Neanderpundit

Like it is-seriously-now, I dream about going back to inland.

Many of the guys I worked with there are dead, some by their own hand. I was lucky to escape when I did. The dream reminds me things are not so bad now.

Is not exactly secret, most who know me know pretty well what I do but as there is a certain professionalism involved in it, it is not appropriate to share details, and frankly, there are a lot of things I have done that have become the industry standard for that equipment- though, in reality, it has always more or less been my intellectual property.

I don’t mind. A powerful lot of what I do, I do because I have had the opportunity to be of assistance to American Industry, at the large and small end of the scale. At least two fairly large companies I know are still in existence solely because I have helped improve their efficiency and reduce their direct labor, and I’m probably being modest.

I have a better than average understanding of how industry works, at a nuts and bolts level, than most people I know. Every time I pick up an item I reverse engineer it in my head, and I have seen enough actual manufacturing to be able to extrapolate the way just about everything is manufactured.

For this reason I LOVE to watch “How it’s made” On complex things they often leave out details, but I have watched them all, or at least all the ones on Netflix, and comparing the filmed version with my own extrapolation I have not been wrong yet; there are after all only so many ways to build things. If you do wonder how things are made, you could do a great deal worse than to watch this series, it’s on Netflix and several other places. Plus they have episodes at places like Holland and Holland, which is worth your price of admission right there.

Many years back, one of my uncles died and was given a full military funeral. he had been silent about his service, I never knew he had served at all until he died, and then there were all these soldiers who had known him in the service. They crowded around and smiled and told stories among themselves and then somberly proceeded to the casket.

At the graveyard they lined up and pulled rifles out of cases. They were all white painted Enfield 1917’s, chromed. Seven men as old as my uncle lined up, the dress uniforms freshly pressed, chests covered in medals, and fired three salvos.

I wished that I had had the presence of mind to bring a camera, but at moments like that you don’t think of such things or are too otherwise involved in your own grieving, but that picture stays with me- those seven aging men fighting past their aches and pains to come to perfect attention as if the years that had intervened had had no effect on them. The crack of three salvos, each so perfectly synchronized as to sound as a single shot, and the tears in their eyes.

So as not to make them wrinkle their uniforms I walked up afterwards and helped them police the brass. it is here now, a Remington green box with twenty blanks in their plastic holders and one extra tucked into the top of the box. They look odd at first because they are blanks. When I see them I think of that wet September day all those years ago, and those seven men who came from the four corners of the country to send off one of their own.