In case you have the time and interest, here is the full version of Charlie and me in the StoryCorps interview I shared a few blogs ago. Warning: it is nearly an hour and 45 minutes. But I added random photos of Charlie, and/or me that even sometimes fit with the story. Please let me know if you listen to the whole thing! By the way, the edited version that aired on NPR was less than 3 minutes. They did an amazing job. I like saying that this aired on January 21st, 2017, and garnered a larger audience than President Trump's inauguration. Please don't tell him, or we will surely get an angry tweet...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQBU7rugAW4
Monday, July 9, 2018
Friday, March 2, 2018
Bullet Point
I keep this live round as a souvenir on my bookshelf. I found it in the trash, of course.
It's a Bernaul (Russian made) 7.62 X54R shell. It's pretty close to deer rifle ammo, but is manufactured for military weapons, primarily sniper rifles or machine guns. Researching to identify it brought me to some websites that gave me as much of a shudder as finding the live round in the first place (had I crushed this thing, it could have blown).
Circumstances lately have got me thinking about my own relationship with guns. I have two in my basement. One is my dad's 22 caliber we used for target practice and rabbit/squirrel hunting. Single shot, bolt action. The other is my Springfield 20 gauge shotgun, pump action, used for all kinds of bird hunting in my youth.
I will admit that I did use my shotgun for self defense once. We had a pretty mentally deranged neighbor, who got verbally violent when high. One evening he was making threats to my family from his upstairs window. I called the police AND I grabbed my shotgun after sending everyone inside. I sat outside with that shotgun, thinking to scare the crap out of him if he came over. The gun was empty. I didn't have any shells. He stayed put, and the police took him to jail.
Speaking of that gun, it still has a "plug" in it. A plug is required in a pump action shotgun when hunting ducks. Typically, pump-actions can hold six shells. However, the law requires a plug for duck hunters so that one can only hold three shells. If we were checked out by the game warden (often enough), he would insert a thing into our guns to make sure they were plugged. If they were not, the penalty would be severe. We could have our guns, our vehicle, our boat, decoys, and anything else used for hunting, confiscated. No trial, no jury. AND THIS WAS TO PROTECT THE DUCK POPULATION. We all accepted that. Gun control.
This was the hunting culture I grew up with. The NRA was all about gun safety and responsible gun use. I received a national gun safety patch after passing a course sponsored by the NRA. The old NRA supported and helped draft the nation's first gun control laws.
I was trained to freak out when I saw someone holding a gun not pointed to the ground or to the sky. A high school acquaintance blew his hand apart when he used his gun to lean on and it discharged. You would not hunt with someone like that. Nor would you hang out with someone who was a gun "enthusiast." To my mentors in my hunting days, that would be like someone who was a poison "enthusiast." Guns were tools, very dangerous tools. You took care of them, used them for a purpose, and put them away.
There's a website called AR15.com. It boasts 300,000 members. That's all I have to say about that.
I know that boys love their toys. I have two motorcycles. But the nobility and responsibility I grew up associating with gun ownership has gone begging. Now it is an absolute right, "based in the second amendment." Sounds like boys who like their toys to me. The 2nd amendment argument sounds a lot like the survivalist rationale: If we stockpile weapons and food, we can survive the coming apocalypse... for at least 60 more days.
Absurd. If you are fearful of government infringement on your liberties and want to prepare to defend yourself, you might want a Hellfire missile--or 400. Nothing less will do. The second amendment argument is goofy.
We are in the realm of fear, I fear. I can appreciate those who geek out over guns, who know all the kinds, and capabilities, just like car enthusiasts. And I know that most of these are safe and responsible people.
I get the argument that the AR-15, and other so-called "assault rifles" are only different in style from weapons that are designed for hunting. Oh, but style matters. We know this in our commercial-cultural bones. Tuggs are not Uggs. Merona is not Patagonia. Kia is not Lexus. And a military-looking rifle stirs the imagination differently than something else. Why else do these young men go for the "assault-looking" rifles? It's a nexus with the elite killers. Commandos, Seals, Green Berets. The pros who are expert killers. It's a weak ego that wants to be strong. Inadequacy bent on super-power.
Psychologically, style matters big-time. It has become deadly. Dead straight. Dead straight shooter. I don't think any of my hunting mentors would want to be part of this fearful, selfish, goofy, insistence on the "right" to unlimited access to kill-people-weapons. Nope, they would give up their own firearms if it would save children. They were all teachers who loved children more than their own guns.
We all agreed that a shotgun that held six shells was illegal, to protect the ducks. Still the law.
Circumstances lately have got me thinking about my own relationship with guns. I have two in my basement. One is my dad's 22 caliber we used for target practice and rabbit/squirrel hunting. Single shot, bolt action. The other is my Springfield 20 gauge shotgun, pump action, used for all kinds of bird hunting in my youth.
I will admit that I did use my shotgun for self defense once. We had a pretty mentally deranged neighbor, who got verbally violent when high. One evening he was making threats to my family from his upstairs window. I called the police AND I grabbed my shotgun after sending everyone inside. I sat outside with that shotgun, thinking to scare the crap out of him if he came over. The gun was empty. I didn't have any shells. He stayed put, and the police took him to jail.
Speaking of that gun, it still has a "plug" in it. A plug is required in a pump action shotgun when hunting ducks. Typically, pump-actions can hold six shells. However, the law requires a plug for duck hunters so that one can only hold three shells. If we were checked out by the game warden (often enough), he would insert a thing into our guns to make sure they were plugged. If they were not, the penalty would be severe. We could have our guns, our vehicle, our boat, decoys, and anything else used for hunting, confiscated. No trial, no jury. AND THIS WAS TO PROTECT THE DUCK POPULATION. We all accepted that. Gun control.
This was the hunting culture I grew up with. The NRA was all about gun safety and responsible gun use. I received a national gun safety patch after passing a course sponsored by the NRA. The old NRA supported and helped draft the nation's first gun control laws.
I was trained to freak out when I saw someone holding a gun not pointed to the ground or to the sky. A high school acquaintance blew his hand apart when he used his gun to lean on and it discharged. You would not hunt with someone like that. Nor would you hang out with someone who was a gun "enthusiast." To my mentors in my hunting days, that would be like someone who was a poison "enthusiast." Guns were tools, very dangerous tools. You took care of them, used them for a purpose, and put them away.
There's a website called AR15.com. It boasts 300,000 members. That's all I have to say about that.
I know that boys love their toys. I have two motorcycles. But the nobility and responsibility I grew up associating with gun ownership has gone begging. Now it is an absolute right, "based in the second amendment." Sounds like boys who like their toys to me. The 2nd amendment argument sounds a lot like the survivalist rationale: If we stockpile weapons and food, we can survive the coming apocalypse... for at least 60 more days.
Absurd. If you are fearful of government infringement on your liberties and want to prepare to defend yourself, you might want a Hellfire missile--or 400. Nothing less will do. The second amendment argument is goofy.
We are in the realm of fear, I fear. I can appreciate those who geek out over guns, who know all the kinds, and capabilities, just like car enthusiasts. And I know that most of these are safe and responsible people.
I get the argument that the AR-15, and other so-called "assault rifles" are only different in style from weapons that are designed for hunting. Oh, but style matters. We know this in our commercial-cultural bones. Tuggs are not Uggs. Merona is not Patagonia. Kia is not Lexus. And a military-looking rifle stirs the imagination differently than something else. Why else do these young men go for the "assault-looking" rifles? It's a nexus with the elite killers. Commandos, Seals, Green Berets. The pros who are expert killers. It's a weak ego that wants to be strong. Inadequacy bent on super-power.
Psychologically, style matters big-time. It has become deadly. Dead straight. Dead straight shooter. I don't think any of my hunting mentors would want to be part of this fearful, selfish, goofy, insistence on the "right" to unlimited access to kill-people-weapons. Nope, they would give up their own firearms if it would save children. They were all teachers who loved children more than their own guns.
We all agreed that a shotgun that held six shells was illegal, to protect the ducks. Still the law.
Friday, January 5, 2018
Christmas: The Tenderloin and the Trash
Christmas is a special time in garbage.
I had a bit of a Blue Christmas this year. It was the first Christmas season in seven years that I was not out hauling. I would miss it more if was not gizzard-frosting cold out there right now.
Forced retirement from hauling came to me a couple months ago when the small local company I worked for sold to a very large company. Happens all the time. It's a bit of a sad tale, but one perhaps for another time. The point is I'm on the sidelines now, though with a trove of experiences and friends in the garbage business. An old-timer said to me, "Once a garbageman, always a garbageman." I'll keep on writing as "always a garbageman."
But back to Christmas in trash. I think it was my fourth post or so that described finding plastic baby Jesus in the trash. Every Christmas brings something special. This year it came vicariously. My friend Wes found this and posted the picture from the post-Christmas trash:
Another friend and former partner-in-trash commented: "I'm curious about the Ball Holder." The potty humor proceeded to stream forth, so to speak.
Last year we (Wes and I) found a whole beef tenderloin in a bin, perched on top of the rest of the trash. It was uncooked, still in its vacuum sealed package, unfrozen but kept cold in 25 degree weather. The label showed this four pound chunk of meat had been purchased at Costco for $24.99 per pound. The use-by date was over a month away.
"I suppose Kari would not be interested in this?" I asked, knowing well his wife has a zero tolerance policy on rescue-food. There was sadness in his eyes. Or was it fear? (BTW, that's a perfectly good junior compound bow and arrow set also thrown away in that same alley. It went to an excited young person at my church!)
Clearly, the beef was not meant as a Christmas tip for the trash guys. I suspect, though, it may have had something to do with some Christmas sadness in that family. Plans for a joyful celebration gone to trash. I imagine that someone in frustration, or exasperation, or sadness, or rage--threw that tenderloin away.
The biblical stories around Christmas are as tragic as they are hopeful. An unexpected pregnancy, suspicions and domestic strife, homelessness and genocide. Christmas has a long shadow.
I ate it with a few friends at our annual winter reunion. Roasted it in blazing coals, wrapped in salt and a cotton cloth--an old Colombian method called Lomo al Trapo, tenderloin in cloth.
It was amazing.
An unexpected gift, born, perhaps, of trauma. Wrapped in cloths. To me, Christmas is a good time to wonder about the human condition: the splendor and the horror. Angelic choirs sing of a miraculous, yet troubled birth. Divine and all too human. Tenderloin and trash.
As Homer says (also retrieved from the trash that day):
Santa Homer
I had a bit of a Blue Christmas this year. It was the first Christmas season in seven years that I was not out hauling. I would miss it more if was not gizzard-frosting cold out there right now.
Forced retirement from hauling came to me a couple months ago when the small local company I worked for sold to a very large company. Happens all the time. It's a bit of a sad tale, but one perhaps for another time. The point is I'm on the sidelines now, though with a trove of experiences and friends in the garbage business. An old-timer said to me, "Once a garbageman, always a garbageman." I'll keep on writing as "always a garbageman."
But back to Christmas in trash. I think it was my fourth post or so that described finding plastic baby Jesus in the trash. Every Christmas brings something special. This year it came vicariously. My friend Wes found this and posted the picture from the post-Christmas trash:
Another friend and former partner-in-trash commented: "I'm curious about the Ball Holder." The potty humor proceeded to stream forth, so to speak.
Last year we (Wes and I) found a whole beef tenderloin in a bin, perched on top of the rest of the trash. It was uncooked, still in its vacuum sealed package, unfrozen but kept cold in 25 degree weather. The label showed this four pound chunk of meat had been purchased at Costco for $24.99 per pound. The use-by date was over a month away.
"I suppose Kari would not be interested in this?" I asked, knowing well his wife has a zero tolerance policy on rescue-food. There was sadness in his eyes. Or was it fear? (BTW, that's a perfectly good junior compound bow and arrow set also thrown away in that same alley. It went to an excited young person at my church!)
Clearly, the beef was not meant as a Christmas tip for the trash guys. I suspect, though, it may have had something to do with some Christmas sadness in that family. Plans for a joyful celebration gone to trash. I imagine that someone in frustration, or exasperation, or sadness, or rage--threw that tenderloin away.
The biblical stories around Christmas are as tragic as they are hopeful. An unexpected pregnancy, suspicions and domestic strife, homelessness and genocide. Christmas has a long shadow.
I ate it with a few friends at our annual winter reunion. Roasted it in blazing coals, wrapped in salt and a cotton cloth--an old Colombian method called Lomo al Trapo, tenderloin in cloth.
It was amazing.
An unexpected gift, born, perhaps, of trauma. Wrapped in cloths. To me, Christmas is a good time to wonder about the human condition: the splendor and the horror. Angelic choirs sing of a miraculous, yet troubled birth. Divine and all too human. Tenderloin and trash.
As Homer says (also retrieved from the trash that day):
Santa Homer
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