Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619

Monument Valley was one of Ford's main actors!

I looked it up and now see the 1986 made-for-TV remake has Doc Holliday on the stagecoach. Weird indeed. Looking at the stuff on the 1966 movie, which sounds like a straight remake: it has an incredible high-powered cast. Like a lot of those '60s movies with ensembles of big stars. There are some fine actors listed there-- is the movie worth watching on its own merits?

I don't think Doc got on the coach.... But then, I don't know anything about the 'remake'.... I watched the original again 2 or 3 months ago. A really great movie. Here's a question: how many 'stagecoach' movies are out there? By that, I mean the scenario with the disparate bunch of characters thrown together on the stagecoach outa town, with the story playing out with the relations between the passengers? One other that I can think of right away is Hombre, another truly fine movie with a great cast.

Very fair indeed.

Oh heck, our stores have piles of .455 Webley. Can't give the stuff away!

I wouldn't hesitate to put them in the freezer, as is, in a plastic bag, if you plan to get to them pretty soon.

The question is how much cloth does a deacon have? I was invited about 10 years ago to officiate at the wedding of the daughter of a good friend and former law partner who had moved to another state. I had known her as a young girl. I was delighted to accept and asked why she had chosen me in particular. Her dad said that it was partly because she was the only one she'd known as a kid who was associated with a church. Her family was very 'non-church". She had remembered that long before I'd been a deacon in the local Presby church. It was fun. I was listed in nice calligraphy on the program as the officiant, "Deacon [Red Gauntlet]", a splendid title. At the reception it was great fun being treated as if I was a somber man of the cloth. Ordinary folks treated me with deference. It was very amusing. They became more relaxed over the evening as I partook of a convivial glass or two.

I started to type gibberish with my left hand at work one day 6 years back. I knew it had to be in my brain. I went to the doc forthwith with a page of the gibberish. He sent me to an immediate MRI, and they found a large subdural hematoma. Probably from a ski accident 3 months earlier, that had stopped bleeding in time. Fortunate, because 50% of traumatic subdurals are fatal in short order. So they drilled a little hole and solved it. I never had a single symptom but that one passing incident. The lesson is to always get immediate attention when something weird or unusual happens-- you know when something isn't right. The worst thing is they will find nothing wrong.

I always get the feeling with such tales that there was no actual deacon who did that, but somebody made up a good 'un. But it still is a good 'un.

I would have my doubts about 'scalpers'. This implies buying for resale at high prices; I haven't encountered that, though others may have. It would be interesting to hear information about scalpers. Most of the limitations I have seen have been efforts to spread the available stuff amongst customers in time of scarcity.

I was at Big 5 yesterday to buy some tennis shoes. I looked over the almost bare ammo shelves and saw three boxes of .45 Colt at 'normal' prices. I bought one. I do have a fair amount of .45, but I'm one who buys a box or two now and then when I go into the stores, so I have a good accumulation of ammo by and large. Got to thinking today; I'll go back and buy those two forgotten boxes of .45. As I got there, a guy was just picking up one of them! But one was left and I bought it.....

My own just-formulated pet theory is that with the widespread panic buying of ammo, a lot of folks out there have unearthed their old dad's or grandad's .38 spl revolver; S&W M&P/Model 10 or many others. After all the S&W .38 with all its many cousins was the biggest-selling handgun in the US, maybe the world, for most of the 20th century. Millions must have one tucked away, dusted off-- better get some ammo for that thing.

True enough, but by the pricing in the small shop I reference, the proprietor has his finger on the market pulse. By that standard, .38 spl is among the scarcest, much more so than .357 for instance. .45 Colt is rising fast. .44 Russian hasn't moved up!

On the market situation: the 'big box' places here are out of all .38 spl., every time I look. They are also usually out of all standard revolver ammo (I don't even look at the semi-auto ammo myself). This has been the situation for weeks. On the other hand, there is a small store here that has lots of ammo in stock. Not sure what his secret is. But-- he's following supply and demand closely. Two days ago, his .38s were $39 per 50, up from the 20s in normal times. Today, .38 spl was $59! But .357 still in the low $30s. .45 Colt on his shelves have gone from $27 per 50 to $59 per 50 in a matter of days. .44 spl holding at $32 per. And so on. But he has ammo, when everybody else is out. He's following supply and demand like the stock market....

I am. Fully retired for three years, but I keep my license active for old time's sake. I first argued a case in the 9th Circuit in 1978, in the old 9th Circuit courthouse in San Francisco, a splendid building that was closed for decades after an earthquake. I don't know if it has ever been restored. I had a couple other cases there back then, then none for many years until the last few years of my career, when I had several. I never had a case reheard en banc, which is a pretty rare thing to happen. I don't really know anything about the panel selection process, except that it is said to be random, and in all my cases, on both sides of the Bar, so to speak, I never heard the integrity of that process questioned. So my response to the post above was to the suggestion that the process was in fact non-random, and thus I asked the poster to inform us of the basis of his assertion.

I had quite a few cases in the 9th Circuit over the years. I never had any reason to believe there was anything 'rigged' about their panel assignment system. Hence my question.

It's against the law.

What's the factual basis for this?

To show you how few times I've used the rifle in recent years, I still have a few boxes of Kinematics Research (ammodirect) .45 cowboy left. That dates me and that's what I've used. But the rifle is exhibiting the problem when worked without any ammo. I'll do the clean and lube and report.

No short stroke; all original. Will follow Abilene's approach and report back. Thanks all.

That's it. The carrier not coming down most times. Will drift down a bit, to the point that I can push in the loading gate and that pushes the carrier the rest of the way down. Perhaps a cleaning is in order first.....thanks.

I have an Uberti 1873 rifle in .45 Colt that I bought 16 years back when I came to CAS. I never shot a lot of CAS matches for various reasons, but have always maintained the interest; regularly post in the Saloon. I've kept all my cowboy guns and shoot them regularly at the local ranges. Primarily my OMV .45, my Uberti .44 Russian, and my Marlin 1894 in .44 mag. But I've seldom taken out the 1873. It seems to have a delicate disposition. A few years back I had it at the range, shot modern loads, and it jammed. I think of a 'jam' as a bad interaction between a cartridge and the rifle mechanism, resulting in various kinds of hang-ups involving both. In that case, the case remained in the chamber, and the next cartridge was stuck halfway up on the lifter. A couple of pards here had the cure, and it worked like a charm. So I took it out to the range a couple of weeks ago, shooting only cowboy loads. Two or three times, it got stuck; that is, levering the action would not pull the extractor back; it was as if it was affixed to the face of the chamber. There was no 'jam' as such. Some really hard pulls brought it back. We finished off about a hundred rounds. Then last night, I watched Winchester 1873 for the first time in many moons, so, naturally, I got out the rifle to work during the movie. No ammo, of course, no dummy rounds. Just working the action and letting the hammer down easy mostly. It happened again, repeatedly. Try to work the lever, everything 'stuck', the extractor would simply not pull back from the face of the chamber. If I messed around a bit-- cocked and pulled the trigger a few times, pressed down on the extractor, worked the lever real hard, it would free up for a few cycles, then stop again. Any ideas? Note-- I have probably had fewer than a thousand rounds through this rifle total.

What we have here is a failure to communicate. My flip phone, believe it or not, does not take dictation. Flip phone: a decade or so old. A portable telephone that will accept phone calls and painstaking texts. There is a little camera with a little screen. A flip phone is not a smart phone with a hinge. It is not a smart phone, period.

There's the beauty of western Washington and Oregon. No snakes (other than little garter snakes), no chiggers, no noxious bugs of any kind except the occasional yellow jacket. So all you get is the berries--- and the thorns!

We've always picked them here. They were long-established when I was a kid, covering every vacant lot. We'd built tunnel complexes under the canes. They of course are strongly armored with thorns. We'd throw plywood, cardboard, or ladders over the canes to get deep into the thickets for picking the berries. You could accumulate gallons easily. Our native wild blackberry is a low-creeping plant, which thrives in burnt areas or at the margins of the woods. The berries are small and very good, but they are hard work, to find and to pick.