the right to peek between the pages. I was even roundly thrashed after he discovered a glob of peanut butter and jelly that had escaped from my afternoon snack to sully the pages of the magazine, or at least that was the excuse he used for that particular beating. He lorded the rationing of that magazine over me as only a teenaged older brother can do to a prepubescent sibling. Whenever I opened The Rifleman I seemed to run across the name of Art Jackson. Jackson seemed to be on every important team and winning rifle matches as fast as he could enter them. The magazine's pictures showed a handsome young man who was tall, spare, and wearing either the uniform of the United States Air Force or a natty blazer with the shield of the United States Shooting Team embroidered on the breast pocket. He soon became my shooting hero. I never lost my interest in Jackson, but it seemed he had dropped off the face of the earth about the time I began to shoot competitively. One day I showed up at Connecticut’s Blue Trail Range to shoot a match and I heard that Art Jackson was there. I eventually caught up with him behind the line where he was spotting shots for a junior. I saw a squat heavyset man, who looked a bit like a genial bullfrog sitting on a lily pad. He was perched on a shooting stool, the stub of a stogie parked in the corner of his mouth. The Art Jackson of memory did not jibe with the Art Jackson of fact, who sat belching forth-huge clouds of noxious smoke. I introduced myself, mentioning that I had been a big fan of his for many years and had looked forward to meeting him. With a booming laugh he plucked the smoldering hunk of rope from his mouth and gave me the once over. Jackson then asked if I had read about him. I replied that I had. He then mentioned that the photographs in the magazines made him look a lot taller and younger. I had to agree. I was then that I noticed a few old timers watching our conversation with badly disguised amusement. After I had been baited and hooked, the cigar smoking Art Jackson let me in on a little secret. There were two shooting Art Jacksons. The first was the Linconesque international shooter, my hero. The second was my present interrogator, a lesser shooter but, as I came to know him, a fine man and a credit to the sport. Disappointed I left the range sure that I would never meet the real Art Jackson. Some years later I was a member of the Connecticut National Guard Rifle Team and one of my teammates was Greg Tomsen. He and his dad, Walt, were old friends of Jackson and told me that he worked for the government and had been out of the country, and shooting, for some ten or twelve years. This explained why I had lost track of him. They also mentioned that he was back in the states and was to be at Camp Perry to serve as the Adjutant of the 1975 United States Dewar Team. That year, our first at Perry, my brother and I shared a hut with the Tomsens during the smallbore prone phase. A couple of days into the match the screen door creaked open and a tall distinguished man with a head of gray hair, politely asked if this was the hut where the Tomsens were billeted. It was the real Art Jackson and I was speechless. Walt and Greg soon walked in and introductions were made all around. I had spent 20 years waiting to meet Jackson and have spent the ensuing 20 years listening and learning from him. YOUTHFUL ADVENTURES Jackson was born in May 15, 1918 in Brooklyn, New York. He grew up in a New York that was much different from the one of today. It was a city with large vacant lots, wide-open spaces, and a lot less of the present big city ills. It was a time when the early greats of the shooting sports were still active and ownership of a firearm was socially acceptable to almost all of the population. Art grew up during the euphoria and prosperity that followed the United States involvement in 'The War To End Wars’ that collapsed into the Great Depression. Shooting cost the young Art his first job. During his 7th and 8th grade school years Art, and his brother Albert, worked after school and on Saturdays as delivery boys for a neighborhood dry cleaning and tailor shop. Art was addicted to shooting, of a sort, even at that early age. Armed with a bag bulging with his collection of trusty 'shooters', aggies, and cat's eyes he roamed the vacant lots and the grassless strips between sidewalk and curb shooting marbles for keeps against all with similar interests. Practicing the concentration that would make him an international shooting star he would hunker down, shut out the outside world, and sight in on an opponent's marble. His thumb would unleash, with unerring accuracy of course, glass orb against glass orb. His concentration was so great that even Albert's constant pleading to return to work went unheard. Mr. Kline, their employer, eventually sought other help and Art was forced into early retirement. He and Albert collected scrap copper and lead, used paper, deposit bottles, and the occasional hubcap to finance his adolescent habits. His devotion to shooting is so complete that the only price he remembers, some sixty years after his sojourn as a member of the avant garde of recyclers, is that of scrap lead, 5 cents a pound The shooting career of the man who would win 22 medals in international competition for the United States almost died stillborn for lack of 15 cents; money that he might well have had if he were a little more attentive to Mr. Kline needs, or had better business sense as a scrap merchant. As a freshman at Brooklyn Technical High School Art attended a rifle team tryout meeting but lacked the 15 cents needed to pay for tryout ammunition. It was 1932 and, in depression wracked New York City; former stockbrokers were selling apples on street corners for a nickel each. In those days, 15 cents was not a paltry sum. When the 1933 tryouts rolled around, he had salted away the cash needed to pay for his ammunition. Handed a school owned slow lock Winchester 52, he stood up and shot an 81 out of 100. The team coach, a Major La Vista, was a World War I pilot who knew little about shooting but had both a spotting scope, of sorts, and the time to devote to the youngsters. Peering through his four power Warner and Swazey telescopic musket sight he gave encouragement to his team but only at home matches. They practiced at the school's five point rifle range that was equipped with target carriers, shooting through small ports that required heavy tables to raise the shooters to the height of the port in order to shoot prone. The tables were then pushed back to make room for shooting the standing position. The course of fire, dictated by the Public School Athletic League, was ten shots prone in six minutes followed by another ten shots standing with the same time limit. Two sighting shots were fired prior to the five bull match targets being cranked out. Times were hard and money was so tight that many shooters made their own shooting jackets out of whatever spare clothing was at hand. A swatch of sheepskin sewn onto the elbows and shoulder where the rifle rested served for padding. A winter mitten, or discarded dress glove, with more sheepskin padding added to protect the hand from the pressure of the sling would fit the bill for a shooting mitt. Even though 10X and Croft were manufacturing shooting coats and padded gloves they were beyond the budgets of the Brooklyn Tech boys.