Ahoy.
A personal event directs my thoughts back many years, to boot camp where a lad's exposure to sea stories begins. He learns almost immediately the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story. One begins with "Once upon a time," the other with "Listen you guys, this is no s--t."
A kernel of truth embellished with all the literary art forms makes up the best of the sea stories, satire, parody, mockery, (especially self mockery), mild fantasy, wish fulfillment, and so forth.
Literal minded people are too quick to scorn the sea tale as just so much bull s--t. Winfred Blevins* had it right even if in a different context. Referring to the tall tales of the Rocky Mountain fur trappers (about 1820-1845) he observed: "What was wanted here was not fact but entertainment." He also notes that the yarn is a form of journalism even though a detail here and there requires heavy discounting.
The young sailor is well advised to listen with patience and appreciation -- or the best approximation thereof he can muster -- even to the banal ones he's heard before. It will make him a better ship mate in the eyes of his fellows, and that is one of the pillars of a happy cruise.
Of course, he may absorb so much that he'll wind up as an aging blogger. Never mind. That's just another one of the perils of the sea.
---
*Give Your Heart to the Hawks ISBN 0-380 - 00694 -4, p. 76
Jun 20, 2014
Jun 18, 2014
Another junk post -- Winchester 97 junk
Poor man that I am, when someone offers me a Winchester 97 for $25, I'll find a way. Maybe borrow a bicycle and go can collecting along the highway.
She's seen here somewhere between before and after. The masking tape that held her wood together is gone, along with some of its gummy residue. Some of the patina is missing. But she's still jammed open and will probably stay that way. I hate tearing down Model 97s.
If I got enough of the gunk from the oil-soaked chip and butt stock wrist, I'll epoxy them back together, reattach the wood, steel-wool the rest of the tape crap off, and offer her up as a "parts" gun or decorator. If the glue won't hold, I'll push her as one of the few Model 97 three-piece takedowns in existence. Or maybe a rawhide wrap. Add a few brass tacks and she becomes a genuine Injun gun.
It's something to do in my dedicated gun-tinkering time while I'm waiting for the Commander slide. If the nice folks at Caspian meet their promised schedule, it's due in three weeks.
---
Sure I know the old Corn Shucker's provenance, all the way from the night Private Alvin C. Blatnik (ret.) of Strawberry Point, Iowa, won her from Teddy Roosevelt in a five-card stud session at the 10th annual Rough Riders reunion. But you guys wouldn't be interested.
She's seen here somewhere between before and after. The masking tape that held her wood together is gone, along with some of its gummy residue. Some of the patina is missing. But she's still jammed open and will probably stay that way. I hate tearing down Model 97s.
If I got enough of the gunk from the oil-soaked chip and butt stock wrist, I'll epoxy them back together, reattach the wood, steel-wool the rest of the tape crap off, and offer her up as a "parts" gun or decorator. If the glue won't hold, I'll push her as one of the few Model 97 three-piece takedowns in existence. Or maybe a rawhide wrap. Add a few brass tacks and she becomes a genuine Injun gun.
It's something to do in my dedicated gun-tinkering time while I'm waiting for the Commander slide. If the nice folks at Caspian meet their promised schedule, it's due in three weeks.
---
Sure I know the old Corn Shucker's provenance, all the way from the night Private Alvin C. Blatnik (ret.) of Strawberry Point, Iowa, won her from Teddy Roosevelt in a five-card stud session at the 10th annual Rough Riders reunion. But you guys wouldn't be interested.
Jun 17, 2014
The Brave Squaw Battle
About this time of evening 138 years ago, Crazy Horse led his triumphant Sioux and Cheyenne light cavalry northward to the Great Camp on the Little Big Horn. Behind him, General George Crook retreated southward from the valley of Rosebud Creek.
The prelude to Little Big Horn was over, final score Indians 53 kills, Blue Coats 8, a lopsided upset of the White Eyes and personal victory for the man who has come down to us as Crazy Horse (nee Curly and, later, Strange Man).
We remember it (if at all) as the the Rosebud Battle. The Indians recall it as the Fight Where Buffalo Calf Woman Saved Her Brother.
Warrior "chief" Comes-in Sight was shot from his horse. She batted her own mount into action, charged no-man's-land, and whisked him to safety as the Blue Coats lobbed big .45-70 bullets all around her. Nine days later, Indian legend has it, she was fighting alongside her husband some 30 miles to the north and was perhaps the warrior queen who knocked Custer from his horse.
(So, a century before Ms. Magazine, women of the Horse Indians were welcome to combat duty if they wished. It was no big deal. Certainly it was something other than a social experiment in gender politics.)
---
The airy, opinionated, and semi-dependable Mari Sandoz wrote briefly of Rosebud in her biography, Crazy Horse.* She credits him with the same decoy tactics he used in the 1868 Fetterman slaughter. More interestingly, she somehow knows his private thoughts as he overlooked the creek valley where Crook's mule-mounted infantry rested in marching order. (Flop where you stop and don't get too worried about guards and pickets.) Crazy Horse wished for better guns, she wrote, and for braves who would fight cooperatively and win rather than made mad rushes for coups and die.
It didn't matter much at Rosebud, nor later at the Custer fight. The Indian alliance mixed up some sound unit tactics with their traditional lust for individual glory and won. Both times.
---
Crook's order of battle is fairly clear, about 960 of the mule-riding infantry, some 250 civilian employees and hangers-on, and up to 300 Shoshone and Crow "scouts." It may be telling that he ordered an ammunition allowance of just 100 rounds per man for their 1873 Springfield single shots.
Crazy Horse didn't have an orderly to write up nice neat daily morning reports. So the Indian TOE that day isn't clear, although the weaponry ranged from war clubs and bows to a few modern rifles and revolvers taken from the enemy dead in earlier battles. He appears to have been one of the leaders of something like 1,000 fighting men. And one valiant woman.
---
Travel note: It is a middling-hard slog into the actual battle site, and I was glad for high ground clearance. In wet weather the four-wheel-drive would have been a necessity rather than my macho manhood symbol. Still, it's an interesting and beautiful site, and if you're in the neighborhood I suggest you pop in. Carry a snake stick for sure, and a sidearm may make you feel a little more secure in the well-ravined isolation.
---
*ISBN 978-0803292116, pp. 317-322
The prelude to Little Big Horn was over, final score Indians 53 kills, Blue Coats 8, a lopsided upset of the White Eyes and personal victory for the man who has come down to us as Crazy Horse (nee Curly and, later, Strange Man).
We remember it (if at all) as the the Rosebud Battle. The Indians recall it as the Fight Where Buffalo Calf Woman Saved Her Brother.
Warrior "chief" Comes-in Sight was shot from his horse. She batted her own mount into action, charged no-man's-land, and whisked him to safety as the Blue Coats lobbed big .45-70 bullets all around her. Nine days later, Indian legend has it, she was fighting alongside her husband some 30 miles to the north and was perhaps the warrior queen who knocked Custer from his horse.
(So, a century before Ms. Magazine, women of the Horse Indians were welcome to combat duty if they wished. It was no big deal. Certainly it was something other than a social experiment in gender politics.)
---
The airy, opinionated, and semi-dependable Mari Sandoz wrote briefly of Rosebud in her biography, Crazy Horse.* She credits him with the same decoy tactics he used in the 1868 Fetterman slaughter. More interestingly, she somehow knows his private thoughts as he overlooked the creek valley where Crook's mule-mounted infantry rested in marching order. (Flop where you stop and don't get too worried about guards and pickets.) Crazy Horse wished for better guns, she wrote, and for braves who would fight cooperatively and win rather than made mad rushes for coups and die.
It didn't matter much at Rosebud, nor later at the Custer fight. The Indian alliance mixed up some sound unit tactics with their traditional lust for individual glory and won. Both times.
---
Crook's order of battle is fairly clear, about 960 of the mule-riding infantry, some 250 civilian employees and hangers-on, and up to 300 Shoshone and Crow "scouts." It may be telling that he ordered an ammunition allowance of just 100 rounds per man for their 1873 Springfield single shots.
Crazy Horse didn't have an orderly to write up nice neat daily morning reports. So the Indian TOE that day isn't clear, although the weaponry ranged from war clubs and bows to a few modern rifles and revolvers taken from the enemy dead in earlier battles. He appears to have been one of the leaders of something like 1,000 fighting men. And one valiant woman.
---
Travel note: It is a middling-hard slog into the actual battle site, and I was glad for high ground clearance. In wet weather the four-wheel-drive would have been a necessity rather than my macho manhood symbol. Still, it's an interesting and beautiful site, and if you're in the neighborhood I suggest you pop in. Carry a snake stick for sure, and a sidearm may make you feel a little more secure in the well-ravined isolation.
---
*ISBN 978-0803292116, pp. 317-322
The federal government has learned that Marshalltown, Iowa, is full of lazy, flabby kids, a crisis of deep national concern, so:
Last fall, the Marshalltown School District ... (landed a $1. 4 million DOE grant) to focus on getting kids active. The district purchased 4,000 pedometers with the grant money and found many students weren’t reaching a recommended goal of 9,100 steps a day.
---
Physical fitness in the 1950s:
Scene: The breakfast table.
Dad: Cut the grass this morning.
Jim: But I was going to hike down to Kalo with Richie and Ron.
Dad: Cut the grass first.
So it was spoken. And done.
---
Free pedometers for layabout kids? ? You have to sh*tting me.
The Youth Physical Fitness plank in my 2016 presidential campaign platform.:
"Cut the grass you lazy little creeps."
Last fall, the Marshalltown School District ... (landed a $1. 4 million DOE grant) to focus on getting kids active. The district purchased 4,000 pedometers with the grant money and found many students weren’t reaching a recommended goal of 9,100 steps a day.
---
Physical fitness in the 1950s:
Scene: The breakfast table.
Dad: Cut the grass this morning.
Jim: But I was going to hike down to Kalo with Richie and Ron.
Dad: Cut the grass first.
So it was spoken. And done.
---
Free pedometers for layabout kids? ? You have to sh*tting me.
The Youth Physical Fitness plank in my 2016 presidential campaign platform.:
"Cut the grass you lazy little creeps."
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