A 137-year-old rifle found five years ago leaning against a juniper tree in Great Basin National Park in Nevada is now part of an exhibit dedicated to the “Forgotten Winchester†at the park visitor center near the Utah border.
The weathered Winchester Model 1873 is in a case designed to capture the way it looked when park archaeologist Eva Jensen stumbled across it on a rocky outcrop above Strawberry Creek during an archaeological survey.
Based on its condition, experts believe the weapon might have been abandoned in the forest more than a century ago.
But nearly five years after its discovery, park officials still don’t know who it belonged to nor why it was left against the tree. No sales or ownership records have been found.
The serial number was visible, allowing experts at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyo., to determine it was made in 1882.
The exhibit also highlights the role the Model 1873 — one of the most popular guns on the Western frontier — played in the history of the West.
“The exhibit is a showcase for visitors to discover the rifle’s mysterious story and become inspired to imagine, investigate and care about a piece of their American history,†said Nichole Andler, the park’s chief of interpretation.
Herbert Houze, former curator of a firearms museum at the Buffalo Bill center, has said Model 1873 rifles were so valuable that whoever owned the one on display might have rested it against the tree and been unable to find it later.
“You just don’t leave a gun like that there,†he said.
The rifles sold for $35 to $50 in the 1880s and can now fetch up to $15,000 depending on their condition.
The rifle on display has been exhibited at gun shows and at the Buffalo Bill center for a summer. There, officials did an X-ray, found a bullet in the stock and removed it.
Singer-songwriter Leon Redbone, who specialized in old-school vaudeville and Tin Pan Alley-style music, died earlier today, his family confirmed. He was 69 — although, in characteristically whimsical fashion, the official statement announcing his death gave his age as 127.
Jeffrey Tucker explains that, after Big Government got done ruining the gas can, it went after automobile design.
Your car looks like a box. So does every other car. It’s boring, even shocking when you consider how awesome cars used to look. What’s gone wrong? And to what extent has the design mess contributed to the decline of American auto manufacturing?
A recent letter to the Wall Street Journal comes close but misses the point. “Blame the Death of Design for U.S. Autos’ Decline†reads his headline. Speaking of Cadillacs and their declining sales, he writes: “The 1957 coupe looked like nothing else on wheels then, and it’s still stunning six decades later. The [new] XT6 and boxes of different sizes, identified with variations of letters and numbers, are the problem. A distinctive, prestigious and beautiful vehicle is the solution.â€
This seems right. You drive around today and can barely distinguish one wheeled box from another. We look through websites at concept cars and wonder why they never seem to exist. And whatever happened to the Golden Age of design?
The problem with the letter is that it only scratches the surface. The real problem is more fundamental. Designers did not somehow lose imagination over the last 25 years. The designs of new cars are boring because regulations forced this result. …
[I]’s not a choice. No manufacturer can make a car like this anymore. Step back from the situation and think about it. In the 1930s, phones were awful, and you were lucky to have one at all. No one today would give up a smartphone for one of those old things. Same with shoes, computers, televisions, ovens, and so much more. No one wants to go back.
We Want Old!
With cars, it’s a different matter. Our sense of nostalgia is growing, not receding. But we don’t even have the choice to go back. There will be no more pretty cars made and sold in the United States. The government and its tens of thousands of micromanaging regulations on motor vehicles will not allow it. …
It hasn’t happened all at once. It’s been a bit at a time, taking place over four decades in the name of safety and the environment. The whole thing began in 1966 with creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, followed by the Environmental Protection Agency and dozens of others. Every regulator wanted a piece of the car.
Each new regulation seems like it makes sense in some way. Who doesn’t want to be safer and who doesn’t want to save gas?
But these mandates are imposed without any real sense of the cost and benefits, and they come about without a thought as to what they do to the design of a car. And once the regs appear on the books, they never go away. They are stickier than code on a patented piece of software.
The Rise of the Boxes
As the years marched on, the homogenization process rolled forward, with each generation of cars looking ever more like each other. You can even trace the problem by looking through the history of the Mazda Miata: this slick two-seater roaster eventually became a shrunken version of all the other cars on the road: swollen nose, rear, and beltline.
Try as they might, manufacturers have a terrible time distinguishing their cars from each other’s. Car homogenization has become something of an Internet meme. It turns out that all new cars more or less look alike. I had begun to notice this over the years and I thought I was just imagining things. But people playing with Photoshop have found that you can mix and match car grills and make a BMW look just like a Kia and a Hyundai look just like a Honda. It’s all one car.
Truly, this cries out for explanation. So I was happy to see a video made by CNET that gives five reasons: mandates for big fronts to protect pedestrians, mandates that require low tops for fuel economy, a big rear to balance out the big fronts, tiny windows resulting from safety regulations that end up actually making the car less safe, and high belt lines due to the other regs. In other words, single-minded concern for testable “safety†and the environment has wrecked the entire car aesthetic.
And that’s only the beginning. Car and Driver puts this as plainly as can be: “In our hyperregulated modern world, the government dictates nearly every aspect of car design, from the size and color of the exterior lighting elements to how sharp the creases stamped into sheetmetal can be.â€
You are welcome to read an engineer’s account of what it is like to design an American car. Nothing you think, much less dream, really matters. The regulations drive the whole process. He explains that the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards with hundreds of regulations — really a massive central plan — dictate every detail and have utterly ruined the look and feel of American cars.
In Washington, there are very big buildings with tens of thousands of employees sitting around all day with nothing to do but write new regulations. And there are lobbyists for auto companies offering suggested regs, intentionally designed to build deep moats around their businesses and to nobble the competition. Then come the insurance company bean-counters, determined to reduce their companies’ liabilities at any cost to your convenience or choice. You may get killed by defective air bag, but the statistics show that overall they save insurance companies money. And, after them, come the crazies and crackpots determined to save the trees and polar bears by taking away the internal combustion engine, one nut or bolt at a time.
“Uncle Bill†Lundy claimed to be the last living Confederate Civil War veteran in Florida, and spent his 107th birthday at Eglin AFB, Florida in January 1955.
It should be noted that Lundy’s actual age and military service have been heavily disputed over the years. William Lundy was allegedly born near Troy, in Pike County, Alabama, on January 18, 1848 (also reported at Coffee Springs, Coffee County). He is said to have enlisted in the last days of March 1864, at age 16; Company D (Brown’s), 4th Alabama Cavalry Regiment (Home Guard) at Elba; and to have been honorably discharged at Elba in May 1865, on account of the close of the war. He moved his family to Laurel Hill in 1890, where he and his wife, Mary Jane Lassiter, raised ten children. He was granted a Confederate soldier’s pension in Florida, no. 8948, of $600 per annum to be paid effective from June 12, 1941.
Albert was the younger brother of the great Melvin Poe and nearly as famous a huntsman.
He had a renowned career as Huntsman with the Piedmont Fox Hounds, the Fairfax Hunt, and the Middleburg Hunt, and was particularly noted as a Fox Hound Breeder.
He was honored in retirement as a Member of the Huntsmen’s Room, Museum of Hounds & Hunting NA, Inc.
Albert had a devilish sense of humor. Karen and I had fun with Albert in Virginia and will miss him very much. I’m told that Tommy Lee Jones, Casanova’s famous huntsman, blew “Going Home” at Albert’s Middleburg Funeral.
This photo of my future wife Karen is from her ancient Yale ID card. It was taken in 1971, her freshman year. The same photo was mounted and framed, along with similar photos of all the other members of the Class of 1975 in Berkeley College, and hung in the Common Room on the wall opposite the Dining Hall.
As you might expect, male Yale undergraduates not infrequently passed the time perusing the four Class Photo Displays, rating each of the young ladies on attractiveness and desirability. (Karen typically came in first in 1975.)
So I was not in the least surprised to read that male submarine sailors were in the habit of rating the respective appeal of their feminine shipmates, now that the US Navy has succumbed to political correctness and foolishly sexually integrated subs. What would anyone expect?
The lying propagandists of the journalistic left sensationalistically refer to the sailors’ ranking of feminine charms as a “rape list,” despite no reference therein of any kind to rape. I suppose they have to. How else would they be able to puff up perfectly natural, and to some at least, complimentary, male behavior into an aggression of some kind, a threat to the womens’ “safety,” and a scandal meriting a 74-page investigation, the discharge of two male sailors, and firing a captain.
“The sexually explicit list describes various USS Florida females by appearances, characteristics and various sexual acts the creators of the list wish to perform with them,” the investigation states. “The list describes aggressive sexual activity, but does not reference non-consensual acts.”
The sub’s commander got fired for failing to respond to complaints from goofy feminists with immediate inquisitorial proceedings. Doubtless, the unfortunate captain thought there were more important priorities on a warship than catering to the amour propre of the hyper-sensitive and easily offended. Clearly, today’s Naval High Command did not agree. Admirals in the Pentagon these days worry less about anti-submarine missiles and depth charges and more about the incredible destructive power of identity politics and crusading journalists.
Donald Trump ought to re-instate those two sailors and the wronged captain, shit-can everybody involved in the investigation including especially the initial complaintants, and issue an Executive Order ending the presence of females in combat units, including warships.
The political/cultural divide extends conspicuously into the Outdoors.
The Outdoors Right fishes and hunts. The Extreme Outdoors Right shoots big game and/or hunts par force du chien. The Outdoors Right wears safari jackets, canvas hunting coats, camo for duck and turkey hunting, and Scarlet Hunt Uniforms for fox hunting.
The Outdoors Left hikes, bicycles, kayaks, rafts, rock climbs, and skis. The Outdoors Left wears the latest artificial fabric in Life -Saver-flavor colors.
The Outdoors Right remembers shopping at the old (the real) Abercrombie & Fitch and Wm. Mills, and buying from the Herter’s catalogue. We still shop at L.L. Bean, Filson, Woolrich, and Cabela’s. We used to buy from Orvis, but now they do.
The Outdoors Left buys from Patagonia, Northern Mountain, and REI.
We lust after custom shotguns. They yearn for custom bicycles and hiking boots.
There is surprisingly little overlap between the two worlds, though –regrettably– A River Runs Through It (1992) resulted in a lot of unwelcome cross-over into fly fishing. Men used to say: “I never met a fly fisherman I didn’t like.” Not anymore. When I see some fashionista on the stream loaded down with expensive, brand-new Orvis equipment, I feel like pushing him in.
I sometimes read Outside magazine, and I commonly marvel (and bristle with indignation) over the cultural differences.
We Outdoors Right types would never dream of spending time in the territory of large predators unarmed. The readership of Outside Magazine is capable of debating the ethics of spraying Old Ephraim in the snout with pepper spray. They bicycle through Mountain Lion country. They camp, unarmed, among the grizzlies. And as you will read in the linked article from the Outside Magazine archives on the late Hendrk Coetzee, the Outdoors Left will go kayaking in cannibal-infested regions of the Congo and down rivers full of crocodiles.
Whitewater kayaker Hendrik Coetzee had decided to call it a career after a decade of first descents on the wildest rivers in Africa. The river’s most feared predator had a different ending in store.
Waters continue to rise across the midwest this week as heavy rains and saturated soil bring multiple rivers to flood stage. Homes have been destroyed, entire communities are inundated—and in Oklahoma, the historic World War II submarine USS Batfish has re-floated once again nearly fifty years after it was dry docked on display in a park along the Arkansas River.
Aerial video from KOTV News on 6 shows the USS Batfish floating comfortably in at least 15 feet of water on Wednesday as the Arkansas spills over its banks and swamps the city of Muskogee. Normally, the 77-year-old Balao-class submarine serves as the centerpiece for Muskogee’s War Memorial Park, standing bare on a bowl-shaped lawn as both an interactive museum and a point of pride for the region. But these floodwaters have it sailing again like it’s 1943.
