Room Service & Afternoon Naps

Room service is good.

Afternoon naps are good

 

Souvenirs

Let’s test the definition: A souvenir (from French, meaning “a remembrance or memory”), memento, keepsake, or token of remembrance is an object a person acquires for the memories the owner associates with it. A souvenir can be any object that can be collected or purchased and transported home by the traveler as a memento of a visit.

Look what Uncle Billy found. As I understand it, a lot of that gear was disassembled, boxed and shipped home during WW2.

 

 

M-3 submachine gun

The Grease Gun

Manufactured at a cost of $15.00 a piece by General Motors circa 1943-45, they were issued as a compact self-defense weapon for US Army vehicle operators. It replaced the M-1 Thompson, which cost $225.00 to manufacture.

However, one of my favorite weapons of all time is the M-1928A1 Thompson, not because it’s fantastically accurate, or light, or versatile, but because I just enjoy shooting it. Ok, I also like the Swedish K.

 

The Official Obama Painting

 

Do you think that she’ll catch a virus?

 

Vintage?

I tell myself that it doesn’t feel like vintage to me. But I’m getting old – maybe.

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18 COMMENTS

  1. Look what Uncle Billy found. As I understand it, a lot of that gear was disassembled, boxed and shipped home during WW2.

    Several years ago, in a nearby town (does that sound like the beginning of a Star Wars movie?) a WWII vet went to his reward leaving no living family.
    The county came in to inventory his property and discovered a bedroom of the home filled with WWII weapons and ammo.
    That is why the SO in the county is one of the few in America with a Ma Deuce in its armory.
    They sold most of their Thompsons a quite few years ago for a hefty sum (that might have had something to do with the incident back in the 70s where a deputy riddled the side of the market in Lakehead with a Thompson during a hostage situation in which the market owner was killed during the fusillade by the multi-jurisdictional mad minute).

    • It’s a pity that the vet’s arsenal couldn’t have remained in the ‘unaccounted for’ private collections in the US.

  2. When I was briefly detailed as the driver of the company’s M578 light recovery vehicle I was assigned an M3. Never got to shoot though, dammit.

    • I’ve fired the M-3. As with the Thompson, it fires from an open bolt, similar cyclic rate as I recall. Every six months we had a qualification with “third world weapons you might stumble onto and need to pick up and shoot”. It included the M1 Thompson, the M3, and many others. It was always a fun range day that concluded with a BBQ.

        • Physically, certainly. Psychologically, undoubtedly. The question of whether I’d do it all over again is an interesting one. If I was twenty today, in this political environment, I think that I’d go another way. I don’t know what I’d do, though. Maybe medicine?

      • I also got to fire an M-3; I was surprised at the lack of recoil to the shooter until I thought about the bolt. The action and weight of the bolt absorbed the recoil force. If I had had a stronger wrist, I think I could have fired it one handed.

        Paul L. Quandt

  3. There was a bit of a flap in my town growing up when it was discovered that the M-20 recoilless a local vet had brought home from the war and made into a memorial on his lawn was fully functional and he had a dozen rounds crated up in his basement.

    They should have let him keep it IMO, he never caused any trouble.
    -Kle.

  4. My dad left me a Leica that he acquired in France.
    All citizens were to turn in any equipment that might be used in surveillance.
    Then there was the Walther PP that I had a lot of fun with as a kid (that he never knew about until I told him in my 40’s). Mom made him get rid of that before he could pass it on.
    He never said how he got that.

    My best friend Jim died last year of Dementia.
    In cleaning out his workbench, his daughter (who he taught to be good with tools and guns, yet is a happily married hetero) found a pipe with caps on each end that obviously contained something.
    A mortar round.

    • Yeah. I wonder what my kids will think when they empty out the gun safes and the sea bags?

  5. I had a go on a grease gun that’d been captured from the “Argies.” Heavy little beast. And growing up there seemed to be an awful lot of Samurai swords hanging above mantlepieces. Also, curiously, I remember lots of fire tools made out WWI bayonets. I wouldn’t mind a set of those.

  6. Disassembly and ship back continues to this day… 😉 And all you need to fix the Land Rover is a phillips screwdriver and a crescent wrench!

    • Land Rovers are rugged vehicles who have earned their reputation through brutal use on every continent.

      • One I was riding around in during my traveling days had the carb fall off! We couldn’t find the nuts that had departed, so we gooped the manifold, both sides of the gasket, and the carb base with gasket adhesive, and wired it back on the manifold. Strapped it down really tight with some bailing wire, waited for the gasket glue to dry a bit, and then continued on our way….

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