Sell It

So one of the big news stories of the day is the (their numbers) $1,700,000,000 marijuana bust in California. 450 agents have been working on collecting and destroying 432,000 plants. Mexican drug cartels have been growing it on National Forest land so they don't have to deal with the cross border transportation issues.

What are they thinking? Paying Federal agents to collect and destroy a cash crop that in their own estimation is worth 1.7 billion dollars? California is broke, handing out IOUs in place of tax refund broke, can't pay their bills and may have to default broke. America has lost the War on Drugs just like it loses all the wars it isn't really trying to win. Let's surrender.

Sell this pot and let California pay some of it's bills. Give up the medical pot charade. Legalize it. Tax it. Sell it like alcohol. It's a waste of law enforcement resources, and it has lead to encroachment of individual freedoms with some of the paramilitary efforts police have been using in the last few decades

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
--P.J. O'Rourke

Why doesn't Blogger Fix this Problem?

Blogger account http://www.blogger.com/profile/07931108327742702307 left me the following comment on my last post:

宋香君 said...
希望能有更多心得與我們分享~ ............................................................

He's been kind of a frequent commenter, but he always says the same thing. And the dots at the end of his comments are to Oriental porn sites like this one. I've been deleting his spam and have tried to report this to Google, but it has gotten to be an everyday thing. So, for the rest of you that leave me comments, or would like to leave me comments in the future, I'm sorry that I have felt like I have to turn on comment moderation.

I don't have any real problem with porn, as a libertarian I think you have a right to rub body parts with other adults, take pictures, and offer them on the internet to other adults that want to look at them. What I don't think is honorable is spamming non-related websites with comments to your offerings.

In fact when you get right down to it, I think people that write destructive computer viruses, malware, spam, unwanted pop-up ads, or leave shit like that comment above on my blog should be banned from using a computer or accessing the internet for life. Since that's not going to happen, when you leave me a comment, expect to have it tell you that your comment is awaiting moderation. It can be positive or negative, as long as it is on topic, I will approve it the next time I log on.

The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.
--Jimmy Breslin

Stand By Me

The movie Stand By Me, and the novella of the same title by Steven King captured something true about adolescent boys. The movie compresses the events and friendships of years into a couple of days, to tell a story of boys on edge of adulthood. Here's the trailer, which doesn't really do the story justice.

If you take the time to see the movie, I had a friend like Chris. We were in Scouts together. He was better at everything, tougher, fearless. We were always doing something outside, out in the woods with BB guns, or hiking an old railroad line looking for artifacts. We were lucky kids. We grew up in America.

Teddy: Boy, you don't know nothing! Mighty Mouse is a cartoon. Superman's a real guy. There's no way a cartoon could beat up a real guy.
Vern: Yeah, maybe you're right. It'd be a good fight, though.
--Dialogue walking down the tracks in Stand By Me

In the Gloaming

Borepatch stopped in on his way home from Atlanta with Son 1.0 and along with another local club member, we went to the range after work. Shotguns at clays, Ar-15s and 1911s at paper.

Here he is prone, with my AR-15. The last rounds at the end of a range visit. He returns to the People's Paradise of Massachusetts tomorrow, but today he got to be a citizen.



I do not believe in people owning guns. Guns should be owned only by the police and military. I am going to do everything I can to disarm this state.
--Michael Dukakis

Fourth of July, 1948

This memory goes to the heart of what I am writing about. America as it was. Here's the Fourth of July as my father remembers it:

Fourth of July was my number one favorite.  On that day we had fireworks, and my father would take me to Jumbo's Store to get the fireworks a couple of days before the holiday.  Jumbo's was owned by a man of Syrian decent who had a big goiter on his neck.  It made him look grotesque, and we kids were afraid of him.  He was a friend of my father, and I was not scared of him when I was with my father.  The fruit store he ran was very dirty, and my mother told my father not to buy any fruit from him.  He only had fireworks on the Fourth of July, and it seemed like the whole store was filled with them at that time.  My father would buy me penny rockets, one inch, two inches and cherry bombs.  Later on when I had money I earned, I had to buy my own.  All of my friends had fireworks, and we would spend the day before the fourth and the Fourth of July setting them off.  Cherry Bombs were my favorite, because you didn't have to light them, but could set them off by throwing them at a hard surface. They made a lot of noise, and we would throw them at each others feet.  Two inchers were also my favorites, and you could throw them if you didn't hold them too long after you lit them.  Every so often, there was a newspaper article about some kid who blew his fingers off, or burned his hand playing with them.  The penny skyrockets were also fun.  We put them in an empty milk bottle and they would soar up in the air after they were lit.  I remember setting some penny rockets off in the street in front of my house once, and it landed on the roof of a house across the street, while it was still burning.  I stood watching it, hoping and praying it would go out before it set the house on fire.  Luckily it did.  There was also a parade on the Fourth of July, and most of the town population would go downtown to see it.  I always went to the front of City Hall to watch it.  People would wave flags, and kids would set off fireworks.  It was a happy time. In 1948 or 1949 the state banned fireworks because they said too many children were getting hurt by them.  It ruined the Fourth of July for me. 

The United States is the only country with a known birthday.
--James G. Blaine

My Dad, In His Own Words

I have some written history from both sides of my family. My father wrote down his memories of his childhood in emails that I collected a couple of years ago. It's written matter of fact, not a lot of emotions or feelings, just a series of vignettes.

You have to read into it, think about the situation, and then some of it comes alive. My dad told me that they fought each other for streets, just for the right to deliver the papers, bought the papers themselves, and had to collect from their own routes. He delivered papers until he developed a hernia and had surgery. He was told he could no longer carry the weight. In 1944, he was eleven. Here's a bit of his story in his own words.

My newspaper route blossomed during the war, and everyone wanted a newspaper to keep with the war news.  By 1944 I had 150 customers, and I had earned my place in the push and shove world of paper boys.  We no longer were allowed in the press room, but a shed was constructed in the back, and we stood in there in inclement weather, and received our newspapers through a window.  We still fought for our place in line, but we were no longer near the machinery.  The shed was very rustic, and had nails jutting out.  One summer day the press broke down, it did so periodically.  Usually the paper tore, and it seemed to take forever for them to clear it out and put in new.  We were all restless, and fooling around, and this one boy who didn't wear a shirt that day, and had one half of one ear removed, was running away from the others when he caught on a nail on the door.  It spun him around, and hung him up on the door.  It ripped open his chest, and he was almost unconscious.  We got him down, and carried him across the street to Dr, Sweeny's office, above McGrail's Drug Store, and left him there.  I do not know who paid the doctor, but the next day he was back with stitches in his chest.

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
--Carlos Casteneda

Roadside Attractions

Sometimes you went out of your way following signs, sometimes it was just a place along the road to stop and find a bathroom and stretch your legs. There were hundreds of thousands of little privately owned roadside attractions, everything from the World's Biggest Buffalo to the Mermaids of the Underwater Theater at Weeki Wachee Springs. They are not all gone yet, and seeking out one can be both fascinating and disappointing.

Most of them had a shop attached, selling fireworks and souvenirs. We had stopped at such an attraction, and among the plates and cedar boxes stamped with name of the local highlights, was a box of the most lifelike rubber snakes I had ever seen. 99 cents. Surely there was fun to be had with such an item. I had a few dollars of allowance and Christmas money, and so, carefully selecting the most realistic of the colorations, I purchased the snake and went out to the car.


I think I had intended to use it to scare my sisters, but when I got to the car I was alone. I opened the driver's door, and laid the rubber snake on the dash so that it's head hung over the edge, then closed the door and went back inside the store. Soon enough, my dad called and we all came out to the car together. My mother opened her door and sat down. The motion caused the snake to move and drew her attention.

She screamed. If there was a recording of the sound she made, it would be used in horror movies to this day. She was back pedaling, and went over the seat to land between my sisters, still screaming. My father, as fathers are expected to do, reached in and grabbed the snake.

As his fingers closed on the snake, the essential rubberiness of the object alerted him and his understanding of the entire sequence of events was both accurate and complete. No explanation necessary. He finally got through to his wife, my sainted mother, the nature of the object. She took even less time than he did in grokking the situation, and said what any loving mother would say, "I want you to beat him. Right now. This isn't funny, don't you start laughing at me, I WANT HIM SPANKED!"

The fact that I was standing at the back of the car leaning on the tailgate laughing so hard that tears rolled was not improving my chances of long term survival, but I was helpless. I could not run, I could barely see, I was weak, doomed even, and yet all there was to do was laugh.

It saved me, I think. He came back to where I stood, still clutching the snake, but a smile was playing on his face. She was still hollering from inside the car. He held up the snake and shook his fist at me, the snake shaking back and forth, but no words came out. I spoke first, "It looks really real, doesn't it?", I managed, in between giggles.

"Goddam it, boy", he said, and he lost it. Now he was laughing, too. Laughing too hard to hide it from her and she was as mad at him as she was at me. We stood out there until we got it under control, and finally he looked at me and reasserted his authority, "Never again, understand? Never again."

I don't remember how long she was mad at us, an hour or a week, all I remember is that high pure note and the sight of her launching herself over the seat. Sometimes those roadside attractions are a real adventure.

When people are laughing, they're generally not killing each other.
--Alan Alda

Road Trips

The American interstate highway system was new when I was a boy. Limited access highways that spanned the continent, chain motels like Holiday Inn and Howard Johnson's, new service stations at almost every exit. Cars were being built with those highways in mind, big American cars, and my parents were among the millions that bought them.

We had a 1971 Ford Country Squire station wagon, fake wood siding, seating for 10, the "Magic Tailgate", and a 390 cubic inch engine. The car weighed about 4500 pounds and got 9 miles to the gallon. Here' the closest commercial I could find, it's for the '73 model.
I liked the cavern in the far back seat. I was far enough away to avoid conflict with my sisters, and if the driver did decide he wanted to swat me, he would have to stop. I traveled thousands of miles with a pile of books, sometimes reading, sometimes watching the scenery roll past.

If you go west past the Mississippi, the road flattens out and the sky gets big. A car on a deserted interstate doesn't much feel like it's moving, so our speed would creep up until it approached triple digits. The motor came into it's own up there, rpms in the sweet spot, and we would hammer along until my mother finally noticed the speedometer and screeched, "Slow down, you're going to kill us all!" at which point we would slow down to 80 or 85.

My parents didn't fight much, but something about the confined space and the monotony of it seemed to set them off, and we were a captive audience to road trip hell. It was predictable, and I never understood why they ever wanted to take these epic trips when most of what you saw was the inside of the car and hundreds of miles of corn and wheat to get to a destination. But they were not the only ones, you could play license plate bingo and get about 45 states in a hour or two, although I don't think I ever got all 50.

The high water mark of our western trips was Mt. Rushmore, we never went west again. We went south one year, covering most of the Confederacy in about 5 days. And we made an annual pilgrimage back to New Hampshire every year in July. If I had known that one day I was going to write about any of this, I would have taken notes.

Now, I owe it to myself to tell you that if you're taking the whole tribe cross-country, the Wagon Queen Family Truckster... You think you hate it now, wait 'til you drive it.
--The car salesman, in National Lampoon's Family Vacation

My Father's Father, Part III

Because his hearing was poor, his language hadn't kept up, and a lot of the sayings and colloquialisms he used were outdated. I wiped out on my bike going down a hill on my way to his place one time and showed up there bawling, with blood running down my legs into my socks from my shredded knees, my palms and elbows raw. I remember he scrubbed my knees and elbows to get the gravel out, made me scrub my own hands and then painted everything with iodine. I must have howled the whole time, because even he heard me. He smiled, and said, "C'mon, boy, it's not that bad, it would be nothing in wartime."

We'll come back to him, there's more, but it will find it's place in context. The important part of this story for all of us is that there are millions of stories like his, men who grew up poor, often lived their whole lives poor, raised their children and hoped for a better life for them. They built America, and their blood flows in our veins.

Work and creativity are what built this country - not money.
--Karl Hess

My Father's Father, Part II

When they moved into town around 1939, my grandfather worked a series of jobs and then got a job with the public school system as a janitor. He worked until 1966, when he was 82. My grandmother died that year, and my father pressured him to finally retire. I remember visiting them, but I was a young child and I can't say I got to know him until he moved to leave near us.

I have no way of knowing what he thought of things, from my point of view, he seemed old ancient. He lived in town in an apartment over a store, and walked to our house for supper every night. My dad would take him home in the car. On some weekends I would ride my bike down there and he and I would walk uptown.

He had quit smoking at 75 on the advice of a doctor, and took up chewing tobacco. Day's Work. When we went walking our destination was a tobacco and newspaper shop on Main Street. It was an old store, with a high tin ceiling, counters full of cigars, tobacco tins, and cigarettes and racks of newspapers, magazines and comic books. He would buy his chew, and sometimes a newspaper, and give me a dime to pick out a comic book. I probably read more while I was making a selection then I ever bought, but finally I would pick one and we would walk back home.

One Saturday, on the way back to his place, I told him I wanted to try his tobacco. It smelled sweet and he obviously liked it. He cut me off a little piece and I popped it in my cheek just like I saw him do it. It was the spitting part I had missed. So I swallowed the juice. Probably didn't take long, because before we got home, I was sick. Throwing up sick. Trying to turn inside out and throw up my toenails sick. When I was done, he patted me on the back and we walked on. I think he did it on purpose. If so, thanks Grandpa, except for one cigarette on a dare, I never did tobacco again.

Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got.
--Art Buchwald

My Father's Father, Part I

He was born in 1884, in a facility called the Tewksbury Almshouse which later became the Tewksbury State Hospital. It was, among other things, a pauper's home, a place of last resort. I know nothing for sure about his parents, although it is likely that they were first generation immigrants from Ireland.

He died in 1975, when I was 16. For the last ten years of his life, he lived in an apartment near us. There's a life in between those two events, and I wish I knew more about it. I know some of it, and here's an outline.

He would not talk about the Tewksbury Almshouse. At all. Ever. He ran away from there in 1897, when he was 13. He rode freight trains west, and worked on ranches and farms, finding work where he could, sometimes for nothing more than room and board.

Somewhere in those early years, he lost most of his hearing. He wasn't completely deaf, but it was close. Even with a hearing aid, when I knew him, you had to talk loud, and he didn't like the hearing aid, so he wouldn't wear it often. A mixed blessing, though. Because of his hearing loss, the Army passed him over for World War I. Later, he was drafted, when the need for men was greater, and he went through training. He was on a troopship ready to sail for Europe when the Armistice was signed.

He came back east as an adult, married when he was 36, and the next thing I know about his life is that they had one son that died as an infant, and then had my father in 1933, when he was 49 years old. They were living as tenants on a dairy farm in upstate New Hampshire around that time. This is the earliest picture I have of them. No electricity, no running water or indoor plumbing. No motor vehicle. There were cows. Important enough that the only other picture I have from that day is this. I have no other pictures of them until 1951. I know that they moved into a larger town when my father approached school age because his mother wanted him to go to Catholic school and next time I will resume the story there. The quote below is something he used to say to me, I just found out today that he didn't make it up himself.

It's a great life, if you don't weaken.
--John Buchan, Governor General of Canada, 1935-1940

This Ain't Nothin'

The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.
--Thomas More

Yes or No

A summer night in July. The fireflies are everywhere and I am catching them in a jar. It is completely dark and I am running around in the yard behind of the house. My mother calls me in and I come up the steps and into the back door.

As I walk into the kitchen my mother asks me, "Do you want some ice cream?"

"What kind?", I reply.

My father lets the freezer door close and looks at me like I have changed colors. "It's a yes or no question, son. Do you want some ice cream? You can say yes and have some, or you can say no and head on up to get ready for bed."

I said yes. I don't remember now what flavor it was, but I remember the lesson.

The warrior's approach is to say "yes" to life: "yea" to it all.
--Joseph Campbell

I May Have Found a Theme

I'm calling it Stories from America. The last two posts are the genesis. A friend pointed that they really share something in common, they are stories from a time before. An America that doesn't exist anymore. I don't think things were perfect then, but it was a time so gone that I think it may help if we try to remember how things were.

I can't write about current events much anymore. I think it's past the point of recovery. The Constitution no longer means the words that are written down on the parchment. GM is owned by the government. The health care system is getting ready to crater into itself as the government takes over. We owe far more than we can ever repay, and that number has increased so much in just the last two years that no one really understands what it is going to mean. Taxes are going to skyrocket, and all of us that pay taxes are going to pay more, it's being deliberately postponed to prevent any fallout in the next election cycle. Rules and regulations, including the new tax reporting expectations, are strangling what is left of business. And on and on...

So, for a while, I'm going to write down my memories of how it was, and what was told to me by my parents and grandparents. They say that everything is captured on the internet and the internet never forgets. So this is for you, in some distant future, if you are taking the time to read my stories you will learn about a time when we lived in the greatest country in the history of the world. As for my current readers, if you are still with me, these stories are about one life in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

A man's country is not a certain area of land, of mountains, rivers, and woods, but it is a principle; and patriotism is loyalty to that principle.
--George William Curtis

1971 Oldsmobile

In the spring of 1989, needing a vehicle that would hold 4 kids, I purchased a 1971 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser. It was brown, two-tone paint job, with an Olds 350 motor. It had an eight-track player in the dash, no air conditioning, and cost me $800.00.

Built on a Cutlass design, it's most noticeable feature were the extra glass windows in the roof. It looked a lot like this. I put a third seat in that I found in a junkyard and added seat belts, and we had what became our only car for the next eight years.

The baby came along in August, and just before Labor Day, Mrs. ASM decided that we needed to go to Baltimore to see her dad, so he could see his new grandson. We left Friday in the evening (no A/C, remember) and headed north up I-95. Me and her, a eight year old, two four year olds and an infant, in an eighteen year old station wagon. A large tool box, as usual, tucked into the floor of the third seat.

About 9 PM, the fan clutch failed. To be precise, it seized. So that whatever speed the motor was going, the fan kept up. It sounded like a small propeller plane on run up before takeoff. I pulled over, took a look, verified the problem, and then drove on, at about 40 mph, to the next exit. There was a restaurant called Pumpkin's, a modern gas and convenience store, and wonder of wonders, a real service station.

Old cars, wrecks and repairs, filled the lot. The lights were on and we pulled in. There was no mechanic on duty, just the owner watching the pumps and thinking about closing for the night. He let me pull the nose of the car into a service bay, and took a look with me. Nodding, he agreed that the clutch had locked up. He led me around behind the station, and there, sitting in the dirt and weeds, were a row of GM 350 motors, all complete engines that had been pulled out for one reason or another. "Here's parts," he said, "if you have tools."

I had tools. I pulled the fan shroud and belts, disconnected the fan and clutch from the water pump, took it back and compared it to the available choices, and one of them matched the bolt pattern. I installed it, put everything back together, and started it up. Problem solved.

I asked what I owed him. "Clutch will be about fifteen dollars if I have to buy one," he said, "so that will cover it for me." He had sat on a stool and talked to me while I worked. Not another car had stopped, and he had stayed until after 11 PM to give me time to finish in the lights of his repair bay. Fifteen dollars. I paid him, and we rolled on to Baltimore, arriving at my parents in the middle of the night.

I thought of this story because coming south last weekend, the fuel warning light had come on her Toyota and I took the next exit. As I got to the top of the ramp it dawned on me where I was. Before I could say anything, she said "Pumpkins! This is the exit!", and we both laughed as the memory of that night came back to us.

When we made the turn, the service station was gone, torn completely down, only the curb cuts to show where it had been. The last of those real service stations are about gone, and businesses that are run by the owner are gone, too. Cars you can understand and work on yourself, gone. GM, as a privately owned corporation, gone. Oldsmobile, gone.

The Toyota is nice, and the air conditioning would satisfy a polar bear, but if it broke down, we would use a cell phone to call a tow truck and find a motel room. The story I wrote for you this evening could not happen anymore, it's history.

The cars we drive say a lot about us.
--Alexandra Paul

July 20th, 1969

I was twelve. On vacation with my parents, I got to watch the lunar landing and the first walk on the moon on a big RCA console television. The future never seemed brighter than it did that evening.

I was going to go to the moon one day, and maybe to Mars. The United States of America was the greatest country on earth and we were capable of amazing scientific and technological accomplishments. Certainly by the time I was thirty, there would be a permanent base on the moon, and regular transports...
Of course, it never happened. We retreated, gave up the dreamed of manned space exploration. Now we could not do it. We lack the manufacturing, NASA is a shell, and we are so far in debt that it would hardly matter if we stopped spending.

Someone will go, maybe the Chinese in 30 or 40 years, but it will be too late for me. I will never see Earthrise with my own eyes. None of us will.

If growing up is the process of creating ideas and dreams about what life should be, then maturity is letting go again.
--Mary Beth Danielson

A Reminder

We have been traveling, and coming back through Virginia on US 301, after we came through Fort A.P. Hill, we turned off and stopped in Bowling Green. A small town, with a lot of history, we walked the street, looking into the shops and reading the historical markers, finally deciding to eat at the Main Street Cafe.





We were after breakfast and before lunch, so we were the only customers. The waitress lingered to chat with us and Mrs. ASM asked, "Why do you still have all the Christmas decorations hanging from the ceiling?"

The waitress looked up up and said, "We decided to leave them up until all the boys come home from Iraq and Afghanistan, you know, to remind us to remember them."

They also serve who only stand and wait.
--John Milton

The Scoutmaster's Nightmare

Every once in a while, something happens that causes the death of a Scout on an activity. From what I have been able to find, auto accidents are the most likely cause, traveling to or from an outing. Drownings, heatstroke, reaction to an insect sting, and falls are all rare, but possible. No activity that involves taking teenage boys into the woods is risk free.

A Scout died of a heatstroke in Florida, fifteen miles in to a twenty mile hike. Out of water, overheated, his symptoms rapidly worsening in a place where other people had to go for water and help, he died. It is so easy to look back and say the hike should have shorter, there should have been a water resupply point, they should have canceled the hike until the weather was cooler.

His parents have filed suit against the Boy Scouts at all levels, and I am not taking sides. I only want to speak as a former Scoutmaster to say that losing a Scout was my nightmare. Even if he is found not to legally be at fault, that Scouter will carry this every day for the rest of his life.

My planning for hikes and water activities revolved around safety. When we camped in the summer, keeping the kids hydrated and ensuring they were monitored for heat stress was as important as ensuring they were together as a group and no one was missing. Reading about this, I feel as much emotion as a Scouter as I do as a parent.

Be Prepared... the meaning of the motto is that a scout must prepare himself by previous thinking out and practicing how to act on any accident or emergency so that he is never taken by surprise.
--Lord Baden-Powell

Something New

New to me, anyway. I have been casting bullets for a while, using a micro groove mould and Alox liquid lube. It seems to work fine, and the bullets drop well enough that I have not been sizing them before I load.

Not content to leave well enough alone, with prompting and help from a friend, I have set up an old Lubri-sizer. Using a borrowed mould, we made a pile of 200 gr. semi-wadcutters. Here is a picture of about 400 bullets lubed and sized to .451, ready to be loaded into cases. It's an extra step, but they look nice, and the sizing should make the finished product more uniform. All of this is time consuming, and as much a part of the hobby as shooting. Sometimes, it is the hobby, and shooting is what you do to get more brass to put in the tumbler. It teaches you a lot, though, far more than you can learn with store bought ammo, and saves about 90 percent of the cost, as long as you don't put a dollar value on your time.

Beware the hobby that eats.
--Benjamin Franklin

Marksmanship

It is a truism of shooters that only accurate rifles are interesting. In the end, if reasonable accuracy cannot be achieved with the Carcano in the previous post, it will become a curiosity, not a shooter. The firearm is only part of it, though. A rifle can be made to be so accurate that, if bolted into a gun vise, it puts all the shots into one ragged hole. When that rifle is in your hands, and you have to shoot it, you are the other part of the equation.

Prone, sitting, kneeling, shooting with a support, offhand (standing), even shooting off sandbags from a bench, the shooter and his skills determine the hits. Back in August of 2008, I wrote a post called Sight Picture, Sight Alignment. It still gets hits every day. Here's an update to that post. This is the Marine Corps Rifle Marksmanship manual in PDF. If you are interested in improving your accuracy with a rifle, read this book. Positions, breathing, slings, trigger control, sight adjustments, and more. Just the chapter page listing is a refresher course. Download it, print it, study it like there's going to be a test.
USMC Rifle Marksmanship MCRP 3 01A This is how I learned to shoot with confidence and accuracy. It's not a mystery, and it's nothing special. The Marine Corps is using this manual to teach marksmanship to another crop of recruits every two weeks. Tired, overtaxed 18 and 19 year old recruits, using worn M-16s and military issue ball ammo are going to shoot for score over iron sights at 500 yards. Some of them have never held a rifle before they got to boot camp. All of them will qualify or they will not be Marines.

The deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle.
--Gen. Black Jack Pershing, U.S. Army Commander of American Forces in World War I

A Project in 6.5

6.5 Carcano. A small, bolt action carbine shooting a fairly light load. Think of a M-1 Carbine and you'll have the size and power about right. This one was made during the Mussolini era, and has not seen a lot of love since. Here's the story. One older friend of mine was given the gun years ago. He never shot it, and a couple of years ago he gave it to me. I thought it was interesting, but I never shot it either. There is only so much time and when I considered buying ammo, dies, and a bullet mould for (another) odd old rifle, well, I gave it away, too.

Now the friend I gave it to is a tinkerer. He bought ammo to get the brass, and slugged the barrel to find out the true bore, which turned out to be .280 inches[Correction == .268, with bullets sized to .270]. He then bought a mould and a die for his Lubrisizer and started making ammo.

That lead to a range day some months ago. At 50 yards, every round keyholed and they were all over the paper. I looked at the ammo, and thought the bullets were extremely long, you can see one of the original bullets in the picture, closest to the rifle. So I cut them off. They looked like wadcutters when I was done, but they shot much better, stabilizing and making sort of a group. We all found this pretty funny, but it was effective, so back to the workshop he went.

Saturday, four of us gathered for some range therapy, and to try the next set of Carcano experiments. The rifle has had the stock refinished, a new front sight post has been installed to correct the elevation issues, and best of all, the bullet mould was remachined, removing several millimeters from the base, creating the new shorter bullet based on the length from the previous attempt.

The loaded ammo is a light powder charge, the goal is to shoot a reasonable group at 100 yards. The bullets are shorter and lighter, and stabilized well. We got the elevation right. The hits on paper string left and right. I don't mean a little bit, I mean a couple of feet. Maybe three feet. All within three or four inches in elevation, but forming a line across a large sheet of cardboard.

I don't know, this is a new problem for me. I open it the problem to all of you, if there are any ideas, or you know an old Italian gunsmith from the Fascist era, we are open to experimenting some more. I got to spend several hours at the range with friends and shoot other people's ammo, that's a good day any way you look at it.

A well-spent day brings happy sleep.
--Leonardo da Vinci

That Which We Can Hold

Just an old Colt .22 pistol. The bluing is worn, the grips almost smooth. Nothing special, at a gun show you'd walk right by. Except that this one was bought new by my grandfather around Christmastime 1934. It was the pistol he carried when he went walking in the fields. The holster and the gun are engraved with his name. It is the gun my mother remembers learning to shoot with. It is also the first handgun I ever shot, and it is the only one of my grandfather's guns in my possession.

When I first got it, I took it apart and cleaned it and replaced all the springs. When I take a new shooter to the range, it is what I use for introductory instruction. When I am bringing a .22 pistol for a range day, it's my first choice. I shoot okay, but one of my friends regularly schools me. He shot the Woodsman today. At 50 feet, standing, with a 3" shoot-n-see target, this was the result. That's some fine shooting. What a great little pistol.

It holds 8 rounds and a houseful of memories.

Very deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?
--Thomas Mann

New Hampshire

This is the one I remember. I have color pictures somewhere, but it's late, and I couldn't sift through all those pictures alone. My earliest memories are in the kitchen of this house. There was a small back room that was mine when we came to visit, and sat closed up the rest of the year. I learned to reload in the basement, explored the woods behind the house, climbed the old apple tree, watched the moon landing in 1969.

We had Christmas there when I was little. This one was already scanned, someone was using Kodachrome, and I was interested in the color and details when I found them. That is your future blogger being overshadowed by the bunny, there in Christmas of 1958, I would guess. That floral print rocking chair has been refinished and is sitting in my living room. The decorations on that tree are in my attic, waiting for another Christmas.
When I went back the last time for for my Grandfather's funeral, I hiked into the overgrown fields, worked my way back to the old cemetery under the big oak trees, went down and sat at the reloading bench, went room to room, and let the tears and the memories wash over me.

I could write about a lot of things, but I'll share one memory and then let the door close. Nothing special, but a memory so clear I can see the kitchen table, the enamelware plates, and the faces of my relatives.

Wednesday evening, some summer in the late 1960s. My grandfather, father, and I had gotten home from the trap range and just finished cleaning the guns. My grandmother made coffee and got out snacks. We sat around the table, and I guess they sort of forgot I was there, because no one sent me off. Talking and laughing and telling stories as it got completely dark outside and the crickets picked up their song. Finally, I was sent to bed, quietly making my way up the stairs, the sounds of their voices still clear behind me in the kitchen.

God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December.
--James Matthew Barrie, Rectorial address, May 3, 1922, St. Andrew’s University, Scotland

Fitness

One of the personal observations I made last week was that I need to be in better shape. Testing for belts in Aikido is an aerobic activity as well as a demonstration of techniques. The people I watched that performed well were young, fit, and had good stamina. I am in my 50s, not so fit, and stamina is something I think I remember.
It's true of shooting as well. When I attend a USPSA event, the top shooters are all in fairly good shape physically. The older, heavier guys may shoot with accuracy, but over the course of a day, they do not have the underlying physical fitness to maintain their competitiveness.

When young people go to boot camp, the first few weeks focus heavily on kick starting them into a fitness regimen. Rifle training, hand to hand combat training, even marching with a pack, all comes later.

My age is a given. Weight and fitness are the things I can effect. So the goal of the next six months is to lose 15 pounds and regain some aerobic capacity. Because it is not about being able to perform in testing or on the range, is it?

The more we sweat in training, the less we bleed in war.
--Painted on the wall of the barracks, 3rd Bttn., I Co., MCRD Parris Island, 1977

After Innocence

The video in my previous post is, to me at least, about looking back at innocence. Who we were as children, the things we were taught, the time before. It is a bittersweet thing to look back because innocence is not a defense against the world.

In the process of becoming an adult, innocence is lost. More accurately, it is shed. In it's place, if we are to be healthy adults, is honor, truth, chivalry, compassion, courage, hope, and love.

I was a young teen when I learned that adults cannot always be trusted, that some battles must be fought, that the good guys lose far too often, and all you really have in this world are the things you believe and your own sense of honor.

We are, as the song and the Bible says, all broken and searching for something to help us heal.

Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory.
--Norman Vincent Peale

Nothing But a Memory

The house I remember is my maternal grandparent's home. It was sold after they passed and I have not been there in almost twenty years, but it was the place I immediately thought of when I saw this video.

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.
--Charles Dickens

Lilypads

Not a Photoshop, I took this with an Olympus point and shoot and resized it in Irfanview. I have not gotten over the conditions that created the reflections I saw last week. Click to enlarge, and then click again for the full size.
Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.
--Ashley Smith

I Can't Help It

I am trying to stay off politics for a while, but here's a comment from Snarky Bytes about what Pr. Obama had to say on the 4th of July.

Happy Birthday, America, I really hope you are able to get well soon.
--Dick, on his blog "Big Dick's Place" 7-4-2010

Training

Scotaku got it in the comments of the previous post. I was at an old CCC camp, called Camp Juniper, in the sandhills of eastern South Carolina at Cheraw State Park. I was there for a week long training camp focusing on Wadoki Aikido.

We stayed in old cabins.









We cooked in the mess hall.

















We ate and socialized in the mess hall.













We used the outside sinks and showers.













Some of us went swimming a few times and I took the pictures of the reflections during the dinner break on Friday when I went down to the lake.










But the purpose of the week was a gathering of the tribe of Suenaka-ha Tetsugaku-ho Aikido. Long sessions of instruction and practice. Morning, afternoon and evening, sometimes running past midnight, so that by the time you had showered and got in the bed it was 2 in the morning. It was around 95 degrees until Wednesday, when the heat broke, and then the rest of the week was milder. Friday was testing for the higher ranks, so practice was short, and then the rest of the day was spent watching that.



If you look at YouTube, you can find all sorts of Aikido, and there are many different styles. If you watch some of it, in many cases, it looks slow and graceful, but does not look like anything you could use in a fight. We do not put our videos on-line. Everyone is reminded that it is not permitted. I assure you, what I am studying, when mastered, is an effective martial art. It is not an easy art to learn, and I am not very good at it, but I am learning and I got about 6 months of regular practice time last week.

In your training do not be in a hurry, for it takes a minimum of ten years to master the basics and advance to the first rung. Never think of yourself as an all-knowing, perfected master; you must continue to train daily with your friends and students and progress together in Aikido.
--Morihei Ueshiba

Home and Back Online

I have returned after an interesting week. Truck is half unpacked. If anyone is even stopping here anymore, I promise an update later this evening. Figure out where I was and what I was doing from this picture and quote, and leave me a comment. This picture was taken yesterday in the late afternoon and I will give you a hint. It is not a picture of the sky. As always, click to biggify.

Life is growth. If we stop growing, technically and spiritually, we are as good as dead.
Morihei Ueshiba