Attics tell tales, particularly those with guns hidden between the joists.
Forgotten in the skeleton of an abandoned farmhouse for almost 40 years, a lost pistol beckoned to Bobby Cole. Patient as a stone, the gun gathered dust in a dilapidated attic and its recovery, as likely as a snowflake in Texas summer, required faith in the unseen.
“The pistol is priceless in my eyes,” Cole says. “No amount of money can match the feeling of finding what is now a family heirloom. If you can’t appreciate this story, you probably never lost nothing important and you probably never lived in the country.”
The Obsession
Outside Crockett, in deep east Texas’ Ratcliff community of Houston County, lives Bobby Cole, a man of a thousand stories. Country as a hickory stump, with a Southern accent pulled from Lonesome Dove, Cole, 52, is not merely a unique keeper of the past—he rides a different train. As in, Cole is a standalone storyteller of the highest order.
Raised in the shadows of his father, Bill, a pulp-wooder, and his grandfather, Jeff, a sharecropper and logger in the age of two-man bucksaws and crosscuts, Cole’s upbringing was saturated in the lore of his father’s lost firearm. From the mouths of his elders, Cole listened to the narrative of loss on a loop.
The more Cole heard, the more he obsessed—and the more he genuinely believed in the pistol’s recovery. “How can you explain that you know, without a shadow of a doubt, a physical item exists where it shouldn’t be—kinda like it’s asleep?” Cole asks. “Even when you weren’t born during the time period when the item was lost, and you’ve never been inside where you know it is, and you’ve never even laid eyes on it?”
“All the way into my teenage years, the pistol was stamped into my mind, like it was chasing me,” Cole adds. “I had to be the one to find it and bring it home to my daddy. I had to be the one. Nobody else.”
Cash on the Barrelhead
In 1953, the Korean War ended; Dwight Eisenhower was inaugurated as president; Joseph Stalin died; Edmund Hillary summited Mt. Everest; Queen Elizabeth ll was crowned; Watson and Crick discovered the DNA double-helix; and Houston County’s Bill Cole was a big, bad, freewheeling five-year-old.
On Dec. 25, Bill and his older brothers, Doug, 8, and Jim, 10, each received $4 in Christmas money—a princely sum for backroad kids in the 1950s. On the next trip to town, the trio piled into Jeff’s truck cab, their pockets burning with a total of 12 crisp bills likely destined for candy, slingshots, marbles, baseball cards, or pocketknives.
On Crockett’s main square, while Jeff sought supplies, the Cole brothers filed into a pawn shop and scanned the walls, spotting a must-have—a .177 caliber pellet pistol made in Italy, a major step up from the ubiquitous Daisy Red Ryder BB gun of the day. The Red Ryder rifle had debuted almost 15 years prior in 1940, costing a mere $2.75. The used spring-piston pellet pistol on the pawnshop shelf had a heftier price tag—$15.
Three heads hunched for a hushed meeting in the aisle as the brothers pooled their money, prepared a bid, and approached the proprietor with a horse-trading offer: $12 cash on the barrelhead for the irresistible pistol with a breakover barrel.
“I reckon the owner felt sorry for them,” Cole chuckles. “He sold them the gun for $12 and threw in a box of pellets. It was every dollar they had, but they jumped on it.”
“They went home with the pistol, more than happy with their bargain, and proceeded to shoot every last pellet within a day or two. No more ammo. Finished. And they weren’t going back to town anytime soon, didn’t have any more money, and Christmas was a long, long ways away.”
“To a bunch of little boys, the solution to no pellets was easy,” Cole says. “Make your own ammo.”
The Lawman
On 100 acres rubbing against the Davy Crockett National Forest, Jeff grew corn on the halves. Every year, 50 percent of his crop was claimed by a landlord and the rest went to Jeff’s livestock. However, included in the exchange was a rent-free, turn-of-the-century farmhouse perched on a hill overlooking a sizable pond. The small, board-and-batten dwelling featured a dog run shooting through its middle. Half of the home featured a finished ceiling, but the remainder was exposed to the roof rafters.
Hauling the pellet pistol around the house’s surrounding property to trial various substances in the smoothbore barrel, the Cole boys chanced upon ammunition growing in inexhaustible amounts: tiny green cedar tree balls. Jammed into the breech, the cedar balls turned the pistol into a spud gun of sorts—and stung the skin like a bee sting when blasted at close range.
“They started shooting each other, over and over, sometimes from really close,” Cole explains. “All three of them did it, but naturally, being the youngest, my daddy would get shot the most by his older brothers, and he’d start to bawling.”
“My grandpa, Jeff, would hear the commotion, take the gun away, throw it in the attic, and only give it back after a few days or weeks or longer, depending on how mad he was. For several years, it was the same old song-and-dance of taking the pistol and putting it in the attic as punishment. He’d say, ‘Boys, when you can learn to behave and quit hurting each other, you can have it back.’ They’d get it back and sure enough, they’d go to crying and fighting and hollering, and just like that, the pistol rotated in and out of the attic.”
As the eldest of the Cole siblings, big-boned Jim asserted dominance and often carried the pistol holstered on his hip in classic lawman style. Whether unloaded or crammed with cedar ball ammo, the gun was kept at arm’s length—close enough to save a father’s life.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind
On a late fall evening in the timberlands of east Texas, Jeff welcomed the good old boys of Houston County for a gathering punctuated by drinking and lying. Gathered around a campfire, the usual suspects pulled on wine bottles for several hours, threatening the world and bickering over the mundane details of life. Away from the fire’s glow, waiting in the darkness, Jeff’s three boys watched as the arguments and alcohol descended toward a predictable outcome.
“They got drunk and somebody started a fight,” Cole describes. “One of the guys picked up a bumper stem jack and was fixing to hit my grandpa. Jim saw what the guy was doing and pulled the pistol. He ran over and hit the guy in the head with the pistol and knocked him slap-out. Cold. They carried the guy and all piled in a car and drove away.”
Problem solved: pistol-whipped by a pellet gun.
Throughout the subsequent year, the three brothers continued to pick cedar balls, load the pistol, and deliver pain to the nearest sibling. During one of the indeterminant punishment phases while the gun was cloistered in the attic, the family moved across the county to a new home—and in the excitement of the switch, the gun was temporarily forgotten by all.
Out of sight, out of mind. “My daddy never remembered the gun until it was too late,” Cole notes. “He begged to go back and get it, but it was over. My grandpa said another family had already moved in and there was no going back for the pistol.”
Chalk it up as a loss—the patriarch had spoken.
Play Yer Cards
In 1971, Bobby Cole was born, and throughout his childhood he soaked in the rough-and-tumble tales of Bill’s upbringing, but was consumed by a standalone narrative that ruled all other accounts—the pellet pistol.
“I was fascinated when daddy would talk about the pistol. He’d always conclude with, ‘I wonder if that pistol could be in that attic?’ The question kinda rung in my ears, and I was eaten up by it, but when I’d ask if we could go get it, his answer was always the same: ‘No. There’s people living there and there’s people been moving in and out for years.’”
“Growing up, I heard the story around my uncles and cousins, and I was certain the pistol was in that same house, undiscovered by family after family,” Cole explains. “For years and years, those people would have been only feet from the gun and not suspected a thing. Maybe it was unlikely, but I believed it was there. I just had to go get it.”
Faith in action.
In 1991, Cole, 20, was already a working man, living on his own and heading toward a career as a mechanic at Ball Metal Corporation. On a Saturday in July, he stopped by his parent’s home, and the conversation inevitably meandered to the pistol.
However, for the first time in Cole’s life, the dynamics around the gun had shifted. According to Bill, the property was vacant and had been empty for several years. Soup to nuts, the house was ramshackle.
Cole pounced on opportunity and approached the pistol from a side street. “Daddy, let’s go fishing at the same pond you fished as a kid and you can tell me stories about the property. If anybody drives up, we’ll tell them the truth that you grew up here and we came for old-time’s sake.”
Bill smelled the ruse and responded with caution: “No. Let’s drive over and just look.”
An hour later, on a blistering July afternoon too hot for dogs to bark, father and son pulled off a highway and stared at a locked gate and a sagging barbed-wire fence on its last legs, the stringed metal riding dirt for long stretches. Unable to resist the lure of family history, they slipped the fence.
“It was like going back in time,” Cole says. “He showed me all his play spots, and where the outhouse stood, and how things were set up around the house. Then we started fishing in the pond.”
Minutes later, Cole set down his pole on the bank, patted a flashlight conveniently tucked in his back pocket, and played his cards. “Hey, you think the pistol is inside the house?”
Snakeskins and Possums
Cole’s pregnant question hung in the air.
“It’s 35-something years past, son,” Bill answered. “So many people have been in and out of the house, and someone’s bound to have found it long ago.”
Cole was undaunted: “Well, it’s in there and I’m fixing to go find it. Just tell me where it’ll likely be.”
Per Bill’s recollection, the pistol normally was stowed in the attic vicinity above the fireplace—narrowing Cole’s search to the general area atop and around the living room.
Alone, Cole marched away from the pond, up a slope, and onto the groaning front porch of the house. No doors. Rooms almost bare as stones. A shell with 1,000 scars.
Walking through doorways and down the dog run, he kept his gaze upward, searching for an attic entry, and spotted a hole in the kitchen ceiling. (Bill’s experience was a house with a half ceiling, but sometime after the late 1950s, the ceiling was completed.)
Cole placed a milk crate on the kitchen’s wooden countertop and ascended to the hole, pulling himself upward via the joists and into the darkness, heavy air, and stifling heat of an attic world marked by rat droppings, snakeskin sheds, and a random possum skeleton. Clicking the flashlight, Cole shone the beam and immediately illuminated two wasp nests suspended from the rafters—left and right.
“I’m talking about nests as big as iron skillets, loaded with red wasps,” Cole describes. “It was scorching hot and summertime, so I knew if one hit me, they’d all hit me, and I’d likely have a crazy death in the attic of my daddy’s childhood home trying to find a pistol that supposedly wasn’t even there.”
Feet on joists, Cole began easing across the attic. “No way was I going back. I remembered the old saying about wasps: ‘Don’t stir’em and they won’t bother you.’ Sure enough, I slipped right by.”
Sending the flashlight’s beam across the attic floor, Cole saw little of interest, but noted a 3’ wooden partition running the width of the house that appeared to separate the living room and kitchen. He maneuvered directly to the partition and peaked over. Nothing. He shined the flashlight down the joists. Nothing.
“I’m standing right at the partition, looking across the room, and not seeing a thing, but when I pointed my light straight down, the past came alive.”
Flash to a bang in a blink. Cole’s mouth went dry to cotton and his heartbeat exploded. Roughly 2’ from the partition’s base, the pellet pistol rested between two joists—untouched by human hands since Jeff’s deposit nearly 40 years prior. Faith rewarded, Cole leaned down and picked up the prize. Although coated in dust, the pistol was free of rust and in fantastic shape. The grips, once plastic, had been chewed away by rodents, but the gun was in remarkably nice condition.
The pistol’s location matched with the home’s pre-ceiling and pre-partition layout. Whenever needed, Jeff would have tossed the pistol into the attic, and presumably stood on a chair to access it after a few days or weeks. (In addition to the pistol, Cole found and retrieved a baby doll from the attic that he later returned to its childhood owner—his Aunt Betty.)
Gingerly reversing his path, Cole kept his excitement in check while skirting the wasp nests and descending into the kitchen. He burst from the farmhouse like a man escaping a fire, finally releasing a tsunami of pent-up emotion.
“I started running and hollering,” he exclaims. “I was motoring for the pond and my daddy and waving the pistol in the air like a crazy fool. I’m usually good with words, but I’ll never be able to find the words to express how I felt. No amount of money in the world can buy the feeling. The moments of discovery and giving the pistol to my daddy are priceless, and anybody who has ever searched for or recovered a cherished memory knows what I’m talking about.”
At the pond, Bill’s jaw dropped open at the sight of the pistol. “I’ll be doggoned. I’ll be doggoned,” he repeated, tickled to his core. “I don’t think I believe it.”
Sincerely. Cole’s faith birthed his father’s reality.
Keep the Faith
Cleaned and oiled, the pistol worked in superb order, throwing pellets as fast as it did on the day of Bill’s pawnshop purchase.
Several years after the gun’s return, Cole again drove by the old homeplace and spotted an open gate. Curiosity building, he parked and walked up the driveway to the house, finding an elderly gentleman, the last in line to buy the property, sitting on the front porch. The old man was shoring up the structure with lumber to prevent further damage.
Cole poured out the pistol story, and the gray-haired cob sponged every detail with a grin. “When I got done talking, I wanted to make sure he knew why we came on his land,” Cole says. “He just laughed and laughed, said it was the best story ever, and gave me and daddy free run of the whole place. I never meant no harm, and if somebody doesn’t understand what happened, then they probably need to stay in the city.”
In 2022, at the behest of his seven daughters, Cole went public with his ability to paint with words, tone, pace, and expression, and took his storytelling prowess to the TikTok arena. His channel, now garnering millions of views and 125,000-plus followers, is a capsule version of his past and present, including the pistol saga.
Where is the pistol today? It occupies a hallowed nook in Bill’s gun rack and will pass on to Cole in time. “It means so much more than a story,” Cole says. “Since I talked about it on TikTok, fellas have made offers, but they’re missing the point because it’s not for sale. It’s part of our family history and I know other rural families appreciate what that means. You know it came from far back in your family and you know it’s now going forward.”
Almost magically, Cole’s attic sensation of discovery still resonates. “The feeling when I found it never leaves,” he says. “No matter what happens in life, no one can ever take that moment away, and I believed that moment would happen ever since I was a boy.”
Indeed. Bobby Cole kept the faith.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Hebrews 11:1
To read more stories from Chris Bennett (cbennett@farmjournal.com 662-592-1106) see:
Judas Goats: Agriculture’s Bizarre, Drug-Addicted Masters of Deceit Once Ruled the Killing Floor
Cottonmouth Farmer: The Insane Tale of a Buck-Wild Scheme to Corner the Snake Venom Market
Tractorcade: How an Epic Convoy and Legendary Farmer Army Shook Washington, D.C.
Bagging the Tomato King: The Insane Hunt for Agriculture’s Wildest Con Man
Young Farmer uses YouTube and Video Games to Buy $1.8M Land
While America Slept, China Stole the Farm
Bizarre Mystery of Mummified Coon Dog Solved After 40 Years
The Arrowhead whisperer: Stunning Indian Artifact Collection Found on Farmland
Fleecing the Farm: How a Fake Crop Fueled a Bizarre $25 Million Ag Scam
Skeleton In the Walls: Mysterious Arkansas Farmhouse Hides Civil War History
US Farming Loses the King of Combines
Ghost in the House: A Forgotten American Farming Tragedy
Rat Hunting with the Dogs of War, Farming’s Greatest Show on Legs
Evil Grain: The Wild Tale of History’s Biggest Crop Insurance Scam
