Saturday: The Guns Of Kokomo

     Shootin' Buddy arrived bright & early (by my clock) and Turk Turon showed up shortly after, fortified with coffee.

     We enjoyed a delightful breakfast at Zest, then set off toward the Kokomo Gun Show in suitably seasonal weather, as can be seen behind Turk, and showed up to find a very full show.  No line but pretty steady traffic and a packed parking lot; it was noon when we arrived.

     AR/AK-pattern rifles were available, at rather higher prices, and the only AR-15 magazines seen were GI-issue surplus 30-rounders for $60 each (!).  Plenty of askers, not so many takers; all the early buyers for modern sporting rifles of the sort politicians are once again talking about banning seem to have come and gone.

     Tam found something that...  I'd better not steal her thunder, or in this case, top- and heart-breakingly near-perfect nickel-plating, real mother of pearl, in possibly-unfired condition and the original box...


      Me, well, I wasn't really looking but I seem to have found anyway: my .22 revolver collection now has a Smith & Wesson, a K-22 Combat Masterpiece, at a good price (!) plus an inexpensive little wonder, a Savage Model 101 single-action, single-shot "cowboy gun" from the 1960s.

     The K-22 (aka Pre-Model 18) is pretty well-known; the little Savage, not so much, though the company made 53,800 between 1960 and '68.  They sold for $20 in 1960 and, adjusted for inflation, I paid the same today.  ($150, if you were wondering)

     Model 101's loading arrangement is clever (the barrel moves with the "cylinder") and the ejector is an interesting twist on the usual methods. It has a highly-rebounding hammer, too, that can't contact the firing pin unless the trigger's all the way back.  (See photo: that's the at-rest position.)  The stocks are not wood but a very good plastic imitation; the supplier was making car dashboards with it when Savage found him.  It's pretty much a kid's gun, though intended for older, responsible "kids."  But when the younger children in the neighborhood where the designer lived heard he'd dreamed up a real "cowboy" sidearm just their size, they asked if please maybe he had some spare ones they could play Western Adventure with?  (This was, after all, during the heyday of the TV Western.) ...You and me, we'd just say, Not A Chance; designer Robert Hillberg decided it was better to make sure the kids had safe toys than to say no and wait to see what they might find on their own: he got Savage to run up a dozen "dummy" versions for the youngsters, not-actually-guns because the chamber was not drilled, so they could not possibly be loaded.  The dummy guns also turned out to be the very thing for Savage sales reps to carry for demonstration when making calls in highly-regulated areas like New York and Washington D.C.

     Do they shoot?  I don't know.  But I'm hoping to find out!  I've liked Tam's K-22 for a long time and I'm happy to add one to my stable.  The Model 101, now, that's just kewl.