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Rocky’s Reloading Room |
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Amerika: 2010
It is the year 2010. Unable any longer to quell the insistent clamor of those who want ever more gun control, Congress surrenders and bans all guns. Every firearm except for police and military is to be destroyed.
Voluntary cooperation with the plan is widely broadcast on the evening news, but is far below official estimates. Fewer than half of the estimated 250 million firearms in the country are turned in for destruction. The remainder cannot be traced, are illegally hoarded or mysteriously disappear.
Violent crime increases dramatically. Murders, assaults, rapes, robberies, kidnapping, and other violent crime rates soar as criminals prey on unarmed victims. Police are overwhelmed. Crimes less than murder are ignored due to lack of time and resources. Taxes are raised to fight the crime wave.
A black market in illegal guns explodes, soon outstripping drugs in both volume and money. Criminals and citizens alike become desperate for guns. Some of those who illegally hoarded guns are discovered providing them to defenseless neighbors and trusted friends. Ironically, these citizens are among the few prosecuted, as the government “sets an example.” As a result, the courts are clogged with citizen gun hoarders while hardened criminals roam free.
Desperate to find and confiscate illegal guns, the government hires 500,000 gun enforcement agents. Proclaiming itself virtually at war, the government suspends laws requiring search warrants and eventually declares martial law. Homes are forcibly entered and searched at random. In some cases, residents are injured and even killed during these violent incursions. To support the war on guns, taxes are doubled. Armed criminals, meanwhile, take to the roads, ambushing truckers and the few private vehicles still foolhardy enough to be on the highways. As a result, interstate commerce collapses.
Urban dwellers flee the rising violence, afraid for their lives. Cities turn to abandoned hulks, virtual free fire zones populated only by gangs of armed criminals. Police can enter cities only in tanks and armored vehicles, but they seldom risk it. City dwellers turned refugees rapidly become destitute. No one will take them in, as every residence has been turned into a fortress to repel criminals. Massive encampments of refugees form, only to be ravaged by disease, hunger and roaming criminals. Tens of thousands die attempting to flee into Mexico and Canada. The government can no longer provide any services except the war on guns.
Factories and businesses fail when their workers are afraid to leave their families unprotected. Riots occur at food stores. The economy crumbles under the weight of rampant crime, the collapsed trucking industry and runaway taxes. Millions die, but no one will ever be able to chart the actual number. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Farfetched? Science fiction? Impossible? Think about it.
Wood, Brass and Steel
"Freedom is framed by muskets," said Charlton Heston, holding one aloft at the most recent annual convention of the National Rifle Association. And so it is. The bronze image of the Minuteman at Concord Bridge bravely and purposefully clutching a musket in his hand is the symbol of our nation's creation.
Other statues -all of men bravely grasping guns- portray how this nation has been preserved: Bunker Hill, Iwo Jima, Cho San, Saigon. In fact, the parts of a musket itself tell us of bravery, spirit, determination, courage, just plain guts.
Picture in your mind's eye a musket, the tool that obtained and maintains our freedom. It is made of wood, brass and steel. Those things symbolize the spirit of the true America.
Wood: It is a symbol of constancy, trustworthiness and dependability. Old Ironsides was so called because British cannonballs could not pierce her stout oak sides. A wooden expression hints at an unchangeable mind. "Going against the grain" means defying the prevalent attitude. A woodsman is the master of his surroundings. One of our greatest Presidents was called Old Hickory because he would bend but would not break.
Brass: A symbol of hardness and durability. "Getting down to brass tacks" represents achieving the most important element of a matter. As bold as brass. A brass plaque is a tribute to an accomplishment or a memorial to bravery. Not always a compliment, brassy people are flashy and somewhat overconfident. But Americans -for better or worse- are thought of in just that way around the world.
Steel: This metal is the symbol of strength, endurance and toughness. To steel oneself is to buck up one's courage. Ironman competition is the extreme test of endurance and strength. Heroes are steel-jawed and steely -eyed. Superman, the man of steel, was the champion of truth, justice and the American way.
Today, more than 250 years after the Minuteman, guns are still made of wood and steel. Their ammunition is made of brass. And Americans still use them to maintain freedom in places like Kuwait, Korea and Bosnia. To take away those guns is to deprive Americans of the very symbol of America. For wood, brass and steel still make up guns as well as the spirit of Americans.
Time To Ban Guns
It’s true: guns cause crime. The mere presence of guns incites people to violence. If there were no guns, there would be less crime and violence.
Actually, those statements are only true if we say that guns in movies cause crime and violence. The mere presence of guns in movies incites people to violence. If there were no guns in movies, there would be less crime and violence. The make-believe world of entertainment is responsible for much of the real-world violence we see today.
It has long been known that the majority of violent crimes are committed by young men. It is also well known that young men respond to “hero” images and try to emulate their heroes. And it is undeniably true that entertainment celebrities are put forth as today’s heroes.
Celebrities are held before our eyes at every turn as the people to emulate. Newspapers follow every detail of celebrities’ lives; the internet is choked with celebrity adoration pages; television programs are seemingly divided between talk shows featuring celebrities and awards shows where celebrities pander to other celebrities. Entertainment celebrities are treated as legitimate sources of advice about world affairs, politics, science and more. Why wouldn’t young men imitate their favorite celebrities in every aspect? And what are these celebrities doing when they are put forward for imitation? They are shooting people with the highest-powered, fastest firing, evilest-looking guns that can be gotten – on the screen. Is it any wonder that our young men do the same – on our streets?
The time has come for a few modest, common sense restrictions on the freedom of speech. Let there be restrictions on the kinds of guns that are available on screen. Let guns on screen be limited to one per film. Let every celebrity who wants to use a gun in a film be subject to a background check and a competence test. Let there be a 14-day waiting period before a scene involving a gun can be filmed. Let guns on screen be limited to police and military only. Let the use of guns on screen be limited to sporting purposes only. Let no gun on screen be allowed to fire more than ten times. Let no gun with military appearance be allowed at all on screen.
None of these restrictions will end anyone’s right to make movies. None of them are a burden for legitimate filmmakers. And all have been applied or recommended as laws for non-celebrities. Lawmakers apparently believe that none of these restrictions is an infringement on the Second Amendment, so how could they object to applying the same restrictions to the First?
History by the Handful
They're made of brass, copper, lead -- and history. The rifle and pistol cartridges of a century ago are more than mere relics. Each has its own story to tell; a drama or perhaps a romance. Studied in the light of their times, they allow an astute collector today a chance to peer into those times and gain insights.
Collecting cartridges may be one of the lesser known sidelines of being a gun enthusiast, but it can be highly rewarding. You also have to agree that it's certainly a whale of a lot less expensive than collecting original antique guns. I started keeping examples of ammunition for my hunter education classes, letting my students see and handle samples of both modern and obsolete cartridges. Soon I started poking around at gun shows, finding trays of old cartridges in calibers I'd never heard of. To answer my student's inevitable questions, I'd search for descriptions of what kind of gun used these old cartridges. Before long, I began to see patterns in why cartridges were developed, how they were used and finally why they passed from favor and disappeared.
Like many shooters, I now have a cigar box full of intriguing old rounds and a shelf of reference books to thumb through. The challenge of finding an unknown round and searching out its biography is a lot of fun in itself. It also gives me an appreciation of what it was like for yesterday's shooters. Books such as Frank Barnes' classic, "Cartridges of the World" contain not only answers to my questions but revelations. I soon began to realize that these forgotten old cartridges had much in common with today's hottest rounds. Each had its supporters and its detractors. Some had very narrow niches and others had broad applications. Among them were multitudes of "deer cartridges", different rounds used for the same purpose. Some rounds remained popular for decades and some disappeared in just a few years. And, just like today, sometimes the reasons for a round's popularity were at least as interesting as those for its eventual obsolesence.
Take the once-popular .45-90 Winchester. In the middle 1880s, civilians scoffed at the Army's .45-70 Government. The military loading was so slow in flight, swore the sports, that a distant adversary, on seeing the bloom of smoke from a cavalrymen's carbine, could jump aside before the bullet's arrival! The extra 20 grains of black powder in the sportsmen's .45-90 made that feat impossible (even if it had been possible with the .45-70, which is highly doubtful).
As an aside, while the numeric designation of old cartridges told a lot about them (the .45-120-500 is a .45 caliber loaded with 120 grains of powder and a 500 grain bullet), it wasn't a sure means of identifying which round fit your rifle. The problem was the profusion of proprietary cartridges in common used during the 1880s. The .40-65 Winchester was identical to the .40-60 Marlin, except for powder charge, but was completely different from the .40-60 Winchester, .40-60 Maynard or .40-65 Ballard. Confused? Consider that there were at least seven different .40-70 cartridges by various makers, almost none of which were interchangeable.
Back to cartridges with interesting lives. Examples are the pencil-like .22-15, .25-21 and .25-25 Stevens numbers. Naturally, black powder fouling was a rather severe problem in such tiny bores. Nonetheless, the three were popular target and small game cartridges chambered in a variety of rifle models. At the time, no one gave a second thought to wiping the heavy powder fouling from the bore with every shot. But with the advent of smokeless powder loads for such as the .22 WCF, .22 Savage High-Power and .25-20 Single Shot, the Stevens round and several others like it died as suddenly as the woodchucks their replacements hit. Even cartridges well-known today can evoke vivid images of another time. I can hold a battered old .45-70, its brass turned green and its massive lead bullet now white, and imagine a young cavalryman clutching with pride his new trapdoor Springfield rifle. And an efficient-looking .405 Winchester floods my imagination with scenes of Teddy Roosevelt clutching his beloved Model 1895 Winchester as he rides herd in a Montana blizzard, or pads cautiously after an African lion.
The still-burgeoning popularity of the .45 Colt cartridge owes largely from our mental images of the Old West and the Colt Peacemaker. More properly called the Single Action Army Model of 1872, this universal equalizer was the weapon of choice for Westerners like Sam Bass, Wild Bill Hitchcock, Tom Horn, Annie Oakley and Bill Breakenridge. But to be honest, the mental images most of us conjure up at the name of the Colt Peacemaker are those of Gene Autry, Tex Ritter, Hopalong Cassidy, Randolph Scott or John Wayne. That's fine too, for even if some of our heroes are imaginary, their Colts and Winchesters are just as real as those of the true West's men and women, be they famous, infamous or unknown. Indeed, the Colt and the '94 Winchester are the definitive guns of the West, both history's and Hollywood's.
But they're not the only such guns. Remington, Marlin, Henry, Savage, Wesson, Starr, Maynard, Springfield, Ballard, Bullard and firearms by scores of other makers adorned the hips, shoulders, purses and saddlebags of real Westerners. Today, such pistol and rifle cartridges as the .32 S&W, .32 Special, .38-40, and .38-55 are well remembered, although deservedly less used than such popular hold-overs as the .32-20, .38 Special, .30-30 and the afore-mentioned .45 Colt. But totally unknown now are many rounds which were quite popular as late as the 1920s, such as the .28-30-120 Stevens, an exceptionally accurate round that has the honor of being the first American-designed 7mm cartridge.
For me at least, it is the older cartridges that induce some of the most interesting images. For example, measure the effort of dressing and skinning a single elk against the tasks that faced the buffalo hunter of the 1870s. These men made their living by butchering dozens, perhaps hundreds of half-ton beasts in a single afternoon of shooting. Far from their romanticized image, these lice-ridden professional killers lived a life permeated by gore, stench, heat and arduous labor. For today's knowledgeable collector, those are the tales that curl up like muzzle smoke from a cartridge such as the cigar-sized .45-120-500 Sharps or the even more massive .50-140-700, both of which were introduced in the waning days of the buffalo hunter.
Another now-forgotten cartridge that once boasted wide appeal and many uses is the .40-65 Winchester. This "deer" round was chambered in the Model 86 Winchester rifle, the Winchester single shot and the Marlin Model 95. Considered a powerful and effective load, it was produced for nearly 50 years in both black and smokeless powder loadings.
Contrasted with the broadly-useful .40-65 Winchester were some cartridge designs so limited in application that they achieved little or no following among hunters or target shooters. Such was the ill-conceived .35 Winchester Self-Loading. Chambered only in the Winchester Model 1905 autoloader, the expensive but ineffectual .35 SL was discontinued after only two years. It was replaced by the .351 Win SL and its slightly modified Model 1907 autoloading rifle. Supposedly, the .351 SL was supposed to go its sire "1" better by virtue of its .24-inch longer case, but was equally undistinguished and today goes unmourned.
There were even rounds that enjoyed virtually no lifetimes whatsoever. These are cartridges that, as far as anyone knows, have never been chambered in any kind of firearm. Examples include the .44-85 and .44-100 Wesson. Both were listed on advertising sheets of the U.S. Cartridge Company about 1881, but no Wesson rifles so chambered have ever been discovered, and no records exist that hint of their manufacture.
Finally, there's the Refrigerator Perry of rifle rounds, the .70-150 Winchester. Appearing on Winchester's 1888 cartridge board, some claim this immense, bottlenecked case was nothing more than a company joke, but one source claims that the company modified one Model 87 shotgun for it. Actually a necked-down 12-gauge brass shotshell fitted with a 900-grain bullet atop 150 grains of black powder, the behemoth load would probably churn up something like 1,300 fps and 3380 ft/lbs. I leave recoil to your imagination.
And imagination, after all, is as much a part of cartridge collecting as curiosity. Besides being fun in its own right, cartridge collecting helps me to better appreciate the incredibly accurate and efficient calibers we have today. But being of a whimsical sort, I wonder what some late 21st-century deer hunter would think if he found a corroded old 7mm Remington Magnum among the rocks. Would he compare it to his laser rifle and pity the poor slob who had to put up with such a sleepy old round? Or would he think back to what surely were the good old days?
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Editorials, Humor And Stuff (Page 2)
Continuing on this page are a number of my short articles, newspaper pieces, editorials and just plain random thoughts. You may have to scroll through the lot to find one that’s even remotely entertaining or enlightening—if there are any at all. But please enjoy them anyway. |
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CAMP FOOD: ONLY FOR THE BRAVE
Deer camp is no place for a vegetarian. It's also no place for the squeamish.
Anyone who spends time in deer camp will quickly realize that the menu consists almost wholly of meat. More often than not, that means whole meat, recently on the hoof. Sometimes with hooves still on. That has probably been the rule since Og and his cave buddies gathered for mammoth camp, and it's still true today.
Nowadays, hunter education courses are strongly safety oriented. That's appropriate; but while these courses have carefully crafted lessons on gun safety, archery safety, tree stand safety and even off-road vehicle safety, nowhere is there even the slightest mention of what may the deer hunter's number one safety hazard: deer camp food. That the vast majority of deer hunters actually survive deer camp food is a tribute to the strength of the human constitution. Typical deer camp food, however, is capable of permanently amending a hunter's constitution.
In every deer hunter's anticipatory mind, the first night's menu will include cuts of venison, elk, dove or duck breasts, squirrel quarters or other delectable delights, all lovingly cooked over a fragrant open fire. Actual first night meal: large and small pieces of year-old, freezer-burned, unidentifiable meat tossed onto an eyebrow-singeing inferno redolent of "Texaco tinder", then served either raw or resembling charcoal. Often, individual pieces are charcoal, having been retrieved in error after a fall through the grill.
Subsequent meals are the same. Not just the same fare, mind you, but the same meat. Between meals, deer hunters are preoccupied with deer hunting, not kitchen duty; the ungnawed or hardly gnawed chunks of meat go pretty much unattended on the cold fire grate, except by various bugs. More experienced camp chefs apply a generous coating of ground pepper to all meat before the initial immolation. This prevents later speculation about the origin of the black specks that cover the meat. But since morning and evening deer camp meals are most often eaten in the dark by the severely bleary-eyed, this extra step is usually omitted as frivolous.
The meat supply, naturally, is replenished in the same thoughtful and meticulous manner in which it was planned. Parts of deer killed by camp members, an unlabelled package from someone's freezer, a whole pig or whatever; bloody or frozen solid, each is simply tossed onto the fire and left for all takers. Put a blaze orange baseball cap on his head and Og would have been right at home. This is, after all, the way hunters have always cooked: build fire, add meat.
But not even hunters can live by meat alone. Og presumably relied on leaves, bark and anything else that couldn't run away as nutritional supplements. Today's deer hunters are somewhat more sophisticated, if not as versatile. Serving as deer camp's only other solid food group is the infamous bean pot. Managed with the same boundless depths of gastronomic creativity as the meat pile, the bean pot is set to simmer the first day of camp with whatever stock the assembled hunters have each brought. Beans are then added after each meal, more or less keeping the pot full. Type does not matter; red beans, kidney beans, navy beans, lima beans, butter beans, pinto beans - heck, any beans. Occasionally added by self-described hunter/gourmets are judicious quantities of onions, jalepeño peppers, and those ubiquitous camp favorites - beer and ketchup. Left to bubble lava-like for the duration of camp, the beans are eaten as courage and sensitive bunk mates allow.
Hmmm, I often wonder if it was a hunter whose bunk mates partook only sparingly of the volatile beans who coined the phrase "pot luck." But I digress.
Inevitably, after several days of such put-and-take management, the bean pot itself will no longer be visible, having acquired an overall outer coating of burned bean crust. This could be considered an aesthetic bonus, as the brick-red crust contrasts nicely with the hunters, who have simultaneously acquired an overall outer coating of dirt-gray dust. Neophyte hunters soon learn that the gray lumps may respond better to attempts at conversation, but the red lump is considerably more witty.
Deer camp's back-to-prehistoric approach to cooking also applies to other routines. For example, if eating utensils other than fingers are required, they are merely retrieved from the pile used at the last meal. The fastidious will wipe fingers or utensils on a pants leg before use, but the practice is viewed by some as being prissy. After use, utensils are returned to the pile until needed again. This is camp hygiene. In some old fashioned camps, non-disposable plates are still used. Here, the pile/pants technique is extended to include plates. But in more advanced camps, hunters merely toss their grease-soaked paper plates onto the ashes of the cook fire as a handy substitute for the aforementioned Texaco tinder.
All this fun and frivolity continue until the hunters either run out of vacation time or run out of antacid tablets. Nobody ever gets sick, which is proof that miracles still happen. Or else it proves that hunters can stomach stuff so deadly it won't even grow germs. Whichever, hunters have eaten camp food every year since the first mammoth season, always exclaiming how much better things taste when outdoors. Or outcaves.
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When I Grow Up, I Want To Be A Geezer
When I grow up, I want to be a geezer. As in, "He's sure a crusty old geezer." That's right - the direct opposite of a yuppie. Still can't quite visualize a geezer? Just look around.
There's no shortage of role models for geezerdom. Television brought us characters like Gabby Hayes, Grampa Walton, and Grampa McCoy (does anybody except geezers remember The Real McCoy's?). Certainly no literary character fits the mold better than Patrick McManus' unforgettable outdoorsman Rancid Crabtree. OK, so now the picture is clear. But why would anybody want to be one?
Picture a geezer you know, or better yet, imagine yourself as a geezer. Does anybody tell a geezer how to act? How to dress? What to do? Nobody. Well, maybe a geezette (which, of course, is a female geezer, an equally honorable and independent sort). But nobody else dares tell a geezer anything. At the same time, a geezer can, and does, tell everybody else how to do everything.
As for their dress, geezers can wear anything they darn well please. Usually it's something like well-lived-in overalls, a flannel shirt and perhaps a slouch hat. In fact, that practically describes the official geezer uniform. But whatever a geezer wants to wear is OK, cause he's the only one passing judgement.
As an item of further identification, beards are pretty much standard for geezers. Any length is possible, but the most common is the three-day variety with the texture of a wire brush. Geezer beards generally run to salt-and-pepper coloring, which may explain the salty language emanating therefrom. Naturally, beards belonging to geezettes are less intimidating, but no less salty.
And, of course, geezers do pretty much whatever they want. Rock on the porch and tell lies to all the neighborhood kids? Why, that's what geezers are for. Take a passel of young'uns fishin'? Same thing. A geezer can putter in the garden, take the dog out after quail or just nap awhile. Why not? Life is just one long weekend for a geezer.
When not at home or afield, the natural habitat of the geezer includes hardware stores, barber shops, gas stations and the like. They prefer places where they can mosey, jawbone and dawdle. (And if those terms mean nothing to you, you're just not geezer material.) Geezers like comfortable places fit for comfortable folks. No malls, styling salons or convenience stores, mind you. Chrome, plastic and noise are geezer repellents. But if you can smell leather, coffee, linseed oil or tobacco, you're in geezer country. It may well be the geezer that you're smelling.
Geezers find amusement almost everywhere. Kids are an especially rich source of entertainment for your average neighborhood geezer. A kid's simple "Boy, it's sure hot!" is enough to get a geezer going on a "Why I can remember..." binge that can last the rest of the day. Any broken bike or tangled fishing reel can grab a geezer's interest for hours. And can immeasurably broaden any kid's vocabulary as well.
Practically nothing can jumpstart a geezer like a new BB gun. Any kid who shows up with one can count on an entire afternoon of geezer-led fun plinking at twigs, rocks and stuff. A fishing rod has the same effect: an immediate trip to the nearest fishin' hole. Either item is also guaranteed to bring on hours of "great shot" and "Big fish" stories.
Speaking of trips, geezers make the most of them, too. Geezers hardly ever have to use their own trucks on hunting trips. Younger men always insist on driving, which leaves the geezer free to concentrate on other things, like telling yarns. Not to be overlooked is the fact that the geezer always gets himself placed on the best deer stand while the young hunters hike the hills. Invariably, the youngsters return to find the geezer happily tagging a buck, which the youngsters then drag to camp. What the upstarts don't realize is that when hunting or fishing alone and unobserved, geezers cover ground just like youngsters and carry their own game, too.
Another plus is that geezers get to complain of "the rheumatiz." Most geezers don't actually have rheumatism, you understand, but complaining about it allows them frequent nips of rheumatism preventative.
Yep, I can hardly wait. So far, I'm only a junior geezer, but I'm already practicin' up for full membership. Having a three-day beard at all times and learnin' myself to say "Why, I remember..." And breakin' in some overalls. See ya on the porch, young feller.
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Stream Sex
You can see a lot of sex on the streams these days, and frankly, it has me at a loss for words. It's not that I'm disgusted or even shocked. Heck, I like it. But I just can't come up with a good word for all those women who have taken up fishing.
For years, it was simple. Writers went blithely along, writing advice to fishermen columns, calling everyone on the stream a fisherman, and typing fishermen this and fishermen that. And we fishermen could safely call each other by that simple term. But no more. Not since women started appearing on the outdoor scene in ever-increasing numbers.
Just for the record, the problem is definitely not the fault of fishing women. The ones I've had the genuine pleasure of meeting have been amiable, courteous and generous - just what you'd expect of anyone who enjoys the tranquil sport of fishing. I don't remember any of them voicing any preference about what they should be called. Except that they'd like to be called quickly if a good hatch was on. Like I said, nice folk.
But these are complicated times, I guess. The days of "politically correct" speech are upon us and sexual discrimination charges are common headlines. We not only should be careful about offending anyone (as has always been true), these days the law says we have to be careful.
As I said, I'm thoroughly delighted about the many women I meet in the outdoors, especially fishing; but I can't figure out what to call 'em. Hunting is easy. A hunter is a hunter no matter what sex. The same holds for backpackers and campers and boaters and trapshooters and lots of other female outdoors participants. But female fishing fans have me flummoxed.
In the business world, many women prefer the suffix "person," as in chairperson, salesperson or spokesperson. But fishperson sounds like some horrible mutation out of a 1950s sci-fi movie. How about fisherwoman? Nah - sounds ridiculous. Fishwife? You think I'm suicidal? Anyway, I'm trying to be genderic, a word I invented, combining gender and generic, meaning non-sexist. So if I'm that darned smart, why can't I make up a word for a fishing woman? Beats me, but I don't seem to be alone.
These days, a lot of outdoors writers seem to have the same problem I do. They use angler as a general purpose descriptive. That seems to mostly accepted, but most readers of Izaak Walton know that he used the term angles to mean worms. If you fish with worms, it's completely accurate to call yourself an angler regardless of your gender. But many of the women I've seen on the streams were catching trout with dry flies, so angler seems a bit coarse, at least to me. And anyway, my Webster's unabridged also gives a pejorative meaning to angler, as one who obtains something by deceit or trickery. Again, it could easily be taken as a slight, and that's just what we're trying to avoid.
How about just plain fisher, with no sexual suffix? Turning again to Webster's, we see that the first definition is simply "one who fishes." Great, except that the term also refers to a fish-eating relative of the weasel valued for its fur. Oops. The politically correct would have a double hissy-fit if we alluded that women were like weasels, not to mention one valuable for its (Oh, horrors!) real fur. Nope, fisher is out.
Let's take a new tack. How about streamer? Still no good. We'd also have to use laker, ponder and riverer. Rodder, perhaps? Or reeler? But rodders are car enthusiasts, and it would be confusing to call a particularly good fish-catcher a hot rodder. And it's certainly true that fishing enthusiasts are occasionally reelers, but usually only after a good dose of snakebite preventative. Other fishing terms have similar problems: liner is a baseball term, a flier is a pilot and a hooker is...definitely not something to call a lady who fishes.
I don't know about you, but I give up. I seem to get in deeper and deeper trouble just by trying to stay out of it. You are hereby on your own. For my part, when I talk about genderic participants, I'll just call 'em fishing enthusiasts. And no matter what your anatomic persuasion, if I see you on the stream, I'll just call you "buddy."
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BOOKENDS
It was an odd career, maybe. Like all careers it is a story told by many volumes; by the chapters, pages and paragraphs that make up twenty-plus years. Unlike many careers, though, the volumes on my shelf are supported by bookend wars. Badly mismatched bookends, you might think. For the old and dusty one at the far end found me in a cockpit flying over Cambodia while the new and clean one at this end has me planted firmly at a desk while pilot friends fly over the Persian Gulf.
And, oddly, it seems as though it's the weight of the pages that support the bookends rather than the reverse. For me, and probably for other veterans as well, it was the service and the sacrifices of the between years which bring meaning to the wars.
In 1971, I saw the steamy jungles and the turbid rivers of Cambodia through the windscreens of an O-2 observation craft. At that time, I was a new officer, a pilot assigned to a classified and dangerous combat mission. Absorbed with the task of surviving, I abandoned any attempt to evaluate what that unpopular and unheralded war meant, either to me or to my country.
Of necessity, I focused on more basic objectives: today's mission, tonight's meal, a drink or two and a good night's sleep. And, please God, no mortar attack tonight. The loftier questions I left for another time: how would the war affect me, my new marriage, and my future; what did this or any war mean to my country?
After the war, of course, there was no time for philosophizing. Day-to-day things continued to occupy my thoughts and actions. There were new flying assignments, promotions, two children, and finally the change to a non-flying profession and the transition to a civilian/Reserve lifestyle. Then, as suddenly for me as for the rest of the world, there came another war. My career's other bookend came into existence unbidden and unanticipated -- but very real.
In 1991, I saw the sultry desert and the blowing sands of the Persian Gulf not through a windscreen but a television screen. This time I was a senior officer, a stateside support player in a widely supported and trumpeted war. But this detached role allowed me a more developed, more mature perspective, a more panoramic view of not just the action but the significance of war.
On a basic level, it became clear that it's not just the fighters who fight - that's there's much more to the spear than the point. In Vietnam, some of our pilots somehow believed that because they flew alone they fought alone. They took it for granted that the planes would be ready, ammunition prepped and loaded, communications available and so on. Very few of us got to know and appreciate not just the ground crews, but the radio operators, the weather forecasters, the fuels specialists, the cooks, and even the Vietnamese who served as our maids.
Pilots who took the time to learn soon realized that without these people they would have no planes to fly, no ordnance to deliver, no food, no living quarters, none of the tools they need to fly each day. And without the many, many such supporting people at home, there is no way to fight, much less to win a war. At this end of my career, I served not as the spear's point but as one of the smallest and most distant splinters of its shaft. And I've learned that the spear is not there of itself, there must also be spear makers. These are the other, equally vital fighters who design and make the planes, order and inventory the ammunition, test and approve the food, cut and sew the uniforms, then load and deliver it all whenever and wherever it's needed.
Nor are fighters restricted to wearers of uniforms. Defense workers, contractors, suppliers, the neighborhood cop and the clerk in the corner grocery store are all fighters, all contributing in their own way. The question is not whether or not any of us are part of the spear; the question is merely which part and how good. Indeed, the best the bravest of all are the military family members; for they truly fight alone, against the invisible but devastating enemies of fear and uncertainty. We fighters leave them alone not just for a war, but possibly forever. Without doubt, our families fight a braver battle than we.
In fact, it is precisely their bravery and valor which answers those weighty questions I had not pondered since my early war: the questions of why we fight. In the Vietnam years, few seriously argued that we were fighting to save the United States from the Viet Cong. And while we may well have fought to save Kuwait from Iraq, it is now clear to me that the United States doesn't fight wars to save itself from anything. It fights to save itself for something.
We fight to save this nation for lots of things: for the protection of ourselves and our allies, for the preservation of the idea of liberty, and for our children's future. Said another way, we fight to save the United States for itself.
And no other rationale is needed. Ultimately, national self-defense is no less than the collective right of self-defense of all its individuals. A nation's rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is no less inalienable as those of its citizens.
Now, after a full and bookend-bound career, I look at my retirement certificate framed on the wall and see at last what the stuff between those bookends brought me. It's not an original concept. It is a realization that other veterans have had, and one that more will receive: what I do as a soldier is bigger than just me, for I am not just me, I am my country.
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