Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: writing

  • SCCY Is Gone

    Years ago, I used my Cabelas card points to buy a SCCY pistol that was on deal.  Half of the reason I bought it was the impressive warranty.  Then the doggone thing worked so well that I never used the guarantee.  The only problems I ever encountered were some ancient Egyptian ammunition that had been captured by Israel in the Six Days War (back in 1967) and stored poorly until they auctioned it off as military surplus.  When ammunition is over a half-century old, and has been stored poorly, it probably isn’t the pistol’s fault when it doesn’t fire.

    It isn’t a bad little pistol – but SCCY (which produced 987,075 pistols between 2017 and 2023 according to BATF) found itself sued by Rochester and Buffalo (New York) in 2022.  In 2024, SCCY learned that the company’s insurer didn’t cover this sort of liability.  (Another comment was that there were over 50,000 SCCY pistols recovered from crime scenes – I’m not sure what the time length was for this statistic).  Anyway SCCY went under the auctioneer’s hammer – and mine still hasn’t malfed.  I’m pretty sure I don’t have a warranty anymore.

    Mine looks like this:

    Other colors are (or maybe were) available – like this:

     The bright colors and the pastels never were my thing.  Neither was the newest model – the SCCY cpx-3 versions.  I’m old fashioned.  I like hammers, and the new versions solved the problem of a heavy trigger pull by replacing the hammer with a striker mechanism.  On my cpx-2, I can’t cock the hammer (double action only) but I can see it through a slot in the back of the slide.  And a long, hard trigger pull is the only safety on the pistol.  To be fair, the hammer isn’t cocked until the trigger makes it all the way back – so it’s really just as safe as the old double action revolver.  Safety aside – baby blue, bright orange, and pink just aren’t colors that belong on my sidearm.  If you feel differently, that’s fine.  

    Back to the striker versus hammer argument – my only striker fired pistol is a 1914 Mauser design.  It cocks every time the slide goes back, and the only protection is the safety.  One safety.  The old 1911 design (Colt, by John Moses Browning) with a hammer has a bunch of safeties.  Mauser had only one.  There have been a lot of changes to strikers over the past century – but I didn’t get my first semi-automatic until Browning’s design was almost 75 years old.  Since I’m now 75, I don’t expect to ever be comfortable with a striker fired semi-auto pistol.  Heck, I’m not comfortable with a concealed hammer single action.

    Anyway, SCCY is no more – and without that outstanding warranty, the prices on both new and used SCCY pistols seem to have dropped.  My own experience is simple – I have taken my magazines apart, and smoothed the rough edges.  They worked before, and I’m not certain they needed the smoothing – it’s something I learned at TSJC, and I do it more based on faith than science. 

  • School District 53 — Older Than Lincoln County

    School District 53 – Trego School – started in September of 1905.  I finally understand why it’s District 53 – it started when the community was still in Flathead County.  Matter of fact, Flathead County had only split from Missoula County in 1904. Lincoln County began in 1909 – 5 years later.  The lower numbers – such as Troy’s District 1 – are Lincoln County numbers. A lot was happening in 1904 – and the map of School District 53 showed another thing I hadn’t realized.  In 1905, there was no Fortine Creek.  The map clearly reads Edna Creek.  The dam running logs down to Eureka Lumber was built in 1904, and 1904 was the year for the first railroad mainline relocation.  The first main line, running back of Marion to Libby was replaced by a line running from Stryker, through Trego, Fortine and Eureka, then dropping into the Kootenai valley to run down to Libby.  (The second mainline relocation occurred along with Libby Dam).The map shows that railroad – and the predecessor of highway 93 – both running to the west of Dickie Lake.  No road shows where the highway now is to the east of the lake. Thinking on it, School District 53 was there before either Fortine or Trego received the communities names. Trego was a nameless construction boom town for the first time.  1904 brought the railroad relocation,  a new dam being built (on Edna Creek, before it was named Fortine Creek) and a new Ranger station was under construction at Ant Flat.  Small wonder that Flathead County got news of a new community that needed a school district ASAP.  It would be over sixty more years before the second railroad relocation and new dam (this one on the Kootenai) would repeat the situation to build a new school for District 53. When we get the copies of those old maps ready, we’ll add them to an article – but for now, it’s kind of neat to realize that School District 53 means that Trego school was created before Lincoln County – and the higher district number means that it was a Flathead County district and got the number from Kalispell.

  • Trego History – 1945 to 1965 Modernizing The Community

    Around 1945, the Edna Creek School closed. The period between 1945 and 1960 saw Trego reduced from four schools – Swamp Creek, Edna Creek and Stryker closed, leaving District 53 with only Trego School. The technologic transition that consolidated the bantam community’s schools was gravel. The original roads were dirt – but in the Forties the addition of gravel made the roads all season. By 1948, Lincoln Electric was moving and shaking – and, with the addition of gravel roads and electricity, it was no longer necessary to build schools close to the students. The era of school buses and electric lights had replaced the time of four one-room schools in a single school district.

    Again, it is a time of social changes rather than impressive individuals – the end of the Forties showed the cooperative effort of clearing land for the powerlines – and that cooperative effort moved into adding the Trego Community Hall to the new 3-classroom school that replaced the log school that had burned. Three classrooms, electricity, an electric stove, and running water that replaced the outhouses (though the school board kept the outhouses until 1965, probably making sure that electricity and pumped water wasn’t just a fad). The homes were electrified – sometimes just wires stapled to wall studs, supporting switches and light bulbs – but the time of kerosene lamps was past. Dances at the Trego Community Hall brought in folks from a wide area.

    The mid-thirties had brought in a new group of settlers – many from around Great Falls. This time saw an end to the logging camps as timber transportation moved to trucks – another change brought by the technology of gravel roads. Balers – wire tie – came to the small ranches, making them more able to cope with winters. The Trego Mercantile combined a general store with the contract post office – and electricity brought refrigeration and cold beer. A later influx of people brought in a World War II veteran population cohort – some immediately after the war, some showing up as military retirees in the early sixties. The Forest Service at Ant Flat grew – yet this classic time of cooperative community building was really just a pause before Trego’s second boom would occur.

  • Rules For A Gunfight – From Gerard Van der Leun

    One of the last emails I received from Gerard Van der Leun was the following “Rules For A Gunfight.” Gerard has passed from writing his American Digest – and I kind of miss his observations and humor. These bits of wisdom are reputed to come from Drill Instructor Joe Frick.

    American Digest: Conceived in Liberty

    RULES TO LIVE BY
    1. Forget about knives, bats, and fists. Bring a gun. Preferably, bring at least two guns. Bring all of your friends who have guns. Bring four times the ammunition you think you could ever need.
    2. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammunition is cheap – life is expensive. If you shoot inside, buckshot is your friend. A new wall is cheap – funerals are expensive.
    3. Only hits count. The only thing worse than a miss is a slow miss.
    4. If your shooting stance is good, you’re probably not moving fast enough or using cover correctly.
    5. Move away from your attacker and go to cover. Distance is your friend. (Bulletproof cover and diagonal or lateral movement are preferred.)
    6. If you can choose what to bring to a gunfight, bring a semi or full-automatic long gun and a friend with a long gun.
    7. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
    8. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating, reloading, and running. Yell “Fire!” Why “Fire”? Cops will come with the Fire Department, sirens often scare off the bad guys, or at least cause them to lose concentration and will…. and who is going to summon help if you yell ”Intruder,” “Glock” or “Winchester?”
    9. Accuracy is relative: most combat shooting standards will be more dependent on “pucker factor” than the inherent accuracy of the gun.
    10. Someday someone may kill you with your own gun, but they should have to beat you to death with it because it is empty.
    11. Always cheat, always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
    12. Have a plan.
    13. Have a back-up plan, because the first one won’t work. “No battle plan ever survives 10 seconds past first contact with an enemy.”
    14. Use cover or concealment as much as possible, but remember, sheetrock walls and the like stop nothing but your pulse when bullets tear through them.
    15. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
    16. Don’t drop your guard.
    17. Always tactical load and threat scan 360 degrees. Practice reloading one-handed and off-hand shooting. That’s how you live if hit in your “good” side.
    18. Watch their hands. Hands kill. Smiles, frowns and other facial expressions don’t (In God we trust. Everyone else keeps your hands where I can see them.)
    19. Decide NOW to always be aggressive ENOUGH, quickly ENOUGH.
    20. The faster you finish the fight, the less shot you will get.
    21. Be polite. Be professional. But, have a plan to kill everyone you meet if necessary, because they may want to kill you.
    22. Be courteous to everyone, overly friendly to no one.
    23. Your number one option for personal security is a lifelong commitment to avoidance, deterrence, and de-escalation.
    24. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun, the caliber of which does not start with anything smaller than ”4″.
    25. Use a gun that works EVERY TIME. “All skill is in vain when an Angel blows the powder from the flintlock of your musket.” At a practice session, throw your gun into the mud, then make sure it still works. You can clean it later.
    26. Practice shooting in the dark, with someone shouting at you, when out of breath, etc.
    27. Regardless of whether justified or not, you will feel sad about killing another human being. It is better to be sad than to be room temperature.
    28. The only thing you EVER say afterward is, “He said he was going to kill me. I believed him. I’m sorry, Officer, but I’m very upset now. I can’t say anything more. Please speak with my attorney.”
    Finally, Drill Instructor Frick’s Rules For Un-armed Combat.
    1: Never be unarmed.
    Thank you for being a member. Please forward this to others that should be members. All writers need readers. I would like to have many more like you. – Gerard Van der Leun American Digest © 2022

  • Long Time Problem Area

    I was sent to Sunday School as a small boy. I’m fairly certain my parents believed it was part of a process to civilize the young – but at the other end of life, as an old man, I’m realizing that it taught me about areas that have been filled with strife and conflict since the dawning of civilization. In general, my Sunday School lessons showed that the mid-east is an area with a long record of strife, war and conflict.

    Gaza, as I recall, was the place where Samson went to see a girl, and left town ad midnight, taking the gates to the city with him. At age seven, I wasn’t real sure what he was doing with the girl, but I was definitely old enough to realize that he was violating the code of the west: leave all gates as you find them. It’s downright un-neighborly to haul a guy’s gates – and gateposts- to the top of the next hill. I could understand how Samson had PO’d the town elders.

    Later in the Samson story, I learned how the guy got a haircut, was weakened, and the local constabulary gouged out his eyes. It left me cautious about haircuts for years, and thinking that some folks just don’t have any sense of humor about people who mess with their gates. At 75, I’m not sure that Sunday School was intended to teach me to leave all gates as you found them.

    On the other hand, there was the way the Israelites were treated in Egypt. The story didn’t totally make sense. When I hashed my way through it, and figured it out, I came up with the idea that the Israelites came down on irrigated cropland with their sheep and goats, and that the Egyptians’ courts sentenced them to labor to make up for the damages the sheep did to the wheat fields. That still makes sense to me.

    There was a bit of a problem in keeping tribes straight as a little heathen in Sunday School – I didn’t know any Philistines – but I knew quite a few Filipinos. Tough little bastards. I came out of that lesson knowing that Samson had kicked ass on 10,000 Filipinos. Probably not the intended lesson – particularly since I liked the Filipinos I knew.

    So I’ve never been surprised by wars and atrocities in the mid-east. And I don’t expect any of the players to wear white hats. The record they showed me in Sunday School suggests that staying out of the middle east, and making a specific effort to avoid Gaza, makes for a healthier, happier life.

  • What Happens to Credentialism?

    Colleges – and even high schools – exist to provide credentials. Probably the highest example of credentialism is the MD or DO – but most of our programs boil down to taking the correct group of classes, achieving a certain minimum score, and acquiring a credential. You pretty much have to get the credential to get the interview that gets you the job. In this simplification, there isn’t a lot of difference between the bachelors, masters and doctorates in the academy and the classifications of apprentice, journeyman and master in the skilled trades (take plumbing or electricity for examples).

    There are a whole lot of jobs where I lack the credentials to even apply. We’ve developed a credentialed society, and sometimes the benefits of the credential seem hard to find. Sometimes the requirements in terms of work experience seem like gatekeepers. And more frequently, people are asking what is the value of the credential.

    My credential is a Ph.D. in sociology. If you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of people who recommend against getting a degree in sociology. I suppose I’m lucky – I got a job in the subject, and retired working at the same topic that interested me as an undergrad. Other folks have other credentials. I’m reading Neil Howe’s book about the fourth turning – and his jacket blurb identifies him as a demographer holding graduate degrees in history and economics from Yale. There are a lot of ways to get the title of demographer – his was, obviously, different than mine.

    After retiring, I’ve spent a few years on the local school board – and teaching jobs are open only to the certified. I started with the belief that certification in special education brought with it some incredible teaching skills – yet as I left the board, I left with a strong suspicion that we had hired people with the credential to evaluate our students, but once the evaluation was complete we wound up with teacher’s aides who did most of the actual teaching. I knew Dave Peterson – and saw more than one of his students go on to graduate and become teachers. But those years of closer observation showed me that Dave was a special teacher – but that wasn’t directly related to a special education certificate. At the Libby Campus of FVCC, I worked in the Academic Reinforcement Center with Connie Malyevac. Connie was a better teacher than I – I watched her reach out and find ways to get students on track, students who were beyond my reach. I was good – Connie was great. It wasn’t a question of credentials – she simply had more ability to reach out and bring students back onto the path.

    Remembering those days when I Worked with Connie makes me understand why we need to be moving into some different forms of credentials that reflect ability. I’m looking at the SAT – the Scholastic Aptitude Test is now reducing the length and complexity of statements to which students respond and from which they determine the correct information. These are the questions my students referred to as “story questions.” The real world has too much information – much of the problem of thinking is just deciding the data that is relevant to the problem.

    I’m glad to have had the University system as a place to work – but I could see how it was breaking down and no longer providing valid credentials. I think on Howe’s work – where his credentials are more the Ivy League degrees than the topic – and I recall the Whorfian Hypothesis. Benjamin Whorf was a Chemical Engineer (MIT BS and MS) who studied the Hopi language and came up with the idea that people experience the world based on the structure of their language. This link shows that MIT still remembers (web.mit.edu.allanmc.www.whorf.scienceandlinguistics.pdf )

    Benjamin Whorf’s name moved into social science fields because of his competence in linguistics, while his credentials were degrees in Chemical Engineering from MIT. Perhaps it’s time for us to start looking at developing competence over credentialing?