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Thursday, July 30, 2009

Maudlin Mauldin Misfires

This is an excerpt from Bill Mauldin's 1950 autobiography, "A Sort Of A Saga." He is best known for his WWII writings and correspondence, but this excerpt sorta reminds me of some near misses I am familiar with, and will serve as a lead-in to the next few posts. Besides, I too was an Ernest Thompson Seton fan when I was a kid and remember the influence he had on me, practiced a "fast" draw, and tried making my own bows and "errors!" -----
  • Up to my ears in the Seton books and determined to be a Northwoodsman even though we were only eighty miles from Mexico, I considered my grandfather's fame, as a man who'd once killed deer with a Colt .45, a challenge. My father still had the legendary weapon. I took it over, with a couple of dozen moldy cartridges, and tried to become a good shot with it--at least good enough to hit a standing deer at thirty or forty yards. I shot at a three foot-thick pine tree a dozen times before hitting it, and by the time I was down to five shells (three had been duds) I decided to give it up, since the recoil of the big gun had made my hand sore, and besides, I lacked the money to buy enough cartridges for more practice.
  • The pistol continued to fascinate me, however. Still in very good condition, it was a real old Western "hogleg." I practiced fanning it like the old-timers had clone, by rapidly slapping the high hammer back with the heel of one hand while aiming it and holding down the trigger with the other. Experts can make a single-action pistol go like a machine gun this way. I got pretty fast with it. And I made a holster out of an old boot top, cut way low for quick drawing. I spent a lot of time crouching, wheeling, and whipping the gun out. I was all right at the crouching and wheeling, but since the gun was heavy and the front sight had a habit of hanging on the holster, my swift action usually ended in a frustrating anticlimax.
  • One evening, after practicing like that for a while, I wiped the gun carefully, loaded it with five cartridges remaining after all the shooting at the pine tree (this left one empty chamber under the hammer), and put it on top of our old upright piano in the living room. Then I forgot the gun and started working on a one-finger rendition of "My Country, 'tis of Thee." Tiring of this piece, I picked up the music book with my right hand and started flipping the pages over until I found something new to study. I still don't know how it happened, but while holding the book in my right hand and studying it, My left strayed idly to the top of the piano, picked up the gun, and thumbed the hammer. This rotated a live cartridge into position, and the first thing I knew my ears were ringing (I don't remember hearing an explosion), the tip of my right thumbnail was clipped, my whole thumb was powdered black, the music book was somewhat mangled, a hole was ripped in a panel of the heavy oak door leading into the hall, and another hole was in the corner of the bedroom wall, where my father was sprawled on the bed reading a magazine. That gun threw a big hunk of lead.
  • While Sid yelled frantically from his bed on the porch and asked what had happened, Pop took a broomstick and lined up the path of the bullet, front where it had left my position at the piano, gone through the door, and into the corner. He sighted over the broomstick at the bed and made the interesting discovery that if the powder had been fresh and had driven the bullet on through the flimsy wood corner, it would have got him in the middle of the forehead. He was a little reproachful about that. But it's a good thing he wasn't too harsh, for only a few days later I was sitting with him on the running board of our car while he cleaned a repeating shotgun, and he blasted a load of bird pellets across my nose, missing me by about two inches. That sort of made us even.
  • Lacking cartridges for our arsenal—which included a 12-gauge and a 410-gauge shotgun, the .30-30, a .44 pistol, and two .22's, including mine with the bent barrel—I took up archery for a while. Once again referring to the Seton books, I learned how a bow is shaped from lemonwood, Osage, or yew. Lacking those woods, I did it with willows. When dry, willows arc too brittle, but green ones have a lot of spring, so I made bows from the green stuff and replaced them when they dried. Since willow dries fast and shaping a bow requires a lot of carving, planing, and test­ing, the process ran into work. I made reasonably good arrows of tiny willow shoots, attaching rooster feathers so they'd fly straight. At first I cut arrow-heads out of tin cans, splitting each arrow and tying the points in tightly with string. But the tin heads were pretty bendable, so I took to filing points out of old pieces of iron. Since I weighed about 90 pounds, my bows were never very pow­erful, but it's amazing what even a weak willow bow will do. I used to put those arrows clear through the sides of wooden apple boxes.
  • I made so many arrows that I used up all the old feathers our single rooster had left lying around, and took to catch­ing him and pulling fresh ones. He hated the sight of me. I'm sure it didn't hurt, because I always felt him over for loose ones which were about to drop anyway, but I know it raised hell with his pride, because he never looked like a whole rooster at any one time:
  • Pop became so impressed with my earnestness about hunting and woodsmanship that he undertook to teach me how to get deer with our .30-30 rifle. He showed me about stalking upwind so the quarry couldn't smell the hunter, how to walk quietly through brush and trees, and how to watch for game early in the morning and at dusk in the evening, along trails and at watering places. By this time Sid was up from his bed and active, but he didn't come along for the hunting lessons—he still preferred mechanics. So Pop's days were pretty well taken up be­tween creeping around the hills with me and dismantling engines with Sid. He was very useful to us, but he didn't have much time for farming.
  • I never got myself a deer, despite Pop's hard work. I still had my smoking habit, and I couldn't resist lighting up when I went out hunting alone. I'd creep and crawl and stalk as I'd been told, but every once in a while a slight crashing in the brush ahead of me would show that my clouds of smoke and the reek of Bull Durham had advertised my presence to a deer as well as if I'd been clomping along and whistling at the top of my lungs. But the fresh air did me a lot of good and I never regretted the time spent on an unsuccessful hunt.
(Me) (Blacktail Books)