Category: Back In The Day

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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Screwed

By Joe Gresh

I haven’t been riding the Yamaha RD350 lately and it’s not because I don’t want to. There is a lot of concrete that needs doing at the ranch and I get to do it.  Anyway, the RD350 has a loose screw in the tachometer and the screw dances around inside the gauge beating a tattoo onto the tachometer face. It drives me crazy to see that little screw eating away at the tachometer lettering so I parked the bike. A few days of rainy weather put a stop to my concrete-the-world efforts and I decided to take advantage of the down time and fix the tachometer.

These Yamaha instrument clusters were not really meant to be serviced. The Yamaha factory crimped the bezel onto the gauge body and back in the day it was cheap to buy another gauge. If you have infinite patience like my buddy Deet, it’s possible to unkink the crimp and reassemble the gauge so that it looks to all the world that its never been touched. I am not that patient.

I modified a harbor freight pick (free with purchase!) into a pry bar, which allowed me to get the crimp slightly lifted. Once you have the bezel edge up a bit you can get a more serious pry bar in there.

This bar is also a modified Harbor Freight tool. The rounded face allows you to work the crimp back to a more vertical position.

With the bezel mangled and pried back the lens will separate from the gauge body allowing access to that annoying screw.

Since I had the gauge this far apart I took the mechanism out of the gauge body and gave it a few drops of oil. This turned out to be a bad idea.

Putting the gauge back together is the reverse of the above description. Make sure the lens is perfectly clean or you’ll be looking at that speck of dust forever. To re-crimp I got the bend started with a screwdriver and the used a small hammer and punch to flatten out the waves. It doesn’t look factory but a rubber bumper covers the mess.

After assembly and testing the neutral indicator light looked odd. It was lit all the time and very dim. I assumed I must have screwed up the wiring and rechecked everything. Turns out the rubber bellows that shields the neutral light socket from the bulbs illuminating the gauge did not slip into position correctly. This caused the boot to fold over blocking the neural light photons and allowing random background photons to leak into the green lens area. I had to un-crimp the bezel again, disassemble the gauge and slip the boot on correctly. Perseverance will beat talent every time.

The speedometer screws were also loose, the face was jiggling around and it was only a matter of time before those screws fell out. I took that gauge apart and tightened the screws. Then I did the oil thing and also adjusted the needle 8 miles per hour slower to more closely reflect the speed I was going.

The sun is shining and I can start putting more miles on the Yamaha RD350 without staring at that stupid screw bouncing around inside the gauge. And I will just a soon as I finish up this driveway.

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Coming Up: A Soprano Safari

Yep, that’s what I’m planning now.  Susie and I are flying to New Jersey for a class reunion, and I’m going to be the ultimate tourist.   What I have in mind is a series of visits to key spots that were featured in the HBO television series, The Sopranos.  If there’s something you think I’ve missed, let me know and it may just show up on the list.

Holsten’s Restaurant

Holsten’s is the restaurant where Tony was whacked.  It’s still open.  Never been there; I’ve been wanting to ever since The Sopranos hit the airwaves.

Bahr’s and the Sandy Hook Marina

Bahr’s is the outstanding seafood restaurant Tony and others mention frequently in the series, and the Sandy Hook Marina where Tony kept his boat (The Stugots) is just below it. I’ve been to both places many times, and I’m looking forward to going again.

Pizza Land

Pizza Land is the pizza place you see Tony drive by in the opening scene of every episode.   It was a low revenue pizza joint before it made it into the Sopranos.  It has since become a sensation.  Today, they ship frozen pizzas all over the world, and it all came about because of that brief glimpse in the opening scene.

Wilson’s Carpet Store

The giant carpet guy statue is another feature seen in the opening scene of every Soprano’s episode.  It’s in Jersey City, the same place that xxx gun store is located (there the guys that handle the FFL transfer for the MacManus Award 1911 every year).  I’ll got a shot of the carpet guy and the gun shop.

St. Patrick’s Cathedral 

This is one of two churches used in the series.  It’s the one Tony shows to AJ when he explains what things were like for the Italian immigrants who came to America.  Like Wilson’s Carpet Store, it’s in Jersey City.  My Mom grew up in Jersey City and my grandparents lived there for a while.  I want to see it again; I haven’t been there in more than 60 years.

Cleveland Auto Body

This is a body shop that was run by Big Pussy Bompensiero and was taken over by his wife, Angie Bompansiero, after Big Pussy was whacked for being a rat.  I understand it’s a real body shop.  I want to get a photo.

Tony and Carmela’s Mansion

Yep, it’s an actual house that a couple actually lived in when The Sopranos producers spotted.  They asked if they could rent the house and the rest is history.

The Rutgers Campus

Rutgers is mentioned many times in The Sopranos.  In the story, Tony attended a semester and a half at Seton Hall, but in real life, James Gandolfini attended and graduated from Rutgers.  So did I.  I want to visit the campus again, stop in to say hi to the ROTC detachment, and shoot a few pictures.

The Paterson Falls

There are a couple of scenes filmed at the falls in Paterson, New Jersey.  In one, Mikey Palmici throws a guy off a bridge.  In another, Hesh threatens to do the same.   I’ve never been there.  I’ll fix that on this trip.

The Skyway Diner

This diner appears in several scenes, most notably with Janice Melfi (Tony’s psychiatrist) and Christopher Multisanti.  We have a lot of diners in New Jersey.  I’ve never been in a bad one.  If it’s still in business, I’ll stop there for a cup of coffee.

Joe’s Bake Shop

This is bakery where Christopher Multisanti shoots a counter guy in the foot for slow service.  I don’t now if it’s real, but if it is, I want to stop and get a pastry.  I know it will be good; it’s where I grew up there are no bad bakeries in New Jersey.

Father Phil’s Church

Father Phil was a kind of a mealy-mouthed priest that Tony saw through right away.  There were a few scenes filmed in that church.  I’m going to stop in.

Satriale’s

Satriale’s was a fictional pork store used by Tony and his crew.  It’s since been demolished and today it’s a parking lot.  That’s the pork store used in the series.  What you may not know is one quarter of a mile away on the same street is a real pork store that was used by the DeCavalcante crime family, the real organized crime group.   If I can get a photo without getting in trouble, I’m going to.

The Bada Bing

There never was a real Bada Bing topless joint, and topless dancing is illegal in New Jersey.  But The Satin Dolls in Lodi (a similar bar with a similar theme, but again, not topless) that was used for the show was real and I will stop there.  I read somewhere that it had closed too, but you never know.  Anything for the ExNotes blog, guys.

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The Wayback Machine: The Springfield Mile

By Joe Berk

That photo above?  It’s the Springfield mile, with riders exiting Turn 4 at over 100 mph on their way up to 140 or so. These boys are really flying.  It is an incredible thing to see.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Two blogs back I wrote about the East Windsor half-mile dirt track, which has gone the way of the dodo bird.  The Springfield Mile is bigger and better and last I checked it’s still with us.  A dozen years ago I made the trek out to Illinois to watch the big boys (and a lady or two) mix it up and it was awesome.  I don’t know if this is accurate or if it’s more biker bullshit, but the guys claim the bikes hit 140 mph in the straights and maintain a cool 100 in the turns.  And “straights” is a relative term.  The track is basically a big oval, with the straights being less of a curve.  What’s nice about oval track racing, though, is you usually can see all the action all the time.  When you go to a grand prix type event, you get to see the bikes or the cars for just an instant when they scream past wherever you are.  Oval tracks are a better deal, I think.

We planned to ride to Springfield from So Cal, but just before it was wheels-in-the-wells time my good buddy Larry passed and I stayed for his funeral.  We flew instead and because that gave us a little bit more of our most precious commodity (time), we bopped around Springfield a bit more.  We visited Springfield’s Lincoln Museum and had a lot of fun getting there. I drove our rental car and we promptly got lost (it was in the pre-GPS era). We pulled alongside a police officer and he gave us directions. As soon as I pulled away, I asked my buds which way to go. “I don’t know,” they answered, “we weren’t listening…” Neither was I. We all had a good laugh over that one.

An interesting Norton in the fairgrounds parking lot.
Another shot of the Norton.

The Illinois State Fairgrounds has two tracks, one is a quarter-mile dirt oval and the other is the big mile track.  The quarter-mile races were awesome.  This racing, all by itself, would have been worth the trip out there.  I love watching the flat trackers.

These boys are kicking up some dirt coming out of Turn 4 on the Illinois State Fairgrounds quarter-mile track.
One of the riders lost it coming our of Turn 4 and he crashed hard directly in front of us.
I didn’t think he was going to get up, but he did.  The next day, this guy won a heat on the 1-mile track.  The announcer said he was “tougher than a $2 steak.” I believe it.

The next day, we went to the 1-mile track on the other side of the State Fairgrounds.

The field entering Turn 2 at over 100 mph on the Springfield 1-mile track. The noise is incredible and there’s nothing like it.  These guys are drifting sideways at 100 mph, just a few inches apart!
The same shot as above, but with the two fastest riders at the Springfield Mile identified.  The arrows point to Chris Carr (National No. 4 in the white and orange leathers) and Kenny Coolbeth (National No. 1 in the black leathers).  Coolbeth won on Sunday and Carr won on Monday.  This photo was just after the start.
One lap later: Coolbeth and Carr are riding as a closely-matched pair well ahead of the group.

I was really happy with these shots. I had my old Nikon D200 and a cheap lens (a 10-year old, mostly plastic, $139 Sigma 70-300). I zoomed out to 300 mm, set the ISO to 1000 for a very high shutter speed (even though it was a bright day), and the lens at f5.6 (the fastest the inexpensive Sigma would go at 300mm).  The camera’s autofocus wouldn’t keep up with the motorcycles at this speed, so I manually focused on Turn 2 and waited (but not for long) for the motorcycles to enter the viewfinder.  It was close enough for government work, freezing the 100-mph action for the photos you see above.

Kenny Coolbeth, after winning the Springfield Mile.
Nicole Cheza, a very fast rider. She won the “Dash for Cash” and the crowd loved it.
A Harley XR-750 rider having fun.

As you might expect, there were quite a few things happening off the track, too.  Johnsonville Brats had a huge tractor trailer onsite equipped with grills, and they were serving free grilled brat sandwiches.  It was a first for me, and it worked…I’ve been buying Johnsonville brats ever since.  There were hundreds of interesting motorcycles on display and a vintage World War II bomber orbiting the area.

An old B-17 flying above the track…it made several appearances that weekend.
An old Ariel Square Four. The owner started it and it sounded like two Triumph 650s.
An old two-stroke Bridgestone, a marque that never quite made it in the US. Imagine the marketing discussions in Japan: “Let’s logo it the BS…that will work!”

So there you have it, along with a bit of advice from yours truly:  If you ever have an opportunity to see the Springfield Mile, go for it.  I had a great time and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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A 1961 Ford Starliner

By Joe Berk

I was having a bad day and I was in a blue funk, but new friend Chuck and his magnificent 1961 Ford Starliner came to the rescue.   Read on and you’ll understand.

A white that is almost a very faint gray.   Chuck’s 1961 Starliner looks great; I think it would look even better in lipstick red.

The blue mood story goes like this: I have a 2018 Subaru Outback that I love except for the entertainment system.  That’s the touchscreen, the backup camera display, the navigation system, the Bluetooth phone system, and the radio (including Sirius XM).  Subaru calls it the entertainment system, but it has been anything but entertaining.  It went out repeatedly in the first couple of years that I’ve owned the car and the Subie dealer replaced it three times.  God only knows how many times I’ve brought the car back to the dealer to have them reflash the chip, the part in which miracles occur that govern everything.

After it was fixed, the entertainment system still had its moods.  When I ‘d hang up after a phone call, the radio (even if it wasn’t on before the call) immediately went to max volume.  When I start the car the radio turns on, even if I turned it off previously. The nav system scrolls through screens whenever it feels like doing so.  The touchscreen stops taking inputs.  Maybe Subaru named it correctly.  It has been entertaining.

You can guess where this story is going.  As a 2018 model, my Subaru is off its warranty, and the entertainment system went out again.  I took it to the dealer and they charged me $215 to tell me my car needs, you guessed it, a new entertainment system.  The price?  Close to $2500.

So that’s what put me in a foul mood.  If you go online and Google this topic, Subaru entertainment system anomalies are all over the Internet.  There are literally hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people who have experienced the same issues.  I think Subaru should have extended the warranty and addressed the underlying design problems.  I called Subaru of America and bitched about my situation and they “opened up a claim” (whatever that means).  They are supposed to get back to me later next week.

On the way home from the dealer, I stopped for gas.  It’s dropped $0.20 per gallon recently, which puts regular unleaded at $4.79 a gallon here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia.  That’s still way too high.  It added to my blue funk.  Then I saw the Starliner.  As I shut off my Subaru after pulling up to the pump, I saw this cool rear roof profile and heard the deep rumbling of an American V8.  You know, sounding the way an engine should sound.  I could feel the vibrations of its thumps through the ground.  The way God intended automobile engines to be before Gen X, Y, Z, or whatever we’re up to now started saving the planet.  At first, I thought this anti-Gore convenient truth was a Buick, or maybe an Oldsmobile, because all I could see from my vantage point was the rear roof line, with what looked like the three portholes that graced the fenders of early Buicks.  But I was wrong.  It wasn’t a GM product at all.

390 cubic inches and 375 horsepower.  Lots of chrome.  No chips.  America at its best, in my opinion.
Tri-Power. Three two-barrel carburetors, if you come from a generation denoted by a letter. A great time to be a teenager, the 1960s were.

I spoke to Chuck, the owner, and he told me I was looking at a 1961 Ford Starliner, one of fewer than 30,000 Ford Galaxie variants made that year.  Even fewer were made with Ford’s 375-horsepower, 390-cubic-inch, Tri-Power engine.  Wow.  Tri-Power.  I hadn’t even heard the term, Tri-Power, in maybe 30 or 40 years. The car has a 3.55 rear end and Posi-Traction (another term I hadn’t heard in a while).  Chuck opened the hood and showed me the engine.  I was in heaven.  I forgot all about my Subaru woes.

I told Chuck about the ExhaustNotes blog and asked if I could take a few photos.  “Sure,” he said.

A retro-modern interior, with the period-correct aftermarket Sun tachometer. Cue up the Beach Boys or Jan & Dean.
A Hurst shifter, with a genuine Hurst T-handle. I had one of these in my GTO. Wrapping your hand around a Hurst shifter handle is a sensual experience. It was cool when being cool meant something. If you know, you know. If not, go play with your cell phone.

I asked about the wheels.  They’re made by Ford, but they weren’t the wheels that came with the car.  Chuck pointed out that the rear wheels are wider than the front wheels.  His Starliner now has disk brakes, an upgrade from the original equipment.   Everything about this car was appealing.  Especially the, you know, exhaust notes.  It sounded heavenly.

The wheels just worked on this car. They looked great.
The view from the rear quarter. It was an amazing car. Made my day, that Starliner did.

Chuck told me the car was for sale.  The ticket in was $35,000.  That’s just about what I paid for my Subaru 6 years ago.  “It’s nice, but I couldn’t swing it right now,” I told Chuck.  “Not enough people are clicking on the ExhaustNotes popup ads.”

The gas pump on my Subie clicked off, setting a new record:  $77 to fill my tank.  I didn’t care.  The Starliner had me in a good place, and I was going to stay there.

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A Mark V ’06

By Joe Berk

I had my .30 06 Weatherby out last weekend.  It was the first time I fired this rifle in maybe 35 years.  I bought it at the Weatherby plant in South Gate, California, back when they used to let you in the warehouse to select the wood you wanted.

Fancy walnut and deep, deep bluing. I think I paid something around $300 for this rifle, new, in the 1980s. I’ll never sell it.

When I first shot this rifle in the mid-1980s, it didn’t group very well with my favorite .30 06 load (a 130-grain Hornady jacketed softpoint bullet and a max load of IMR 4320).  That was the load I used in my Ruger No. 1 chasing jackrabbits in west Texas.  Other things intervened to capture my attention, and I never got around to finding a load for this rifle.

Fast forward several decades, and for this outing I grabbed what was available in the ammo locker:  A box of 168-grain Speer jacketed hollow point boat tail bullets (my Garand load), another box with Remington 180-grain jacketed soft point bullets (which are unfortunately no longer available), and a third box with 150-grain Hornady jacketed soft point bullets and 48.0 grains of IMR 4320 (which is also no longer available).  What I learned on this most recent outing is that my Weatherby really likes the 180-grain Remington bullets and 48.0 grains of IMR 4064.  It did acceptably well (for hunting purposes) with the other two loads, but that 180-grain Remington bullet and IMR 4064 is what answers the mail for me.  It’s one of the places where accuracy lives in this rifle.

Before I left the house, I ran an oiled patch down the bore because as I said above the rifle hadn’t been shot in literally decades.  When I first set up on the range, the rifle was throwing shots all over the place for the first few rounds.  Then, either I or the rifle (or both of us) settled down and the Weatherby started grouping.  Most of the other groups were in the 1.2-inch to 2.1-inch range (which is good enough for hunting deer and pigs), but the rifle really liked that 180-grain load.  I’m talking sub-minute-of-angle.  I couldn’t do this with every group, but it tells me the rifle will do its job (if I do mine).

When assessing a hunting rifle’s accuracy, I typically shoot 3-shot groups at 100 yards off the bench. Some folks like to shoot 5-shot groups, but it’s pretty hard to get the animals to sit still for 5 shots.
Two shots through the same hole, and one a half inch away. I wish I could do this every time. The rifle is way more accurate than I am.

I was pleased with how the rifle performed, and I’ll probably start bringing it to the range more often.

A 12X, fixed-power Leupold scope with target knob adjustments and a sunshade. This is a nice setup.

I originally set up the 12X Leupold scope and this rifle for shooting in the standing position, so the scope sits high on the rifle.  When I bought the rifle, I thought I would shoot metallic silhouette with it, but I never did. With the scope as high as it is, it was awkward shooting from the bench.  That probably had something to do with the other groups opening up a bit, but I’m not complaining.

I wish Remington still sold bullets separately, but hey, life goes on.  I have two boxes of the Remington bullets left, and when they’re gone, they’re gone.  I also have a couple of boxes of Speer 180-grain jacketed bullets, and when I’ve run through my stash of Remington 180 bullets, I’ll try the Speers next.  Speer still makes those.  There are a few other loads I’m going to try, too.  I’ll keep you posted.

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Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Armed Forces Day

By Joe Berk

Mike Huber’s recent post on ANZAC day in Australia touched on our Memorial Day.   Let’s take a minute for a brief review of the three military holidays we celebrate here in the United States (Memorial Day, Veterans Day, and Armed Forces Day).

Memorial Day

Memorial Day is a federal holiday honoring men and women who have fallen in battle.  It is on the last Monday in May.   Memorial Day was originally known as Decoration Day, with origins rooted in several state-specific holidays.   The tradition started after the end of the Civil War and has continued ever since.

Veterans Day

Veterans Day is another federal holiday; it is celebrated on November 11.  It was originally known as Armistice Day to celebrate the end of World War I which occurred on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.  Armistice Day was officially redesignated as Veterans Day in 1954.  I like to think of Veterans Day as my holiday because it celebrates all veterans of the US military.  No doubt many of our ExNotes readers who served feel the same way. Like Memorial Day, Veterans Day is a legal holiday.

Armed Forces Day

Armed Forces Day celebrates our military services and those who are currently serving in uniform.  It occurs on the third Saturday in May.  It came into being in 1949 when Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson announced its creation to celebrate consolidation of all military branches under the U.S. Department of Defense.  Prior to that, there were separate Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps Days.

Sergeant Zuo on the ride across China. He was a magnificent leader.

I’m grateful for having had the opportunity to serve (as are the vast majority of those who have), and when I meet other people who have worn the uniform of their nations’ military service there’s an instant bond.  I felt that way immediately when I met Mike Huber that hot summer day in Baja (I recognized Mike’s jump wings on his BMW at an impromptu gas stop in Catavina), and I felt the same way when I met Sergeant Zuo in Chongqing when we started our 6000-mile ride around China.

Mike was a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division when he served. I went through the same jump school as Mike did at Fort Benning, Georgia (I’m Charlie 34 in the photo up top, one of the scared young soldiers a few days away from my first jump at the Benning School for Boys).

Sergeant Zuo is a retired Chinese Army senior NCO.  Because I was a lieutenant when I got out of the Army, Sergeant Zuo snapped to attention and saluted me every morning on that great ride around China.  At the end of our 38-day ride, Zuo and I enjoyed a swim in the Yellow Sea in Qingdao.  When I served in a Hawk missile battery in Korea, my missiles’ primary target line pointed across the Yellow Sea directly at Qingdao.  Zuo and I had a good laugh about that.

Good buddy Mike Huber, AATW.

I’m proud of my service in the U.S. Army and the fact that I joined in an era when most people were doing everything they could to avoid military service.  It’s paid huge dividends for me, not the least of which are what I consider to be a realistic outlook on life, the ability to focus on objectives (in both my military and civilian careers), and my willingness to listen to others (“seek to understand before seeking to be understood” is perhaps the best advice I’ve ever heard).  My belief is that eliminating the draft at the tail end of the Vietnam era and not replacing it with some sort of universal public service has hurt our society, but that’s just my opinion.  If you have a different perspective, I’d love to hear from you.

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The USS Alabama

By Joe Berk

Good buddy Paul recently sent to me a video about the powder charges used by US Navy battleships.  The USS New Jersey was featured in the video, and it reminded of my visit to a sister ship, the USS Alabama.  I wrote a Destinations piece for Motorcycle Classics magazine ten years ago, and I thought you might enjoy seeing it (along with photos that did not appear in the MC article).

The coastal plains along Alabama’s southern edge are flat and the line of sight extends to the horizon.  Ride east on Interstate 10 out of Mobile and you can see her distinctive, bristling profile from a great distance.  One can only imagine the fear she induced in our enemies as she emerged from the mist on the high seas.

She, of course, is the USS Alabama.  She’s docked at Battleship Memorial Park, just east of Mobile on I-10 where Alabama’s coast meets the Gulf of Mexico.  To call the USS Alabama impressive would be a massive understatement.  This magnificent old warship is a study in superlatives and in contrasts.   Taller than a 20-story building, longer than two football fields, and capable of firing projectiles weighing nearly as much as a Z-06 Corvette at targets more than 20 miles away, the USS Alabama projected America’s power on the open oceans and inland during World War II.  The “Lucky A” (she lost not a single crewmember to enemy fire while earning nine Battle Stars) sailed just under a quarter of a million miles in combat conditions and saw action in both the Atlantic and the Pacific theatres.  When she passed through the Panama Canal, the 680-foot, 44,500-ton Lucky A had just 11 inches of clearance on each side.

After World War II the USS Alabama was retired from active service.   In 1962 the Navy announced plans to scrap this magnificent ship due to the high costs of keeping her in mothballs, but the good citizens of Alabama would have none of that.  Alabama kids raised nearly $100,000 in nickels, dimes, and quarters, and corporate sponsors coughed up another $1,000,000 to bring the ship from Puget Sound to Mobile.

The USS Alabama is in amazing condition; indeed, it looks as if the ship could go to war today.  Being aboard is like being in a movie (Steven Seagal used it for the 1992 movie, Under Siege).   It is an amazing experience eliciting a strong combination of pride and patriotism.

The USS Alabama is a floating artillery base.  With armor more than a foot thick above the water line it’s amazing she could float at all, but the old girl could top 32 mph and she had a range of 15,000 nautical miles.   When she stopped at the pumps, the USS Alabama took on 7,000 tons of fuel (a cool 2 million gallons).

The guns are what impressed me most.  The ship bristles with armament.   The Alabama’s 16-inchers dominate everything.  Approaching the ship highlights the big guns and when you get closer, they are stunning.   Try to imagine nine 16-inch guns, three per turret, firing at our enemies (it must have terrifying).   The ship boasts twenty 5-inch guns (two in each of the ship’s 10 smaller turrets).   There are another 12 mounts with 48 40mm cannon.  And just to make sure, the Alabama has another 52 20mm anti-aircraft cannon.   If you’ve been keeping track, that’s 129 guns.

The USS Alabama is only part of the treasure included in Battlefield Memorial Park.  The park includes the USS Drum (a World War II submarine), numerous armored vehicles, and an impressive aircraft collection spanning 70 years of military aviation (including a B-52 bomber, numerous fighters, the top-secret SR-71 reconnaissance aircraft, and assorted other planes).  The USS Alabama could touch 32 mph on the high seas; the SR-71 cruised at 3,000 mph.   The USS Alabama weighs a bit more than 720 million pounds; the SR-71 was built from lightweight titanium.  As I stated earlier, the Park and its exhibits are a study in superlatives and contrasts.

Battleship Memorial Park is just east of Mobile on Interstate 10.  You can’t miss it (the USS Alabama is visible for miles from either direction, even at night).   Admission is only $15 and take my word for it, it’s the most bang for the buck you’ll ever get.

The Skinny

What:  Battleship Memorial Park, 2703 Battleship Parkway, Mobile, AL 36602.  An outstanding collection of land, air, and sea military vehicles, with the USS Alabama being the main attraction.

How to Get There:  Interstate 10 from either the east or the west.  From anywhere else, just head south until you hit Interstate 10 and point your front wheel toward Mobile.

Best Kept Secret:   There have been seven US Navy ships named Alabama reaching back to before the Civil War.   Today, a US Navy nuclear submarine sails under that same proud name.

Avoid:   Missing Mobile.  It’s a beautiful town, and its Gulf Coast location makes for great seafood and great hospitality.

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