Mid-1950's at the Western Auto store in Iola KS when I was about 10.
My folks lived 17 miles north on a cattle & wheat farm, and made the trip every week or two on Saturday afternoon to stock up on grocery's & repair parts.
They would drop me off at Western Auto and go to the grocery store across the street.
If the older man who owned the Western Auto wasn't too busy with real customers, he would sell me my weekly supply of Daisy BB's, and regale me with story's of his annual trip to Alaska after big bears and Moose, or quail & pheasant hunting in Kansas in the fall.
The WA was a full stocking Winchester, Browning, Colt, & Ithaca dealer, and he allowed me to take anything in stock off the rack and coon-finger it, by myself.
(He also had the first SAKO's I had ever seen)
The handguns were kept in a glass case next to the register, and he would even let me hold a Colt SAA, or 1911, or Woodsman Match Target, if he had time to fool with me at the time!
The only warning he ever gave me was to check them for Empty as soon as I touched them, not bump them into anything, and wipe them off with the oily rag when I got done.
Good advice that I still live with!
He would even occasionally go in the back room and bring out his well worn pre-64 Model 70 .375 H&H in a leather sheepskin lined case.
He had cut it to 20" to better handle in the alder thickets on Kodiak Island, and I think it had a low power Lyman Alaskan or Kollmorgen scope on it? I forget which.
I will never forget as long as I live, the smell of Hoppe's #9, fine new guns, racks of new tires, and his Old Spice & pipe tobacco aroma!
Funny things kids remember nearly 60 years later!!
PS: No he was not Chester the Molester!!
He was just a damn fine old man that treated a 10 year old kid like a adult with the same intense interest in guns & hunting as his.
I have forgot his name tonight, (H. B. something) but I still remember his face like I just talked to him an hour ago while he was explaining the fine points of a Winchester Model 12 as opposed to a Browning A-5 Auto!
Or a Winchester Model 62A as opposed to a Browning .22 Auto.
He had a low opinion if the Savages & Mossberg's of the day, although he did sell them!
(The Winchester 62A, and Browning A-5 & .22 Auto won out, and I have owned one of each my whole life)
rc