Month: January 2017

Builders ,

A quick story, just to demonstrate while I am a tireless supporter of American made products, I also appreciate well made machines from all over the world.  Below, a photo taken in my back yard yesterday, with a classic piece of cold war history, a Belgian FN-FAL.

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If you made a very good product, you could expect it to be popular in your own country. Now ponder this question: How good would it have to be for 90 different countries to adopt it as their standard of national defense in the Cold War?  Fabrique Nationale, better known by the initials “FN”, designed the FAL in the years after WWII, and by the 1960s it became so popular in non-communist countries that it was often called “Right Arm of the Free World”.

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This was not a case of super powers exporting weapons to third world proxy state conflicts. While a great number of the FALs were built in Belgium, FN licensed their production to countries large and small. Countries adopted the FAL simply because it was incredibly good,  it was not an imported form political support as the AK-47s and AKMs largely were.

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The next time you are at an airshow looking at a UL Power aircraft engine and someone says “It’s from Belgium, do they make a lot of mechanical stuff there?”  You can take a moment to tell them Belgium spent 50 years as the source of “Right Arm of the Free World”.

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Above, in the back yard holding a FAL. This is a very finely made power house, as nearly all of them were chambered in 7.62 NATO. Even if you don’t know firearms it is recognizable by it’s distinctive folding carry handle, extreme cant of the pistol grip and the magazine that isn’t curved. It has excellent ergonomics, it is easy to shoot accurately, and it took just a few moments to turn a stack of cinderblocks into rubble.

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-ww.

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Builders,

I traveled more extensively in 2016 than I have in 20 years, I saw a lot of people and places and feel fortunate to have the opportunity to experience it, even the parts that were hard work and tiring. But one single afternoon out of 365 will stick in my mind long after the others, even the strong ones, have faded.

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Above, Grace and ScoobE sit with my Father in the hospital, looking at my fathers US Navy albums from the late 1940s and Korea. The photo was taken on May 19th.

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I was in California, just after Corvair College #38 in Cloverdale ended. My sister in law called and said Dad was not doing well, had pneumonia, and it was time to come home. I dropped the trailer in a storage lot, drove to Sacramento and got on a plane headed for Newark. Before getting on the plane, I sent Grace, who was in St. Pete FL caring for her parents, a text explaining my departure from California.

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Without further word, Grace put the dog in Caddy and headed 1,200 miles north, stopping only for gas. Having known my father for 17 years, Grace knew that memories and stories from the past and the company of a loyal dog would go a long way to improving my fathers outlook.  Armed with a stack of photo albums and an attitude that says “Of course he is a real service dog” without anyone needing to ask, Grace spent the afternoon pictured above listening to my father recall both moments of humor and sacrifice, names of men who raised good families and those who’s devotion to duty and shipmates cost them all they might have done in this life.

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The afternoon of May 19th 2016 will remain the moment of 2016 which I am most thankful for. In my life the most profound moments have not been the brief satisfactions of achievement nor victory, but the moments that have lasted are the hours when I have felt weak, unsure and helpless, and someone arrived to show how the moment could be salvaged for a vastly better outcome. If you make a single pledge to yourself for 2017, consider vowing to be the person who arrives, without being asked, in the hour of another persons need. It produces the kind of gratitude not easily forgotten, no matter what may come.

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-ww.

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