Posted on 03/16/2010 6:48:56 AM PDT by marktwain
Several weeks ago hunting buddy Bill Boone was showing me a very nice over-under, 20-gauge shotgun he'd recently bought at a good price from a gun store. I'd heard about Mackey's Landing Firearms but had never been there yet so I decided it was time to I head for Jamesville.
Since our beginnings as a colony of England, Americans have been fascinated with guns. Guns were tools to harvest food, provide protection from predators, and a means of securing our freedom and independence. Guns were so important to our people that our Constitution guarantees that we Americans will always have an individual right to keep and bear arms.
The Jamesville store lays claim to being the world's largest gun shop.
I didn't realize just how huge the shop was until I stopped off there to see what all the talk was about. From the outside the store looks like some sort of warehouse. When you walk through the front door, it's another world.
I've been in and out of gun stores about all over the country now and looking into another one is sort of a ho hum experience for me but Mackey's Landing Firearms got my attention.
My jaw fell open when I looked in on thousands and thousands of every type of firearm known to man. They're well displayed, labeled and categorized. There were sections of the store set aside for shotguns; other sections displayed any imaginable type of rifle and rack upon rack of all the ammunition you can imagine.
Cornering store manager Charlie Hayes, I managed to get his attention long enough to find out just how big the Mackey's Landing Gun Shop really was.
(Excerpt) Read more at theherald-nc.com ...
Ah yes....my concept of what heaven looks like. Of course there is a golf course right outside the front door. Nothing fancy. Maybe Pebble Beach.
I’ve been there with my dad, a few years ago! Mackey’s Landing Gun Shop is truly an amazing store.
And the Cypress Grill is a landmark in these parts. I used to go eat fried herring there with my grandpa from the time I was a teenager, up until he died in my mid 20’s. Good times.
Herring & guns ping!
IMO they’re rather proud of their stock.
I ate herring there as a small lad, cir. 1960. Deep fat fried standing at a table attached to trees. Bet it has changed a good bit.
We live in Farm Life at the time. See if you can find that on a map. And no, I don’t mean Farmville. That’s big city stuff.
I’ll have to check it out tonight. I have only been down there a couple of times, both with my dad, who is a local chapter president for the National Wild Turkey Federation.
Regardless of the prices, they really do have a breathtaking inventory.
I don’t know what it was like then, but even now it’s literally just an old fishing shack. It’s right next to the Roanoke River.
There’s nothing else but fish, shellfish and roe on the menu (except for side items). Great stuff!
I remember you telling me you lived in Farm Life, once. At the time I checked it out on Google Maps. I bet y’all had to pump in daylight! Wow.
They do have a lot of items. A local store here that’s been in business almost 40 years has buyers that travel all over buying up estates, sooner or later you’ll see everything there except the really rare stuff that the owner either keeps or calls “certain” customers before it ever hits the floor.
Most of my rare and high condition stuff came from them.
For those of us who grew up thinking of herring as a pickled hors d'oeuvre, North Carolina river herring is a shock. For one thing, it looks like a fish. And for another, it really, really tastes like a fish. Not the least bit like chicken or anything else. If you like fish, you will love it. And there is no better place to love it than at the Cypress Grill on the banks of the Roanoke River. Here is the last of the old-time herring shacks, quite literally a cypress wood shack, open only for the herring run, January through April...
Overall: Worth driving from anyplace
(more at link)
Took my son there about this time last year. Shot a few shells. After a while he turns to me and says, “It’s so quiet here.”
That’s the place. It’s been about 50 years but I think that’s the same shack.
Anyone know how to get drool out of a keyboard?
Probably so!
Ha, that’s great.
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