"You Were Lucky"

[benos]

A PM with a member reminded me of this... I wrote the shooters version of the Monty Python sketch, "You were lucky," (from Live at the Hollywood Bowl) years ago. It could be my all time favorite Monty Python sketch. Me, Henning, Robbie, and a couple other shooters were planning to record it just for fun. Henning even bought some recording equipment - but then we dropped the project when we realized that, since we are not actors, we sounded like idiots. 

06.05.19 I added the Monty Python video at the end of this Thread.

 

“YOU WERE LUCKY”

 

Who would have thought 20 years ago, we would be sitting around here in all our glory discussing the virtues of the "Seeless" versus the "Misspoint."

 

Yeah, back when I started shooting, all we had were singlestack 45’s.

 

Fortyfives! I used to dream of having a 45. I was lucky to have a gun magazine with a picture of a 45.

 

Gun magazine! Huh! I had to save for 6 weeks to buy a used gun magazine from our  ‘hole-in-the-wall gunshop and he could only afford to stock one gun.

 

But we enjoyed shooting more then, when we were poor.

 

Because we were POOR!

 

I remember back when I was first shooting matches, no one even thought of making an optical sight.

 

Optical sight! I was lucky to have an adjustable sight on my old gun.

 

Adjustable sights. I was lucky to have a Micro fixed sight that Clyde from the Pistol Parlor gave me off one of his used pistols to put on my first comp gun.

 

You were lucky to have a comp gun. Back when I was shooting steel matches in the gravelpit all I had was a 5” gun with a 6” Barsto barrel.

 

Six-inch Barsto! That was the trickiest gun I’d ever seen. I was lucky to have a 5” government model that my wife bought for me for christmas with the money she saved from babysitting.

 

But of course I had it tough. I started shooting with a old Browning Hi-Power with a Bomar rib. It cycled so slow you couldn’t fire a split faster than 2 tenths of a second.

 

Luxury! Back when I started shooting I didn’t even have an electronic timer. We had to time our matches with a stopwatch. The only gun I had was a revolver because there were no gunsmiths that could make a 45 function for an entire match.

 

Matches!!! You were lucky to shoot matches. After working 110 hours a week I only had the time to load enough ammo on a prototype Dillon RL-300 to shoot two of the four stages at our monthly match.

 

You were lucky to have a Dillon press. The best I could manage was an old Lyman singlestage press. I could only load enough ammo to practice once a week for an hour. IF I was lucky.

 

You were lucky to shoot for an hour. My Old single stage was so broken down I could only load 20 rounds a week. I had to buy a revolver so I could stay at the range for more than five minutes.

 

You were lucky to have a single stage press. I remember when I used to handload for my .44 with a Lee loader. The powder scooper wasn’t big enough so I hollowed it out with a penknife.

 

.44! You were lucky to have a .44! We had to shoot .357s with 38 special cases and pretend they were .44s!

 

Yeah, but back when I started shooting all I had was a 45 with no magazines or ammo. I dryfired for years before Mike Dillon took pity on me and gave me some bullets to load.

 

Free bullets! You were lucky! I had to walk around grocery store parking lots for years collecting enough wheel weights to CAST my own bullets. And then I had to go to the junkyard and steal scrapmetal to form my own magazines to use in my old broken down 45 that wouldn’t function long enough to do a double tap.

 

Doubletap! I used to dream of doing a doubletap. Back when I started shooting all I had was a worn out singleaction .22. The mainspring was so weak it would only fire one shot out of every cylinder of ammo.

 

You were lucky to have .22 ammo. I used to have to get up every morning, half an hour before I went to bed. My grandpa would make me walk 2 miles through the freezing rain and shovel all the hogshit out  of the barn with a soupspoon and then once a week he would give me a box of .22s. IF I was lucky.

 

.22! You were lucky to have a .22. when I was a boy all I had, and mind you when I say had, I really meant that my friend down the street had an old daisy BB-gun that wouldn’t shoot even if we could afford to buy a box of used BBs. We would sit around for hours aiming at the neighbors cats and wondering what it might be like to actually shoot one of those bastards right between the eyes.

 

Cats! You were lucky to have cats to aim at. Where I was growing up there wasn’t a living thing to even think about shooting for miles. Our whole family lived in a rusted out dumpster at the bottom of a lake. We would have to get up, catch a bucketful of crawfish, swim 6 miles to the surface and another 12 to land. Then we would walk for 2 hours to the cajun restaurant, sell our crawfish for a penny a dozen, take our nickel down to the pawnshop and use it to rent a broom to sweep the shop 3 times over and then... maybe the shop-owner would let us look at a broken BB-gun. IF we were lucky!

 

Right! Back when I started shooting there weren’t any sort of guns at all in the entire state. We would have to hitchhike for 3 days to get to the airport, kill the security guards so we could sneak into the baggage compartment on a flight to Los Angeles. Fight our way through the gangs in L.A. and then hike on foot over the mountains to the Southwest Pistol League and then... IF we were lucky, we would see Mike Dalton or Mickey Fowler driving towards the range.

 

....and you tell that to the young shooters today... and they just won’t believe ya!

 

No, yeah

 

Yeah, right, yeah!

 

[Toolguy]

Great stuff Brian! Thanks for sharing. It would have made a great YouTube video!

[LT45]

It's not too late to give it another try... perhaps you didn't have the proper motivational beverages at hand...

[AlamoShooter]

You are Lucky !

[Team Amish 1]

Please, please make the video.

That'd be hilarious!

[Flexmoney]

The only gun I had was a revolver because there were no gunsmiths that could make a 45 function for an entire match.

... I had to buy a revolver so I could stay at the range for more than five minutes.

[recovering19A]

The best thing I have read, am reading, will read, or will have read!

Edited August 23, 2010 by recovering19A

[Gary1911A1]

I like it.

[John Dunn]

Awesome!

[benos]

It's not too late to give it another try... perhaps you didn't have the proper motivational beverages at hand...

That's never the case!

be

[jhgtyre]

It's not too late to give it another try... perhaps you didn't have the proper motivational beverages at hand...

That's never the case!

be

You are lucky you can walk to a bar! I have to cross a river filled with Piranahs and fight a homeless mountain man just to get a tiny drop of stale beer!

-ld

[benos]

It's not too late to give it another try... perhaps you didn't have the proper motivational beverages at hand...

That's never the case!

be

You are lucky you can walk to a bar! I have to cross a river filled with Piranahs and fight a homeless mountain man just to get a tiny drop of stale beer!

-ld

You are lucky!

Back when I was young, I'd have to run behind my neighbor's house across the street before the school bus pulled away in the morning, then who knows how many miles I'd have to walk, in shoes with cardboard duck taped in the bottom of them, until I could find an old enough car I could hot wire, drive it to Forida to my brother's house, where, if I was lucky, he'd let me smell the beer from the bottles he drank the night before. And then drive back to Ohio and be ready to run out from behind my neighbor's house before the school bus pulled away that same afternoon, so it would look like to my mom, who always watched me "get on the bus" from the living room window, that I was in school all day.

[LT45]

It's not too late to give it another try... perhaps you didn't have the proper motivational beverages at hand...

That's never the case!

be

You are lucky you can walk to a bar! I have to cross a river filled with Piranahs and fight a homeless mountain man just to get a tiny drop of stale beer!

-ld

You are lucky!

Back when I was young, I'd have to run behind my neighbor's house across the street before the school bus pulled away in the morning, then who knows how many miles I'd have to walk, in shoes with cardboard duck taped in the bottom of them, until I could find an old enough car I could hot wire, drive it to Florida to my brother's house, where, if I was lucky, he'd let me smell the beer from the bottles he drank the night before. And then drive back to Ohio and be ready to run out from behind my neighbor's house before the school bus pulled away that same afternoon, so it would look like to my mom, who always watched me "get on the bus" from the living room window, that I was in school all day.

You were lucky… when I was a kid I didn’t even have neighbors. I’d have to walk five miles to the nearest road just to see a car. Duck tape hadn’t been invented yet and card board was a luxury. So we soaked our feet in mud and let them dry in the hot sun… those were our shoes. I was so far out in the woods I didn’t even know what beer was. We’d hit each other in the head with rocks to get stoned, and we were thankful for those rocks.

[gunsablazin]

Stones, when I was a boy we couldn't afford stones, if we wanted to get stoned we had to grow our own.......... stones......

[benos]

You were lucky… when I was a kid I didn’t even have neighbors. I’d have to walk five miles to the nearest road just to see a car. Duck tape hadn’t been invented yet and card board was a luxury. So we soaked our feet in mud and let them dry in the hot sun… those were our shoes. I was so far out in the woods I didn’t even know what beer was. We’d hit each other in the head with rocks to get stoned, and we were thankful for those rocks.

You had it tough!

[benos]

 

[Dranoel]

.45? Revolver? You were lucky! I had to compete with a single shot, hand pump Daisy pellet pistol with no grip panels and sights carved out of a soggy corn cob! I had to fire 3 shots just to make minor and an average stage took me 3 weeks to shoot.

You really need to do this video.

[jhgtyre]

17 hours ago, Dranoel said:

.45? Revolver? You were lucky! I had to compete with a single shot, hand pump Daisy pellet pistol with no grip panels and sights carved out of a soggy corn cob! I had to fire 3 shots just to make minor and an average stage took me 3 weeks to shoot.

You really need to do this video.

Oh, well, you had a PUMP,  you WERE LUCKY!  We had to use a blow gun with naught but spitballs to nudge the ballistic pendulum and hope to God that we made power factor lest we be relegated to shooting PCC with the toffs and fairies!

 

(no, wait, that might be more recent...)

[Dranoel]

10 hours ago, jhgtyre said:

Oh, well, you had a PUMP,  you WERE LUCKY!  We had to use a blow gun with naught but spitballs to nudge the ballistic pendulum and hope to God that we made power factor lest we be relegated to shooting PCC with the toffs and fairies!

 

(no, wait, that might be more recent...)

 

Spit balls? You were lucky! We couldn't afford a used newspaper to make them with and couldn't afford spit either. I spent every free minute (about 3.5 every day) searching the banks of the swamp we lived in for pebble just the right size and roundness for ammo.