What a zillion dollars worth of Pentagon small arms experts couldn't do:

They couldn't keep the Mk-48 machine gun firing  without ammo bearers on hand. When it ran dry in combat the gunner had to stop and laboriously reload. When that happened the enemy got pretty arrogant about shooting you.

If you're Bill Gates you solve problems like that by having a couple-three good ol' country boys around. You let them kumshaw some old ammo cans, parts of a junked MOLLE system, and a few other odds and ends of scrap metal. Quicker than you can say "lemme use your welder," you have the "Ironman Pack Ammunition System."

It works, so the Army gives the lads a ceremony and a little attaboy award.

Then, a few hours later, unless thngs have changed since my  day, some shave-ass second looie notices the rustic inventors and tells them their  fingernails are ragged and sideburns a quarter-inch over regulation and shape up or ship out.

The lieutenant's career will prosper and, in due course, he will be the Army's general in charge of small-arms design.

Drive-by post

And what just drove slowly by is a gleaming 1955 or '56 Ford Victoria convertible. Mint green and hunter green.  Wide white walls.  My lust meter pegs and blue suede shoes dance in my head.

Cows ain't born in Saran Wrap, y'know

Getting ready to  grill up that cow part for your Independence Day observance? You might be interested in a report from the range on what it takes to get the critter  from the wide open spaces to  your Weber. It's a Hell of a story. Survival of both horse and man was in doubt.

Jiinglebob has it.

Drop the Coke bottle, Jorge

Imagine that, an "uncontacted" tribe. Two hundred people and not a single screen-printed tee shirt.

H/T to the author of The World's Greatest Travel Blog.

Is this the person to whom I AM speaking?

There's one of those memes going around --"How old are you?" One of the questions asks if you have ever used a phone without a dial. Sure, in fact,:

"Numbuh plee-uz?"

"Seven-three-five, please""

"Oh, you want Miss Clooney. She's not home. I just saw her go into Jackson's grocery store. Shall I ring her there?"

"Yes, it's kind of important."

"Okay."

(buzzz  buzzz buzz)

---

Re-constructed from memory of a tale told by an aunt.

Back to beautiful basics

Sometimes I get tired trying to make sense of the  government loonies. So back to basics, to the TMR I intended -- libertarian thought as revealed to the perceptive mind through exploring guns, dogs, and women who manage allure even with privacies decently covered.

Lessee, there are bad girls...




Cute Luddite  girls...



And girls with dogs and guns.

Be still my beating heart.

Hell, I've hugged a few trees myself.

Some of my pals aren't going to like this. Off-the-grid. Sustainability. Life without  Starbucks. Etc.

Some of it I probably won't like either. But in essence these three guys -- actually two plus a girl -- represent a healthy portion of me -- or of the me I occasionally wish I was.

Go read The Independent Spirit.  Our old friend Joel is part of it.

Well blow me down

On this date in 1819 the  side-wheel Savannah tested her engines at sea and a week later set out to become the first steamer to cross the Atlantic. She made it, and in 1933 Congress took a break from making the Great Depression worse and declared May 22 National Maritime Day.

So honor the nation's Shellbacks by thinking a nautical thought or two today. Thank ee kindly, Mate.

Getting lost with great precision

For several years a GPS-generated  911 map misplaced my home and kingdom about seven miles, plopping it in Mrs. VanFookstra's soybean field.  No big problem. It might have even thrown off a few pests wanting to cold-call me for 20-pay-life or a surefire  way of getting St. Peter to punch my ticket.

It was worse for the Canadian couple who decided to trust their GPS gizmo to get themselves to  Jackpot, Nevada. 

The cops found Rita about seven weeks later, drinking from a creek and wondering how long the last bag of trail mix would last.  They're still looking for Albert.

As a public service TMR renews certain of its motoring suggestions:  Consult a good paper map. When in doubt ask ol' Zeke at the Conoco station. Look out the damn window once in a while.

..fish nor fowl nor good red herring; the .22 long

We didn't know anything about ballistics. We just knew .22 longs were a dime a box cheaper than .22 long rifles. Shorts were cheaper yet, but we were led to understand by our elder experts  -- mostly eighth and ninth graders  -- that they would ruin our guns.

So we happily shot longs up and down the wild (really) Des Moines River valley -- squirrels, rabbits, Blatz beer cans, floating debris, and spawning carp.

The .22 long was born in 1871 for S/W revolvers as a supercharged improvement on the short. It held  the same 29 grain lead with  a longer case and a black powder charge upped to 5 grains.  The ballisticians were divided on its actual worth but felt it might offer a small improvement on the  short in handguns. In rifles, the  powder burn pooped out before the bullet left the muzzle.

Re-specked for smokeless, it was routinely available for about 100 years, disappearing from the hardware store shelves when the makers could no longer offer it cheaper than the long rifle.

So it was neat to find this while sorting an auction-sale can of odd nuts and bolts. The head stamp is "U," from the Union Metallic Cartridge Company, later part of Remington. It's a treasure to be placed in my can of oddball cartridges, perhaps never to be examined again. So what?  As the philosopher Travis McGee wrote, the best collectibles are moments of pleasure.

Inkpadutah's Revenge* and Indian Motorcycles

I haven't owned a bike for years, but the taste for old machines remains in my mouth.  When I was a lad I was occasionally privileged to borrow a couple of the veteran  Indians which were still around, held together with shade-tree contrivances  which permitted them to keep running after a fashion.

So there a nostalgic pleasure in learning that someone else is interested in the "Indian" marque -- namely Polaris Industries (ATVs, Victory motorcycles made just a few miles from Camp J).  They'll certainly be as over-gadgeted, over-lawyered, and over-priced as the other crap we're we're offered by vehicle makers, but maybe they'll at least preserve the neat old logo.

It's probably futile to hope they'll re-create anything as elegant as this.

It hurts my head to calculate the number of owners of the Indian bike name over the decades, certainly a number greater than Liz Taylor's husband tally.

---

*This is unreasonably obscure for anyone not a serious scholar of  the Plains  Indian Wars. Nevertheless, I have suggested to Polaris that it should be the name of its first model.

King of the Wild Frontier

A lad just old enough for Cub Scouts would have loved finding it in the toe of his Christmas stocking,  a gin-yoo-ine Davy Crockett Barlow.  Later in life he scores, proving it's a good idea to rummage through the knife dealer's one-dollar junk box.

"Mary gave him a bran-new "Barlow" knife worth twelve and a half cents; and the convulsion of delight that swept his system shook him to his foundations. True, the knife would not cut anything, but it was a "sure-enough" Barlow, and there was inconceivable grandeur in that...."  Mark Twain

Now, that's a bang

What happens when you combine a 10-year-old lad with a can of ether, two pounds of Pyrodex, and a new bow with flaming arrows?

Jinglebob tells all in my nomination for the  best read of the morning.

Libertarian gun love

I've been to dozens of political conventions, but never one with this in the announcement:

 "If you carry and need to use the restroom, a gun wrangler will be designated."




It makes me think of  shining up the 59 and actually attending this one,  May 7 at the Hilton Garden Inn, just north of Des Moines.  


Last time I hit a convention I decided I even needed to leave the little Buck pocket knife in the hotel room.


Gotta love libertarians, even big-L ones.


Click the link for  more details, and for some recent news of Ron Paul.

Beauty in .45ACP

Please go see a great portrait of a Marine veteran -- certainly of Iwo Jima and perhaps of the 4th Marines in pre-war China or Nicaragua in the 30s. Who knows what history it helped make?

To heck with our obsession with shiny newness  in our relics. This one is museum quality.

Thank you, Wyatt.

The Limits of Technology

Departing cold fronts often produce a little snow in these lattitudes, and the National Weather Service guys thought they saw some on their electric radar sets. Only problem was that folks on the ground kept saying, "Snow? Don't know nothin' 'bout no snow here. Ain't none I see."

Upon further reflection, the NWS publishes:

"(There are) SOME MORE INTERESTING RETURNS CLOSER TO SIOUX FALLS...AND WHEN COMPARING TO PILOT REPORTS...ARE LIKELY SEEING LARGE FLOCKS OF GEESE."

Damn, but you have to love living in a country where people like this still exist. I refer to the South Dakota sheriff with nobly-acquired buffalo shit on his boots --  not the Florida ass who won't take care of his own animals.

Jane Russell addenda

(1) -- A yen to spend your quarter on a Jane Russell movie occurred after one of those frightening life changes that affect boys in about the sixth grade. You came home from a Roy Rogers movie and found yourself thinking less about Trigger and more  about Dale Evans. If you really did go see The French Line next Friday night,  you told Mom the first lie that made you feel really guilty.

(2) -- (And I didn't know or had forgotten this.) She appeared in Darker than Amber.  as the "Alabama Tigress" (huh?).  John D. reacted to the screening: "I was so convinced it would be utterly rotten, that I was pleased to find it only semi-rotten." 


Wonder what his ghost will have to say about  Juvenile DiCaprio as McGee?
.

Make ready, Gridley

The USS Iowa (BB61)  still floats but faces a wistful destiny as a tourist trap. The old girl is being fought over by two California SSRs -- Mare Island (a Frisco burb), and Los Angeles.

No contest. Moor her in the City of Angels. Go ahead and fill her with your tacky boutiques and souvenir shops.

Just keep the main battery oiled and the powder bags dry.

From LA, the Port of Long Beach is within easy range of the 16-inchers, allowing us to work our will on the container ships from Shanghai, just in case we ever need to declare war on China and /or WalMart. A half-dozen broadsides and we've  wiped out at least half the Middle Kingdom merchant fleet.

(The exit strategy is to get our plastic flashlights and cheap tee shirts from Malaysia.)

Ahhhhhh, that's better

For two days the wood stove has been cold, and for no better reason than pure, cussed laziness, the Commandant's Quarters at Camp J (home of the Northern Expeditionary Force) has been heated to 78 degrees with propane, the first time this season the little gas furnace has been on.

It made me feel unmanly. No man ought to secure comfort with no more effort than twisting a knob. So, as of 0906 local, the  flames dance and a ready supply of wood is on the hearh.

Yes,  I feel much manlier.Thank you for asking.