Sorry. I can't stay out of this reminiscence, try as I may! I was born here is the stinky city (Lewiston), as was my Dad, my Mother, Dad's Mom and her family, and further back, many great and great-great aunts, uncles, cousins, etc., 28 of whom are buried in the Normal Hill Cemetery here, but about Lolo Sporting Goods. Before it was Lolo Sporting Goods, it was Rich's Sporting Goods and before it specialized in guns and ammo, it was Rich's Mercantile. The man who opened it, even before the "roaring 20s", Dexter Rich, was my great uncle. My first , second and third rifles came from there in the 50s. My great aunt, Francis Rich, owned the building and leased it to Lolo until the 1990s. Back in the early 1950's, I remember going in there as a child and marveling at the guns all over the walls, as far back as the eye could take in (it was and is an old, two-storey shotgun building, narrow and open clear to the back then. Many of the firearms on the walls, and some of the ammo contained for sale and displayed in the middle of the floor, dated back to the Spanish-American War. 30-40 Krag was a hunting staple prior to WWII. Just about every exotic firearm you could imagine could be found there, and those that couldn't could be found on the wall over in North Lewiston at Jim and Dolly's "Curley's Tavern." The Speers went into business here in Lewiston, and Cascade Cartridges Incorporated, (CCI) started here about the time I moved away. At Lolo, you could step in about any time of the day and hear locals talking guns, hunting and sport shooting. I never found another place quite like it. Dexter was a local champion shotgunner and upland game bird hunter prior to his death. I retired back here, fifty years after moving away. In many ways it has proved the fallacy in the old saw "you can never go home again!"
