In her time...

Well, if that ain't almost as purty as a nice new Remington pump gun I don't know what is.

Saturday Suckage: Remington 31 Surgery?

It would be elective because:

Not  all that bad. She is what it is, used, moderately well cared for over most of her 65 years, tight and working fine. However:

This can be explained. The owner wanted a selection of chokes. This Lyman add-on was popular in the 1940s when this 31 left Ilion.

This defies logic and even a pretty good imaginative stab. Dropped on a spinning stone? An angle grinder gone postal? Pure malice? 

So, despite her classic status, her collectiblity is long gone, victim of  accessorizing mutilation and some unspeakable workshop atrocity. 

 Does she go on the rack as simply a spare for a hunter who arrives empty-handed? No, not necessary. She would be about a fourth spare, and I don't know that many people likely to come for shooting and forget to bring a gun. (Ammo-free visitation is quite another matter.)

Take her to another loophole and try again to get  something like 150 Federal Reserve Cartoons?  It didn't work last weekend. In fact, I don't think anyone even fondled her. Economics: She commanded a bride price  of either $85 or $60, depending on how my CPA decides to allocate the $25 profit from a J.C. Higgins bolt action 12 gauge which accompanied her. So I'm not in over my financial head on this one, The decision is aesthetic, not monetary.

A makeover is possible. Chop her down to the legal limit, smear some JB on the gouge, smooth everything out with files and emery, then bring her to tactical glory with some of that nice black spray 'n' bake stuff from Brownells.

I suppose that would be okay. At least she'd look acceptably tactical if I decided to pose in my GI combat pants, M1951 field jacket, and the beret, if I can find it. I could put it on the internet and be cool.

But it seems like a cruel fate for a dowager who, however time-ravaged, still retains the grace of, errr, well, say, Princess Grace in her time. 

Sometimes a guy just doesn't know what the Hell to do.

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Bernanke takes Econ. 101

If I didn't already know who Peter Schiff is, I'd probably just go along with John McCain and figure him as a libertarian kid in a dorm room.  In fact, of course, he's a grown-up libertarian long past his dorm-room days. Not to mention he has a record of being right about economic trends.

Here he is suggesting again that the warp-speed printing presses tended by Ben Bernanke are likely to complete the destruction of the American Greenback, also known far and wide as the "Federal Reserve Cartoon."

"Nope," says Ben, cuz this year the dollar is actually rising against that ubiquitous "basket of currencies," that is, against other country's cartoons  which also masquerade as wealth.

But Ben tries to be fair, so he signed up for one of my economics seminars here at Camp J.  I served him fresh-squeezed orange juice from a silver ewer, just so he'd feel at home. Then we gamed his rising-dollar theory.

We stood next to a picnic bench and eyeballed our relative height. We agreed I'm a little taller. Then we each stepped up onto the bench and again eyeballed our relative height.

"Dr. Bernanke, would you agree I'm still a little taller?" I asked.

"Well I'll be a sonuvabitch!" he exclaimed. "Yes. I believe your are."

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It' a start, but I'll believe that the lesson sunk in when I hear the presses slow.

Sometimes it's hard to be an Iowan

Diverting the cops is a standard tactical move if you want to do mischief somewhere else, and I suppose calling a bomb threat to a school 20 miles away could work about as well as anything else. That's what a couple of would-be criminal masterminds from Des Moines did up in my neck of the woods..

The results were non-optimum. Their bank-heist take was an employee's purse. The car they stole was recognized and chased. They abandoned it along the wild bluffs of the  Des Moines River and hid in the woods. Officers quickly found them. Homing in on chattering teeth?

Criminey. When even your criminal class apes a Three Stooges plot, you get to thinking about state pride and all.  I may resort to social climbing.  Claim to be from Arkansas or something.