Miss Mossberg of 1948...

(...or so)


Hardly anyone sets out to collect Mossberg .22 rifles. Among firearms aesthetes it's declasse, like acquiring a hoard of museum quality Vegomatics.

I think that's a shame, though I concede that Winchester, Remington, and Browning made prettier rifles for the 1930-1950s mid-price market, good shooters, light and with finer "feel" and more graceful lines than the slightly cheaper Mossies.

O.F. Mossberg and Sons hardly ever played the anorexria game. Steel was cheap, and what are a few  more ounces in a tool designed to contain explosions and deliver energy precisely and consistently?  So some of them could look a bit clunky, like the 144ls or the 151.

I have a near-ugly 151* on the rack, seldom cleaned and never treated to spa day. It sometimes goes afield when the population of dirt clods gets out of hand. It kills them quickly and reliably, hardly ever bitching about the kind of ammunition it is fed.

Trading off the 144 ls was one of my all-time great errors. In the 70s I was mildly interested in four-position, 50-foot bullseye shooting, and it yielded nothing to Winchester 52 shooters (although I often did).

The other one I love is the fake Tommy Gun. I've mentioned I picked up a nice one recently to replace another I gave to a nephew. She's been my companion on the two marginally decent plinking days of this evil January.















Mossberg 152. Not for sale. Or trade. Or gifting.

I may even waste time rooting around in old gun magazine for paper copies of contemporary ads.

This one is from late in the 1948-57 production period.  The flipper became plastic about 1954.

Even in those calmer days you had to cut ad writers some slack. While the 152 was about the size and heft of the M1 Carbine, the forearm made it a Thompson to its target demographic -- imaginative 12-year-kids.

Minor geekery: The same flip-down marketing ploy was used on the bolt-action Model 142. The 152 came with a "peep" sight, the 152 K with opens.  The scoped option never sold well.  Most retail prices were a  few pennies under $30. Factory magazines held seven rounds, and they are now hard to find. Triple K aftermarkets hold 10 and cost $42 with shipping. Mine required tinkering with a file to even seat, then a little more to feed -- which is still does only about two-thirds of the time. After that dreary drill I ran across an OEM.

---

*The 151 and some others reflect a period in O.F.'s history when it had a serious love affair with Mannlicher stocks and Monte Carlo cheek pieces.  If you like retro-Kraut look, fine. If not you wonder, "what the hell? It's a ,22."

Other recreations

The MB Heretic; 30'6" loa; 29' lwl; built by Marinette in 1963; welded aluminum; powered by a monster V8  through a Velvet Drive straight-through transmission. Call  it a big boat or a small yacht, what ever you like. Delphine (RIP) and I had raised our kids and usually thought of it as an extended-stay,  second-honeymoon, abode.

As Water Rat said: ""Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

Up and down the Mississippi from the St. Croix River southward to the Keokuk lock for five or six nice years.

A warmup; anarchy; a little light porn for desert rats

Assemble the trumpet chorus of tall vestals in flowing white gowns.  We need to rehearse for the big day tomorrow.

At the coordinates of Camp Jiggleview, of which I am Commandant,  winter is being put to rout. Statistically anyway. On January 19, the average daily high advances. From 25 to 26. Ta da.

As soon as the girls are in good tune, if will come time to unpack my spring fashion ensemble, even to the Speedo in anarchy black.

---

Anarchy could be a lot of fun, and I have a soft spot in my heart for anarchists, even somewhat dreamy ones like John Zerzan. The internet persona he projects is one of a nice, very thoughtful,  guy who dead centers some of our post-modernist (what the Hell does that mean? dunno.)  ills.

He's part of the anarcho-primitivist school, yearning for a return to the hunter-gatherer system of economics.That makes him a romanticist Luddite, just like me when my reality connections are a little corroded. In some of my nicer fantasies I battle the sabre-tooth tiger approaching my woman in our cave.  She looks a lot like Kim Novak. I always win.

Philosophically, the dream breaks down the next morning when my clan huddles to plan the death of a nice, juicy, mammoth. Quite naturally, I am the leader -- in 20th Century terms the Minister of Plenty. There goes the egalitarianism that Zerzanites like so much.

There are probably some serious Zerzan students among the readers. I've been only vaguely aware of him and his work, but something  triggered a net wander this morning. I think I'll read more of his stuff. He seems too smart to have fallen completely for the serene glamour of the noble savage, and he makes a decent point or two about the dehumanizing effect of this and that in the digital age.

---

Also before I hie myself off to work, I need to pacify my buddy John of the GMA, a commendable man but also a dude always grumping about the aesthetics of my WWCO selections -- most recently Twiggy of London. He wonders why I didn't choose Whatzername. I'll tell you why, Pardner. Because my apology to Bernanke had substance enough only for an A-Cup.  Anything larger would have been a waste of good silk and wire.

But since you insist:

 

Skinny Amends

I keep putting off a moral obligation: apologizing to Ben Bernanke. The tanked United States economy is not totally his fault. He's a tool, a dupe if you will, like some guy who tugs his forelock and says yassah Master when ordered to modify gravity.

The job of the Fed boss for a century has been to palpate the money supply to promote (a) full employment and (b) stable prices.

Ben, like every other Federal Reserve chairman, is too smart to believe that a doable proposition. But, also like his predecessors, he's perfectly willing to play the game in order to be one of the most powerful men in the world, a status which gets a guy invited to all the best parties with super models and single malt. I'd be tempted myself. So consider this a hemi-semi-demi apology, really tiny.

One trouble is that Ben is personally likable and seems so sincere, even when being more than a little dissimulative. For instance:

Last month, hard money hawks (so to speak) finally persuaded him to reduce the  Kwee 3 production of thin-air money a bit -- from $85 billion a month to $75 billion.

He took a deep breath and pronounced that good, but before he could exhale, his inner Keynes leaped forth.

"But don't worry Mr. President and all you vote-buying thugs in Congress. We're still going to be easy, perhaps even easier. So go cheerfully about your business.  Spend away.  Bike trails and ag subsidies and roads to no where;  idiotic billions to political buddies with a solar dream: farting around in the Third World pretending that we know how to build other nations; creating regulations costing ten bucks to administer for every 37 cents in benefits, if that much. Whatever will make the unwashed voter love you." 

(How? HIs Fed promises to keep fiat money gushing by some level of Kweeing, plus interest rates effectively zero for a long, long time -- probably through the first Chelsea administration, at least.)

Would it help if more of us became a little more focused  on Econ 101 as presented by someone other than Paul Samuelson?

Price stability depends on many things, but above all on money stability; that is,  a person should have reasonable confidence that the five-dollar bill in his pocket today will also buy a pound of bacon next year. Lacking that belief, he'll go immediately to Starbucks and piss it away while studying food stamp eligibility rules on his G4 phone.

Full employment depends on a population making, buying, and selling things. Their ability to do so depends in large part on greedy capitalists who somehow get some money and gamble it on factories, drug stores, farms, distilleries, and gas stations. Every man and woman in the mix must have an ordinarily decent character and diligence -- plus an expectation that his wages and profits as measured in money will hold their value, or nearly so.

Excessive taxes discourage that sort of diligence and willingness to take risks, but  currency inflation can make confiscatory taxes seem like a comparative angel kiss.

Ben won't publicly address basics like that, but, as I say, the perks of being a perceived Midas are compelling, so on a strictly personal level, I understand, Sir. Therefore I formally offer my apology for five years of verbally abusing you, an apology heart felt but so wee and flat as to be almost imperceptible.