Neanderpundit

I decided I needed a little range time ot keep from using my firearms on other things, and i wanted to confirm what my coalburner was going to do after a year of idleness, so I dragged it off to the range and sat down for some shooting.

First of all, I realized I had forgotten not only my targets, but my spotting scope. After a few moments of rummaging in the truck, I managed to find a couple unmarked pieces of cardboard and two lonely shoot-n-C dots.

So i hung my piece of cardboard, and settled in to burn some coal. I found, to my delight, that not only was the scope still on, I was also still able to put holes where I wanted them. I was shooting within minutes of squirrel, and I only needed minutes of deer. I put nine shots in a three inch circle at 50 yards; anyone who shoots at deer further away than that with a 20″ barrel coalburner is nuts.

Wrapping things up, I managed to BREAK MY DAMNED RAMROD.

I was so pissed I could have screamed.

Anyway, I went to my favorite local spt to try to replace it, and they didn’t have what i wanted, which was the self-extending CVA rod. So I ended up with a cut-to-length aluminum rod.

I also got a right-length birch dowel, nice and straight, and I cut the ends down on a table saw and fitted the old ramrod tips to it. As I was doing so, It dawned on me: I have done this before.

I did it before building my first coalburner, a 40 caliber, years and years ago. I had a friend who set up to make several, so we found stock and drew it out octagonal, draw filed it by hand, stress-relieved and ground it, and bored the barrel. We rifled the barrels by hand, six grooves, .025 deep, .005 per pass, five passes per groove. We put in the breechplugs and fitted curly maple stocks. We also stored cow urine, burned willow stumps for charcoal, and dug sulphur to make our own blackpowder. Bastard shot like crazy. We made five rifles in all. I ended up giving mine away, the guy still has it and loves it, you just can’t use .40 in Indiana to hunt deer.

So every time I get down thinking about the stupidity of the pelosi’s of the world, and the bullshit to come, I think, I can make my own damned guns. I can make my own powder. I can do everything necesary to make a firearm that will be the equal of anyting around.

Bring it on, folks.

Hard to believe, now, that forty years have passed.

In the fall of 1966 we’d had some seriously wierd weather. I remember a bonfire in late november, a snowstorm that followed, and a late indian summer that uncovered the ashes of the bonfire in a single day, from six inches of snow.

My walk to the schoolbus was only half a block at that time; I didn’t start walking uphill for three miles to school until I was in my teens. So the snow that flurried around my buckle-on galoshes and made me pull my parka tighter was never much of an inconvenience, and in fact, the school bus shelter (built by the parents of the neighborhood) was good shelter from the wind.

So nobody expected that January storm. Weather radar wasn’t shit then. When 23 inches fell practically overnight, it paralyzed Chicago for ages.

Now, we were one of those “survivalist” families you read about. Well, not really- Mom & dad had both lived through the worst of the Depression, and had learned to save and store. Mom canned vegetables, put up fruit, dad filled the freezer with rabbit and quail and pheseant. We bought sides of beef at a time. We bought canned goods by the pickuptruckload. So, Dad got home at noon, before the storm started, and I was already home, mom and sis were at home. We sat and watched it storm.

In the morning, snowdrifts covered the yard, some as high as the roof. Dad clambered up onto the roof to make sure the furnace chimney was clear. We started shovelling.

Dad and the neighbors worked together to clear everyone’s driveways, and keep them clear when the snowplows eventuqally came, which wasn’t for several days. I busied myself clearing our front walk, which frankly, wasn’t such a big deal. Nobody was going out on it anyway. So I started working on the piles of snow still left on the driveway below the raised walk. Gary miller, my next door neighbor, was on the sidewalk using a spade- and we managed to spin and connect at the exact same time.

The spade cut my right eyelid just about off. It was hanging by a thread. My eye was miraculously unhurt. My mother fainted.

Gary’s mom, a registered nurse at a local hospital, wiped off the blood, squished me up against their dining table with her huge mammaries, and butterfly-taped the tiny eyelid back together as meticulously as you can imagine. To this day, i don’t have a scar to speak of. She took a can of Welches frozen grape concentrate and told me to jhold it against my head.

I wasn’t allowed outside the rest of the duration of the snowed-in week. Pissed me off, I could see the neighbor kids all out there building snow tunnels and caves and igloos big enough to park cars in, and i was stuck inside wearing PJ’s and watching Captain kangaroo. I haven’t yet forgiven Gary for that.

People who lived in the area, got any memories of 67?

Any reccomendations for hi cap SKS mags? I’m looking at the AIM surplus ones, for $15.