Noticing what I see when no one is looking...

  I slept outside the range waiting until I could bother them with my presence, driving when the commute isn't on is wonderful. So as I woke and watched periodically I noticed the concealed and the open carry and those that carried bags with stuff into the range. Lovely, the CC folks didn't imprint badly, but if you were looking it was different on the back right hip from the left. The open carry didn't care but carried in exactly in the same place - not where I carry but then I am of the don't worry about that old fat man group.
 
    You know, the old men that gather in the mid-morning for coffee and conversation in every fast food joint that isn't going to run them off after giving them a hot cup of coffee and maybe a pastry.  Groups of five to six, every morning like clockwork, the ones resisting the joining showing up at least twice a week, but not more. They also show up to pretend to work out at the YMCA, the local range to bust caps or talk about wonders and tech at the local range they built when shooting was a hobby.  Old men everywhere that have certainly outlived their utility, the nation no longer needs nor cares about them... they get their checks and go over in that corner and don't disturb us with the reminder that life becomes aged as it marches on relentlessly. And they all know things that everyone should, but don't want to cause a ruckus when talking about buying gasoline at twenty-five cents a gallon and earning a healthy two dollars and fifty cents an hour in the days of eighty-five cents an hour minimum wage... but then you would have to listen to them tell you that the bankers like inflation for their own reasons.

  Old men, put them off in their corner and don't see them, they aren't manly, sexy, nor do they ever look prosperous.  But they might not be what you see on the media that feeds your vision of what has worth: because there is little morality, honor, dignity of labor nor appreciation for real 'love' of others that will bring anyone to the theaters or cable to view for commercial exploitation among them. The media has only false visions of fantasy to feed the feeble minded, and the feeble minded buy it wholesale. The difference between Roy Rogers with two pistols and a wife, good buddy and a dog and a horse, and Clint Eastwood with one pistol, and Jason Bourne with no idea why he does so much bad with so little reason is too great a jump for y'all cause y'all are young... the Hollywood tech on all the gun play is still very poor.  John Wesley Hardin would have killed them all, easily.  But John wasn't a fine man even in his day.

   My point about what you don't see in those old men, is the years of work and sacrifice that made their families fond of them and their example years after their best was gone or going quickly.They loved hard, deep and well.  You may not know it, but they shot firearms in the most dangerous times for the victory they had to win.  Most of it won't make it into History, nor books nor movies and they don't brag nor talk much about it, because you that haven't, really don't understand.  You reach out to shake their old hands and say thank you for your service and they almost cringe because you don't get their nightmares and shakes and have so little idea.  But they smile gently and say thank you, because they are shaking your hand and accepting your thanks for those that they never forgot that died right beside them in some unknown place for some forgotten politicians' vision of victory. 

   Living in the fantasy of experts that will make it all better - just give them more money, help them win the war, the election or the White House! Nah, go out and make your corner of God's great creation as beautiful as He wants it to become, and don't ask for honors nor accolades, just forgiveness for the times you were a weaker vessel, and get back to making it all better. Or, just sit with the other old guys over coffee and talk about when you were stronger and sexy and mattered.