I've been shooting different Browning Hi-Powers since I was in my teens. In my twenties, a court case my dad handled resulted in him being awarded by the court as part of his fee the ornately engraved and silver/gold gripped Hi-Power that my father's drug client had in his possession when arrested, in a Corvette, speeding through a little town, with as many pounds of marijuana as you can stuff in the back of a late 80's Corvette.
So he kept it for a while, enjoying carrying the flashy BBQ gun that had also been heavily worked on with a trigger smooth as silk. Ultimately, his best friend since college and law school days offered him some huge amount for it and it was sold and onto another carry gun for him. He was like that.
The gun shot really well, but the big and ornate grips made it painful to shoot with even ball ammo. The grips looked great and were horrible in use. So I'm guessing the gun was for show and not go since no one in their right mind would stand the pain that the grips caused when the gun was shot. It was the huge eagles on both sides, inlaid gold into silver, that caused the pain. But my dad's best friend, the late Big John, had been a hunting and fishing buddy of ours since I was born and wanted it for a BBQ showoff gun around his brother and their fishing and hunting buddies.
Later, in my 20's, I'd often hit Lake Conroe in the spring and summer afternoons, leaving work around 3 or so, for 3 hours of good fishing with Big John and his brother, also now deceased, Edgar. Edgar was a retired career fireman out of HFD, as were most of the guys they ran with and had grown up with.
They were all hilarious and had great stories and most had other businesses on the side like pawn shops and gun stores so I was occasionally given access to some super deal on some great revolver. They knew I like those Smith and Wesson and Colt revolvers and 1911's.
I sure miss Big John and Edgar. They sure taught me a lot about largemouth bass fishing all those afternoons fishing the old river channel on the upper part of Lake Conroe. A childhood chum of theirs, a man named Paul, lived on his family acreage which had lots of prime lake frontage and ran a small marina and boat/rv storage place. So we were always able to either use Edgar's boat or one of Paul's rentals for free and pay for the gas.
As I've told in earlier stories, back in the 80's me and Billy Ray had several all night fishing camps on part of Paul's lakeside property, fishing in a hole that ran into the original deep river channel that was right next to his shoreline on one part of his place. It's times like those I really miss. I'm afraid that property is probably a golf course condo setup or something like that now. It was pretty cool to have free access to his place, based on our friendship with his friends, and he welcomed us like kinfolk every time we showed up out of the blue to do some fishing. Of course, we always brought a bottle or two of some really good scotch for him in gratitude.
But back to the Hi-Power.
All during my early twenties, as an LEO in Houston, Texas, the occasional officer would be seen with a Hi-Power. 30 years ago, revolvers were still king and if a Houston cop had a semi-auto, there was a 90% chance it was a 1911. Back then, I always enjoyed shooting the Hi-Powers of others but never felt the need to get one, despite that and the S&W Model 59 being the only hi-cap 9mm's really available in January of 1984 that area departments would sanction. The HK P9S and P7 were also universally allowed, as were the 13 shot variants. I often carried a P7 off duty, and still often carry the P7 either in the PSP or M8 format.
Since then I've owned several Hi-Powers including a high gloss blued model and the Practical two-tone early 90's model. I ended up with a nib early 90's black matte finish that I've taken quite a cotton to. Like shooting the Glock 19, particularly after shooting some other handguns, I often laugh at the lack of recoil and how fast and how well I can shoot the G19 under a variety of plinking and target situations. Same with the Hi-Power.
I shoot well with the Hi-Power and earlier this year, after acquiring a couple of good holsters for me personally, I've been carrying it a lot. I got an Alessi IWB holster that fits it like a glove and is very soft and comfortable to wear and a Simply Rugged Pancake that also is very nice to wear. A bit more concealable than the Simply Rugged is the Mitch Rosen 1911 Government belt holster that also fits the Browning. I'll note that some but not all of the Commander holsters I have also fit my Hi-Power perfectly.
I used to not care that much for the wider grips of the Hi-Power, but now after decades of shooting Glock 19, 20, 20sf, 21, 21sf and 36, I'm used to wide grips and the Hi-Power grip doesn't seem near as big as it seemed 30 years ago.
In the Alessi IWB holster, the Hi-Power fits my body so much better than the Government model in the same holster. As far as belt carry, there's no real difference, except the Browning grip sticks out a bit more due to it's width.
Weight specifics aside, to me the Browning Hi-Power FEELS like it ways a lot less than handguns that actually weigh about the same
I've also found that it point shoots well, which is something that's always fun when plinking. I tend to go through times where I prefer to carry one handgun over another, or one group of handguns over others. I'm enjoying this Hi-Power immensely.
Wednesday, January 8, 2014
Sunday, January 5, 2014
MY NEW FREIND COLE FROM LAMPASAS
So yesterday the family takes a two hour road trip northwest of Austin near the town of Lampasas, Texas, which itself is northwesterly of Austin. Our purpose was to get a piece of gear for the rv that we saw on craigslist.
Our seller lived out in the country and is a somewhat well known, at least to folks like us, songwriter for several popular Texas artists who have worldwide fans. The smaller artists from Texas, some who have been popular for the past 30 years.
We made our deal and since we were near the town of Lampasas, where fellow blogger Wild Ed recently relocated to the vicinity of from about 40 or 50 miles east of there. I read that on his blog. It's a good one. Wild Ed knows his outdoors stuff. Fishing, hunting, shooting, affordable stuff.
Anyway, after dealing with an honest and friendly guy who had moved back to the family place after living several decades in Nashville. The wife looked him up on the internet and he is quite well known in country circles, also as a performer and sideman to various country acts.
But he wasn't the interesting fellow of the day. Cole was the interesting fellow I met in Lampasas. I asked our craigslist seller where the best place to eat in Lampasas was, since I haven't spent much time there since the early 90's. He told me to go to Storm's drive-in that had been there for 30 or 40 years. I'd never heard of it in all my ramblin' around that area as a kid or as a young man, but figured we could find it without much trouble and didn't even ask where it was.
Lampasas was about 20 miles from the seller's place, which I'd driven by on the highway many a time. I also used to make regular runs through this country when attended a small private college to the east of Lampasas by about 30 or 40 miles. My college roommates hailed from Llano, Mason and the Highland lakes area, a beautiful part of Texas called The Hill Country and filled with elevation and all sorts of fishing and hunting opportunities.
This area of the Hill Country is famous for it's deer hunting. World famous. Towns survive, and have survived quite well year round primarily off the revenue received during deer hunting season.
But as I often do, I digress.
So I convinced the family to take a detour out of our way home to hit Storm's which featured, according to our new songwriting friend, those thin, old-time kind of hamburgers that are sorta burnt on the edge.
I knew indeed what he meant, and the burgers were legendary at Storms. Big chains would do well to switch to their meat supplier and cooking method.
So while we were at Storms, I decided to have a rare smoke and stepped out of the no smoking allowed truck while El Fisho Jr. and his mom waited on our order. Which order, by the way, included Mrs. El Fisho having some fried mushrooms along with her burger.
Storm's is an old style drive-inn, with a nice outdoor patio eating area but with most business being done this cold day in a drive inn, order from the kiosk and carhop brings food manner.
I stepped behind our truck and two trucks over was an older gentleman about 20 to 25 years older than I. About my late father's age. He and I instantly nodded in acknowledgement that we were both banished from our vehicles with our bad habit. We met halfway and I said hello. It's one of the most interesting conversations I've had in years, and it lasted mere minutes.
Cole was in good physical shape, and like a lot of Texas lawmen and cattlemen from the past, he was once a real big fellow. Age had taken some toll on his physique, but he was in great shape with big old shoulders. He had a good deep voice that sounded healthy and full of life after a life of really arduous and just plain hard physical labor.
-Hey, I'm El Fisho, I began.
_Hey, I'm Cole. I'm from here. I was born here. This ain't the same place I grew up.
_Well, I said, nowhere is anymore, I suppose.
-Cole then says, You from Houston? You sound like you're from Houston, and you stand like a lawman.
-I told him I was from Houston, but we now live in So and So, Texas. I told him I used to be a lawman in Houston 30 years ago, but now was a prosecutor.
-I was a lawman here for many years, sir, Cole said. Back then, we all ran cattle and being a lawman was our regular job. I still run cattle, but you can't make money like you used to if you're honest about it. I spent a lot of time in Houston, brother, running cattle down there for sales, before I became a lawman here. Spent some time, you might say, down at 61 Reisner Street (El Fisho note: That's the old address/location of the Houston Police Station and city jail). I learned that if you smarted off to them coppers in Houston, it might take you a while to get up to the 9th floor, you know what I mean. They'd keep you downstairs and slap you around a bit. I still became a cop though...
Cole went on about something I didn't know. Cole told me that Lampasas was a major drug smuggling route back in the old days. He said that US 281 ran from the border to Canada and that they used to run all the dope up north through Lampasas. US 281 is one of several major highways that intersect in Lampasas.
Cole mused that the current Meth epidemic gripping much of Texas, particularly the central parts of the state, wasn't the problem. Nor was the crack cocaine that came before it in the mid-80's, or the powder cocaine in the 70's nor the Mexican heroin from the 50's and 60's.
It's a social problem, not a law enforcement problem.
-I replied that I guessed the smugglers went that way to avoid the police interdiction efforts on Interstate 35, which is roughly 50 miles east of Lampasas. Cole looked at me like I was a real dumbass. Cole then said that this was in the OLD DAYS, before I-35 existed. Now, I'm over 50, and I'm pretty sure that I-35 has been around as long as I have, so he's talking about OLD DAYS here. Maybe Cole was older than I thought.
I told him that Lampasas wasn't so bad, that I had friends whose kids lived there and worked there and that it was a better place to live than 99% of the rest of the world. I told him I'd like to have a little place in that area to go to, and that the wife liked that area as well. I told him I'd done a lot of fishing in Sulpher Creek and West Rocky Creek and Mills Creek and other area creeks and rivers over the years, and was somewhat familiar with the area.
-Cole started talking about drugs again. He said I would be surprised to know that some of the stinkiest sensimillia used to grow wild "It's a weed!" where Sulpher Creek met with the Lampasas River. Small fact I didn't know. He kind of smirked sheepishly and indicated that he wasn't supposed to know about that with a wink for added emphasis.
We were both finishing up. Cole told me he now lived in Round Rock, near his wife in the home she was in, but visited Lampasas weekly to visit kinfolk and eat at Storm's. He told me despite the fact that I thought Lampasas was 99% better than the rest of the world, he was still carrying his Colt SA Army in .45 Colt as his CHL. I conceded the fact that John Browning's 1911 creation rode in my holster at that moment as well, with the admission that you still can't be too careful these days.
With that, he bade me to "Keep So and So County a safe place, El Fisho" and we shook hands and parted ways.
Back in the truck, the food still had not come. Mrs. El Fisho wanted to know what in the world I was going on about with that old man out there. I began telling her what Cole had to say, and after a few of his nuggets of wisdom, she began saying "He told you all that while smoking a cigarette?".
He did. He did indeed.
I felt like Sheriff Bell, the Tommy Lee Jones character in No Country for Old Men, when Bell was having the conversation with his shot-and-retired-in-the-line-of-duty relative about the lawmen in his family and about his family history as Texas sheriffs and about how Bell was feeling "overmatched" by the criminal element nowadays and was considering retirement.
Special thanks to Wild Ed for letting me know in a gentlemanly way that I misspelled Lampasas, so I could correct it and not look like a moron on the internets. So be it. What a great Texas guy, that Wild Ed!
Our seller lived out in the country and is a somewhat well known, at least to folks like us, songwriter for several popular Texas artists who have worldwide fans. The smaller artists from Texas, some who have been popular for the past 30 years.
We made our deal and since we were near the town of Lampasas, where fellow blogger Wild Ed recently relocated to the vicinity of from about 40 or 50 miles east of there. I read that on his blog. It's a good one. Wild Ed knows his outdoors stuff. Fishing, hunting, shooting, affordable stuff.
Anyway, after dealing with an honest and friendly guy who had moved back to the family place after living several decades in Nashville. The wife looked him up on the internet and he is quite well known in country circles, also as a performer and sideman to various country acts.
But he wasn't the interesting fellow of the day. Cole was the interesting fellow I met in Lampasas. I asked our craigslist seller where the best place to eat in Lampasas was, since I haven't spent much time there since the early 90's. He told me to go to Storm's drive-in that had been there for 30 or 40 years. I'd never heard of it in all my ramblin' around that area as a kid or as a young man, but figured we could find it without much trouble and didn't even ask where it was.
Lampasas was about 20 miles from the seller's place, which I'd driven by on the highway many a time. I also used to make regular runs through this country when attended a small private college to the east of Lampasas by about 30 or 40 miles. My college roommates hailed from Llano, Mason and the Highland lakes area, a beautiful part of Texas called The Hill Country and filled with elevation and all sorts of fishing and hunting opportunities.
This area of the Hill Country is famous for it's deer hunting. World famous. Towns survive, and have survived quite well year round primarily off the revenue received during deer hunting season.
But as I often do, I digress.
So I convinced the family to take a detour out of our way home to hit Storm's which featured, according to our new songwriting friend, those thin, old-time kind of hamburgers that are sorta burnt on the edge.
I knew indeed what he meant, and the burgers were legendary at Storms. Big chains would do well to switch to their meat supplier and cooking method.
So while we were at Storms, I decided to have a rare smoke and stepped out of the no smoking allowed truck while El Fisho Jr. and his mom waited on our order. Which order, by the way, included Mrs. El Fisho having some fried mushrooms along with her burger.
Storm's is an old style drive-inn, with a nice outdoor patio eating area but with most business being done this cold day in a drive inn, order from the kiosk and carhop brings food manner.
I stepped behind our truck and two trucks over was an older gentleman about 20 to 25 years older than I. About my late father's age. He and I instantly nodded in acknowledgement that we were both banished from our vehicles with our bad habit. We met halfway and I said hello. It's one of the most interesting conversations I've had in years, and it lasted mere minutes.
Cole was in good physical shape, and like a lot of Texas lawmen and cattlemen from the past, he was once a real big fellow. Age had taken some toll on his physique, but he was in great shape with big old shoulders. He had a good deep voice that sounded healthy and full of life after a life of really arduous and just plain hard physical labor.
-Hey, I'm El Fisho, I began.
_Hey, I'm Cole. I'm from here. I was born here. This ain't the same place I grew up.
_Well, I said, nowhere is anymore, I suppose.
-Cole then says, You from Houston? You sound like you're from Houston, and you stand like a lawman.
-I told him I was from Houston, but we now live in So and So, Texas. I told him I used to be a lawman in Houston 30 years ago, but now was a prosecutor.
-I was a lawman here for many years, sir, Cole said. Back then, we all ran cattle and being a lawman was our regular job. I still run cattle, but you can't make money like you used to if you're honest about it. I spent a lot of time in Houston, brother, running cattle down there for sales, before I became a lawman here. Spent some time, you might say, down at 61 Reisner Street (El Fisho note: That's the old address/location of the Houston Police Station and city jail). I learned that if you smarted off to them coppers in Houston, it might take you a while to get up to the 9th floor, you know what I mean. They'd keep you downstairs and slap you around a bit. I still became a cop though...
Cole went on about something I didn't know. Cole told me that Lampasas was a major drug smuggling route back in the old days. He said that US 281 ran from the border to Canada and that they used to run all the dope up north through Lampasas. US 281 is one of several major highways that intersect in Lampasas.
Cole mused that the current Meth epidemic gripping much of Texas, particularly the central parts of the state, wasn't the problem. Nor was the crack cocaine that came before it in the mid-80's, or the powder cocaine in the 70's nor the Mexican heroin from the 50's and 60's.
It's a social problem, not a law enforcement problem.
-I replied that I guessed the smugglers went that way to avoid the police interdiction efforts on Interstate 35, which is roughly 50 miles east of Lampasas. Cole looked at me like I was a real dumbass. Cole then said that this was in the OLD DAYS, before I-35 existed. Now, I'm over 50, and I'm pretty sure that I-35 has been around as long as I have, so he's talking about OLD DAYS here. Maybe Cole was older than I thought.
I told him that Lampasas wasn't so bad, that I had friends whose kids lived there and worked there and that it was a better place to live than 99% of the rest of the world. I told him I'd like to have a little place in that area to go to, and that the wife liked that area as well. I told him I'd done a lot of fishing in Sulpher Creek and West Rocky Creek and Mills Creek and other area creeks and rivers over the years, and was somewhat familiar with the area.
-Cole started talking about drugs again. He said I would be surprised to know that some of the stinkiest sensimillia used to grow wild "It's a weed!" where Sulpher Creek met with the Lampasas River. Small fact I didn't know. He kind of smirked sheepishly and indicated that he wasn't supposed to know about that with a wink for added emphasis.
We were both finishing up. Cole told me he now lived in Round Rock, near his wife in the home she was in, but visited Lampasas weekly to visit kinfolk and eat at Storm's. He told me despite the fact that I thought Lampasas was 99% better than the rest of the world, he was still carrying his Colt SA Army in .45 Colt as his CHL. I conceded the fact that John Browning's 1911 creation rode in my holster at that moment as well, with the admission that you still can't be too careful these days.
With that, he bade me to "Keep So and So County a safe place, El Fisho" and we shook hands and parted ways.
Back in the truck, the food still had not come. Mrs. El Fisho wanted to know what in the world I was going on about with that old man out there. I began telling her what Cole had to say, and after a few of his nuggets of wisdom, she began saying "He told you all that while smoking a cigarette?".
He did. He did indeed.
I felt like Sheriff Bell, the Tommy Lee Jones character in No Country for Old Men, when Bell was having the conversation with his shot-and-retired-in-the-line-of-duty relative about the lawmen in his family and about his family history as Texas sheriffs and about how Bell was feeling "overmatched" by the criminal element nowadays and was considering retirement.
Special thanks to Wild Ed for letting me know in a gentlemanly way that I misspelled Lampasas, so I could correct it and not look like a moron on the internets. So be it. What a great Texas guy, that Wild Ed!
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Howdy from Texas on this New Year's Day, a time of new beginnings and a new year.
I've been silent for several months, if not more than a year, compared to my previous output. I've had a lot going on. It's all been good occupationally and with the family, but the plate has been full for months and months on end. I recently had a serious bit of medical stuff going on, and fortunately I'm well on the road to rehabilitation and redemption. Not a heart attack or cancer, but something almost as serious that I've been dealing with for over a decade that finally required the surgical steel solution. I'll talk more about that later.
There hasn't been a lot of exciting news in firearms or fishing lately, but there has been some news. Glock is coming out with two new guns, one being some kind of competition ready .45 auto that will be optic ready and full size. The other was recently and supposedly revealed to be a mini-.380 Glock. Guys like me have been hoping for a thinner single stack 9mm for many years, and if the forums and blogs are to be believed (probably won't know for sure until the SHOT show later this month), instead the gun is a just under 14 oz unloaded .380, which is not what I and many others have blogged on about for the past decade or so.
So here's another longtime Glock user's opinion. I will not buy a .380 Glock. I would buy a slimline single stack 9mm Glock but it just can't have a narrowed grip, that slide needs to get skinny on a 9mm. For years, Glock fans have lamented that a single stack 9mm might resemble a Model 36, no doubt a cool carry gun (I know, I frequently carry mine) but still a bit bulky in the slide department compared to a 1911.
They've got rainbow trout stocked just down the road from my house, with one stocking a couple of weeks ago and another one in a few days. I'm going to try to find out when the stocking will happen because it is a pretty cool site to behold and I think Mrs. El Fisho and El Fisho Jr. would enjoy seeing it. It's been cold lately, and those stocked rainbows are always friskier with a little chill in the air and in the water. I've been thrilled by winter trout fishing in Texas for forty years now, and it's always so fun. I really want to move to a place that features trout fishing year round. That means a place where it snows, and we're trying to find a place that has that happy medium of usually not having too much snow but cold enough that stocked and native trout populations thrive year round.
I've been putting bad guys in jail occupationally for a long time now, and I've gotten to the point where I think I'm ready to sell fly rods or guns or something in my own store. Maybe some choice vintage used musical instruments and vintage gun holsters as well. Of course, common sense would say make it a web based business, and I may very well start it as such. I'd like to sell a lot of cool used gear.
I know I have a pretty good grip on what is a cool used gun or fishing rig or holster or piece of musical gear is, and judging from that stuff I've bought at auctions, others share my interest in many of the items like this I fancy.
This is not a great idea of mine. My bride tried to get me to leave law enforcement decades ago and open up a storefront called the Fishing Musician in a then quaint Texas Hill Country town called Boerne in the pre-internet days.
But my mindset has changed in some ways about the things I think are important now. My bride tells me, and I have to agree, that I have done my fair share of trying to "save the world" over the course of my career and that it's time to have some fun. I'm now in agreement.
Once upon a time, during early college days, I was a mechanic at a mini-race car place called Malibu Grand Prix. I did everything there including rebuilding the race cars from the frame up. I enjoyed that level of mechanical rebuilding, which was far less than that required for a full size car.
Similarly, I was a big motorcycle rider when I was a teen. All of my friends and I had bikes like the Honda XR-75, the Hodaka Wombat, the Honda Trail 70, an Indian 100, the Honda SL70 and a host of others.
I think I'd like to start rebuilding some older motorcycles, those for which parts can still be found. Something not as daunting as rebuilding a car (I've helped re-build two Mustangs and an El Camino in my earlier days). A friend recently did a five year rebuild on a '55 Chevy, and another guy I know built an AC Cobra replica from a kit. More work that I have the space for, and again, a single cylinder motorcycle rebuild is a far less daunting task.
I did a lot of working and rebuilding Hondas and Hodakas when I was a kid. I was never a rock star rider but I did enjoy dirt riding (the easy kind) a great deal. Now that we have bought an RV motorhome with a substantial rear bumper, I think the time has come to invest in a couple of bikes for El Fisho Jr. and myself.
For Jr., the choices are easy, something like a Honda 100, and I've more or less decided that the Honda CRF250L is a good choice for my re-entry into cycling. This 250 has lights and is street legal so it'd be ideal for a rear of the RV deal to run errands, hit difficult to reach fishing spots and scoot to meals while traveling in the RV.
I'm not looking for a big time power off road machine. I'm pretty sure that the 250 I like has more power than I can use on the backroads and trails I intend to use it on. I'd also like something that I could pick up when I do inevitably lay it down in the boonies.
My friends who are much more into bikes than I am try to steer me toward dual sport bikes that are WAY more powerful than the 250. I'm not looking for a road bike that can sometimes go off road, I'm looking for an off road bike that I can sometimes drive legally to the store or down a road to get to a trail or to the beach. My friends ride high end dual sport bikes like BMW's and crazy stuff like that. Nice bikes to be sure, but that Honda reliability goes a long way.
So the big two items on the family agenda for the first part of 2014 are to find a place we'd like to live where there are some mountains nearby and move into some new occupations. Mrs. El Fisho has gone and gotten a Master's degree in an entirely new area from her previous career and is ready to forge on with that.
It's a time for big changes for us. I hope your changes this year go well also!
I've been silent for several months, if not more than a year, compared to my previous output. I've had a lot going on. It's all been good occupationally and with the family, but the plate has been full for months and months on end. I recently had a serious bit of medical stuff going on, and fortunately I'm well on the road to rehabilitation and redemption. Not a heart attack or cancer, but something almost as serious that I've been dealing with for over a decade that finally required the surgical steel solution. I'll talk more about that later.
There hasn't been a lot of exciting news in firearms or fishing lately, but there has been some news. Glock is coming out with two new guns, one being some kind of competition ready .45 auto that will be optic ready and full size. The other was recently and supposedly revealed to be a mini-.380 Glock. Guys like me have been hoping for a thinner single stack 9mm for many years, and if the forums and blogs are to be believed (probably won't know for sure until the SHOT show later this month), instead the gun is a just under 14 oz unloaded .380, which is not what I and many others have blogged on about for the past decade or so.
So here's another longtime Glock user's opinion. I will not buy a .380 Glock. I would buy a slimline single stack 9mm Glock but it just can't have a narrowed grip, that slide needs to get skinny on a 9mm. For years, Glock fans have lamented that a single stack 9mm might resemble a Model 36, no doubt a cool carry gun (I know, I frequently carry mine) but still a bit bulky in the slide department compared to a 1911.
They've got rainbow trout stocked just down the road from my house, with one stocking a couple of weeks ago and another one in a few days. I'm going to try to find out when the stocking will happen because it is a pretty cool site to behold and I think Mrs. El Fisho and El Fisho Jr. would enjoy seeing it. It's been cold lately, and those stocked rainbows are always friskier with a little chill in the air and in the water. I've been thrilled by winter trout fishing in Texas for forty years now, and it's always so fun. I really want to move to a place that features trout fishing year round. That means a place where it snows, and we're trying to find a place that has that happy medium of usually not having too much snow but cold enough that stocked and native trout populations thrive year round.
I've been putting bad guys in jail occupationally for a long time now, and I've gotten to the point where I think I'm ready to sell fly rods or guns or something in my own store. Maybe some choice vintage used musical instruments and vintage gun holsters as well. Of course, common sense would say make it a web based business, and I may very well start it as such. I'd like to sell a lot of cool used gear.
I know I have a pretty good grip on what is a cool used gun or fishing rig or holster or piece of musical gear is, and judging from that stuff I've bought at auctions, others share my interest in many of the items like this I fancy.
This is not a great idea of mine. My bride tried to get me to leave law enforcement decades ago and open up a storefront called the Fishing Musician in a then quaint Texas Hill Country town called Boerne in the pre-internet days.
But my mindset has changed in some ways about the things I think are important now. My bride tells me, and I have to agree, that I have done my fair share of trying to "save the world" over the course of my career and that it's time to have some fun. I'm now in agreement.
Once upon a time, during early college days, I was a mechanic at a mini-race car place called Malibu Grand Prix. I did everything there including rebuilding the race cars from the frame up. I enjoyed that level of mechanical rebuilding, which was far less than that required for a full size car.
Similarly, I was a big motorcycle rider when I was a teen. All of my friends and I had bikes like the Honda XR-75, the Hodaka Wombat, the Honda Trail 70, an Indian 100, the Honda SL70 and a host of others.
I think I'd like to start rebuilding some older motorcycles, those for which parts can still be found. Something not as daunting as rebuilding a car (I've helped re-build two Mustangs and an El Camino in my earlier days). A friend recently did a five year rebuild on a '55 Chevy, and another guy I know built an AC Cobra replica from a kit. More work that I have the space for, and again, a single cylinder motorcycle rebuild is a far less daunting task.
I did a lot of working and rebuilding Hondas and Hodakas when I was a kid. I was never a rock star rider but I did enjoy dirt riding (the easy kind) a great deal. Now that we have bought an RV motorhome with a substantial rear bumper, I think the time has come to invest in a couple of bikes for El Fisho Jr. and myself.
For Jr., the choices are easy, something like a Honda 100, and I've more or less decided that the Honda CRF250L is a good choice for my re-entry into cycling. This 250 has lights and is street legal so it'd be ideal for a rear of the RV deal to run errands, hit difficult to reach fishing spots and scoot to meals while traveling in the RV.
I'm not looking for a big time power off road machine. I'm pretty sure that the 250 I like has more power than I can use on the backroads and trails I intend to use it on. I'd also like something that I could pick up when I do inevitably lay it down in the boonies.
My friends who are much more into bikes than I am try to steer me toward dual sport bikes that are WAY more powerful than the 250. I'm not looking for a road bike that can sometimes go off road, I'm looking for an off road bike that I can sometimes drive legally to the store or down a road to get to a trail or to the beach. My friends ride high end dual sport bikes like BMW's and crazy stuff like that. Nice bikes to be sure, but that Honda reliability goes a long way.
So the big two items on the family agenda for the first part of 2014 are to find a place we'd like to live where there are some mountains nearby and move into some new occupations. Mrs. El Fisho has gone and gotten a Master's degree in an entirely new area from her previous career and is ready to forge on with that.
It's a time for big changes for us. I hope your changes this year go well also!
Sunday, September 1, 2013
PRAYERS FOR THE FAMILY, FRIENDS AND STAFF OF MIKE ANDERSON, DISTRICT ATTORNEY OF HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS
Mike passed on due to cancer over the weekend. A young man at 57, he dedicated his life to fighting crime and making Houston and Texas a better place. My prayers go out to his wife and kids, friends and family and all of the folks who worked for him in Harris County.
Friday, August 9, 2013
A REVIEW OF THE "NEW" WALTHER (UMAREX?) PPK/s .22 L.R.: IN A WORD, DISAPPOINTED
Really, it's my unfortunate duty to report that result. In fact, really, I could say nothing more, and if you're one of the few who'd take me at my word, that one word would be, as I said, disappointed.
But inquiring minds want to know more. First off, let me say I didn't conduct the full exam of the gun that I should have. But, as you'll soon see, what I did see disappointed me so that I didn't feel the need to go on. I won't be buying one.
I'm disappointed because I was really looking forward to getting one of these. Priced at a street price of $423 at my LGS, it was certainly priced right.
I'd be willing to pay lots more for a gun that had better quality.
In my teens, I owned an Interarms imported German made 1976 Walther PPK/s in .22 L.R. I foolishly traded it, although I got a Python for it, some years later. It was a great gun. It had a smooth and reasonable DA trigger pull and an excellent SA pull. It's rich, deep, almost liquid-y blued finish could only be rivaled by Colt and Smith and Wesson on their finer guns. It was as accurate as you could want a .22 pocket pistol to be, and really was quite an accurate gun.
I now own a Smith and Wesson/Walther blue finish American (and recall repaired) Walther PPK/s in .380, and it's construction and it's trigger pull in DA and SA are what I recall those of my old Interarms version to be. I've also owned another and much earlier made American version in stainless, which I sold to a friend years ago.
So I have a frame of reference about the "normal" operation of a PPK/s in the trigger pull department.
How should I describe it? Jerky. Haltingly. Heavy. Uneven. Scratchy. I could sum it up with unpleasant.
As a former cop, longtime prosecutor, and even longer time gun buyer and seller, I've seen lots of guns from crap to great. In my law enforcement work, I've seen a disproportionate share of Hi Points, Loricin, RG and other guns.
I'd take any of those over the Walther I saw anyday of the week. Each has a better trigger pull, whether SA or DA.
When I said "Oh, is that the new PPK/s in .22?", my LSG just rolled his eyes and told me not to get excited. He told me the trigger pull was horrible, and he didn't know how they were going to sell the numerous ones they had in stock. He said he had the one with the best trigger pull on display and that the others were even worse. He had a request into his distributor to have the maker take back these guns as defective, but reportedly the response was that "they just have a heavy trigger pull".
The finish was dull. The gun is lighter than a "real" PPK/s and I suspect it's made of cheap metal. You know how the slides and frames of the mass of .22 versions of 1911's are sorta light and made of perhaps a metal cast itself? I know lots of parts are cast even in high end guns, but this had an especially cheap kind of lightweight characteristic.
Not a good kind of lightweight like my Colt Cobra or the Glock series of pistols but a scary kind of lightweight. Cheap. It felt cheap in the hand. I didn't pay particular attention to the grips, because frankly after I tried DA and SA trigger pulls once each I had no interest in the gun.
The finish was a matte sort of blue, but not a nice matte finish like that I have on some Smiths and Kimbers. Again, it looked cheap.
I didn't check to see if it disassembles like the standard PPK (using the trigger guard) or to see if the safety functioned as a decocker. I did notice that the sights were black and hard to see and that the safety had no red dot on it to indicate firing position.
I'm guessing this is made FOR Walther under license by Umarex. I've seen some of their guns that were not so high quality that had that same feel as did this one. I will say that my son has an Umarex Colt M-16 (really a 70's stocked long barrel AR .22 clone) and we've been quite pleased with it for several years now and it doesn't have that cheapo feel that the PPK/s did. The rifle has had thousands of rounds through it with no issues.
So as I remarked to my LGS, and to which he agreed, for less money the Ruger SR22 is a million times the pistol that the Walther is, plus it wouldn't take a trigger job on the SR22 to actually be able to use it. The stock trigger and sights on the SR22 are excellent.
If you want to spend a little more dollars than the Walther, the Browning 1911-22 is another excellent, excellent gun. Again, my son has this gun, and shoots the heck out of it. Whenever I get the chance, I pry the gun from his hands and from those hands of my friend Billy Ray, and I get to shoot a mag or two out of it before surrendering it again to El Fisho Jr.
As pleased as we are with the SR22, we shoot the Browning a whole lot more because of the fun factor, and because it is an accurate little cuss. As is the SR22.
So buy either of those, or a Mark series Ruger pistol or Smith and Wesson in .22, but trust me on this. The PPK/s is a stinker.
But inquiring minds want to know more. First off, let me say I didn't conduct the full exam of the gun that I should have. But, as you'll soon see, what I did see disappointed me so that I didn't feel the need to go on. I won't be buying one.
I'm disappointed because I was really looking forward to getting one of these. Priced at a street price of $423 at my LGS, it was certainly priced right.
I'd be willing to pay lots more for a gun that had better quality.
In my teens, I owned an Interarms imported German made 1976 Walther PPK/s in .22 L.R. I foolishly traded it, although I got a Python for it, some years later. It was a great gun. It had a smooth and reasonable DA trigger pull and an excellent SA pull. It's rich, deep, almost liquid-y blued finish could only be rivaled by Colt and Smith and Wesson on their finer guns. It was as accurate as you could want a .22 pocket pistol to be, and really was quite an accurate gun.
I now own a Smith and Wesson/Walther blue finish American (and recall repaired) Walther PPK/s in .380, and it's construction and it's trigger pull in DA and SA are what I recall those of my old Interarms version to be. I've also owned another and much earlier made American version in stainless, which I sold to a friend years ago.
So I have a frame of reference about the "normal" operation of a PPK/s in the trigger pull department.
How should I describe it? Jerky. Haltingly. Heavy. Uneven. Scratchy. I could sum it up with unpleasant.
As a former cop, longtime prosecutor, and even longer time gun buyer and seller, I've seen lots of guns from crap to great. In my law enforcement work, I've seen a disproportionate share of Hi Points, Loricin, RG and other guns.
I'd take any of those over the Walther I saw anyday of the week. Each has a better trigger pull, whether SA or DA.
When I said "Oh, is that the new PPK/s in .22?", my LSG just rolled his eyes and told me not to get excited. He told me the trigger pull was horrible, and he didn't know how they were going to sell the numerous ones they had in stock. He said he had the one with the best trigger pull on display and that the others were even worse. He had a request into his distributor to have the maker take back these guns as defective, but reportedly the response was that "they just have a heavy trigger pull".
The finish was dull. The gun is lighter than a "real" PPK/s and I suspect it's made of cheap metal. You know how the slides and frames of the mass of .22 versions of 1911's are sorta light and made of perhaps a metal cast itself? I know lots of parts are cast even in high end guns, but this had an especially cheap kind of lightweight characteristic.
Not a good kind of lightweight like my Colt Cobra or the Glock series of pistols but a scary kind of lightweight. Cheap. It felt cheap in the hand. I didn't pay particular attention to the grips, because frankly after I tried DA and SA trigger pulls once each I had no interest in the gun.
The finish was a matte sort of blue, but not a nice matte finish like that I have on some Smiths and Kimbers. Again, it looked cheap.
I didn't check to see if it disassembles like the standard PPK (using the trigger guard) or to see if the safety functioned as a decocker. I did notice that the sights were black and hard to see and that the safety had no red dot on it to indicate firing position.
I'm guessing this is made FOR Walther under license by Umarex. I've seen some of their guns that were not so high quality that had that same feel as did this one. I will say that my son has an Umarex Colt M-16 (really a 70's stocked long barrel AR .22 clone) and we've been quite pleased with it for several years now and it doesn't have that cheapo feel that the PPK/s did. The rifle has had thousands of rounds through it with no issues.
So as I remarked to my LGS, and to which he agreed, for less money the Ruger SR22 is a million times the pistol that the Walther is, plus it wouldn't take a trigger job on the SR22 to actually be able to use it. The stock trigger and sights on the SR22 are excellent.
If you want to spend a little more dollars than the Walther, the Browning 1911-22 is another excellent, excellent gun. Again, my son has this gun, and shoots the heck out of it. Whenever I get the chance, I pry the gun from his hands and from those hands of my friend Billy Ray, and I get to shoot a mag or two out of it before surrendering it again to El Fisho Jr.
As pleased as we are with the SR22, we shoot the Browning a whole lot more because of the fun factor, and because it is an accurate little cuss. As is the SR22.
So buy either of those, or a Mark series Ruger pistol or Smith and Wesson in .22, but trust me on this. The PPK/s is a stinker.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
IT'S HOT DOWN HERE IN TEXAS, NOW...
That title, of course, is a blatant theft from Stevie Ray Vaughn, a pretty valued musician around my friends and peers here in Texas, but it is hot.
It is not as hot as hell, however, and some parts of the past few days have been downright tolerable.
We've had a smidgen of rain and are on watering restrictions and the like, although in my part of Texas it's not so bad but the further west and northwest you go the more the effects of this drought can be seen.
It's looking to be a replay of the highly miserable summer of 2011, but knock on wood, we're not steadily up in the triple digits, although we've had more than a few days where we were hitting three digits.
Some thirty years ago, Mr. California, a former roommate of mine and his girlfriend and wife to be, had that itch to move to Cal-i-forn-i-yeh and did move to San Diego back in '83 or so. They moved there from all of our native Houston to escape the heat and humidity Houston is known for. For at least two months of the year, Houston is like the planet Creamatoria in Vin Diesel's Chronicles of Riddick movie. It's like a million degrees outside. Oppressively hot and very humid. For the two months on either side of that hellish period, it can be tolerable but is often not.
Swamp city, Mr. California used to call it.
It's pertinent to note that Mr. California, had been touting the great benefits of California living for years and how we were fools not to come along with him to the West Coast.
Mr. California was unbearable on this subject at times.
His childhood friend Smitty, also a friend of mine and later a roommate and close friend of mine for all these intervening years now, considered the option and we even made a few exploratory trips to LA and San Diego. We actively sought work, Smitty with the LAPD and me at law firms and seeking transfer to a LA law school.
But I digress. So my roommate Mr. California and his gal moved to San Diego and about a week after they got there, they were in the midst of a horrid and long lasting heatwave. I recall his answering machine message that summer, for those of you old enough to know what a pre-voice mail answering machine is, was something to this effect:
"Hi. This is Mr. California and his gal. We're not available to come to the phone during the daytime hours. We're hiding in the shadows, where the temperature is lowest, right at about 100 degrees. We wait until darkness falls before leaving the shadows, when the heat goes down, before we can return phone calls".
We found this especially funny because Mr. California had rented a condo with no A/C upon landing in San Diego. We'd been hearing him proclaim for years that "...in California you don't need air conditioning." We did feel sorry for his gal.
I'm reminded of that message when it gets searingly hot outside.
The story has a very happy ending. They lasted a few years in California, then went north to Oregon then Washington state and then ended up in North Carolina. They are still married with two great sons. Mr. California and his wife are both employed in a field of speciality of nursing that pays really large dollars. So they've always done well, and their specialty and service thirty years ago under legendary Houston heart docs like Cooley and DeBakey means they don't have to look real hard for a great job where ever they go.
It is not as hot as hell, however, and some parts of the past few days have been downright tolerable.
We've had a smidgen of rain and are on watering restrictions and the like, although in my part of Texas it's not so bad but the further west and northwest you go the more the effects of this drought can be seen.
It's looking to be a replay of the highly miserable summer of 2011, but knock on wood, we're not steadily up in the triple digits, although we've had more than a few days where we were hitting three digits.
Some thirty years ago, Mr. California, a former roommate of mine and his girlfriend and wife to be, had that itch to move to Cal-i-forn-i-yeh and did move to San Diego back in '83 or so. They moved there from all of our native Houston to escape the heat and humidity Houston is known for. For at least two months of the year, Houston is like the planet Creamatoria in Vin Diesel's Chronicles of Riddick movie. It's like a million degrees outside. Oppressively hot and very humid. For the two months on either side of that hellish period, it can be tolerable but is often not.
Swamp city, Mr. California used to call it.
It's pertinent to note that Mr. California, had been touting the great benefits of California living for years and how we were fools not to come along with him to the West Coast.
Mr. California was unbearable on this subject at times.
His childhood friend Smitty, also a friend of mine and later a roommate and close friend of mine for all these intervening years now, considered the option and we even made a few exploratory trips to LA and San Diego. We actively sought work, Smitty with the LAPD and me at law firms and seeking transfer to a LA law school.
But I digress. So my roommate Mr. California and his gal moved to San Diego and about a week after they got there, they were in the midst of a horrid and long lasting heatwave. I recall his answering machine message that summer, for those of you old enough to know what a pre-voice mail answering machine is, was something to this effect:
"Hi. This is Mr. California and his gal. We're not available to come to the phone during the daytime hours. We're hiding in the shadows, where the temperature is lowest, right at about 100 degrees. We wait until darkness falls before leaving the shadows, when the heat goes down, before we can return phone calls".
We found this especially funny because Mr. California had rented a condo with no A/C upon landing in San Diego. We'd been hearing him proclaim for years that "...in California you don't need air conditioning." We did feel sorry for his gal.
I'm reminded of that message when it gets searingly hot outside.
The story has a very happy ending. They lasted a few years in California, then went north to Oregon then Washington state and then ended up in North Carolina. They are still married with two great sons. Mr. California and his wife are both employed in a field of speciality of nursing that pays really large dollars. So they've always done well, and their specialty and service thirty years ago under legendary Houston heart docs like Cooley and DeBakey means they don't have to look real hard for a great job where ever they go.
Saturday, June 15, 2013
SWITCHBLADE KNIVES TO BE LEGAL IN TEXAS SOON!
Knifemakers and gun shop owners will be adding a new profit line come September 1, 2013. The arcane switchblade knife prohibition is now history, or will be soon. Governor Perry reportedly signed it into law on June 14th, 2013. That's yesterday, and although it has not been in the newspaper the various legislative watch websites have said it is so.
So now there is another time proven method for the common man and woman to defend themselves as well as the many collector and utilitarian functions a switchblade can serve. If you read that last sentence a couple of times, I believe it makes sense.
In any event, a nice stag F.B. a and Microtech Halo, here I come.
So now there is another time proven method for the common man and woman to defend themselves as well as the many collector and utilitarian functions a switchblade can serve. If you read that last sentence a couple of times, I believe it makes sense.
In any event, a nice stag F.B. a and Microtech Halo, here I come.
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