Good as New Almost

I was able to patch Ol' Betsy up with electrical tape. (Duct tape proved too wide for the job as the stock is curved where the cracks are.) It's not as dangerous as it sounds. What happened was the machine screw that attaches the wooden stock to the metal part of the gun had become loose over time, probably because wood tends to dry out and shrink a little in storage. The cracks were likely caused by the stress put on the loose stock when the gun was fired. The metal parts were just fine, the only thing damaged was the stock. I taped up the stock, tightened up the screw, and shot the gun several times to make sure it still worked. This is only a temporary fix to get me by for the rest of the season, I will order a new stock from the manufacturer before next season.

I paid over $600 for this gun, more than I have paid for any other gun in my life. I was looking at some cheaper models but, as soon as I picked up Ol' Betsy and held her snug against my shoulder, it was love at first sight. You see, a gun has to fit properly in order to shoot properly. The really rich sportsmen have their guns custom fitted by a gunsmith, the rest of us just keep trying guns off the rack until we find one that fits.

Hoosiers come from Indiana, Buckeyes come from Ohio, Wolverines come from Michigan, and Suckers come from Illinois. Each of these names has a story behind it, the only one I'm not familiar with is the Ohio Buckeyes. Hoosiers got their name from their funny way of saying "Who's there?" when somebody knocks on their door. Michigan Wolverines were so named by some Ohio Buckeyes during the Toledo War because they were such fierce fighters. I'm sure that the habit real wolverines have of pissing on their food so that no other animal will touch it had nothing to do with it. When Illinois was virgin prairie, a man could travel a long ways during a dry spell before coming across a source of drinkable water on the surface. In many places, though, the ground water table was near the surface if you knew where to dig and wanted to go through the effort of digging a hole every time you wanted a drink. In areas like that, crayfish often dig holes to the water table, where they hang out during dry spells. Illinois frontiersmen used to find a hollow reed or something, stick it down a crayfish hole, and suck up the water. Hence the name, "Suckers". I am not making this up!

The original Christmas Ship sank with all hands in 1912 while carrying a load of Christmas trees from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Chicago. They had also shipped some trees by rail, which arrived shortly after news of the sinking was received. The captain's widow insisted on supervising the sale of those trees, giving some of them away for free to poor families as her husband had always done. The surviving family kept this tradition for decades, but I don't remember when or why they stopped. I have a book about this somewhere but, I don't want to dig for it tonight. The newspaper article I read says that the current practice of the Coast Guard delivering the trees in collaboration with several Chicago organizations has only been going on for 14 years, so that's why we never heard of it in our youth. I'm surprised, though, that your local news media doesn't say much about it.

Jesus said, "God causes the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust alike.", and I tend to agree with that. Most of the dramatic climate changes and mass extinctions on Earth happened before there were any humans living on the planet, so I don't think they happened for our convenience. When something like that happens, all species including humans have to either adapt to it or perish. Humans have learned how to manipulate their environment more than any other species to date. Sometimes that has come back to bite us, but mostly it's been a survival advantage for our species. Of course, nothing lasts forever. Maybe we will go down someday just like the dinosaurs but, until that happens, I intend to live forever or die trying.