Another Blast From The Past, 2007 May, I Believe

"I know sage, wormwood, and hyssop, but I can't smell character unless it stinks."  Edward Dahlberg

A long day at work finally wound down, and the thought of lemonade brought us to the local supermarket. I sat in the truck, two disappointed little dogs standing in my lap, watching through the window as my wife disappeared past the automatic doors. The radio murmured quietly as a gentle breeze filtered into the cab, and I watched a slice of the local population filter into and out of the store. People watching. My favorite pastime.

One of those imported sport/luxury sedans was parked two slots over. Nice chrome custom wheels graced four corners. Low profile performance tires were wrapped around those rims. He paid extra for those. The front tires were worn nearly to the chord. The rears looked almost new. Somebody appeared to have been smokin' those tires around the neighborhood more than absolutely necessary. And he had not mastered the art of rotating them. I put a mental check in the bad column over that one.

When the driver returned to this car, and unloaded his shopping cart through his passenger door, I watched. I won the bet with myself when he left the cart sitting in the adjacent parking slot, rather than returning it to the store or pushing it into one of those cart parking areas that the store provides. And no, I was not surprised when, after he had consumed the contents of those take-out food containers, they just slipped out his window to splat on the pavement. Two more checks in the bad column.

OK, so the guy is a slob. That is not exactly equivalent to mass murder, but I do believe his acts add up to what you might call bad character. And if you add up enough bad character, pretty soon you end up with a society like ours, which often seems sorely lacking in the good version.

Swinging your fists around in the air is not bad character. Swinging them into some innocent person's jaw in a crowded room is. Bad character has a signature. Trying to park your car in that slot in the parking lot in which the shopping cart sits reminds you of bad character. Finding the litter next to it confirms the suspicion. Watching the hillside go up in flames because someone thinks that smoking cigarettes is a license to litter, well that smells of bad character, too.

Lying, cheating, and stealing demonstrate bad character. Those merchants in China slipped melamine into the wheat and rice gluten that recently showed up in your pets' food. They just wanted their protein to assay higher, so they could sell it at a better price, and they didn't care a wit if somebody died. Bad character.

"As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly."  Samuel Johnson.

Perhaps this is where we end up. Spend enough time in a world rife with bad character, and our standards drop. A certain quiet resignation settles down upon our shoulders as we face the hopelessness of it all.

And then there is that mirror on the wall, where our own examples of bad character come home to roost. We live in glass houses. Perhaps we shouldn't be too quick with that stone. And we are not without sin, so we shouldn't cast the first one. So what should we do when we realize, as the radio guy pointed out the other day, "The world changes, but human nature does not."

Perhaps we could listen to Marcus Aurelius, from the 2^nd century:

"Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."

Dec 18, 2011

Not sure if I will be able to use this rifle on this occasion, but will give it a try.

Man, the toolmaker.

Homo hobilis, the “Handy Man” of prehistoric earth, began making tools back in 1.8-1.4 million years BC, that rocking time we now call the Stone Age. Not long afterwards, but well before “Tim the Tool Man Taylor” hit the airwaves, my father in law, Rex, built a rifle. Like H. hobilis before him, Rex didn’t make his tool from scratch. Back in the Stone Age, the locals picked up a rock that was already there, that had the right shape, and then they worked it into better shape, usually by sharpening it. Most often, they then attached a handle to the sharpened rock, a piece of wood, and it became a weapon. 

Of course such tools were also very handy when these guys needed to gather up a mastodon or two for the weekend barbecue. Over time, these stone tools were improved. Eventually, the sharpened rock weapon tools evolved in one direction, and the hunting tools in another. But a family resemblance remained.

Rex built a hunting rifle by improving a weapon rifle.  In 1917 and 18 manufacturers in this country built Enfield rifles chambered in the American service cartridge, the 30/06. They had been making Enfields chambered in 303 for the British earlier in the war, because we liked those guys. In World War I these rifles were sent across the Atlantic to help the Brits who were fighting the Germans, et al. When we sent homemade Americans across the Atlantic to help the Brits who were fighting the Germans, et al, we sent along rifles chambered in 30/06. We wanted to send Sringfield rifles chambered in 30/06 because this was an American rifle, albeit one “derived” from the German Mauser. (Some would say stolen from the German Mauser) But we couldn’t make enough of those, so we made some 2 million 30/06 Enfields, an English rifle “derived” from the German Mauser, and sent them along as well.

The German Mauser was not the original rock somebody sharpened, but it was a good one and folks still build rifles “derived” from it. 

Attached to each of these rifles was a piece of wood that was designed to make these tools better weapons. They weren’t very pretty, but they sufficed. When the next big war ended, a bunch of those Enfield rifles were still in government storage, and since the government wasn’t yet obsessed with taking guns away from its citizens, people could obtain these old weapon tools, and if they wanted, they could turn them into hunting tools. Cut a piece or two off the weapon, bend another, refresh the bluing, mount a telescopic scope, and pretty soon they had converted a weapon tool into a hunting tool. A family resemblance remained, but now it served its new job better than the old mass produced one. 

The biggest difference between the weapon tool, and the hunting tool the people created, was that piece of wood attached. Where the weapon tool had utility, the attached wood was not pretty.  But the people building the hunting tools specialized in attaching the prettiest wood they could find. 

Rex was very active in drum and bugle competitions after WWII. A friend on a competing corps gave Rex an Enfield rifle the team no longer needed. So in the very early 1950’s probably 1 or 2, Rex took a 30 year old weapon tool and turned it into a beautiful hunting tool. And much of that beauty came from the block of wood he carved and shaped and sanded and finished, which converted a mass produced weapon into a one of a kind hunting rifle. And Rex turned it into a piece of art.

Now, the story doesn’t end here. For when Rex had completed converting his rifle, save for that coating of finish that would highlight and protect the wood, he carried it into the hunting field. And as luck would have it, in the dark woods of Vermont, at a time when deer were far harder to find than now, the largest most antler endowed buck Rex ever saw wandered in front of him. But as luck also had it, the wood of the rifle had gotten wet the day before, and when it swelled and warped, it compromised the action, and when Rex pulled the trigger on that buck, the rifle wouldn’t fire. 

Other rifles came along in subsequent years, most lighter and easier to carry in the woods, and they put deer into the freezer for Rex. But to this day, 60 years later, the sporterized Enfield he built has not fulfilled its destiny.  It’s still as pretty, and Rex is very proud of his work, but this rifle has not yet helped to fill a freezer. And as Rex recuperates from some medical problems at the tender age of 96, I don’t believe he figures it ever will.   

But wait…

In two weeks we will drive to South Dakota, and we will bring back a bison for the freezer. I won’t insult this beast by calling this endeavor a buffalo hunt, for I certainly know where the bison will be, and the usual exertion associated with a hunt ain’t gonna happen here. But a rifle will be used to take this bison, and it’s gonna be Rex’s hand built Enfield rifle, which is now a treasured family heirloom. I don’t know if you can make a rifle happy. But I think I know how to do that trick for Rex. He deserves to know that the tool he made so many years ago finally had the chance to do its job.