Category: Back In The Day

The Yanke Motor Museum

By Joe Berk

Talk about a hidden gem and a great destination:  The Yanke Motor Museum in Boise, Idaho is about as good as it gets.  There’s precious little information on the Internet about it, but trust me, it’s worth seeing. It’s not widely publicized and you can’t just roll up and visit its treasures; admission is by appointment only.  My advice is to make the run to Boise and make the effort to get an appointment.  The Yanke Motor Museum contains a world class automobile, motorcycle, tractor, and musical instrument collection.

A 1924 Packard convertible is one of the first vintage cars you encounter upon entering the Yanke Motor Museum.

As you know from reading this blog, I’m a big fan of car and motorcycle museums, and I never heard of the Yanke Motor Museum.  It’s the only automotive museum in Idaho, and it never appeared on my radar before.  I only came across it because I Googled “motorcycle museums in Boise.”  Some of the Internet services won’t tell you that it’s by appointment only, but that’s the deal.  Further complicating things, some of the GPS programs get the directions wrong.  We used Waze to find the address and it worked.

There is a lot to see at the Yanke Motor Museum.  We were lucky: Sue and I had the place to ourselves.  We made an appointment and new good buddy Tyler (one of the curators) pulled up just as we entered the parking lot.  Tyler was in a silver Subaru WRX, so I liked him right away.  He opened the place just for us, and then he had to walk around turning all the lights on (and he flipped a lot of switches to do that).  The place is huge.

A 1957 Cadillac. This is a beautiful car. I was 6 years old when it rolled off the assembly line.

I didn’t quite know what to expect because when we entered the main display area (after walking through a collection of musical instruments), I at first saw mostly automobiles.  They were impressive and they were plentiful (see the Packard and drop-dead-gorgeous pink Cadillac above), with the odd motorcycle parked here and there.  There was a Ural and a couple of Harley dressers, so I asked Tyler if there were more motorcycles.  He smiled and pointed me toward another hall.  Wow, were there ever!  In fact, my back started bothering me lugging my boat-anchor Nikon D810 and 24-120 lens around to get the photos you see here, but it was worth it.

A Ural with a sidecar. Good buddy Dan owns one of these.

Before we got to the main motorcycle hall, we saw several more interesting motorcycles and the odd trike or two.  There was a ’37 SS Jag replicar.  It was flanked by a stunning cherry red Harley Servi-Car and a custom flathead Ford trike with Offenhauser heads.

Sweet!
A fire engine red Harley Servi-Car.
A flathead Ford trike. Check out the front brake.
A custom in every sense of the word. The workmanship is stunning.
Offenhauser heads. Offy also made complete 4-cylinder engines.  Think decades of Indy 500 dominance.
One last view of the flattie trike. Even the tires are beautiful.

Susie and I were blown away by the classic cars and the multiple motorcycles we encountered at the Yanke Motor Museum, and we hadn’t even made it to the motorcycle room yet.  In the main hall, classic motocross and other bikes were scattered among the cars and other vehicles.

I once had a friend who thought a Bultaco was a Mexican food item. No kidding.

There was a flatbed truck with a Harley XLCR Cafe Racer, a vintage Indian Chief, and a vintage Harley.

I could have bought a new ’77 XLCR just like this one for $3,000, but I couldn’t justify spending $3,000 for a motorcycle back then. I don’t know who I thought I had to justify it to.
A 1941 Indian Chief. Those fenders!

When we entered the motorcycle room, it was like being a kid in a candy shop.  No, wait, I take that back.  I used to be a kid in a candy shop six or seven decades ago.  This was better.  Just about everything imaginable was there if you are looking for cool motorcycles.  Desert racers, WW II military Harley 45s, modern bikes, custom bikes, vintage Harleys, vintage Indians, scooters, Whizzers, vintage flat track and flathead Harley race bikes, and more.  The Nikon was giving me fits weighing heavily on my lower back, and leaning over to get macro engine shots was getting downright painful, but I didn’t care.  Susie had an Advil, I swallowed it, and the photo safari continued.  I was on a mission.  Anything and everything for our ExNotes readers…that’s our mantra.

In the motorcycle room…check out the Army 45s.
A 1934 74-cubic-inch Harley VLD flathead, another stunning motorcycle.
A Lambretta!
Whizzers! Carlos, take note!
Harley-Davidson flathead flat track racing motorcycles.
Ah, the patina! Check out the steel shoe!
Flathead porn.
An Army 45 in decidedly non-Army colors.

The Yanke Motor Museum also contained some cool military stuff, including Jeeps and a few cannons.  Cannons!

A 1948 US Army Jeep.
A 25mm Hotchkiss cannon.
The same action as a Ruger No. 1. A classic falling block concept.
Another falling block artillery action.
A custom scope mount for direct fire. This thing must be a hoot to shoot. Folks at the Museum reload for it.

I thought it couldn’t possibly get any better, but when I peeked into an adjoining room I spotted several 37mm and 25mm projectiles in various stages of the reloading process.  Imagine that:  Reloading for your own cannons! There’s no doubt about it:  The folks who own and run the Yanke Motor Museum are our kind people.

Ron and Linda Yanke started the Museum.  An extremely successful entrepreneur, Ron is unfortunately no longer with us.  The Yanke family started the business empire with a machine shop.  Ron Yanke expanded the business holdings to sawmills, an air charter service, a firefighting equipment manufacturer, extensive timberland holdings, several real estate companies, a mechanical contracting firm, a manufactured housing company, and a couple of banks.  He was one of three original investors in Micron Technology, the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer.

The Yanke Motor Museum is located at 1090 Boeing Street in Boise, Idaho.  If you want to get in, here’s the web address that will get you started.

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Old Idaho State Penitentiary

By Joe Berk

I don’t know what it is about prisons that fascinates us.  Susie and I have been on three prison tours (the Old Idaho State Penitentiary, the topic of this blog, is our third; the earlier two were Alcatraz and the West Virginia State Penitentiary in Moundsville).  It’s not just us; abandoned prison tours are a hot ticket and Hollywood loves to do prison movies.  The Shawshank Redemption was a hugely successful film (I watch it every time it’s on the tube), and Netflix is currently running Orange is the New Black (don’t waste your time on that one).  Google the topic “Why we love prison shows” and the Internet will light up with underlying psychological reasons:  The ultimate loss of control, the inherent brutality of man, surviving after losing everything, etc.  But that’s enough armchair psychology…let’s get on to the topic of this blog:  The Old Idaho State Penitentiary.

The entrance to the Old Idaho State Prison. The warden’s office was immediately on the left as you entered.

Idaho (actually, Idaho convicts) built the Old Idaho State Penitentiary in 1870.  The construction was sandstone mined from the hills surrounding Boise.  It held prisoners for 101 years, and during that time, this old prison had its share of escapes, executions, and experiences that make for an interesting tour.  Perhaps the most interesting thing about the Old Idaho State Penitentiary is that the grounds are so beautiful.  It’s more like a botanical garden than a prison.

The landscaping is magnificent. Wandering the grounds, it almost feels like a college campus (with, of course, solitary confinement and Death Row).
Another scene from inside the prison grounds.

One of our fellow tourists asked our guide, Eric Overzet, if the grounds were as nice when prisoners were housed there as they are today.  Eric told us they were.

The first structure we entered was the prison’s multi-purpose building.  It served a number of functions, including being a shirt factory, a shoe shop and then a shoe factory, a bakery, a license plate shop, the laundry, a hobby room, and a loafing room.  It also housed the prison showers.

Inside the prison’s multi-purpose building. The prison showed movies here, too.

The prison’s shoe and bakery outputs were particularly successful after they started selling to the public, and to hear Eric tell it, they made a hell of a product for a very low price.  The Idaho State Penitentiary manufactured shoes that cost a fraction of what store-bought shoes cost, and they lasted much longer.  The shoes were so good the prison worked itself out of the market.  They saturated the Boise shoe market and the business folded.  Other ventures were more successful.   When the prison bakery started selling donuts to the public, word quickly spread that they were the best donuts in town.  The prison produced 4,000 donuts a day.  People lined up outside the prison to buy them.  A lot of donut sales were to police officers (some of whom probably put the guys who made the donuts in prison).

Next we toured the cell blocks.  Things looked bleak.   You wouldn’t want to live in a place like this.

Eric Overzet sharing stories of prison operation and famous prisoners.
The different halls had different kinds of cells. This cell housed four people.

We saw the levers that opened and closed the cell doors. Seeing them was like seeing a scene out of a movie.  As a retired mechanical engineer and all-around gearhead, I enjoyed seeing the mechanism.  Everything operated mechanically; there was no software or any of the other intangible things we would use today.

The locking devices were patented in 1897.  The Pauly Jail Building Company is still in business today.
Levers for opening selected cell doors or all cell doors at the same time.

There are five prison halls in the Idaho State Penitentiary, and several different forms of “special housing” (i.e., solitary confinement).  I couldn’t remember all the ones Eric described, but one stuck in my mind:  A set of underground 4 ft by 4 ft by 4 ft cubes for solitary confinement.  There were hatches at ground level through which a prisoner entered.  It was hot when we were there.  I can’t imagine what it must have been like in those little boxes in Idaho in the summer, nor can I imagine what it must have been like in the freezing winter months.  In 1909, inspectors from the State of Idaho decided these 4 ft cubes were too cruel for human confinement and directed the prison to stop using them.  The prison told the inspectors they agreed, and then they continued to use the little punishment boxes until well into the 1950s.

One of the “dark cells.”
Another set of solitary confinement cells were known as “Siberia.”
One of the “Siberia” cells.
Another set of punishment cells.
No shoes, no shirt, no service, and most definitely, no loafing.

As one might expect, the execution chamber and Death Row are areas that get the most attention.  When the Old Idaho State Prison was in operation, hanging was the only execution method.  Idaho uses lethal injection today, but when good old-fashioned hanging was in vogue the execution chamber was designed around it.  The noose hung from a mount in the ceiling, with the trap directly below it.  I shot these photos from the witness gallery window.

Death Row, coming up.
Idaho uses lethal injection today; there are currently 8 men and 1 woman on Idaho’s Death Row. The modern Idaho State Penitentiary is just south of Boise; the women’s prison is in Pocatello, Idaho.  When the Old Idaho State Penitentiary was in business, both men and women were imprisoned there (separately, of course).
The noose hung from this fixture.
The trap that dropped the condemned to their death.

You may want to go back up to the featured photo at the top of this blog.  Old Tony Grooms (featured in that picture) was a real bad boy.  There were several placards explaining the crimes of occupants in different cells and what they did while in prison.  Old Tony had acid splashed in his eyes and convinced the prison guards he was blind.  The guards figured it out when nurses were in the prison for a medical emergency and they saw Tony following them with his eyes.  I can’t tell that story as well as our guide Eric can; that’s a good reason for you to visit the Old Idaho State Penitentiary.

We enjoyed the Old Idaho State Prison tour.  You can also do a self-guided tour, but we were lucky.  We arrived just as Eric’s tour was about to start.  My advice is to go for the guided tour.  Eric was a magnificent guide and entertaining storyteller, and he knows a lot about the place.  We would not have gotten as much out of the tour just wandering around by ourselves.

The Old Idaho State Penitentiary is in Boise’s Historical District at 2445 Old Penitentiary Road.  Admission is only $8.  The guided tour is another $2, and that’s a hell of a deal.

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Laguna Seca 4: AHRMA Wrap Up

By Joe Gresh

Foggy and cold in the morning. I broke down and bought a burrito from the Flag and Wicket down in the paddock. Everything was soaking wet and I didn’t feel like making food. The Rag and Basket has good burritos and they are nearly the same price as a Quart-o-Grease from McDingies.

The Rag and Moose down in the paddock has good eats for not too much money.

I don’t think they can run in the wet fog but the rider’s meeting is on. We will see if they wait a bit.

The trials sections were mostly tight corners in uneven terrain
This never happened historically but I’m letting it go.

When you’re at the track you’ll need to be somewhat self sufficient as the only place nearby is the Toro restaurant and they close early. There a little food store towards Salinas but before the Toro where you can get stuff. Forget going west to Monterey, it’s sort of touristy and unless you’re going to the Aquarium or cannery row it’s a food desert. It could be that I don’t know where to look.

I think it will be a short day today. The fog is still thick, if a bike went off the course you’d never know it.

Foggy conditions delayed the racing for a bit. AHRMA still managed to run a full slate

I wandered over to the trials sections and they were ok, the fog doesn’t bother trials riders as they only need to see a few feet ahead. There was a triple log obstacle that I saw only one guy on a TY175 clear. Everyone else dabbed. The trials was held down in a little valley and the sections led a short way up the sides. Very tight turns and soft sand caught out many competitors.

Two old codgers on two old bikes. Still flogging. Fulton and Roper.

Back on the track the fog cleared and AHRMA ran 14 more multi-class races. You get your money’s worth for sure.

I’ve decided to let the whole historic thing go. What AHRMA really does is provide sanctioned races for orphan motorcycles, both new and old. Even 160-175 Honda twins.

Sunday the campground empties out and the squirrels take over. You’ll need to keep that tent closed or they’ll rob you blind. I like the Sunday night, it’s quiet and you get to be alone for a few hours.

The wind never let up the entire day and I got sort of tired watching so many races. It was dry and around race 12 I decided to load Godzilla in the truck before the plastic bed liner got slippery with dew.

All in, I’ve been here four days and it’s time to break camp and get back home. I highly recommend attending the AHRMA either as a spectator or a competitor. Just bring plenty of water and any food you might like to eat.

I’ll be back next year. Maybe bring the RD350 to see how it runs at sea level.

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Laguna Seca AHRMA Racing 3

By Joe Gresh

I’m in no rush to leave the tent this morning. The wind blew all night long and is still blowing hard. It’s cold and damp. Canvas pops and snaps, the tent inflates and deflates as if it is a breathing thing. I’ll have a second cup of coffee.

Having coffee in a hurricane.

The vintage motocross races at Laguna Seca are situated over the hill, towards the north. It’s a natural terrain course just like the tracks these vintage motorcycles ran on way back when. No manufactured hazards like triples or whoops. Any whoops on this track are made by churning knobbies. So of course I love it.

Laguna has more CZs in one place than I’ve ever seen. A bunch of Honda Elsinores and BSA 4-strokes populate the area. Less popular are Yamahas, Kawasakis and Suzukis.

The BSAs were out in force. One of the few 4-strokes that could compete with the 2-strokers…if you had Banks riding it.

Four Elsinore 125s put on a hell of a show. They were swapping the lead back and forth, passing three bikes in a corner only to be re-passed the next corner. It was good, handlebar banging action. I’m going back for more today.

The motocross crowd is a bit looser than the road racers. There is a yellow rope denoting the track that you are not supposed to cross. Nobody pays attention and spectators walk rigs up to the edge of the course to yell encouragement at their buddies.

Just a few of the motocross classes. Something for experts to beginners.

One guy had a train horn attached to a battery powered compressor and when the bikes were stuffed into the corner he would blast the horn inches from the rider’s ears. You don’t get that sort of fun on the pavement over the hill.

Unlike some of the road race bikes, the motocross bikes are historically accurate. These are the bikes that actually raced back then and except for razor sharp fresh knobbies they are in a slightly beat condition.

There are a few 100-point restorations racing but those guys take it easy around the track. The Sunday riders got the same encouragement and horn as the top racers.

Tidy Penton, these were the original KTMs and beautiful bikes. The cylinders were huge square things.

In the evening I hear live music drifting in on the soaking wind, a two stroke bike circles camp and people chatter, sounding like they are right next door. I have to remind myself not to be old. Sure, I want to got to bed at 8:00 p.m. but nobody else does.

Back to the road race side of things. AHRMA is always expanding the definition of historic and they even have classes for modern motorcycles. These classes are well stocked because the bikes are easy to get and keep running. I’d say more than half the field were riding new-ish motorcycles. Our old buddies Walt Fulton and Dave Roper put in another fine showing but I kind of lost them in the multi-class race they were in. So maybe they didn’t do fine.

I’m really enjoying how well Godzilla is running down at sea level. The bike has tons of grunt and runs so smooth with the oxygen levels. Probably the humidity helps also.

I’m off to watch some racing. It’s still windy but I can’t sit in the tent all day. The neighbors will start talking about the weird old man next door.

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Laguna 2: More Hasty Conclusions From Laguna Seca

By Joe Gresh

Man I slept good last night. The combination of the new cot, air mattress and mummy bag worked to perfection. Add in the cool moist Monterey weather and the loudspeaker’s 8:15 call for a rider’s meeting was the first thing I heard.  I’ve really got this camping thing down. With the added capacity of the Toyota truck I was able to bring along a few luxury items. Like a chair and an ice chest.

These Can Ams had huge cylinder fins.
Can Ams also had a somewhat unusual disc valve with a long intake runner leading to a carb in the back of the engine next to your left foot.
A bike I never knew about, the AMMEX motocross bike.
A 1930s Husqvarna. Not much different than my 2008 version.

Unlike last year, there are no food trucks in the paddock, only the Bear and Shank which has some pretty good food at reasonable (for California) prices. The ice chest frees me of food anxiety, I’ve got plenty for the weekend.

My enduro riding buddy, Gilroy Larry, stopped by with his clean TY250 Yamaha trials bike. We rode over to the trials area but it was more secure than last year.  There’s also a sweet, old-style motocross track where a guy can race his old bike without spending 95% of his time in the air. (Note to Supercross: less hang time and more racing!)

I still have one of these in boxes. It’s a C110 Honda 50. 4-speed with hand clutch and a pushrod engine. When mine ran it did around 45 miles per hour.
Unusual rear wheel on a Mule flat track style bike.
I had one of these also. This is a one-owner, dad’s old bike.
Since we are apolitical here on ExNotes I know Berk will love this Suzuki 100.
A beautiful 500 Tiger for not much money.
It’s a good thing I don’t have $4500 laying around or i’d buy the Triumph.

There are entirely too damn many four-strokes out here. My era of motorcycle racing was dominated by two strokes both on the pavement and in the dirt. Flat track was the only place four-strokes were competitive and that was by favorable rules. To me, a buzzing stroker is the sound of speed.

Bikes are warming up on Laguna’s interior roads. You’ll see a full on road racer cruise by the camp if you wake up early.

The same dense air that’s makes it so easy to sleep has Godzilla running fabulously. The grunt is amazing and the smooth, steady beat makes me want to move here rather than tune for my 6000-foot elevation.

Yesterday we had no fog and the picnic table was soaking wet in the morning. This morning diaphanous clots of fog are blowing past like smoke from a fire and the picnic table is bone dry. Listen, I don’t like using diaphanous any more than you like reading it. I guess should have paid more attention in meteorology class.

There was a vintage bike show at the track.  The show had a pretty decent turnout.  Maybe 50 bikes showed up.  I owned several of the models represented.

Nice old flathead Beemer.
The evolution of Maico crankcases Part 1: 1970s.
The evolution of Maico crankcases Part 2: The 1980s.

It’s hard to beat looking at old CanAm motorcycles while out on the track vintage bikes are racing by at full song.

Sent from my iPhone

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Rainy-Day Japanese Atomic Monster Repair… Revisited

By Joe Gresh

Monsoon season has streamed into New Mexico’s upper atmosphere, hampering my concrete construction projects so I took the opportunity to settle some old scores with Godzilla, my 1971 Yamaha RT1-B Enduro. I’m getting the bike ready for a west coast trip and there were some annoying little faults I wanted to do up right before riding the California coast.

Godzilla has grown over the years. I’ve put a taller 21” front wheel on the bike and longer rear shocks. As a result the bike leans way over on the original-length kickstand. Parked in the shed I use a chunk of 2×4 to make the Yamaha sit more vertical but I’m not about to carry lumber all the way to California.

I measured the length needed, about 1-1/2-inch, and cut some tube off an old handlebar I keep around for just this purpose. I’ve been altering a lot of kickstands lately. I don’t know why I have to keep messing with kickstands but there it is. I used a piece of tube from an old floodlight frame to make a centering piece so that the three sections stay straight.

The tube from the floodlight was slotted and press fit into the extension piece.

Then all the pieces were assembled and welded together. After welding I touched up the stand with a bit of spot putty and gloss black paint.

The angle worked out great. Unfortunately the longer stand now hit the lower chain guard bolt when in the up position.

To solve this problem I added a blob of weld to the kickstand stop; this increased the clearance between the longer stand and the chain guard.

The next problem was the rear wheel sprocket carrier. This part has heavy wear as Godzilla spends most of its time in the dirt. The sprocket was alarmingly loose, not enough to throw the chain but not far from it.

There are two distinct areas of wear. The first is the hub boss that the sprocket carrier rides on. The second problem is the distance between the sprocket carrier retaining circlip and the carrier had become quite wide, meaning the clip didn’t hold the carrier tight to the hub. This allowed the carrier to wander in and out, causing even more wear on the hub boss.

To fill the gap between the hub boss and carrier I used a section of well-greased, steel measuring tape as a shim. I wound the tape around the boss and held it into position with a bit of string. To determine the thickness needed I started long and trial fit the carrier. I kept decreasing the tape length until the carrier would just slip over the shim.

For the circlip gap I was lucky and found a piece of aluminum pipe that fit nearly perfectly and trimmed off a baloney slice to use as a shim.

By trial and error I fit and re-fit the shim. I used the South Bend lathe to reduce the thickness of the shim bit by bit until the clip would fit without any back and forth play. Now the sprocket carrier is snug to the hub but still has a bit of rotational movement between the hub’s rubber cushions.

Godzilla seems to be in pretty good shape right now. It’s running a bit rough but that’s probably due to the old gas in the tank. I’ll dilute the crap gas with fresh and take the bike out for a nice long ride. See you in California!

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Painless, Paintless Dent Repair

By Joe Gresh

I’ve ridden my Yamaha RT1B 360 Enduro for thousands and thousands of miles. The old two-stroke has been across country more than once and I rode it on the Trans America Trail east to west from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina to Port Orford, Oregon. In all that time I never put a dent in the beast known as Godzilla.

It is a fairly easy job to load the light-ish Yamaha into a pickup truck…normally. This time was different. I lost my balance mid-ramp and the Yamaha started to topple over onto me. I was out of position to save the bike, my legs were getting tangled and in that split second I envisioned a broken arm or crushed ribcage. I let the bike go and jumped down to safety. The bike fell to the left; the gas tank smashed into the side of the truck bed and my somewhat pristine Godzilla had a huge dent.

You and I have both heard about the paintless dent repair kits.  Amazon had this one for pretty cheap and I thought I’d give it a try.

The kit comes with everything you need, except alcohol (to clean the tank, not drink). After the tank got a good scrubbing with the hooch, I used the included hot glue gun to attach the little puller tabs in places I thought needed to be pulled. The dent was pretty deep and had a crease running diagonally across the tank. I didn’t hold out much hope.

The flimsy plastic puller seemed like it would break at any moment but the thing held up. It was strong enough to yank the pull-tabs.

The kit came with a slide hammer but that tool broke the tabs. I believe the shock load was more than the plastic could handle. You’ll need weld on tabs to use the slide hammer.

Usually the tab would pull off the tank and since the paint on Godzilla is 53 years old the glue removed a bit of paint each time. The kit came with a little spray bottle that you fill with alcohol; the alcohol loosens up the hot glue to allow reuse of the tabs. It took several re-positionings but I managed to get the majority of the dent pulled out.

The creases in the tank are still visible and the tank is far from straight but it’s at least 80% better than it was. From 10 feet away you may not notice the thing is dented. I worked on another egg-shaped dent on the top of the tank that was there when I bought the bike. The paint in this spot was in bad shape so it was hard to get anything to stick.

I ended up sanding the egg-dent to get something firm to attach the pull tab and gave the spot a light dusting of gloss black spray paint. After the paint dried I feathered it in with 600-grit. Again, I got the dent about 80% removed.

I think for minor dents without sharp creases and with fairly new paint stuck firmly to the metal the kit would actually work pretty well. The Z1 has a ding that’s a prime candidate for the dent puller except the dent is right over a stripe decal. I’m sure the tab will lift the decal.

I call the paintless dent removal process a good one. The kit I bought was bottom of the barrel cheap so possibly a better kit would produce better results. I’m happy enough with Godzilla’s tank. After all, it’s a dirt bike and will probably take a few more hits before I shuffle off.

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Texas Rangers Smith and Wessons

By Joe Berk

I think it would be difficult to be a firearms enthusiast and not be a student of history.  Firearms are history.  And some of that history revolves around the Texas Rangers, the oldest and perhaps most legendary law enforcement group in US history. I’ve always been fascinated with the Texas Rangers, starting with their use of the very first Colt Paterson revolvers in combat, the early Captain Samuel Walker days, and the emergence of the Colt Walker black powder revolver.

Texan Ranger Captain Samuel Walker.

When I was a kid, we had a steady diet of Westerns on TV and in the movies, and the Texas Rangers figured prominently in many of those shows.  I’m a Lonesome Dove fan, having read Larry McMurtry’s novels and watched the television series numerous times.  Go Gus and Woodrow (but especially Gus; he carried a Colt Walker).

Robert Duvall as Gus MacCrae in Lonesome Dove, and his Colt Walker.

You would think with the Texas Rangers’ historical and often romanticized use of Colt revolvers, Colt would be all over the Texas Ranger commemorative gun business.   They did so in the early 1970s with a very limited run of Single Action Army revolvers, but that was the only time.

Colt’s Texas Rangers 150th Anniversary Commemorative. These guns don’t come up for sale often, and when they do, the price is stratospheric.  It’s the only Texas Rangers Commemorative Colt has ever done.

The Texas Rangers commemorative mantle has been picked up by Smith and Wesson, first in 1973 for the Texas Rangers’ 150th anniversary, and again in 2023 for the 200th anniversary.  These are beautiful firearms (they are art, in my opinion).

A Texas Rangers 150th Anniversary Smith and Wesson Model 19.
Another view of the Texas Rangers 150th Anniversary Smith and Wesson Model 19.

Jumping back to 1973, Smith and Wesson offered a cased commemorative Model 19 Smith and Wesson along with a Bowie knife.  A standard Model 19 cost about $150 back then (I had one); the Texas Rangers Model 19 with display case and matching Bowie knife was a whopping $250.  It seems an almost trivial amount today.  A standard Model 19 costs around a thousand bucks today, and the Model 19 of today is not the same gun it was in the 1970s.   The older ones, as is true with many things in life, are better.

The 200th Anniversary Texas Rangers Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolver.

Fast forward to 2023, and Smith and Wesson did it again, with a Texas Rangers 200th anniversary revolver.   This time it’s a highly polished N-frame, fixed sight version.  The N-frame is Smith’s big gun frame used on their original .357 Magnum, the Model 27, the .45 ACP revolvers, and the .44 Magnum revolvers.  You know, the Big Boy guns for us full-figured shooters.

A real beauty, these 200th Anniversary Texas Rangers Smith and Wessons are.

I’ve been perusing both of these Texas Ranger guns on the gun auction sites.  I can get the 1973 version (which was based on the Model 19) for about $1500, which isn’t a bad deal considering you get a more collectible gun, the knife, and the case for not too much more than what a new Model 19 cost today.  I’d shoot it, too, if I bought one.  And then there’s the current Texas Rangers 200th Anniversary revolver, built on the N-frame   Those are going for around $2500 or more.  That a bit pricey, but maybe in 50 years $2500 will be a trivial amount.  I’m a firm believer that you can’t pay too much for a gun; you just maybe bought it too early.

A lot of things are different today, and the price for either of the Smith and Wesson Texas Ranger commemoratives is just a starting point here in California.  Compounding the felony on both guns is our outrageous California 11% excise tax on firearms and ammo (that little bit of silliness and government overreach went into effect this month), which gets added onto:

      • Our outrageous California state sales tax
      • The federal government’s $40 background check and ATF Form 4473 (the one that Hunter Biden was convicted of falsifying when his sweetheart deal fell apart)
      • The FFL dealer’s $40 transfer fee
      • A $75 shipping fee to get the gun to me here in left wing Utopia (i.e., the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia)

It all adds up to roughly another $700.  And all that’s aggravated by the likelihood I couldn’t even get the 200th Anniversary Texas Rangers commemorative because our California Attorney General hasn’t seen fit to add it to our roster of approved handguns.  Even Gomer Pyle wouldn’t know how to react to all these added government fees, but I’m guessing his reaction would be a heartfelt Gosh, or a Golly, or maybe even a Shazam!  It’s almost as if California doesn’t agree with the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

But that earlier Texas Rangers Smith and Wesson…the Model 19 150th Anniversary gun.  It’s now over 50 years old, and that makes it an antique in California’s all-seeing and all-knowing firearms book of state regs , and antiques are exempt from the Roster of Approved Handguns limitations.  I’d still have to pay all the fees described above.  But it’s doable, and I’m thinking about it.

You might wonder:  Are the Texas Rangers still around, and what sidearm do they carry?   The answer is yes; the Texas Rangers are part of the Texas Department of Public Safety.  Texas Rangers are issued a SIG 320 (a 9mm semi-auto), but they are allowed to carry their personal sidearms.  Many choose to carry the 1911.

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Zongshen Acquires Loncin

By Joe Berk

Two of the largest motorcycle companies in China are Zongshen and Loncin.  I recently learned that Zongshen became the major shareholder of Loncin, turning Zongshen into the largest of the motorcycle companies in China.  I asked my contact at Zongshen if he could tell me more about this, and he did.

Hi Joe:

On July 3rd, Zonsen Power, a listed company under Zongshen Group, announced official news.  Here are the details:

Zonsen Power announced that its associate company intends to invest 3.35 billion yuan (CNY) to acquire a 24.55% stake in Loncin. Upon the completion of the transaction, Zonsen will become the largest shareholder and the actual controller of Loncin.

In fact, before this acquisition, Loncin Group had been trapped deeply a debt crisis due to heavy losses in its real estate business, leading to significant debts in 13 of its subsidiaries.

In previous years, Loncin had been trying hardly to resolve this issue, and some companies proposed acquiring shares in Loncin, but ultimately, none succeeded.

The Chongqing court ruled that Loncin Group must resolve this debt issue before August 2024, or the company will be auctioned. This acquisition of Loncin by Zonsen is likely the result of coordination by the Chongqing government.

As the previous acquisition of Lifan by Geely Automobile was not successful. Geely, a powerful automotive enterprise in China that is the largest shareholder of Daimler and once acquired 100% shares of Volvo, but had no intention of developing the motorcycle industry by acquiring Lifan. Instead, it aimed to obtain Lifan’s electric vehicle production license.  However, after the acquisition, Geely did not invest much in the motorcycle sector, causing Lifan to decline significantly, which greatly displeased the local government.

Although Loncin’s real estate business has suffered heavy losses, its motorcycle business is still operating well. Therefore, the local government is unwilling to let Loncin suffer the same fate as Lifan, so it coordinated with Zonsen to acquire a majority stake in Loncin, and state-owned assets also invested in Loncin.

Whether Zongshen and Loncin’s businesses will be merged is yet to be announced officially, but most people believe that Loncin will maintain its current structure and business, and there will still be competition between the two companies in the same industry.

Thanks!

These are interesting developments.   In case you were wondering, Zonsen is the name by which what we knew as Zongshen now wishes to be called.  Another bit of information:  3.35 billion Chinese Yuan is the equivalent of approximately 461 million US dollars.  I first visited Zongshen more than a decade ago, and the company impressed me greatly.

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AI Is Making Us Dumber

By Joe Berk

I’m all for intelligence (most folks would agree there’s too little of it), but I’m scared to death of artificial intelligence.

Turn the clock back 60 years.  I’m a kid working in a farm and garden center and the boss (John Bocchieri, who was a neighbor and a nice guy) put me on the cash register after I’d been there about a week.  The first time I rang up a sale the customer handed me a $5 bill and I had to make change.  Mr. Bocchieri saw my dilemma and he told me how to do it.  “You just take the amount, take money out of the drawer, and while doing so count up to what the customer gave you.  That will be the right amount.”  That little secret made life a lot easier for me.  It even worked if the customer gave you a little more in change (you know, so you could give them back only paper money).

Today, the electronic cash registers try to make it even easier, but all they did was just screw things up.  Kids will ring up a sale, the customer gives them, say, a $20 bill, the kid enters the $20, and the cash register tells them how much change to give back.  If that feature isn’t working, I’ve often had clerks mentally lock up when they have to determine how much they should return.  I first started seeing this during the Bush administration.  (Whenever it happens, the phrase “No Child Left Behind” pops into my mind.)  Relying on the cash register to determine how much change to return robbed clerks of their ability to think.  Give a clerk a little extra to get paper money back (you know, say the price is $11.79 so you give the cash register jockey $20 and 79 cents), and it really throws them into overload mode.

I ran into this same phenomenon of machines doing peoples’ thinking for them in my manufacturing days.  In the old days, production planning involved what the job title implied:  The ability to plan a production operation.  Production planners (or schedulers, as we sometimes called them) were people who knew the required manufacturing delivery dates, the manufacturing times, and the supplier component lead times.  With that information, they determined what we needed from suppliers and when we had to order it, and what had to happen (and when it had to happen) in the factory to deliver product on time.  We usually did just that: We delivered on time.  When things didn’t go as planned in one or more of the work centers (as often happens in the manufacturing world) or if a supplier was late (another common occurrence), the production planners could develop workarounds and our products still shipped on time.

Then an evil computer program called MRP (Manufacturing Requirements Planning) came on the scene.  It was software that required as inputs the info described above.  The idea was that it would simplify production planning.  But a funny thing happened.  Over the course of a few years, the skilled production planners who could actually plan workflows through a factory retired and they were replaced with folks who were essentially data entry clerks.  These folks were still called production planners, but they couldn’t plan a trip to the bathroom.  The really bad thing about MRP is that it assumed everything in the factory and our deliveries from suppliers happened on time (and as anyone knows who has ever worked in a factory, it never does).  When production hiccups occurred, MRP was useless and so were our so-called production planners.  I guess I shouldn’t complain.  I was a manufacturing consultant specializing in helping companies that couldn’t deliver on time.  I made a ton of money thanks to MRP’s inadequacies and the managers who thought it was the answer to all their problems.

Another form of this disease comes in the flavor of nav systems.  You know, the things driven by global positioning systems that ask for a destination and then tell you how to get there.

Don’t get me wrong:  I love these nav systems. But when I use them (which is nearly all the time anymore), I lose the sense of where I am, where I’m going, and how to get there.  I don’t have to think.  I just listen to what Waze (or whatever program I’m using) tells me to do and I do it.  I’ll tell you how bad it is:  I’ve almost driven through stop signs and red lights listening to my nav system.  And I secretly sort of know, deep down, that if I didn’t have the nav system, I would not know how to get to places I know that I know how to get to.   If that sentence gives you trouble, read it again; I wrote it and I know it’s tough to follow.  But it conveys what I’m trying to say.  Maybe AI would do a better job writing it, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to ask it to.  Writing is one of the few things I have left.

Ever been embarrassed by the autocorrect feature when you write something on your cell phone or your computer?  I find it highly annoying, and my experience is that it makes as many mistakes (by auto”correcting” to a word I didn’t want to use) as it fixes.  It’s a feature that’s teaching us it’s okay to not pay attention to our spelling.  Maybe some people need it.  Those people shouldn’t be posting comments.  We are already a nation bordering on illiteracy.  We don’t need help to speed us along.

Now the talk is all about artificial intelligence and where it can take us.  Self-driving cars.  Diagnostics software for medical doctors.  Social media algorithms.  Nuclear weapons control.  Chatbots.  Blog articles.  Think about what these programs will do.  They’ll degrade doctors’ ability to make diagnoses themselves.  They’ll eliminate the need for drivers to drive an automobile.  They’ll decide what violates “community standards” and take down posts (they are already doing this and no one likes it).  They’ll decide when to launch a nuclear attack.  Can you believe this is being seriously discussed?   What could go wrong?  Think about chatbots or the automated questions you get when trying to reach a human being on the phone.  Have you ever come away from one of these encounters thinking “gee, those folks really made it easy for me?” I don’t think so.

How about AI-generated writing?  I get three or four email inquiries a week from services that want to pay me to allow their blog content here on ExNotes.  When I asked to see what they could do (back before I realized what they were doing), the content was awful.  Thanks, but no thanks.

Nope, you can keep your AI.  What’s lacking in the world is not enough plain old real intelligence, and AI will only make that worse.  We need more intelligence.  The real kind, not the artificial kind.

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