BIG BOOMER

 

A few years ago I took up the sport of Long Distance Target shooting. Its a good sport for an 86 year old man because you get to do it laying down... As a boy I had a BB gun and at age seven I owned a .22 rifle. My father was the Small Bore champion of California in 1936, the year I was born. So he started me shooting as soon as I was able to hold the gun. At 10 years of age he had me shooting a Remington 45-70 offhand. I only weighed 80 pounds at the time so it really rocked me. Three years ago I decided that I needed to get back to shooting as I was now a Federally Licensed Firearms dealer. Made sense for me to be a shooter as well.

The unofficial world record for distance was 4 miles so I planned to do 4.5 miles. I started my training with a Savage .338 Lapua but it was not capable of the distance I needed.

So I purchased an antique .50 BMG single shot bolt action rifle. “Antique” in this category of weapons means that it was built in 2004... Made by Fisher on a Macmillan action with a very heavy Stainless Steel barrel by Lilja. It weighs a bit under 60 pounds. Not a gun to be fired from the “standing position.” The weight, while a handicap in offhand, does a lot to limit the recoil in the prone position. It has a muzzle break that looks like the one on a tank that also helps in the recoil reduction. The result is that it's not much worse than a double barrel 12 GA shotgun firing both barrels at the same time.

Recently, that record has been extended to 4.5 miles so I better get going because I don't think the 50 BMG can reach five miles so I will have to get ANOTHER gun if I want to compete. But as they say, “Too many wives can be a problem, but you can never have too many guns!”.

Hot Rod Mabelline

 

"Mabelline" is the name of this piece of art.  She is named after the hot rod song Mabelline made popular by Chuck Berry in 1955.

From my early youth in Southern California in the 1950s I dreamed of a “proper” hot rod. I was too poor to afford ANY car but as I got older I decided to realize my dream.

On the internet I found the foundation of that dream about 1000 miles away, and luckily, within a few miles of a friends house who owned a trailer and could be talked into bringing it to me on his next visit. 

Many hours of hard work resulted in its first showing where it garnered Second Place in the “Rat Rod” division.

This is my 1937 Ford Roadster Pickup. It sits on a 1970 Cadillac Eldorado frame with the original 500 ci Eldorado V8 (been hopped up a bit....LOL).

I recently gave it to my Pastor who is also a car nut because there was no more room in the garage of the “Museum”.

Salvador Dali

Salvador Dali. Spanish Surrealist painter and printmaker, born in 1904 and known for his explorations of subconscious imagery.  

I have always admired the fiercely technical yet highly unusual paintings of Salvador Dali, and when I got the chance 30 years ago to buy 4 original signed  prints from the wholesaler called Comb, I bought them. 

The Hallucinogenic Toreador (first picture) was originally done in oil on canvas around 1968, 

The Madonna and child (second picture), 

Also 

'Columbus Discovers America', 

and 

the 'Wailing Wall'. 

According to the Google library, Dali would make a drawing on the back of the checks with which he paid his restaurant bills. Resulting in few cheques being cashed, but instead kept for the collectors value. 

Salvador Dali's interactive art ushered in a new generation of imaginative expression.

Credits to: https://www.britannica.com/  https://thedali.org/

YELLOW ROSE of TEXAS

I had an epiphany one day.  A revelation of a truth which all boat builders probably know but that I had not yet learned after 60 years of building small boats. Since 1963 I've been building boats from 12 to 32 feet in length, but for some reason it never dawned on me that a boat doesn't have to be perfect, only watertight.

I started building a Wee Lassie II one year late in March.  After 30 days of labor (not consecutive), at the rate of about 3 to 4 hours on each day worked (perhaps 100 hours accumulative), my Wee Lassie was named THE YELLOW ROSE OF TEXAS and almost finished.  Everything went just perfectly, building my expectations high. Until one day.. disaster hits - bubbles in the epoxy!

It turned out to be fixable, but it did take the wind out of my sails and lowered my expectations.  That was good.  Now I look at the labor I put into the boat and what I am getting out. OK its beautiful, but it isn't a show boat.  The only contest it had to win is the approval of my friends, and that was won years ago.  It was awesome after the first coat of varnish went on, even with the couple of flaws which no one but I will see.  I felt better. She would be a handsome dinghy to go on our planned world cruise.

It's good to lower one's expectations to the level of what you want to accomplish.  Sure, with another 50 hours I'll bet it would be a show stopper.  But it wasn't worth the effort, when the first time I pull it up on an oyster reef, the show stopper will become a fishing boat.

I took her fishing one day.  I caught a 32 inch Redfish.  The canoe and I together weighed almost 200 pounds.  Don't know what the fish weighed, but it towed me almost a mile in the wrong direction, away from where I had to go to get home.  Maybe I should've made a harness for the fish and took him with me whenever I went out!