It’s Valentine’s Day, 2015, and it falls on a Saturday. You know what that means, don’t you? It means you won’t get into so much as a Burger King without a wait! Be sure to visit today’s A&J for my indirect thoughts on that one. Where do you get your ideas, indeed. Don’t get me wrong. I love a nice outing in a good restaurant, especially in observance of Valentine’s Day; I just make it a point never to go on Valentine’s Day! This allows for a truly romantic dinner in a peaceful atmosphere (at normal prices), plus it serves a secondary purpose if necessary: “Valentine’s Day? Don’t you remember that cozy little place we dined at last August!”
Happy Valentine’s Day!
By Jimmy Johnson
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255 responses to “Happy Valentine’s Day!”
Don’t know yet, Ghost. It is a bank holiday, remember? They reopen tomorrow, hence my idea to go in person when ice melts off roads which Oklahoma does not treat nor clear. Need to find my magnifying glass, found the #’s on gun!
Ghost dear, I think I know what this gun is or a hint anyway. It says “U.S. Property” N0979027 M1911 A1 US Army” Which means it should be in bank vault with other guns and I have no idea what it was doing next to my bed with two other guns I didn’t know or recognize either. Of course, not being too knowledgeable on guns I did not recognize their calibers either but can go look!
It is original, has holster too I think and the clips are all original.
Love, Jackie
Denise, about the time Oscar Wilde wrote that play, I appeared in it playing one of the female ingenues. I think it was fluffier one, whichever that is! Is there a Gwendolyn? I remember the costumes being hot, sniffling in the Louisiana heat and tiny waits with lace-up under-wired corsets of some sort. You almost gasped from the breathlessness of it all. Ours were rented from some “real” theatrical supply house and ill suited for Southern climates.
Doesn’t the powder in ammo get stale or dangerous over time? Peace, emb
Yes, EMB, it does. I do not put ammo in a bank vault and I am trying to send some of this old ammo to the Sheriff’s Department here in county to be exploded, which is what they are supposed to do with it. I am sitting here and quietly laughing while I try to compose an intelligible answer to that one because 1) I am not my mother’s child, well I am but not on subject of guns and ammunition 2) My family has bullets and shotgun shells lying around the old farm house older than any of us are 3) No one else besides me finds this alarming.
Love, Jackie
Jackie, the “NO” in front of the serial number indicates that M1911A1 was manufactured during WWII by Remington Rand. (Yes, the typewriter company.) The s/n indicates the year of manufacture was 1943. Depending on its condition, it may have some significant collector value, especially if it has an original holster and extra magazines. So, yes, it should be cleaned and properly prepared for storage.
Even if it has no significant monetary value, it would not be suitable for your use as a SD weapon. Its size would make it difficult for small and/or RA impaired hands to operate. And the recoil of the .45 ACP rounds would be a bit daunting for a novice shooter. And no, that is not Bubba at the gun range allowing that, “Little lady, that there shootin’ iron is a lot more gun than you need.”
It belonged to my step-dad, Ghost, who was in SeaBees during WWII. He helped build the bases in Alaska and install radar there but that isn’t where the gun is from. He was part of the British and American joint behind the lines “unofficial not uniformed or official” spy efforts in China that went in to map and survey harbors and possible landing sites for invasion. It was a volunteer group selected to meet with the local forces still there. Talk about strange alliances of spies, pirates, warlords, soldiers of fortune, nationalities. It’s the original and I would be surprised to find out there was a record of who it was issued to.
It’s going into bank vault if roads are thawed tomorrow.That whole story is shades of Terry and the Pirates adventurers. He was really a sort of character likes the ones in movie Secondhand Lions, he was in Saudi Arabia staking first oil well ever drilled there, being attacked by dessert pirates on horseback and then went on to survey first Danish fields, Germans took Denmark, he’d married a local Danish girl there apparently, she disappeared in war, he got out and then volunteered for Navy despite being exempted.
I hasten to point out he and I were at total opposition my entire life, so I found out most of this long after he died. Made me wish that we might have liked each other.
Love, Jackie
Jackie, let your pit bull deputy boarder take care of the old ammo.
With a history like that, the 1911’s collector value probably just went up.
Commercially produced ammo (not hand-loads) that has been stored inside, not exposed to water, and does not have corroded cases should be perfectly fine for use. Fifty-year-old military surplus ammo is commonly sold and used. (If it’s like 90 or 100 years old, it may have collector value.) Old gun powder doesn’t turn into nitroglycerin or anything more dangerous than new gun powder. If you don’t want the ammo, give it to someone who can use it.
Mark, I will do so with all the old ammo from here. Hopefully I don’t find much more but you know what? I have all those boxes of stuff of my mom’s still to go through and stuff from her house in Louisiana. I am going to pretty much wash my hands of the farm house which belongs to our family estate and let them deal with it. I am going to have to take a trailer over there and haul off four wheelers, three wheelers and lawn mowers I suppose to avoid being liable for them? They can explode the ammo or let their grandchildren swallow it!
Case in point…I have a stash of 45-year-old .357 Magnum ammo someone gave me that still makes a satisfyingly loud “bang” when the trigger is pulled and sends the bullet downrange.
Thanks, Ghost. I actually knew that about the old, old ammo being collectible. Will have to go sign in to bank vault I suppose and see what lies there, look around here a little more.I don’t want to leave anything appealing to thieves here and this stuff wouldn’t be here, had I known!
Love, Jackie
Historical fact for February 16, 2015. Today is the day Marty McFly arrived in the future from October 26, 1985.
Thirty years ago and it seems like yesterday!
Where can I get a hover conversion for my car? Or buy a Hoverboard? Or Nikes with automatic shoelaces?
Thought Nike brought out the shoelaces? And I thought someone did a working Hoverboard?
Here is a sobering fact. I sold “Back to the Future” giftware and toys as a sales rep back in the day, including other movies like “Who Shot Roger Rabbit?” and others. Briefly. It wasn’t really my stick, although good at it. Is that stuff now valuable?
Snopes says it ain’t quite so:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/hoaxes/bttf.asp
To be more precise, the date used in the second film was 21 October 2015.
OK
From notes taken:
Jackie – I used to hunt skeet, I say that because I didn’t hit many.
Woman was taken from Adam’s rim so she would walk along side, not before or behind.
I do not wear a wedding ring (nor should you) because I work with my hands as you do.
I have seen and heard of too many people losing fingers (male & female) because of
wedding rings.
Have 2 cats that have learned how to open door to get in – just wish they would close the door
once they were in.
John – If light still comes through the light shade – it is clean enough.
David – Prayers of thanksgiving. Miracles happen – all the time, we just have to recognize them.
Denise – A “Depth Charge” (according to my uncle a WWII Navy man) was a shot glass of
whiskey dropped into a glass of beer. I like yours better.
A “hover board” that floats an inch above the ground, as long as the ground is covered with sheets of cooper or aluminum, for 15 minutes before its batteries run down, doesn’t really count. I hadn’t heard about the shoelaces.
Jackie, maybe. There are guidebooks for most everything that is collectible. But things that were designed to be collectible have a way of losing value in the short run. Unless it contained something that really was valuable and in short supply. You really ought to go through your mom’s stuff because there might be a lot of undiscovered family history there. Beyond that, hire an estate sales outfit and let them deal with getting it out. My brother got tapped by a friend here to be executor of their estate. Two years later, he is still trying to find everything and get the real estate sold. It turned into a full-time job for him. There were some unusual things in the houses as the woman’s parents had been circus people before settling here. Her mom was an equestrian performer and dad became a homebuilder after leaving the circus. One of the things my brother found was a recording phonograph, which I had only seen in pictures. Basement had stacks of old magazines, including Variety and an offshoot dedicated to the fair and carnival circuit.
Bear, your uncle was correct about the “Depth Charge” drink he knew, based on a WWII period-piece movie I saw many years ago, in black-and-white, as I recall. (Wish I could recall the movie’s name.) A variation of the “Boilermaker”, with the added challenge of getting the shot glass to drop into the beer glass from a height of 10 or 12 inches.
Mark, my point exactly! I knew it wasn’t and wasn’t going to be! I felt like a lying fraud selling that stuff to retailers because it was all manufactured collectibles and I just couldn’t con people into believing in it. I actually have an entire enormous bank box full of thousands and thousands of dollars of Franklin Mint junk that was foisted as being “collectible” on my step-dad apparently. It isn’t and if the price of silver goes up I will melt it all down. The workmanship is beautiful but the stuff is melt-down doomed. My cousins inherited hundreds of thousands in Jim Beam bottles that are worthless today.
Sorry, that is why I just like things for what they are and don’t worry about collectible or increased value. I fully understand my friend who said he wished he didn’t know what some of his things were valued at because he could no longer just enjoy them.
You know that song “Simple Man”? I like it.
Love, Jackie
Old Bear- the flesh stripped from your hand/fingers by a wedding ring or any other ring is very real threat. As are watches, jewelry, earrings, necklaces, certain types of clothing. Gotta’ remember death, maiming and destruction were my first career (after the department of agriculture dilly dallied around for a year trying to decide to hire me as a Federal meat inspector)
In other words, I became a Federal injury specialist for workmen’s comp and learned every possible way you could conceivably be hurt, including some pretty exotic ones. Not to make light of any of this, I still flinch at what things I see people doing!
“Quick, kids! Draw Winky Dink a ladder so he can escape.”
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/u5TdRhNLOPk/hqdefault.jpg
I wonder what an unused Winky Dink kit would be worth today. I also wonder how many kids got in trouble in the 1950’s for using their Crayola crayons to draw directly on their TV screens.