Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Author: michaelmccurry

  • Actuarial Thoughts on Turning 76

    As the 75th year moves to the 76th, there are some actuarial thoughts that come to mind. Table 10 (Social Security Administration) gave me a life expectancy of 65 years and 3 months at birth – obviously, since 52% of my age cohort is still on the grass side (as opposed to the root side) we’ve made some long strides in medicine, health and life expectancy. It’s not until the 80th birthday that 50.7% of us will be gone.

    That translates to a calculated mean life expectancy of 11.29 more years at my next birthday. On the other hand, if I’m still kicking for that 87th birthday, the table shows another 5.6 years – and nearly 30% of the original birth cohort will be there for the 87th birthday.

    I suppose that living is kind of one of those habitual things. I can’t help feeling fortunate for the many advances that have occurred in my lifetime. So what do I plan to do with those next ten years? When I lived past the June, 2012 expiration date my oncologist gave me, I came to the conclusion that my best purpose was to look out for wife and daughter. It’s been a good purpose – but the next ten years are for my grandkids. I want to teach the little ones to sail – and I think I can do that on the pond, by combining a small lateen sail with a slow hull. I want to teach them marksmanship – and I will probably start with airguns and little steel chickens, pigs, turkeys and rams. If the health holds out, we’ll combine forest management with entrepreneurial attitudes as we continue thinning the woods. I may not ride a bicycle to their house – but I am sure that they will ride bikes to mine. Bicycles are a good place to develop mechanical skills – and seven speeds seem like plenty to me. There is a chance that we can rebuild the fences, and get a few Guernsey or Jersey cows. Remi already has his two little goats – and one watches his little crawling brother through the window. By the time a kid is ten, leading and brushing a dairy heifer is a reasonable task. At ten, a kid can learn the mechanics of a single or double barrel break in the middle gun. And, with any luck, I will be able to share the joy that can be found in mathematics, in reading, design and research. It is enough. Not everyone has a 76th birthday with so bright a future.

  • Thinking of That Congressional Dormitory

    I’ve been thinking more of the implications of housing all Congresscritters in dormitories, much like college freshmen (who are often required to reside in university housing). This meme suggests building that dorm might make congressional service more accessible to the average American:

    Part of the problem appears to be that congresscritters don’t want to leave DC once they get there. I can’t explain it – from the moment my plane hits the ground there, I feel that I’m “in the presence of mine enemies” and I want to go home. Dormitories aren’t places where you get so comfortable that you want to stay. Look at Jon Tester – he got to DC and stayed 18 years before the election results forced him back to Big Sandy. Compare him to Marc Racicot – who took a job in DC, then lobbied there, and then made up his own mind to move back to Montana. Think of Nancy Pelosi – 37 years in DC representing San Francisco. John Thune was running for Senate when I hired on with SDSU (2000). Admittedly he didn’t get to DC until 2005, but he hasn’t made it back to a home in Sioux Falls yet. His predecessor, Tom Daschle also served as senate majority leader, spent 26 years in DC, and when South Dakota’s voters sent Thune in, Daschle stayed in DC until a few years ago, when he moved to South Carolina. He has yet to make it back to Aberdeen to live. The list of people who get to Congress and never go home is long.

    My proposal to counteract the incumbency advantage will work – every time an incumbent runs, he or she is limited to a campaign spending limit that is half of their previous election spending. Under that limit, Nancy Pelosi would have been down to three bottle caps, a subway token, and a half-stick of Wriggly’s gum for her last election.

    A Congressional dormitory might help bipartisanship – but it would definitely make congresscritters more anxious to travel home for weekends and holidays – Dormies like going home. I recall AOC’s challenges in finding an apartment when she first went to Congress – the congressional dorm would eliminate that problem. Who knows – with affordable housing for congresscritters in Washington, and reform that would counteract the incumbency advantage, we might wind up with less than half of Congress being millionaires and more.

  • When I Needed A Gun

    This story goes back about 40 years – Renata has encouraged me to get it down on paper, and as I think about it, the story still seems unreal, like it couldn’t have happened. But it did. At the time, I was teaching at Trinidad State Junior College, and driving a 78 Dodge Colt. Renata and I had finished shopping and were headed South from Pueblo, Colorado, on I-25. By today’s standards, the road was isolated, and cell phones hadn’t taken off yet – by our standards, accustomed to Montana, it was a four lane highway, and downright populated compared to the stretch from Wolf Point to Glendive. We had heard of travelers along this stretch of highway being pulled over, robbed and assaulted – but it was one of those things that couldn’t happen to us.

    The back held our groceries and K-Mart purchases, and we hadn’t reached Walsenburg when six cycles pulled alongside and behind us on the left. The guy alongside pointed his hand to tell me to pull over. It didn’t look like a great location, and the crew on motorcycles didn’t look like Walsenburg’s Welcome Wagon, so I just shook my head and started wondering how many Harleys I could knock down with the little Colt if it was time to start playing bumper cars. He again pointed at the side of the road, so I looked for the easiest way (at 55mph) to explain that I had no intention of pulling over. I reached between the seats, still looking at the cyclist and driving with peripheral vision. I smiled my sweetest smile, and lifted a cocked and locked 1911 Colt with my right hand.

    He returned my smile, waved a ‘follow me’ to his companions, and six motorcycles courteously passed the little Dodge Colt and quickly drove out of our lives. When I got back to campus, I shared the story with Walker, the cop instructor. He shared it with Ernie, second-in-charge of the town’s police force. Ernie showed up, asking why I hadn’t got the license plate numbers – “Because I didn’t think of it.” and telling me that this crew had a record of assaults on people who had pulled over – even introducing me to one student who had been robbed and beaten. He wanted them.

    As I write it up, it still seems unreal. I still wonder how many Harleys I could have knocked down with the little Dodge Colt – that little car was my primary weapon. The 45 Colt only had 7 rounds in the magazine – and while I was shooting Bullseye competition at the time, six moving targets and eight rounds didn’t look like a good situation. (Renata remembers more cyclists – but my recollection is that I had only two spare cartridges.)

    The little Dodge Colt (made by Mitsubishi, and the motivator to owning an Eagle Talon) looked like this:

    I think it had about 85 horsepower in the overhead cam 4 cylinder.

  • Thoughts on Politics

    John Steinbeck quote: Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as...

  • Glock Switches Change Faster Than Glocks

    Glock had some problems with anti-gun groups and the California legislature (I may be repeating myself there) because of a device known as the ‘Glock Switch.’ What it amounts to is a device that makes the Glock pistol go full auto – basically changing a semiautomatic pistol to a machine gun. Put simply, the device is illegal as all hell. It’s a combination of old gunsmithing skills and computer use to build interchangeable parts with a 3D printer. There is nothing particularly new about the idea – one of Dillinger’s guns, built by Hyman Lebman was a model 1911 converted to full auto – as this photo shows:

    I don’t believe I would enjoy shooting this – but at the time Lebman was building them (and converting Winchester 1907 rifles to machine guns) the National Firearms Act was still a gleam in some politician’s eye. Unlike Lebman’s San Antonio operation (1933), Glock switches are sold on the internet – my personal recommendation is don’t even think about buying one. Ethics aside, the fines and prison sentences are too large. Even if the switch is advertised at only $13.

    Anyway, with Everytown for Gun Bans and the California legislature closing in, Glock decided to redesign all of it’s handguns, and come out with a Glock V that wouldn’t take the switch. Intriguing enough, by the time the Glock V was moving in the supply chain, the new switch for the Glock was on the market.

    Like I said before – I’ve never fired a Glock. I’ve never converted a semiauto to full auto. I have repaired a few semiautomatics that, because of one worn or broken part or another had problems with multiple discharges. The problem is that it looks technically easy to convert many semiautomatics to full auto. I can’t say for sure – the only work I ever did was to make sure semiautomatics didn’t go full auto. But it looks easy enough to me. I suppose, if you gave me the task of building a semiautomatic that couldn’t be converted to a machinegun, I’d start by making it hammer fired and double action only. That way, you still might make it go full auto, but you’d have to spend big dollars changing a whole lot of parts.

  • I’ve Never Fired A Glock

    It isn’t that I’m some sort of a bigot – or perhaps it is. With a long double action trigger, I tend to shoot low and left. Not a big deal – with the SCCY, I took the sight pusher – a tool that uses a bolt thread to move the rear sight – and put the rear sight in a spot that corrects for my weakness. The SCCY is different from a Glock – a plastic frame and a stainless slide – and double action only – but what do I know? I’ve never fired a Glock. When Glocks first came out, I was learning the ins and outs of the 1911 – and it didn’t seem that good habits for the 1911 transfer seamlessly to the Glock.

    As a kid, it was pretty much revolvers. Dad packed a Smith Victory model that he had salvaged from a sunken plane, and he started me with a High Standard Sentinel. Dad liked 4-inch barrels and double action revolvers. And I learned to use them single action. When I started teaching at Trinidad State, in the mid-eighties, they taught me that God carries a model 1911A1. I learned to hone the sear so I could have a 3 pound trigger pull (the other important changes were a fitted national match bushing in the front, and a tight link at the back. When the trigger doesn’t move far, and doesn’t take much pressure, it’s a lot easier to hit. And the model 1911 (like the 1873) is single action only.

    I guess my first match quality pistol was Thompson Center’s Contender – I used it with a heavy 22 barrel when I hung out with a bunch that shot metallic silhouette. Renata medaled. I never did. In most of my competitive shooting I’ve been treated respectfully, but never had the ability to regularly finish at the top.

    Glocks call their striker fired action ‘safe actions’. They may well be – but the early striker models (around WW1) depended on some cheesy safeties. So, as Glock was coming on, I was learning the 1911. I’m not bigoted against the Glock – it’s just that it came out in the mid-eighties, and it’s probably a bit too modern for me.