Neanderpundit

With apologies to m. bach
A LOT of gunbloggers have discussed their gun cabinets, and what they carry, and what they have, and I look at the pile of rifles and shotguns I own, and think, if I buy one more rife, i’m:

a: going to have to sleep i the garage until I’m sixty, and
b: going to have to get another gun cabinet.

I’m less worried about “A” than most might imagine- and in fact, the ogwife likes to shoot as well, but we have other, pressing things to do around the Hamlet of Og before up-armoring.

All of which led me to think, I have a pretty full gun cabinet, does it have everything I need?

So I thought, what should every wellstocked gun cabinet contain? Here’s my list:

A 22 rifle. Hell, I have many of them- but you should have at least one. With the Cugirs coming into the states at $59, there’s almost no excuse. In fact, a Cugir is a good basic rifle. My dream rifle would be a Browning Auto 22, or a Remington 241 Speedmaster. Wait, I have a speedmaster.

A shotgun. A scattergun will cover a large percentage of north American game, and if you get a pump or an auto, you can get a slug barrel that will allow you all the rest. My personal favorites are the Remington 870, the browning Auto-5. Harder to find a slug barrel for an Auto 5, but not impossible. The Mossberg 500 field/deer combo is a solid, reliable pump which comes with the rifled slug barrel for under $250. Hard to beat.

A medium power centerfire rifle
You don’t need a lot of reach out and touch someone to take down a deer, or a coyote, or a badger, or any of the vermin you’re likely to encounter farming or ranching; a 30-30 lever action is a perfect choice. Fast, smooth, rugged, reliable. I have a Winnie 94. Marlin makes a bunch of fine rifles too. The Savage 99 rocked. THe Browning BLR rocks. I lke the winnie because, well, it’s a Winchester.

A higher powered centerfire rifle. If you intend to hunt anything that you can’t easily get close to, or something you don’t WANT to get close to, a cartridge beginning in a “3” with a designation anywhere from 30-06, to 300 win mag, to 375 h&h mag, is a good choice. these are NOT toys. These rifles are meant to bring the battle to the enemy, from a long way away. If I could choose only one,it would be an M14. I’m lucky enough to have several, and my favorite is an Interarms mark X mauser, custom made and barrelled to order for me.

Some states don’t allow high powered rifles for deer hunting, so you have to use a coalburner. I have a cap-and-ball percussion rifle made by Traditions for Charles Daley. it’s a nice rifle, but I would not reccomend it as a hunting weapon. If you go afield looking for a deer, and you want the rifle to go bang when you pull the trigger, buy an inline. Preferably one with shotgun-primer ignition. Save yourself the grief. The muzzleloader I lust after was made by David Pedersoli for Cabelas, and is a replica of the old Remington Rolling block. It’s around three hundred bucks, and worth every penny.

I like to think every gun cabinet should also have a 22 auto; I have a Ruger mark II. As Kim says, a 22 is a commodity.
I also think every home should have a 38 special or 357 revolver. I’m partial to the rugers, there.

Lastly, I think every wellstocked gun cabinet should have a large bore auto. A Glock or some similar modern firearm is a good choice- glocks aren’t pretty or classic but go bang every time you pull the trigger, which is the entire point. I’m always going to be partial to the 1911, but there’s something to be said for glock reliability and double-action convenience.

What’s in your ideal minimum gun cabinet?

the lens of time does refocus things. Dad was my nemesis when I was a kid, and that’s the way of the world. I wanted to make nitroglycerine, he put the kibosh on that. I wanted to nair several of the neighborhood cats- even saved the money and bought the nair- no dice. I wanted to give the dog a mowhawk- OK, I DID give the dog a mowhawk, but I got my ass whipped for it… Anyway, the point is, I look at al the shit I wanted to do, tried to do, tried to get away with, and all the times dad thwarted me. he seemed to have a sixth sense about the type of trouble I would get into, up to and including collecting shot and rock salt in disagreements over the ownership of produce. Sometimes the shot got dug out. Sometimes the rock salt sat there and dissolved, and was a long term painful reminder as to why I shouldn’t have been coveting the watermelons in that specific field in the first place.

Anyway, as time goes on, I look back at those moments and think less and less about the asswhippings,etc., because I have now well and truly learned the lessons they taught. I can think of them as much needed reinforcements. On the extra hand, I can think more clearly of the good moments, which I do, a great deal.

One such moment happened on a cool afternoon like today, not long after I got my driver’s license. Dad had just come out of one of his many surgeries, and he was sitting around the house grousing because he couldn’t drive. “Where do you want to go anyway?” I asked him. ‘hell, i don’t know. Maybe I’d like to go fishing” so I said hell, let’s do it. We hopped in his truck, me driving, drove down to lake shaffer in Monticello Indiana, a couple hours drive. I was off for a couple days, we both had valid licenses. Dad had just had surgery on his left arm- he’d had an infection in the bone marrow that after scraping it al out had left his humerus eggshell thin. He couldn’t do much besides reel in with it, and since he had a baitcasting reel I loaned him a spinner. That way he could cast with his right arm and just reel with his left, not put too much strain on it.

We stood on dry stones below the dam and cast out into the river. We didn’t catch a lot of fish, but we caught a few, and we sat on the shore frying them in a pan over a little primus stove. Pop had a beer, though he wasn’t suposed to, and I drank a Doctor pepper from a bottle. We hardly talked the whole time. The image of dad standing on those rocks, his pipe bit in his mouth and the aroma of fivestar surrounding him, ballcap on his head,reeling in palm sized bluegills and rebaiting his hook… The memories that count, the true memories, the real memories; they come shining through at the moments we least expect.

I try hard not to be as absent as Dad was, he had a job schedule and a private life that excluded him from being home very much. Most of the time when we were together we were working together, fixing someone’s car, fence, roof, remodeling the school dorms, etc. The moments we had together just he and I have been lost a long time. Now, the history of my misspent youth fades and those times snap into focus- the day’s stubble of his beard, the smell of that pipe, the way he struck a kitchen match on the seam of his Dickies. i can see them now, more clearly than ever before. Sometimes I can even write about those things without going insane with the pain of having lost him. I also am more aware of the times I don’t spend with the oglet, and try to stretch them.

Last week I had another of those moments, and when i did, I got in my car and drove over to mom’s to give her a big hug. I think she thought i was nuts. I’m glad these memories are coming back now, when i can try to write them with some level of eloquence. I’m glad I have these moments to remind me to appreciate those i have yet.

On the way home, dad slept with his head up against the corner of ther truck’s cab. I took the pipe out of his hand lest he burn himself, and as it was darkening, I could see it had a cherry there yet, I put it to my lips and drew a big deep draw, pulled the rough smoke into my lungs, held it there a bit, exhaled it slowly through my nose to catch every nuance of the aroma. I put the pipe in the ashtray and drove the rest of the way home.

Prompted by this post from Freddie:

A lot of years ago, in the house out in Cedar-Tuckey, we developed a wasp problem. And when i say problem, I mean there were six neighborhood kids allergic unto death to the little bastards. So when they decided to build one of their papery nests on our eaves, dad did what he knew best to do.

We knew a lot of people in the refrigeration business those days and it was not uncommon for us to end up with an extra R24 tank once in a while. Dad simply took gloves, unwound some copper tubing, connected it to the R-24 tank, and emptied the whole thing into the hornet’s nest. he then climbed up the ladder and knocked the whole shit and caboodle down.

We put it in an old asphalt bucket.

Now, a lot of people don’t know this about wasps, but they will survive a brief freeze. In fact, a lot of them can overwinter.

We had a particular guy in the neighborhood who was a revolviong asshole. A revolving asshole is a guy, who, no matter which way you look at him, is an asshole. So in the night, I put the asphalt bucket of frozen wasps on his back porch.

We never did get to see him open it, but we did watch him walk around the yard with his face swoll up to look like he had gigantic gumboils. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.