Out

Today was beautiful, so I set out to test my leg and Murphy with a hike to the Maryland Heights observation spot above Harpers Ferry. Murphy was doing well today at first. I stopped at a drive-through and grabbed a couple of burgers on the way and he made it clear that he wanted some, but he wasn't pushy about it until we got to Harpers Ferry. As I approached the ranger to see about a parking spot, Murphy decided that she meant us harm and began to bark and bite at her through the rear seat window. I rolled the window up and apologized to her, and as I did so, Murphy came up between the two front seats like a rocket, only instead of continuing his defensive actions, he jammed his muzzle down into the burger bag and snagged the remaining burger. DAMMIT! He got an elbow in the head for that one, but he also managed to retreat with the burger and scarf it down before I could take it away, so that one was a draw.

I took him out on leash and across the bridge over the Potomac, and he was good. Heading up the trail though, he began to show signs of wanting a drink, so when we got to a spot just above a creek where I used to water Lagniappe, I took a gamble and unleashed him, my rationale being that where we were, with the creek on one side and a rock wall on the other, he could really only go down to the water and back up to me. That's what Lagniappe always did and that's how I used to water him here without my having to traverse the steep slope both ways.

OK, that was a bad call. He could also run up and down the trail like a lunatic, which is actually what he chose to do. He ran in each direction about 40-50 feet, then turned and ran back, just playing and daring me to try to grab him. Well I know better than to try that, so I just bid him goodbye and began walking on the opposite direction. As soon as he ran past me, I turned around and went back the other way. Puzzled, he came right up behind me and when I stopped and told him in a stern voice to "sit", he did. I was able to leash him up again (and he got praised). And then, because I'm too nice, I walked him down the steep slope to the creek so he could drink his fill, and then we climbed back up to the trail.

At the top, we took in the view for a bit. Murph seemed to enjoy the cool breeze, and I was happy that my leg had held out. Last year, before the new trouble with it, I could have double-timed this climb. But now, even though it's starting to work right again, I've lost confidence in it and I'm going to have to work at re-establishing my capabilities with it. That's going to mean starting slow and working up until I'm pushing the envelope again, and it'll be hard and painful over the next month or two, but a man's got to know his limitations, and in this case, that means going forward until I hit one, and then working through it. Today's 4mi. rough-terrain hike really helped though.
Then it was back down. It would have been a longer hike, but I know a shortcut down from this spot, so Murphy and I cut about 20 minutes off the descent and we were actually back in lower Harpers Ferry well before some of the people we'd been talking to up top--people who'd left back down the trail well before we did. And of course once down there, Murphy had to go see Sharon at the Swiss Miss ice cream shop.



And here he is, enjoying his sweet treat. Notice that he doesn't inhale it in one bit like Lagniappe did. In fact, he's downright dainty about it.


How'd I get to be your ice cream bitch? Just take it already!

Saturday Morning Man Movie

In the 1953 classic Bend of the River, reformed border raider Glyn McLyntock, played by James Stewart, is leading a group taking food and other supplies to a settlement that will starve without it.

Alas, he's double-crossed by his hired men, including a young Henry Morgan, and his friend, Emerson Cole, played by Arthur Kennedy. Here, Kennedy saves him from being killed and sends him on his way, taking the food to sell to a mining camp willing to pay much more for it.
Cole's going to regret that before too much longer. Unarmed, alone and on foot, McLyntock is going to get that wagon train back. Just you watch.

And lawyers wonder why America despises most of them

So an ambulance-chasing weasel by the name of Mark Gold is suing the Gold Rush strip club, trying to get his gold back.

MIAMI (CN) - An attorney sued a strip club, claiming it got him so drunk he became "temporarily unconscious," and it rang up $18,930 on his credit card.
Mark S. Gold, who specializes in traffic cases, sued Turntable Entertainment and Production Co. dba the Gold Rush, in Miami-Dade County Court.
Gold claims that in November 2010, "Gold Rush knowingly and continuously served plaintiff alcoholic beverages to the extent that he was rendered intoxicated, partially or temporarily unconscious, and further to the extent that he had a complete loss of judgment, rational thought, or ability to enter into lawful contracts or agreements.
He adds: "Gold Rush having knowingly caused plaintiff's irrational state of mind, continued to ply him with liquor in order to charge his credit card excessive amounts to the extent of $18,930.
"Defendant knew, or should have known, of plaintiff's intoxicated state, having caused it."
Gold wants his money back, and punitive damages, for unfair and deceptive trade. He filed the case pro se.

"Pro se" means that he's acting as his own lawyer. And you know old adage about a how a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client...I'm thinking that Mark Gold proves that statement perfectly.

Here's the actual filing. Note that even though he's representing himself, he's still demanding attorney's fees.

What a scumbag.

The vacuum cleaner went and got reinforcements!

Poor Murphy.

Readers here will recall his battles with the vacuum cleaner. He still hates that device and can be counted on to attack it at least once or twice every time I try to clean the floors. But Murph has just figured out that the vacuum cleaner has a friend who has been silently lurking in my bedroom, waiting to pounce.

He discovered this today when, due to the heat and humidity that we got here, I retired to my room to enjoy the air conditioning. The air conditioner makes the room fantastically comfortable on the hottest day, especially when the cool air is swirled around by the ceiling fan.

Well I haven't used either of these things since Murphy came to live here, so it obviously came as something of a shock to him to walk into the bedroom and see the fan come to life and begin to spin menacingly above his head.

Suddenly he stopped and looked up. You could almost hear him exclaim: "What the hell is THAT?!"
And with his eyes still riveted to the spinning fan, Murphy backed out of the room. He then stood in the doorway and began to growl at it.

It took me a couple of minutes and a few tricks to get him to come back into the bedroom. This has to be done because this is where his bed is and he's going to have to either get along with the fan or move.

He reluctantly came back in, but he's careful to keep an eye on that insidious fan, because clearly it's poised to descend the moment that he turns his back on it.
"So the vacuum got back-up, huh? Well you just stay up there and we won't have any trouble."


EDITED TO ADD: I can report that as of this morning, Murphy and the fan are now good friends. He's lying spread out beneath it right now, the breeze ruffling his fur, instead of on his dog bed in the corner.

But it's still a cold war with the vacuum.

They joys and benefits of cartridge reloading

I've been slow to blog lately because I've been stuck at home for so long and unable to get out and find much blog motivation. But Brigid's post on reloading was like a good smack in the head. I mean, what have I been doing here at home all day? Reloading! In fact, I just finished a run of .303 cartridges that beat hell out of any military surplus stuff as far as accuracy goes. And for less than $200, I now have a .50 ammo can filled with 500 rounds of excellent .303 ammunition.

I started out this batch when I noticed an ammo can back in the far reaches of the space under my reloading bench. There's a lot of them back there, and every now and again I pull one out and find something really cool that I'd forgotten putting there. In this instance, it was a bit over 500 empty .303 cases, all Greek military stuff (HXP headstamp), and to my surprise, I saw that they were all primed with Winchester Large Rifle (WLR) primers.

Well damn. I don't even remember doing that, but the ammo can was sealed and a random sampling of a few of the primers showed them good, so I set those aside and went seeking bullets.

I've had problems loading accurate loads for my Enfield rifles before, because as anyone who shoots Enfields know, while the bore is supposed to be .311 in diameter, in actual practice, due to wartime manufacturing quality control and decades of shooting, (Two of my Enfields are 95 years old currently; the newest one is 45.) some of these bores are a fair bit larger, and accuracy blows, especially when you're trying to reload using surplus Russian bullets what are also allegedly .311 but which, in practice, tend to run from .311 down to nearly .309. Mate those undersize bullets up with an oversized bore, and you've got a rifle that shoots "Minute-of-general-direction" even if everything else is right. Even store-bought .303 hunting ammo runs to the shy side of .311 (thanks, lawyers!), so that's not much better, but you're paying close to a buck a round for it.

But then along come my pals at Midway, and they have some Hornady 174gr. soft-point ball bullets that are .312 in diameter, just a bit oversized, to ensure a snug fit in all of those sloppy Enfield barrels out there. I bought six hundred of them and set aside 500 for the production run. Then I used the last hundred rounds for testing.

After perusing several current reloading manuals, I settled on a powder range using IMR 4895, a propellent that I already use for my .30-06 loads. Some people like to find the optimum powder for each caliber but I like to standardize, just to keep things simple and efficient. I'm just shooting the .303 for fun now, not trying out for the US Palma Team. I load various five-round batches at different charge weights across the rough range that the manuals suggest, starting low and working up in 0.2 grain increments. I then took my worst-shooting Enfield (a #4mk1) out to the range and fired for evaluation, noting with some glee that it was grouping like a champ with these new bullets. And this was a rifle that previously would have had problems hitting the floor if I dropped it. I finally found a load that really seems to work right, and then I took two other Enfields out, An Indian #1Mk3 and an Eddystone Pattern 1914, and gave them a try. The results were impressive with all three of the rifles, so I declared it to be my new .303 load and set to filling cases and seating bullets. Now I've got enough .303 to allow me to enjoy shooting these rifles for a while, and I've ordered enough new bullets to allow me to reload these cases another time or two. The end result is that I can now shoot and enjoy these classic rifles for about a quarter of what it would cost me to go to Wal-Mart and buy factory ammo for them, and I get much more accurate ammunition to boot!

Shooty goodness treasure:

As an added plus, I actually enjoy sitting down at the press, making new ammo as my Blues and old Rock tunes play on my computer. My ammo production is usually always helped along by music greats like BB King, Bob Seger and Jerry Reed. Good times.

The new rifle food:

The test rifles:
Top to bottom:
Pattern #1914, Eddystone Arsenal, United States (1916)
#1Mk.3, Ishapore, India (1964)
#4mk.1, Royal Ordnance Factory, Maltby, England (1941)
Makes you just want to sing "We are the World", don't it?

Nah. We'll stick with Seger:

More from last week

Aaron over at The Shekel demonstrates the concept of "Better Late Than Never".

Easter morning

He's Alive. True then, true today.

Saturday Western (man movie)

Could you get any more manly in 1950 than Errol Flynn?

In this climactic ending from the 1950 movie Rocky Mountain, Flynn is the leader of a small band of Confederate raiders who was sent west to try to uphold the Confederate cause. As typically happens, a noble deed and a woman get in the way and in the end, he and his band wind up making the decision to draw off a large band of savage indians and saving that woman and some Union cavalry. Massively outnumbered, his final order rings out: "They've seen our backs! Now let's show 'em our faces! CHARGE!"

Of Dogs and Guns...

So early this afternoon, I step out onto my deck and literally trip over a box that had been set there without my knowledge by UPS.

Some watchdog I have, right?
Sigh...

I open the box, and I find a ton of bubble wrap around...a smaller box. I open that and it's filled with styrofoam peanuts. Digging through that, I find more bubble wrap.

I'm getting pissed now.

I slice all of the tape holding that together, and I find this:

Heck, I remember that pistol. It's my Argentine Colt Sistema Model 1927. The last time I saw it, it looked like this:
I sent it out in March for some work. That would be March of 2010. It's been gone thirteen months (don't get me started on that) but now it's back. And now it has a new deep charcoal parkerizing that's still seeping oil, a Wilson Combat ambidextrous safety, Trijicon night sights, and a trigger that breaks like a fine glass rod.

I'm liking this.

Quickly I grabbed a bag of ammo and my range bag and I headed off to the range for a test.

The plus side: It ran flawlessly, and it doesn't group--it just makes ragged multi-round holes in the target. Wow.

The downside: It's shooting a bit high. Not high enough to miss center mass on the evil-doers, but just high enough to keep me from using it for pistol matches or classes where the shooting has to be precise. I'll have to see if I can't get a taller front sight. Also, it's not ejecting the magazines with any real force. When I hit a mag release, I want to hear that mag hitting the ground every time. But that should be an easy fix.

Overall, color me happy with the pistol.

Now as for the watchdog...

Warbirds page is a go!

OK, as promised, I've set up a new page entitled "The Warbirds of Selfridge Field"

Go check it out, and I'd love your comments, both there and here.

He's getting it!

So this afternoon, I'm out talking Murphy for a short walk. He sees a neighbor's miniature Chihuahua standing in the street and tries to go play with it but the little taco dog is quickly scooped up by it's owner before Murphy can get to it. (Sorry, Buddy...)
However, Murphy is still tugging at his leash a bit, and apparently when I hooked it up, I connected it to one of the light rings that hold his tags on instead of the collar itself, because suddenly, with a snap that send dog tags flying everywhere, Murphy was free.

Aw, Damn. Here we go again, I thought. Let the games begin.

But Murphy just turned, looked at me, and walked right back up to me. And then he stood patiently while I reconnected his leash. This is the first time that he ever voluntarily came back once he found himself off of his leash.

Every day, this dog gets a little better.
I gots to behave...I think that the boss was gonna leave me with those strange people over the week-end! I need to show him that I'm worth keeping here!

Selfridge ANG Museum visit

Last Sunday, after church, my father and I took my nephew The Spud out for a bit, just to spend some quality "guy time" with him and expose him to something besides video games and the television set. We took him up to the Selfridge Air National Guard Base museum, in whose back lot can be found nearly seventy years' worth of military aviation history in the form of some of the finest aircraft ever to grace the skies in defense of this or any other country.

It was cold outside, with a heavy wind blowing and snow/freezing rain occasionally coming down on us, so my father couldn't stay out there too long, but as for me, I was in Heaven. So much winged goodness in one place, and all touchable!

Bear with me on this one. I have so many pictures that I'm going to set up another blog page just to display them. But just for a tease, here's a few.

This F-86A used to fly with the Michigan Air Guard out of Kellogg Field in Battle Creek.

This Lockheed P-3B Orion used to hunt Soviet submarines. Now it's here on display and open for tours.

Here's The Spud, climbing the boarding ladder into the P3B Orion.Spud wanted to sit at the controls. He was a bit put out that I relegated him to the right seat. The left seat had my name on it.


Here's my father, freezing to death in front of an A-7D Corsair II


An F-4C, perhaps one of the very aircraft that my father and I used to come out to the base to watch fly on week-ends, way back when.

I'll never forget noise so loud that it shook the car, and the kerosene residue that they left all over us as they launched off of the north end of the runway, right over our heads.


They switched to these F-16s a little later. It just wasn't the same.


Here's what they fly now. the 127th Wing flies the A-10.Unfortunately none were flying on this day due to weather conditions. I'd have liked Spud to have seen that.

The Spud in front of an M113, clearly wishing that he was somewhere else.


There was so much here that I wanted to show the boy, but I guess when you're a modern-day 12 year old, this:is more interesting than this:

I don't get that. When I was twelve, it would have taken half a dozen MPs to get me out of a yard like this. It was still hard for me to go on this day, but my father had gone back to the car and Spud had gone after him quite some time before. So reluctantly, I left the aircraft and fantasies of flying each and every one of them behind and returned to reality. But I'll be back to see them again some day. Count on it.

Give me a day or two and I'll have the whole yard posted for your enjoyment.

Shooting

As expected, Aaron over at The Shekel and I got out and did some shooting. The fact that it was about forty degrees with high winds didn't stop us, although it did cancel out our plan to work on precision pistol drills because it was blowing so hard that Aaron's most excellent target stand kept blowing over. Such is life. But a little wind wasn't sufficient to keep us from having some fun with the M60.
Here's adorable me, firing from the prone position.

And here's Aaron, shooting from a kneeling position.

Aaron has some better video, at least of him shooting the gun, and he'd better post it to his blog ASAP or else I'll tell the story about how he told his wife and kids that we had a pig in his Jeep, making them run out to see...the M60. She called him a few bad-sounding things in Russian when he explained the joke.

Whoops. I guess I told it. But he'd still better post that clip.

Aaron also had his Uzi out, and I managed to find an M1 Garand in my M1 locker that I've apparently never fired before. It was a World War two-dated Springfield Armory (June, 1945) with a correct barrel date but later birch wood. Moving the rear sight up seven clicks from park put it dead on at 100 yards and we had some fun nailing coffee cans and my old worn-out Midway brass tumbler with that one. I also got to shoot my S&W 642 and a new (to me) S&W-produced Walther PPK that Aaron found for me. Unfortunately it was plagued with malfunctions, and a detailed examination this afternoon shows that it's missing the ejector spring, something the apparently less-than-honest seller had to have known about had he shot it or even closely inspected it even one time. At least it'll be a quick and easy fix, and then I can go and be like James Bond--he's been making one-shot, three-hundred-yard kills with his PPK for decades so you just know that it's truly an awesome weapon.The big and the small. M1 Garand and Walther PPK. I can't believe that I've never shot this Garand before...

I started out the day using my crutches because the leg just wasn't cooperating, yet by the evening, not only was I back off of them, but I was able to go out with Aaron and The Spud for a few rounds of Lazer Tag. Much fun and the adventure-deprived Spud lives for stuff like that. It actually went well until the last game, when a collision with some long-haired college kid put my down pretty hard on that leg. I paid for that the rest of the night. At least the kid was polite and helped me get back to an upright position again, and I promptly zapped him as soon as I could shake off a few of the pain warning alarms going off in my head. (Hey, he was on the other team, after all.)

Meanwhile, my mother was learning the hard way that you cannot leave food on the counter when the Murphinator is on the prowl. Fortunately casualties were limited to a bag of rolls and most of a pack of cheese slices.

Back...

So we're back. And never has a dog been happier. (That's because he doesn't have to deal with the flooded basement that we came back to. Posting will be slow today, FYI.) Murphy has some issues to work through before he'll be considered a good traveler, that's for sure. I took him to visit family, and every time that I left him in someone's house while I went somewhere else--even if I was just outside helping my father patch up his sorry excuse for a fence--he threw fits. He cried, he yelped, he shrieked, he wailed, he threw himself into doors and windows...He wanted to be with me and he would not be consoled by anyone else. But we'll be working on that, because there's probably going to come times in this dog's life that we're going to be apart again, and this behavior is unacceptable.

He did ride better this time out though. Once he realized that the Turnpike means hours of tedium, he settled in and snoozed, waking up just long enough to talk a State Trooper who had thoughtfully stopped me to show me his nice new laser device and let me know how fast I was going. But alas, Officer Friendly could not get close enough to my window to take my driver's license from my hand because Murphy seems to have assumed that the trooper wanted to see his best Cujo impression and he barked, snapped, growled and screamed with canine rage, all while doing his very best to get between my seat and the driver's door. Murphy was clearly trying to ensure that there was no mistaking the fact that he was scared/angry/very hungry, and the trooper, exercising a healthy discretion, refused to even get close to the window. I offered to step out of the vehicle so that we could discuss the finer points of laser-aided speed determination and traffic safety in a location that would have been quieter and free of raging fangs, but he declined my offer and suggested that dog and I just drive a bit slower. Fair enough. (Good dog...)

We did stop in Pittsburgh for a bit to take a walk along the Allegheny River. I told Murphy that I wasn't really pleased with his behavior on this trip and that he needed to either shape up or ship out. He thought about it for a moment and then he made a beeline for the gangplank of the closest submarine.
Cast off all lines! All astern one-third! I'm shipping out!

Saturday Western (man movie)

This morning, we have a scene from the movie El Dorado (1966) where washed-up Sheriff JP Harrah, played by Robert Mitchum, staggers into the bar to arrest rich villain Bart Jason, played by Ed Asner. Fortunately he's a tougher man hung over than most men are sober. It also helps that he's got back-up in the form of John Wayne, Arthur Hunnicutt and a young James Caan.

Some people are just too stupid to die

Down in Birmingham, Alabama, police stopped a car for a traffic offense. The driver had at least one outstanding warrant so he was placed under arrest.

And while they're doing the inventory search of the car prior to turning it over to the tow truck, they find a....

mortar bomb.

An explosive device was found in a Birmingham neighborhood that could have killed people, according to federal agents. Birmingham police found a World War II Japanese mortar in a car in the Bush Hills neighborhood Wednesday morning.

Police dispatched their bomb squad unit to a vehicle located at 16th Street and 8th Avenue shortly before noon. Birmingham Police Sgt. Johnny Williams said the mortar was discovered during a traffic stop. He said a car was pulled over and the driver was arrested on an outstanding warrant. Williams said a female passenger in the car then became disorderly and she was arrested.

With both occupants of the car arrested, the car had to be towed. As the vehicle was being prepared to be towed, the officers discovered the device.

to Birmingham police, it was live and in working order. Resident Agent in Charge of the ATF, Gabriel Mamock, described it as an anti-personnel device used to kill people in WWII..

(No shit? Is that what they were for? Who knew?)

"Based on the proximity of being in a small confined areas, there's a high likelihood it could have killed them," said Mamock. "There could've been danger to anyone outside close by the vehicle, if the windows were up, glass flying at a high rate of speed. So it could've been bad? It could've been bad, yes."

The mortar was safely removed and taken to an undisclosed location. The device will be detonated by the Birmingham Police Department's bomb squad. The driver said the mortar was a gift from his grandfather and he used it as a paperweight, The Birmingham News reports. No word yet on charges for the man and woman in the car.

So this mortar bomb, if live and not an inert display item, has been sitting around acting as a paperweight all these years, and then Einstein here tosses it into his trunk and just drives around with it. Presumably it'd still be in his car now, waiting for the right moment to go off, had not Nimrod gotten stopped for a traffic offense AND had a warrant for his arrest AND had not the passenger, Becky Sue Joe Bob or whatever her name really is, got all huffy about her boyfriend getting arrested. had she not yelled out something like "Y'all ain't takin' my may-un!" and proceeded to act stupidly enough to get herself locked up right alongside him, this bomb--if live--would still be rolling around the Birmingham area right now.

Some people die because they are unlucky. Others don't die because the rest of us are unlucky.

California Teachers Union worried about Pennsylvania Cop Killer

Yeah, that's right. Instead of focusing on how to better do their jobs (they get paid to educate the public's kids), the wanna-be agents of world change that make of the membership of the California Federation of Teachers is devoting their time and energy towards advocating for convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, the ghetto hood who murdered Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in cold blood back in 1981.

Frankly I tire of hearing fools claim that this hood was "set up" and that he's really innocent. The facts in this case are about as cut-and-dried as any criminal murder case in history.

At roughly 3:50 a.m. on December 9, 1981, Officer Daniel Faulkner stopped the car of William Cook [corrected] on a street in Philadelphia. Cook is the brother of Abu-Jamal. Coincidentally, Abu-Jamal was parked nearby in a taxi he was driving. Upon seeing an altercation between Faulkner and Cook, Abu-Jamal ran across the street and shot Faulkner in the back. Faulkner was able to get a shot off at Abu-Jamal, seriously wounding him. With the wounded Faulkner on the ground, Abu-Jamal shot him in the head, killing him instantly.

At the time there were only three people in the immediate area of the crime: Faulkner, Abu-Jamal, and Cook. But others were nearby. Within minutes there were statements taken by separate police officers from several different witnesses who identified Abu-Jamal as the shooter. There were only two guns on the scene, Faulkner's and Abu-Jamal's. Ballistics show that the bullet in Abu-Jamal came from Faulkner's gun, and that those in Faulkner came from a gun like Abu-Jamal's. In the presence of a hospital security guard, Abu-Jamal shouted "I shot the m__f__r, and I hope the m__f__r dies."

Witnesses, physical evidence, his own statements...that's why he was sentenced to death and why no one but the American leftist subculture has ever doubted his guilt.

And by joining in that fight--and using union dues to do it--this bunch of teachers has declared themselves to be too stupid and too un-American to ever be allowed in a classroom with anybody's children.

But these retards go even further. They're actually lionizing Abu-Jamal as a "civil rights hero". Seriously.

Fred Glass, CFT spokesman, told TheDC that the even though the case is 30 years old, since Abu-Jamal is still going through appeals, the issue remains relevant.

“The delegates decided it was time to reiterate that they supported him due to the irregularities that they felt had taken place during his case,” said Glass. “They see this as a civil liberties issue, it is quite common for the CFT to take positions on broad social matters like this.”

Well I suppose that it's more satisfying than trying to, you know...teach, I guess.

Where else but in California do you have public servant school teachers calling the murderer of a public servant police officer a "hero", civil-rights or otherwise?

And the Democrats are only was too happy to keep accepting their campaign funds and passing laws that help them get more money while offering the taxpayers less in the form of competent teaching.

We really need to give Southern California back to Mexico with the express provisions that they move all of their illegals back into it and that they also have to keep all of the liberals, union members and common criminals who live there. Then we wall it off once and for all.

And the rest of our public schools need to be purged of unions ASAP. Let's do it for common sense, and let's do it for the children. Scott Walker for President in 2012!

Oh--and Fry Mumia!

Banned!

Someone is banned from the kitchen for a while, because I've tired of his barking at the cats out the patio window. Now he's sad.

Whine, whine...Life is SO unfair!

Gunbroker whacked!

I've spent the last ten days watching a Mauser on Gunbroker.

It was a nice old 7mm Model 1895, the sort that would normally sell for $300-$400 in nice condition.

However this one was special. It was a Boer War Mauser, with the OVS marking for Orange Free State--my people from long ago. I've been watching and waiting for one of these for years and this is only the third one I've ever seen. The last two got away from me but I was determined to get this one. I wanted it bad enough to pay the $850 that it started out at--and that it stayed at right up until the last half hour of the auction.

It turned out that some other people wanted it too, and they wanted it badly enough to engage in a bidding war that took the rifle up to almost $1600.00. Sadly I had to drop out well before then. Much as I wanted it, I couldn't justify that kind of money for what would honestly have just been another stick of furniture in the gun room, sitting on the rack between other Mausers which all cost much, much less.

I could just see visitors saying "Gee, that $1600 Mauser looks a lot like that $125 Mauser. How do you tell them apart?" And then I would point out the little OVS stamp, pictured here:


So I've been consoling myself with beer on this night, which will be remembered for a long time as the night that another Boer Mauser got away from me.

And then it hit me, because beer gives me good ideas.

What made this Mauser 5 times more valuable than any comparable garden-variety Mausers out there? That little OVS stamp! I have a metal stamp kit somewhere. And I have lots of other nondescript guns that could magically become Boer war guns!

So watch Gunbroker next week as I release my collection of Boer War bring-backs, to include:

Orange Free State Mosin-Nagants, some of which seem to have been in Finland too!
Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek Mas-36 rifles, which the French obviously managed to sneak through the British blockades to arm the valiant Boer fighters.
Several SKS rifles bearing the markings of both the OVS and ZAR governments. SKS rifles have turned up in every other conflict...who is to say that none were used in the Boer War?
Oh, and for the truly discriminating collector, I have a Cape Government-marked Ruger Mini-14. Hold it and you can almost feel yourself taking part in the Siege of Mafeking.

But wait--I've saved the best for last...I have this Second Generation Glock 17 pistol which is not marked, but it comes with capture papers that detail how it was taken from a young British war correspondent by the name of Winston Churchill. Or maybe he shared a room with Churchill. It's so hard to read the printing on these faded old dot-matrix print documents. Heck, that should be worth some bucks just by itself, huh?

The ironic part is that most of these would fit right in with many of the other so-called "collectables" that are rampant on Gunbroker these days.

Sigh.

Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms

When I get to be President, there will be a branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in every community. And they'll be open 24 hours a day, six days a week, just like any other good convenience store.

And they'll also sell coffee, so I guess we'll have to change the name to ATFC.

Saturday Morning Man Movie

In this clip from Death Wish 3 (1985), Charles Bronson shows us yet again how to reduce crime rates in the inner city.


Then he kills the Giggler, and the people cheer.

But then the gang punks rampage, like Democrat voters when the welfare checks stop coming. So Bronson takes them all on, and he's man enough to hold a Browning 1919 by the barrel shroud without even getting burned! Then he gets back-up from the detective who's been trying to catch him since he got in town, and they clean up the punks big-time.


Now THAT is Community-oriented policing.


Bronson made five Death Wish movies from 1974 to 1994. A few years ago, Sylvester Stallone mulled the idea of re-making the original and starring in it himself. But he didn't, and it's just as well, because that gun-control-supporting hack has never had what it takes to fill Charles Bronson's shoes.

Woooooo....We made it through another week.

It's Miller time.

Ah, civility. Dems encourage terroristic acts at Congressman's home.

This must be that new civility that Obama was talking about.

Democrat Party activists are now encouraging people to take their garbage and dump it at Congressman Boehner's house.

Seems to me that they should be dumping it at Harry Reid's house, or at the White House. After all, the Republican House has actually passed a budget. The Senate just refuses to go along with it because it doesn't spend enough of our money.

And I have a real problem with the idea that it's ok to go to someone's house and stalk and harass them there just to play political games. I wouldn't support it at Reid's house either, even though he's the one who is really responsible for the impending government shutdown. This sort terroristic intimidation is way over the line under any circumstances and I hope that arrests are made and convictions follow if any such actions take place.

But even worse is the fact that this isn't just angry citizens planning and promoting this. The two main organizers of the event, Jonah Goodman and Nolan Treadway, are paid operatives for the Democratic Party. Goodman is a staff member of the Democratic National Committee and Treadway is the political and logistics director for the liberal group Netroots Nation. In other words, they're Obama's henchmen, doing exactly what Obama has publicly called for an end to.

Seems to me that it would only be right for Obama and Harry Reid to show up and personally clean up any garbage that their minions throw out at Congressman Boehner's house. And every Democrat and supporter of that party needs to be ashamed that their once-great party has sunk so low as to resort to stuff like this.

Road Trip

So this morning, I loaded Murphy and a broken machine gun up into my SUV and we headed off for the wilds of Pennsylvania, taking the gun back to it's creator, gunsmith extraordinaire Charlie Erb.

Murphy just came along because so far he's a horrible passenger and I want him to get used to riding and settle down.

We got out to Frederickstown, PA a bit after noon, following a drive complicated by lousy Bing Maps directions and a minor incident as a gas station where I'd stopped to get a real map. My leg was troubling me more than a bit, so I stepped into the rest room to take it off and re-adjust it. No sooner was I in there though when the door began to rattle. I told the impatient person that I'd be out in a minute, and I could hear a child outside announcing to someone that he had to go poop.

Well darn, kid. I need to get my leg put back on. and at that moment, it was completely off and I was trying to clean the residue of a large burst blister out of the liner and disinfect the area around said blister. Needless to say, I was in a foul mood, both from the pain and from being somewhat lost, so I didn't respond terribly well when someone else began knocking on the door and a woman's voice yelled: "Hurry up in there! My son's going to poop his pants!"

I'm sorry...how is this pending event that affects you and your son exclusively in any way MY problem? Do you think that I just came in here to read the graffiti, or enjoy the smell? I again announced that I'd be out in a minute and returned to re-assembling my leg, trying to get it to fit just differently enough to take the pressure off of the damaged area.

Another banging on the door. "My child needs to use the bathroom!" the woman yelled, confirming that she really believes that I'm supposed to vacate the rest room instantly in response to her kid's demand.

Whatever. I ignored her and focused on putting my leg back together. I finished in short order and it felt good enough to get by, so I opened the door and walked out to find a fattish woman glaring at me as a boy next to her who was probably five or six was dancing around like some sort of Special Olympian on crack. Shame on me, but when I walked out and pulled the door shut behind me, I seem to have inadvertently re-locked it. Oops. My bad. Hopefully the teenager behind the cash register had a key somewhere.

Back on the road, I reached the Erb estate about half an hour later and met the legend himself. Charlie Erb was 31 years in the machine gun business, during which time he built and serviced countless machine guns, and even though he's retired now he's still willing and able to help out people who own the guns that he brought to life decades ago. Charlie took my sick gun into his machine shop and tried what Mike and I had already done: Banging on the operating rod end with a steel rod and large hammer to no avail and saying "Wow..." a lot. That sucker was still locked up tight. Finally, after considerable effort was expended on it, I agreed to write the bolt off, and he put the gun on his vertical mill and ground the bolt out by cutting it through the ejection port and top of the receiver then busting the remains with a hammer, allowing the barrel to be removed. (The bolt, when in battery, locks the barrel in place.) He was able to determine that the gun's ejector had been blown up into one of the slots on the bolt collar by the explosion of the steel-cased cartridge, and with the ejector forced up into that slot, the bolt and barrel were effectively locked together and the destruction of the bolt was the only way to separate them again. This happens rarely to M60's but it does happen. My luck, it happened to mine the first time out. A contributing factor was likely an excessively worn operating rod and/or bolt. These parts had seemed ok to me when I inspected the gun prior to firing it, but I am admittedly no expert on this weapon system yet.

Anyway, the gun was cleaned, lubricated and reassembled with a new bolt and operating rod, and a few other minor kinks were ironed out of it as well, since it was open and on the table. Then we took it out to his test range and I put nearly 400 rounds of assorted BRASS-CASED ammunition through it--everything from surplus to my own reloads--and the gun ran without a hiccup. This thing is great, and after an inspection and rebuild by it's actual creator, the man who built it originally in the early 1990's, it's in better shape than it was before the catastrophic stoppage turned it temporarily into a 23lb. paperweight. An added benefit was that I got to learn all about this gun from the master himself, and my ability to diagnose it and keep it running has greatly increased.

Here's the man himself with the gun. He originally built 50 of these M60's, and numerous other great guns, including Stens, Sterlings, MP-40s, 1919s, Vickers and Maxim guns.

And here's Dave, Charlie's "watch rooster", who tormented Murphy incessantly by walking around and around my SUV and utterly ignoring him no matter how much Murphy barked. Dave knows that dog ain't getting out of that truck.
Finally we headed for home. Since I'd forgotten to bring food for Murphy, I slid through a drive-thru and got him a couple of burgers. I'd meant to give him the burgers once we were on the highway so I hid them from him by putting them under a jacket that was laying on the front seat, but when we got on the highway and I looked for them, they were gone. I looked in the back where Murphy was and I found the wrappers for those burgers, torn and empty and covered with dog spit. He'd helped himself, and done so in such a stealthy fashion that I didn't even see it go down. So the question is, if the dog steals food that's basically his food, is it still theft?

I'm thinking yes, just on principle.


But now we're home. The M60 is back in the gun safe, Murphy is in his dog bed, and I'm fixing to retire and read a few chapters of T.E. Lawrence before calling it a night.

Travels With Charley a probable fraud...(sigh)

According to writer/researcher Bill Steigerwald, John Steinbeck, one of my favorite authors, apparently took considerable liberties with his supposedly autobiographical book, Travels With Charley.

In fact, he calls it a fraud.

This saddens me, in particular because it was the first Steinbeck book I ever read, and it made me want to read the rest once I discovered and came to admire his unique style.

I was actually introduced to the book--and to John Steinbeck--when I was a traveling graduate student, taking summer courses at an ultra-liberal school in Boulder, Colorado.

That summer I was living in my camper, a former ambulance which, because I lacked the time and money to repaint it, still bore the orange-and-white paint scheme and blue stars of life on it's sides and back. It had been upgraded with a bed, a TV, a cooler and a few other creature comforts but still resembled an operational emergency vehicle closely enough to keep me from getting pulled over several times as I journeyed around the country in it with my first German Shepherd, Oliver. It even got me flagged to a couple of accident scenes, and as I was also a licensed paramedic at that time, I always stopped to help out. In one instance this almost got me in a fair bit of trouble as I was assisting at the scene of a roll-over crash with minor injuries.

I was the first one there, and I got things stabilized until the Fire Department and their real ambulance arrived on scene--one which coincidentally bore a pretty close resemblance to mine, except for the fact that it actually was an ambulance, of course. Soon that crew was treating the driver of the crashed car and I was talking to a couple of people prior to departing when the first State Trooper arrived on scene. The Trooper saw that the crashed car was empty and rightly figured that the driver that he needed to talk to was already in the ambulance. So, squaring his Smokey-the-Bear hat on his head, he walked over to the first orange and white truck with flashing rear red lights that he saw.

(Yeah, I really should have disconnected those...and I eventually did, partly as a result of what happened next.)

The Trooper opened the rear door and took a step up onto the back bumper to enter the truck...and came face-to-face with one angry German Shepherd who was not at all shy when it came to protesting boundary violations into his house on wheels. I heard the loud "RAR! RAR! RAR! RAR!" and turned to see the Trooper stumble backwards off the step bumper and land on his butt on the road shoulder. Fortunately for him, as he fell back, he'd managed to reflexively slam the door shut, a move which had kept Oliver from pursuing but which did not prevent him from standing up on his hind legs and continuing to bark out of the rear window at the person who'd just invaded his domain.

The Trooper got to his feet and began to brush the dust off of his formerly clean uniform as I rushed up to apologize and quiet Oliver. But this Trooper, he was not amused.

"What the HELL is a DOG doing in an AMBULANCE?!"

"Sorry," I said. "But this isn't an ambulance any more. It's my camper."

"Why the HELL is it still painted like an AMBULANCE?! And why the HELL does it have FLASHING RED LIGHTS ON IT?!"

To say that he was mad would be quite the understatement. And of course the more he yelled at or near me, the more Oliver raged and hit at the inside of the door. I did my best to explain that while I did plan to repaint it, I didn't have time to do it before embarking on this trip. However the laws in the state where it was registered only required that I remove the word "AMBULANCE" from it and take the rotating strobe light off the cab roof, both of which I had done, making it technically legal. Since there was basic first-aid equipment in the vehicle, it could lawfully display the star of life.

The Trooper, still angry, did not want to hear any of this though, and I was only saved by one of the fire department responders intervening and telling him how helpful I'd been prior to their arrival. I didn't stick around to be thanked, however. I got while the getting was still good. And as I drove away, Oliver barked at the Trooper out the window for as long as he could still see him.

But back to Steinbeck...

I learned about him one day when the dean at the school came and found me as I was leaving class one day. He introduced himself and said that he wanted to meet "the modern-day Steinbeck."

I did not know who he was talking about, so I promised that if I ran into this Steinbeck fellow, I'd tell him that the dean was looking for him.

"No, I mean YOU, " the Dean said. "Traveling the country in a truck with a dog... Just like Steinbeck did in Travels With Charley."

I told him that I had never read the book, so he invited me back to his office and loaned me his own copy, telling me that he'd appreciate it greatly if, when I'd read it, I sat down with him and gave him my thoughts on it. He wanted to know how life on the road today compared to life on the road in Steinbeck's day.

So I read the book, and I enjoyed it. Obviously some things have changed. One no longer picks up hitchhikers casually or camps on the land of any old farmer or rancher today, but, as it turns out, Steinbeck probably did not do these things either, at least not as he wrote about them. But he'd captured a few things that I could well relate to, from over-packing insanely at the beginning of a trip, to the fatigue felt towards the end of a trip that makes you just push on for home regardless of where you'd planned to stop when mapping the trip out. Those things were real to me, more so than the description of all of the people that he'd met and talked to, people who seemed real enough to the reader until you considered that the odds of him meeting so many stereotypically-colorful people on one trip were high indeed.

But I did like that book. And I enjoyed talking to the dean repeatedly about my adventures during the summer as I traveled the state on week-ends with Oliver. we climbed mountains, explored old mines, slept in fields, rode on tour boats and trains, and just had a grand time together. And being in Boulder, a quirky place on a slow day, we fit in and were accepted, by the faculty and my peers, if not always by the campus police. In fact we met them our first night there.

Arriving late in the afternoon the day before class was to begin, I'd registered and gotten my university parking permit but I had no idea where to spend the night. Then is dawned on me: I've got a university parking permit. I'm golden! So I pulled my truck in next to the building in which my classes were going to be and settled in for the night. And there I was, a short time later, watching TV, drinking coffee, and flipping through my school books, when suddenly there was a loud banging on the side of the truck. "WHAT THE HELL..?" I yelled as Oliver began to bark furiously.
"POLICE!" a voice outside yelled back. "Come out of there!"

I opened the side door and exited to see five police officers standing there.

Now me being from a big city, I was not used to seeing that many police officers unless something very bad had happened.

"Um...what's going on?" I asked, puzzled but eager to help.

"What are you doing here?" one asked.

"I'm a new student here, and my classes start in the morning," I said, naively thinking that this explanation would be sufficient. I was even friendly to the point of offering them all coffee from the pot that I had on provided that they brought cups, because I did not have five extra coffee cups. But another cop stepped forward and grabbed the extension cord that was running from my truck's power coupling over to an outlet on the side of the building. He yanked it from the socket and my truck's interior instantly went dark. "Hey man..."

Oliver barked at him.

In the next couple of minutes, it was explained to me that I:

1. could not be on campus after hours, parking pass or no,
2. was not authorized to plug into the campus power grid,
3. had to get local dog tags for Oliver.

And just to be sure that I got it, they gave me a list of the campus rules, with each of these items highlighted. They helpfully highlighted a couple of other things that they obviously suspected that I might violate later, too. In fact, about the only one that they did not highlight was the one that said that firearms were prohibited on campus and that the possession of a firearm was grounds for arrest and expulsion from the university, even if the bearer had a permit from Colorado or any other state (which I did). Fortunately, probably because all of the lights were out in the back, they did not see the Smith and Wesson Model 66 that was in plain view on the shelf at the head of my bed, nor did they see the gun locker that I'd installed--the one containing a few more long guns. Silly me, I'd just figured that Colorado, being all mountains and outdoorsy, would be the place for backcountry hiking and shooting. Turned out that it is...almost anywhere other than Denver or liberal Boulder.

But not seeing the handgun sitting there, they just gave me a verbal ass-chewing and a few written warning infraction notices and sent me, my dog and my guns on our way. And I drove off into the darkness to find a new camping spot, only to be rousted again from that spot a few hours later by a county deputy.

This never happened to Steinbeck.

Fortunately, the deputy was more sympathetic than the campus toy cops were and he was kind enough to tell me of some places where I actually could park and camp for the night. And after that night I figured out how the game was played and had no more troubles when it came to hiding my truck and bedding down. I camped in a different spot almost every night over the next two and a half months and never once drew the attentions of The Man. And life was good that summer.

Shooting and such

Yesterday, several of us went out to the range to get some shooting in. This Bren and the Browning 1919 (on tripod) were just two of the numerous machine guns that were there on this day.These and others were brought out by Mike Meador of EFI. Mike makes, repairs and sells all sorts of great stuff, both NFA and non.

And yes, I brought the new M60. The pig performed flawlessly at first, dominating the downrange impact area and destroying a hostile propane tank with 200 rounds.

Then I turned the gun over to David, and the Bad Karma fairy landed hard.

They aren't supposed to smoke like that.

As I was testing the gun on different types of ammunition that I had on hand, I let David run the gun with some Russian steel-cased ammo that I had a batch of. He fired less than one box before the Event occurred. A case became thoroughly wedged in the action, putting the weapon out of commission. Now to be fair, the problem was the crap ammunition. Had David not been on the trigger, I myself would have loaded and fired that ammunition shortly, so I can't blame him or the gun. But this will not stop me from referring to him as The Destroyer of M60s forever more.

Returning to the shooting, we have Mike here coaching Dan on the operation of the Browning 1919A4.I remember when I had one of those...and it didn't lock up on steel-cased ammunition.

And here's Oleg Volk demonstrating excellent form as he fires my Uzi.

Ah, the smile that only an Uzi (or a functioning M60) can put on a shooter's face.


A good time was had by all. Sadly the M60 could not be unjammed back at Mike's shop, but I have been in touch with the gun's actual manufacturer who fortunately lives somewhat close to me and Murphy and I will be driving it back to Mordor shortly for the requisite repair.

But until it crashed, that thing was awe-inspiring.

PS--Thank you to those of you who called my phone last night to help me find it. (It was in the laundry basket.) I will gladly return the favor to any of you, any time.

Saturday Morning Man Movie

In this clip from The Cheyenne Social Club, James Stewart, a staunch Republican in real life, explains things to Democrat Henry Fonda.

Damn dog...

So I was awakened this morning by a knock on the door. I opened it to find the local animal control officer standing on my deck. He was not smiling.

He gestured to the back of his car, where a German Shepherd sat, looking out the window. "That your dog?"

And of course it was Murphy. Come to find out he figured out how to open the patio door all by himself. He apparently went out early this morning and I didn't even know that he was missing.

"Yeah, he's mine," I admitted. "Where'd you find him?"

"He was next door, killing your neighbor's cats."

I just sighed. "Sorry, Officer. I'll try to keep a better eye on him from now on."

The Critter Cop was not too bugged about it though, seeing as how this was Murphy's first offense. But he did say that the neighbors were pretty upset and they wanted me to pay for the cats he killed.

"OK," I said. "That sounds fair, I guess." I reached for my wallet. "How many cats we talking about?"

"Thirty seven."

"WHAT?!" I dropped the wallet. "How could one dog kill thirty seven cats?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot to ask..." said the Animal Control officer as he walked back to his car, popped the trunk, and withdrew something from inside. "This your M60?"

Damn dog...

Happy APRIL FOOLS day!