Life In The Slow Lane

As I get older and wiser and better looking I note that the chrome plated, fuel injected American Dream seems to reside in the fast lane...where perhaps it should not. It's even creeping into the shooting sports with flashy anodized guns, big cash and prizes at the top events, and industry celebs whose every word is gospel to legions of young aspiring shootists. I was one for years but never seemed to learn to shoot!

Awhile back I just saddled up Inferno and headed out to the range. It's out in the country, in an area slowly being over-run by yuppies that will probably shut it down sooner or later.

It's a nice drive in its own right; and a great way to get away.

I love black powder guns too - the pace slows right down, and if ya cast your own bullets you can damn near shoot all afternoon for less than $10.00! It takes a lot of tools and implements to properly manage a percussion revolver and my wife made this wrap-thing to hold all my junk. It looks like something that a period authentic duffer at the turn of the century might  use on an afternoon out on the pistol range.

The first time I rolled it out all my chit went clattering across the floor. Goddammit...happens every time, doesn't it? Sometimes the Gun Gods take pity on those that love them most, and I redeemed myself by unleashing a precision hail of lead on the new gongs and spinners the club put out. For a brief and glorious afternoon - I actually looked like a shootist - smacking the gongs with contemptuous ease, accompanied by the stink and smoke and blazing hot barrel of my 1860 Army repro. Then, as a final coup-de-gracie, I finished up with this fine piece of shooting:

Six shots, five in the black and all a smidge over to the left. That's a good group for a modern gun, never mind one designed back in 1860! Mine is the Uberti reproduction - and it shoots like this all the time. Kids have fallen in love with this thing and I have sold enough of them that the local gun stores should pay me a commission! These guns just shoot like a hot damn. The only drawbacks are that they are messy (I use Crisco lard for a bullet lube) - and after about 36 shots mine is so bunged up with fouling that you have to shut down and clean it before shooting any more....but by then the afternoon is shot and you have to head back home anyways.

It occurs to me that I live the life of a king - my motorcycle is a sweet liquid cooled V Twin with a stereo and throttle by wire rig with all the new tech...and my pistol is an obsolete but charming relic from better days and times.

Life in the slow lane starts to look pretty good the older you get...

So Long, Old Friend

I dunno how many sappy SF movies and shows there are that try to ponder the idea of man/machine love. I think it is mostly clucky women and beta male flimps that get bogged down in such idiocy
As for me - hell, I know a man can love a machine; and it matters not one whit whether the machine reciprocates. How can you NOT love something that never lets you down and is always there for the rescue in the nick of time? I've heard stories of battle hardened green bean United States Fuggin Marines - the MEANEST sonsabitches on the planet and probably this entire quadrant of the galaxy - shedding tears when they had to hand in their Springfield rifles for the new M1 Garands. That was a good enough trade, apparently - but they shed tears again when they had to hand THOSE in and replace them with the new M16. They've had that rifle for 40 years now, they're STILL bitching about it and nobody is really listening. I suppose in a perfect world the Marines would develop and deploy their own anti-sonofabitch machines, right? One would think there is a certain kind of logic for having the men that wield the weapon have a hand in its design?

But sometimes the egg heads and ivory tower dwellers get it right. Not only right - but PERFECT
Behold:

 

In 2004 I decided it was finally my time to buy an ATV. It was one of life's landmarks. I had turned a corner in life, I was making more money, I had more time to hunt and fish and could finally afford some of the good life. Not bad for a dummy that started out working in the warehouse driving a forklift! When I bought it, the Bomb and the Yamaha Grizzily were the best quads in this class.

 

I did a little trail riding with it but it's primary purpose was hunting and fishing. The trails were mostly easy, and the hunting was grand. It always started, and was always there to pull other quads and their hapless riders out of the mire, muskeg and other quad-eating terrain. It's very possible she goes home with new owners tonight, and I find myself at another of life's milestones wondering where in hell I am...and how I got here!

 

It's a 'maturity thing'. Bah - in straight language...I've turned into an old fart! I think it happened last night while I was sleeping. I can't run 14 Km at the drop of a hat anymore. I can't pack a moose out of the bush myself anymore, my back is giving me trouble and my gut is expanding like a bloody super nova! The bush is no longer a place for me and it is time to admit my hunting days are over. I remember friends and campfires and frosty mornings and hunting in the mountains...and for me, letting go of Ol' Yeller has been a very difficult thing to do. I should have sold it two years ago...but memories are hard things to sell. It's funny how this age thing works. One year, you are just pumped to get out, take after the game, set up the tent and camp and live like a man - free of the bullshit of the city and its maddening swarms of morons and tools...and a few years later that ground gets cold and hard, setting up camp is a pain in the ass, and shooting a deer and cleaning it ... is drudgery! What in hell happened to me...? And who is that old fart I see in the mirror in the morning when I shave?

 

So long, Ol' Yeller! No matter how old I get, a piece of my heart and soul will always ride with you! Happy trails.

 

 



 



 



Range Notes

I have always been a .45 ACP guy. It's all Col. Jeff Cooper's fault; along with the cool kids that owned the range when IPSC became wildly popular. I never caught the IPSC bug but I fell hard for the 1911 Flu and still have it today.

My first serious handgun was this heart throb:

The owner of my gun store was a kindly man that knew I was a young man with a new family that had his hands full paying for baby food and diapers...never mind scrounging enough for a good handgun. Bless his heart - he gave me this one for $425.00. I originally had to pass on it because all I could scrape together was $400.00 and change. It almost tears me up to remember him saying 'Filthie, your killing me, here! No, I ain't selling it to your for $400.00, you'll take the goddamn gun and owe me the other $25.00 and pay me later...'.

That gun was the BEST .45 ACP I ever shot! It was a chit house Auto Ordnance stock gun that some rich kid tried to pimp into a race gun. It had an alloy frame though, so he took the compensator and other farkles off, put it up on consignment - and it ended up in my lap. The trigger's been done by a master and it broke like glass. It shot circles around the Colt Delta Elites, and ate the National Cup guns for breakfast. Newbs and pros marvelled at what a fine shooter my bargain basement gun was. The gun store owner almost wept with regret at passing this gun onto a piker welfare case customer too! I dunno how many pounds of lead and powder went down that girl's gullet, but the Parkerizing slowly came off, a barrel bushing cracked - and I foolishly gave it to a phony gunsmith to refinish and restore...and it never shot the same again. Who woulda thunk my first gun out the gate would be that 'once in a lifetime' gun?

Years later my situation and finances vastly improved - but my job sucked balls. My manager and I were butting heads in an almost weekly ritual and I finally lost my shit on him. I got up, walked out of his office and told him I was going to the gun shop to buy a pistol to shoot him with! He couldn't believe it and tagged along to see where I was really going. He was stunned when I waltzed into Ye Olde Gun Shoppe and picked out this Heckler and Puke:

He figured he had better be able to defend himself and he bought a beautiful Sig P210. After that we had our meetings at the gun range and complete civility broke out. The HK USP .45 Tactical is probably one of the best polymer guns out there. It has a superb trigger for a factory gun...but it never shot with the same accuracy that my old 1911 did. It's a great gun; I still have it and may still shoot it...but I want to shoot classic 230 gr. RN bullets at around 850 FPS. After awhile I started getting homesick for the old 1911 again.

I'm at that age where I am too old to work and too young to retire so I figured I am going to get my grail guns while I can - and sail into my golden years with the best toys possible. I bought a sweet 20 guage SxS shotgun. I bought a match Springfield M1A. That rifle impressed me so much, I figured I better grab a match pistol from them too!

And...here I am today. An ageing stubfart and gun club duffer with some semi-respectable heavy metal guns! Unfortunately...I dunno if this one is my last pistol or not. I need to reload for it and see what it can do but preliminary testing shows that it shoots right on par with the HK. Very disappointing in a gun that costs about $300.00 more than the HK did.

Today I spent my lunch time stinking out the range with my marksmanship, but the nice thing about recoil therapy is that during my session today - I stopped being the grumpy old stubfart for about a half hour...and became that young, 20 year old kid with a box of ammo and not a care in the world beyond that!

If only a man could make that feeling last the whole day...!

Speeking Of Queers

As Woodsterman notes - these are the guys that take the most offense to the Confederate flag. Being Canadian I have no dog in that fight but to me, that flag means The Dukes Of Hazzard and evokes images of hillbillies, Boss Hogg and The General Lee.

But yannow...if that flag offends the kind of people that participate in shit like this...maybe it has some merit after all.

Mending Fences And Dirty Laundry

My family ripped itself to shreds 5 years ago.

To begin with, we were a rock solid semi-extended family where my mother and father in law took huge roles in my family life. There was friction and over the years it slowly built as they became more and more liberal and progressive in their outlook, and more and more militant about it. Things finally exploded when my daughter came out of the closet as gay.

These scenes are always sanitized when Hollywood portrays them because the queers are always loving, respectful and discreet. When my daughter came out she was a hateful, ranting shrew about it and she said some really offensive stuff. Not to go into it in any great detail here, but basically she became the average gay social justice warrior (SJW) hellbent on re-inventing the family and its morals and ethics. As a father my place in the family would be at the bottom of the totem pole; my gay daughter and her ugly girlfriend would call the shots and tell me what I could and couldn't say, what I could and couldn't think, which jokes were funny, etc. ad nauseum.  Of course, my response to this was equally rancid - I told my daughter that never before was I more disappointed and disgusted with her and the way she had chosen to handle 'coming out'... and that was the last I saw or heard of her.

The final straw was when my in laws jumped into the fray and proclaimed me to be an abusive homophobe that was literally causing PTSD in my gay daughter by not agreeing with her every whim, and by not assuming my new role in the family as the designated punching bag. At that point...I walked away from them and refused to talk to them for 5 years now. Last week we finally sat down to talk for the first time. Apparently... my wonderful gay daughter isn't talking to them anymore either. They send her money on birthdays via EMT and she takes the money...but doesn't email or call back.

When my 25 year old daughter and her ugly girlfriend first ran away from home I was worried sick about them. I didn't know if they were alive or dead, and all I wanted to do was apologize and get some kind of dialogue going. But then I started running across articles on the internet about similar guys in my boat. They were people that simply dared to disagree with queers, feminists and SJW's - and then found themselves the target of ostracism, scapegoating and even twitter mobs. People have even lost their jobs because of it. When I found my daughter trying to set me up the same way I REALLY lost my shit - she was on the internet telling anyone that would listen that she was a noble lesbian child - timid and traumatized by a domineering homophobic father that she just HAD to run away from. There are some words and actions that you can call back. There are some that you can forget about and pretend they never happened...and there are others you have to live with, or atone for.

Ugh.

The level of maturity involved boggles the mind. This is how they bully weaklings, apparently. If you disagree with them, even that is enough to hurt and offend them enough to cause PTSD and you have to fall over yourself to apologize for making them feeeeeeel baaaaaaad.

When we talked the other night, I was struck by how much my in-laws had changed...and yet how much the same they were. They are still progs and they are hurt and saddened because their gay granddaughter - who they loved and supported without condition - had turned away from them. I'm tempted to tell them that their daughter is playing them for fools and has discarded them because she doesn't think they are of any use to her any more. But they think like a lot of folks today - that queers are just nice people that want to be left alone to interior decorate and look fabulous. I have always held that homosexuality is strongly linked to other self destructive behaviours - 125 years of classical psychology can't be wrong - and have been scolded about it for the last 15.

And yet - here we are. My in laws are now elderly; my father in law is on medication that renders him largely clueless but happy, and my mother in law still treats and regards her 30 year old granddaughter as a child and makes excuses for all her failings. Is it even worth trying to get these seniors to see logic and reason? And my daughter - she's 30 years old and works part time in a bicycle shop. Her love partner is a basket case with eczema and apparently it gets so bad that sometimes she can't even go out in public. She is a freelance artist. They don't have a car, they don't have an apartment and live with a bunch of hipsters in a communal lifestyle in downtown Vancouver. From what I have been able to learn, in addition to homosexuality she has major problems with maturity too...but a lot of kids do these days, I think they sanitize that too by saying 'they are extending their youth...'. Good Christ.

At what point do you stop blaming the parents for the failure of their kids? At what point can you decide that not even the best parent in the world can save them? Did I fail my daughter?  And if so - where and how? 

I'm 51 now, and life goes on I guess. I'll be a senior soon and as I go over my life's failures and victories...I wonder if my daughter's are mine as well.

Jeez, I hope not. I will forgive her, I suppose, if she ever develops the maturity to ask for it. What else can a father do? 

Seems That Ol' Wirecutter's At A Loss

The old beardo may be flummoxed by this - but I am heartbroken. For you see - that's a picture of my old girlfriend! Yep...ol' Filthie lost his gal to a dapper, distinguished gentleman with access to indoor plumbing and running water! Flo sent me that picture as a kind of a 'screw you Filthie' because she didn't like emptying the pan on my thunderbox! The woman never really had any sense and I'm better off without her...but she made a mistake that's all too common these days - folks throw out the old and embrace the new and forget that sometimes, the old way of doing things offer charm and nostalgia not available with the latest and greatest techno-marvel.

Once in awhile the wife and I still bake the odd loaf of bread in the oven. Sure, you can buy it or even get a super-easy-to-use bread making machine...but I swear our home baked stuff is better. I have fallen away from brewing my own homebrew wine and beer too...and I need to rectumfy that. I've heard the odd fag and flit complain that homebrew is horrible but I beg to differ. Pasteurization kills bugs that might be in beer...but it also kills character and taste too. I've also not even fired my black powder guns in the last 100 years either. NOTHING beats the Holy Black. NOTHING.

I have one of those Uberti 1860 repro revolvers that shoots like a hot damn - and will do it all afternoon for less than $10.00 bucks! I can't load the mag on the M14 match gun for that! I also got one of those 1876 lever guns in the obsolete 45-75... and I really need to step up my load development on that. The .45-75 was the official round of our RCMP police force at the turn of the last century.

How in blazes does that work, exactly? We buy more and more stuff and fancy gizmos to save labour and free up time to do...what? Hell, I STILL don't have enough time to enjoy the finer things in life even with the modern gizmos. I suppose the lesson here is that sometimes ya gotta make time to waste it.

Have a good weekend all.