The film “Stand By Me” is one of the best coming-of-age movies of all time. It’s a story of four boys who, in a journey seeking the body of a dead classmate, discover themselves.

At the end of the film, one boy makes the observation that while one of their number will be groomed for greater things, most will be sent to shop class, where they’ll make ashtrays and birdhouses. I don’t know if it’s still the case, but when I went through junior high, boys took shop class and girls took home economics.

In shop class, each of us had to select and build a project that was a large part of our final grade. Some guys chose to build a hope chest. Others designed and built fancy chess boards or cabinets for the home. One guy built a racing hydroplane boat.

A handful of us chose to design and build gun cases. At the end of the year, the projects were put on display for open house.

I was proud of my gun case. It held seven guns — six slots for traditional rifles or shotguns and a seventh slot made extra wide for a side-by-side, double-barrel shotgun. My gun case graced the bedroom I shared with my brother and had drawers underneath to store ammunition, gun-cleaning stuff and related items.

When I got married, my gun case became part of the furnishing of our new household. I guess it was as inevitable as rivers flowing to the sea, but somewhere along the line, something changed.

As a birthday gift one year, my wife bought me a fancy glass-door gun case, and the old one was relegated to junk storage in the garage. Eventually, even the fancy glass case was replaced by a massive fireproof gun safe that would still be intact after your house burned to the ground.

Somewhere along the way, my old shop project faded away, never to be seen again.

Of course, I rest easy at night knowing my guns are safe from theft, flood or fire. But I miss being able to enter my den and see my guns (and wood-working skills) on display. It’s true that guns stored in a controlled environment are protected from rust, dust and cobwebs, but I miss the sight of polished wood, inlaid metalwork and the smell of Hoppes No. 9 gun cleaner.

About 20 years ago, I attended a fundraiser at the house of a world-traveling hunter. Old Bob surely invested more in his game room than I had in my entire house. Magnificent oak gun cases with lead glass doors and recessed ceiling lighting lined the north wall. From the east, a mounted leopard had leapt into a tree with a gazelle in his jaws and glared down at you, daring you to challenge him, while on the south a jackal waited for his chance to steal a meal from the leopard.

Although Old Bob has gone on to that great safari in the sky, I wonder what became of his game room.

In 1965, a drive through a high school parking lot anywhere in the Central Valley would turn up several dozen pickups equipped with gun racks mounted in the cab’s back window. Frequently, there was a shotgun and rifle ensconced in the rack.

Many of us would hunt before class and then again immediately after class. I remember what a treat it was to go shooting with our high school speech teacher. Boy, could he shoot a shotgun!

Now, a gun in a vehicle at a local high school probably would produce a response from the local SWAT team. I know our guns are safer in their humidity-controlled vaults and that we can’t have pickups equipped with guns anymore, but sometimes I think maybe we were safer then than we are now.

I miss my old gun case.

Until next week, Tight Lines.

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