A First (For Me)

Several days ago I met my friend Bill, and one of his old National Guard buddies, at a local shooting range. The friend brought along a number of guns, one of which was this very nice M1 Carbine with a Saginaw Gear marked receiver.

I've owned a lot of guns in my time, and I've shot more than I've owned, but I have never shot an M1 Carbine. Well, after 69 years this range trip fixed that shortcoming. Bill's friend allowed me to put a magazine through the little rifle, and I was enchanted. Great handling, excellent sights, very nice trigger, and acceptably accurate (about 4 MOA as I shot it).

Sadly, given my age and stage I doubt there'll be an M1 Carbine in my collection, unless someone just gifts me one, but having shot this one I now understand why they remain incredibly popular.

Stay sharp!

December 2025 Update

Here I am again, making excuses. It's late December, 2025, about a week away from Christmas, and it's occurred to me that this blog needs some serious attention. Not new posts, per-se (although there's going to be more of those coming in the new year), but in cleaning up stuff I've posted in the past. This comes down mainly to fixing broken links, replacing photos that no longer load properly, and doing some minor grammar updates on posts I think are important.

You see, I will finally retire in early January 2026. My kids tell me I've threatened to retire too many times for them to take me seriously this go-around. So to prove how serious I am about hanging things up, I've gone ahead and filed for Social Security, and I've even formally notified my employer that I will, in fact, retire on January 9th. Even they didn't take me seriously, at first.

This blog has been put aside for several years as I followed other interests. However, I've decided that, since I no longer need to play nice and bite my digital tongue on issues like firearms, politics, morality and other fun stuff, I'll re-energize this blog as a more 'pithy' outlet for my thoughts. 

So stay tuned for more. More knives, more guns, more shooting, more fishing. More of everything you love... well, OK, more of what I love!

Stay sharp