Swamp Musings

Must need it!



That photo was taken through a screen a couple of days ago. ~10 feet from where I sit when exercizing the fingers. Summertime in Florida. She is waiting for me to come outside and play before it gets too hot. Gonna be 95 before this day ends.

Woke up at my usual 4:30 AM with the radidio set on a different station than usual. Disco. All disco, all the time. Ke-rist! Most of 30 years peeled back and before cognizance occurred, found myself headed toward the cedar chest. There are silk shirts and ivory pants in there... Now they are playing mashups of disco, Doors, rap, and Blondie. Amazingly good. Rima has a wrinkled brow. Old crippled-up greybeards are not supposed to dance! I think it might be the cane that is used to keep the carcass mostly vertical that is the off-putting part..



Pages and pages of links and comments. For one reason or ten others, just can't seem to generate enough interest to post them. They'll probably wind up burned to a disk next time I do a bit of 'puter housecleaning. However, after reading Kim du Toit this morning, I got to recollecting about a tech from a company I did a bit of work for most of a quarter-century plus ago that came down (800 mile trip) just to show off and shoot his brand new "sporterized" M-16 carbine. Cool. It had been a number of years since I'd had the "opportunity" to use one of those squirrel guns and I set up the swamp range with flood lights so he could plink at paper targets into that night. After establishing he was much sorrier than my 95 pound wifey, he wanted to have a "hard target" to kill. Yes, he was properly trained on handling firearms, no hazard or re-training would have been mandatory. Enthusiasm is always a plus. Am I a hard case? You betcha. Not fond of accidents, been there and continue to suck air. I set up a collection of 40 pound cement blocks in front of the berm for him to plink at. Kinda fun watching him improve while burning his way through those boxes of 5.56. Little puffs of dust from the blocks. He was all kinds of happy. The effect was more or less kinda the same as my Ruger 10-22 with the CCI hot ammo available back then. After he'd gleefully gone through a few boxes, I went into the house and withdrew 2 rounds for the 98, picked up same and checked it for the usual reasons, went out and offered him same. And yes, I HAD removed the bayonet. And yes, the steel buttplate is very 1943. He declined first shot. The concrete block with 50 or so .223 pock marks vanished with one round of the rather old Mauser. The .223 went back into the trunk of his Saab. If something needs shootin', it needs shootin' properly.

If I were to be called into combat, my preference would be to have 10 rounds of major-league sleepy-pills rather than 1,000 rounds of spray and pray.




..and this is why!



I rest my case.