Neanderpundit

the first firearm I “owned” was a Sheridan Blue Streak, chambered for 5mm. (.20 cal)

Now owned by Crosman,these rifles were, at the time, the high end of pneumatic pellet guns. While all the other kids were wandering around with their Red Ryders (yes, I eventually got one too) I had an actual rifle.

Now, I won’t say I wasn’t jealous- the other kids could just do one quick pump, and shoot. I had to pump and pump, and load it by hand with the tiny bolt action, and only then could I shoot- but the difference was, I could shoot crows out of trees sixty feet away, and everyone else could see their BB’s arc in flight before hitting the ground in front of the tree.

When I got serious about squirrel hunting, I could pick squirrels out of trees with no effort. With my young eyes, I would regularly pick the bushy bastards off branches thirty feet out. Of course, it was a couple minutes before I could shoot again, because it took eight pumps to get the speed up to 900 fps.

I used a williams peep sight because the buckhorns have always been hard for me. I also eventually got the scope mount and put a little weaver 4 power scope on it, as my eyesight got worse.

Anyway, Mom was always a hoplophobe. The exception was the Sheridan. She could shoot that thing like an olympic biathelete, and her favorite target was wild dogs. We had more than our share of them, and she was bound and determined to keep them away from our Brittany Ginger.
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Well, second impressions, actually.

A long tie ago, just after the earth cooled, I was working in a northern Ontario town, installing a machine for a major Canadian furniture manufacturer. I had met the ogwife for the first time, on the previous trip. I was staying at the hotel where she worked.

A machine install takes me a week, more or less, and I was on day two. With the machine about 20% together, my wrench slipped off a bolt and I sliced my right hand open along the knuckles, a slash about three inches long. A flap of skin has opened along the back of my hand so I look like Edward Kangaroohands, and I marvel a moment at the structure of the inside of my hand. The maintenance man helping me takes a look and keels over.

I wake him by using my left hand to smack him back to alertness, and make him drive me to the local hospital.

I’ve been working all day, this is midafternoon, and I’m filthy. I have grease all over my hand, and the triage nurse is dabbing at the filth with a betadine sponge.

I grab it out of her hand and start scrubbing, rubbing the grease andf filth away from the wound causing the skin flap to be pulled painfully back, but it needs to be clean if it’s gonna heal. The nurse faints. I finish cleaning the wound and in walks the ER doctor, Dr mengele. He’s drunk and has a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. He looks at the passed-out nurse, looks at my hand, sits down and starts stitching the skin, and in his drunken haze, he passes the stitches through the flexor tendons that control the fingers. This means every time I close my hand the skin on the back of my hand goes along for the ride. Like when I can make a fist again, the skin on the back of my hand will fold over the knuckles.

This is not good.

Dr Mengele finally realizes he’s been stitching for five minutes and hasn’t iced me up ‘How thoughtless of me. Vould you like some novocaine?” “no, I’m fine, just finish” the ash of his cigarette falls, thankfully on my other hand, and he puts in the fifteenth stitch. He finishes, wakes the nurse, and I go about my way.

All the way back to the hotel, I’m flexing the hand, and trying to figure out which sutures are actually attached to the tendons. I don’t know if the skin will disconnect itself when the sutures are removed, but the more I think about it, the more I don’t want to take the chance.

So back at the hotel, the someday ogwife waits at the front desk, I wander in and take a shower. I get a packet of 3-0 silk out of my kit, and take it to the front desk.

I know if I let my hand curl up it’ll pull stitches open or cause other trouble, so I get the someday Ogwife to use duct tape to attach my fingers to plastic knives. Thus immobilized, I use my fingernail clippers to remove the stitches that are holding my skin to my tendons, and fumble with the suture silk (I’m right handed, and I’m awful with the left hand) until the future Ogwife takes over and stitches me with close, even stitches. I explain to her how to tie a surgeons knot, and I’m all set. I spend the rest of the week working (clumsily) wiht my left hand and finish the install.

In two weeks I return for a followup visit and the Future Ogwife helps me cut the stitches out and pull them. I knew then I’d found a woman tougher than any other, and figured if she could stitch me up, she was a keeper. We dated for another couple of years.

Damn. I was prepared to ignore this, but I was tagged on the same day by four different people. Out of respect to all of them, I’ll respond- and then remind them all: I HATE MEMES.

Four jobs
hand
blow
rim
nose
Four movies:
Anything with Zatoichi
Anything with John Wayne
Becket
The Lion in Winter
four places:
Cedar Lake, Indiana.
Highland, Indiana.
Dyer, Indiana.
Schererville, Indiana
four TV shows:
Monty python.
There are no more.
Four places I’ve been on vacation:
Home. Anyplace away is not a vacation.
Four websites:
Eternity Road
Kim Du Toit
Hog on Ice
Day by Day
Four foods:
Mom’s beef roast
Mom’s pork roast
Mom’s turkey
Any fish cooked by the Ogwife.
Four places I would rather be:
With the ogwife.
Hunting
Hunting
fishing.
Four people to tag:
I don’t dislike anyone that much.