Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: writing

  • The Walther PD380

    I picked up a Walther PD380 for my daughter – the little gun is designed for a smaller hand than mine, and before I hand it off to her, I needed to make sure it works flawlessly. Turned out to be a good idea – on the first magazine, 7 rounds worked perfectly, but on two the slide didn’t close all the way. Looked it over, and it looked as if polishing the feed ramp would solve the problem. Some use a Dremel to polish feed ramps – I use some worn fine sandpaper, and on this one a short piece of 3/8″ dowel. The trick isn’t to grind away a lot of metal – the Walther engineers got the angle right. All I needed to do was polish it a bit smoother. Otherwise, I anticipate I’d hear the same “Fix it.” that I heard when my pre-teen encountered something that didn’t work to her satisfaction.

    I scored better on the 50 ft slow fire target the first time – one 10x helps a whole lot, and I could select a group of 4 (9 shot magazine) in one ragged hole. At this age and physical condition that is a rare occurrence. The second time, with the ramp slicked, all 9 rounds were in the paper, but only scoring 35 – more me than the gun. Good sights, the grip is a little small for my hands – but I didn’t buy it for my hands.

    I never had a Walther PPK – my first German double action was first a Mauser HSC, and then a HK-4 that has been my light pistol for the past 40 years. The PD380 seems like a good successor to Walther’s PP. There’s a lot to be said for building the tilting barrel, instead of going with a straight blowback system – recoil is gentler with the PD380 than the HK in 32.

    In days of old, the recommendation was to break the gun in by firing 500 rounds at the range. That would slick up the rails and smooth the feed ramp – but a little synthetic dry lube on the rails, and a few minutes with worn out sandpaper on the ramp is a lot cheaper than ten boxes of ammunition. Besides – I needed to learn how to take the gun apart for cleaning. I’m looking forward to seeing how it fits her hand.

  • Mojados in Kalispell?

    I went to Kalispell on Friday – doctor appointment after the hernia repair surgery. With the ability to combine activities, Renata gave me a shopping list for Wal-Mart. I have a 15 pound lifting/exertion limit until mid-February (I tried to find a loophole, but the Doc was adamant). All told, it was a good trip – there is nothing like trying to get every item on a single page, two column shopping list that makes you understand the complexity and strenuous activity she does in shopping. The aisles were cluttered with store employees shopping for folks who call in their orders. While they are definitely obstructions to traveling the shopping lanes, these people are definitely tops at telling you where to find things. I failed only in getting smoked peppers.

    As I went from the groceries toward the north, to find copy paper and sharpies, I pushed my cart past three young men – not dressed quite right for the area, and as I went past, speaking the rapid Spanish that you hear south of the border. Fortunately, I’m not connected with ‘la migra’, so I could smile and go past. They may have been legal – but chances are that they aren’t. Seeing them brought me to the realization that I see different levels of illegal within the term illegal immigrants. These were Mexicans – neighbors. Maybe it’s an age thing. Maybe it’s spending time in the southwest. Maybe it’s being an aggie – being accustomed to a system that, in extremes saw a rural ranching job split between three Mexican nationals, each working 4 months, making a year’s worth of Mexican pay, then going home to their families for the next 8 months. Kind of like a non-governmental deployment.

    I needed that brief exposure in Wal-Mart to bring clarity to my thinking. Somehow, the Mexican illegals hold a different status in my mind. I think it’s because they’re neighbors whose homeland is not so nice as ours, does not offer as much – and I’ve known several who were north of the Rio just to make a living for themselves and families, then return home. I guess I tend to put the Mexican illegals in the category of good non-citizens. They’re here. They’re illegal. But it isn’t like Minneapolis. And I wonder how much George W. Bush attempts at developing a better immigration policy ran aground because of Al Quaeda, the twin towers, and 9/11?

  • Recovery Time for a Retiree

    I went through hernia repair surgery on the second of January. A skilled surgeon, using a special robotic tool, made for minimally invasive surgery. So I have a 15 pound limit until Valentine’s day, and after about ten days I feel like getting back to work. The package says you should be able to go back to work a couple-three days after surgery. For any job I have held in the last 35 years, I could have gone back to work.

    But I’m not employed – I’m retired. And most of the work for a retiree doesn’t include other people to do the lifting and toting. I have a shower repair that is being put off until mid-February. No big thing – there’s a second shower upstairs, and with my new knee I handle the stairs well. I’d like to be working on the service station remodeling tasks – but the lifting limit makes it too easy to do something stupid. There’s a bunch of blowdown that needs cleaned up – but again, it would be all to easy to do something stupid. I need to re-level the sawmill, and mill more boards – but a 2×8 is probably about at the limit. Sam came by with the little goats – I offered to take a lead rope, and the answer was “They can exert a lot more that 15 pounds worth of effort. I realized the Talon had been parked too long and needed to charge up the battery – and, after I had the hood up, I realized lifting the hood was more than 15 pounds. I carry firewood onto the porch one piece at a time, instead of pulling a loaded cart up. Taking groceries in to the house takes so many trips that I bless the new knee.

    Finally, I looked at the snow free yard and realized I could grab a shovel and start cleaning up the winter’s supply of dog droppings. It isn’t a flashy task – but at least it’s something that I can do within the lifting limit. Old retired guys need to do a lot more lifting than old professors.

  • You Have To Beat Darwin Every Day

    There are Darwin Awards out there – and you have to win every time you’re in a spot to get a Darwin. (The Darwin awards are in recognition of removing oneself from the gene pool by one’s own foolish actions) Darwin, like Malthus, only needs to be right once. Winning means not getting a Darwin award.

    It’s why stupidity, according to Heinlein, is a capital offense. Martin Luther King said “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.” Jennifer Lee Carrol described it: “Stupidity makes you dangerous to yourself and everyone around you.”

    Perhaps John Farnam’s rule of stupid is what we most need: “Don’t go to stupid places; don’t associate with stupid people; don’t do stupid things.” In Minneapolis, we saw Farnam’s rule violated – and then, seeing the results were not what they wanted, the folks against deporting illegals doubled down, even more came out of the woodwork, with a story that denied Good’s contribution to her death. Then ICE doubled down and sent in another thousand agents.

    Some of our mojados survived the trip through the Darien Gap, the rest of central America, Mexico and across the Rio Grande – others died on the way. I think of Gonzalo’s mother – a pregnant teen, sixty years ago, going north from Yucatan so her baby would be born in the US and Gonzalo would have opportunities that she didn’t. She took the risks knowingly, won her gamble, and was promptly deported back to Mexico, with newborn US citizen Gonzalo. That was a different, calculated decision.

    In the woods, don’t hang out under widowmakers. I have one here on the place, that my father pointed out to avoid over sixty years ago. I’m looking forward to sharing it with my grandsons – let’s see how many generations can share that hazard. There’s a reason to wear a brainbucket when you’re using a chainsaw.

    Hanging out with stupid people can be hazardous – the type of friend that says or does exactly the wrong thing and gets the entire bar PO’d at two or three people. Come to think of it, part of that may include going to stupid places and doing stupid things. Right now, the news kind of focuses me on Minnesota and ICE – but there are a lot of other opportunities to go to stupid places and do stupid things with stupid people. The point is to avoid them – and at 76, I’ve probably been lucky more than skillful. Not having a Darwin Award for the wall is a good thing.

  • Computer Repair by Mussolini

    My cat decided my laptop needed to be kicked to the floor. Everyone who has a cat has experienced it – the cat jumps to a flat surface, and makes the decision that whatever is there needs to be pushed to the floor. While cats have a tendency to land on their feet, laptop computers have a tendency to land on their corners. And on most laptops, two of the four corners include the hinges that let you lift the screen.

    So my laptop had the right hinge still connected, and the left side of the screen was hanging free. There are an amazing number of problems in using an HP where the left side is loose – all sorts of shut down and start up problems occur because that’s the corner with the switch. I thought of epoxy – but hinges have to move, and generally, anything I fix with epoxy needs to be thicker than the original piece or it will break again.

    I pulled out the dial calipers – a handy tool. The computer, at the spot where it was broken was just under half an inch. So I started looking through the scrap for a chunk of aluminum with a half-inch channel. No such luck. I couldn’t find the piece that did what I needed. Then remnants of my early years struck my mind – could I find a piece of metal in the clutter of a half-century of gun repair and modification. Maybe an old Carcano or Steyr clip? The Steyr clip was angled, but Cartridges of the World told me that the rim diameter was0.470 – the right size, but the angle wouldn’t work well. On the other hand, the Carcano rim was .450 – and if memory served, the clip was all right angles. It was a question of looking through 40 years of collected miscellaneous junk for something that looks like this:

    Well, it took a while to find it – (I haven’t had a Carcano around in over forty years. Nice enough little carbine, but less practical than an M1 carbine. Thought I was doing great when I swapped it off.) Took a grinder and removed the right side, and I had my brace to repair the broken computer. It took a lot longer to figure out the part I could repurpose and then find it than it did to modify it and fix my computer. And if the cat gets ambitious and breaks the right hinge, I still have one more perfectly original Italian Carcano clip on hand to use for one more repair. I am sure that Mussolini never expected that parts for the rifles he used to invade Ethiopia would be used to repair computers.

  • You Haven’t Met All The People . . .

    One morning I saw a meme – maybe an unattributed quote: “You still haven’t met all the people you’re going to regret ever meeting.” I’d been ill with chest congestion for several weeks, so on that hand it was an upbeat message. On the the other hand, it’s a depressing description of the world as it is. On the third hand, I may well be one of the people folks regret ever meeting.

    So I got to thinking – and the people I remember have all enriched my life in some manner. The narcissist, whose rage provided the motivation to study up on narcissism, taught me to look beyond the presentation of self. It’s a wonderful gift, to see others more as they are, and go past the disguises that cover up the problem. Some people really do have value as bad examples.

    Others add amusement to life just by being there – I recall one character on one of the main drags of Missoula, as I walked from the motel to a restaurant for breakfast. As he stood in front of me, and whipped his overcoat open, I had time to think, “I surely don’t need a flasher this morning.” I was wrong – the lining of his coat was covered with bible verses that he used in his missionar2y work of bothering people before breakfast.

    In South Dakota, we had biennial visits from Wisconsin Jehovah Witnesses – nice people on a mission to spread their gospel in an area they believed was devoid of their reality. They’d stop by for 15 or 20 minutes, every other year, with no real expectation of making converts. I liked them. Missionaries that stop by for 15 minutes every other year are very tolerable people. More frequent encounters may lead to becoming people you regret meeting.

    The one man I quickly regretted meeting was the county cop who busted me for speeding through Ashland on my next to last trip moving back home to Montana, He did make a point of cheerfully welcoming me back home – but he did it with a forty-dollar bond I forfeit for the crime. Never saw him again, but I was still out forty bucks.

    In general, karma tends to reach a balance – and that’s enough for the people I regret meeting.