The Rifleman

I'd like to sincerely thank Colby Stead: a good friend who took it upon himself to spend some time with my family and me this past weekend at the Idaho State Service Rifle Championships. He took some footage of the event and compliled it into a video entitled "The Rifleman" that you can see here, along with other short documentary style films featuring individuals more gifted and unique than myself.

Last year I wrote a poem entitled Spent Powder, which you can read here, which embodies the beautiful bond that shooting has created between me and my Dad. Colby could have edited the film to communicate a varitey of messages from any number of family and friends, but ultimately what this breif glance into the shooting world became wasn't the technical or even cultural aspect of it all, but rather the personal effects it has had on a father and a son.

When it Began

In 1987, or thereabouts, my father became involved in competitive highpower rifle shooting. It has since become a family affair. The current roster of avid competitors is my father Dick Blake, brother Frank Blake, brother-in-law Greg Lewis, and cousin Brig Blake. Other family members besides these compete from time to time. Some families get together on Sundays to watch football, but those families are boring. This is a weird sport full of weird people, and we’d only be kidding ourselves if we refused to be lumped in with them.

In August of 1992 my Dad coaxed me into taking my first foray into competition. I had never participated in an organized match before, so what better place to test myself than at the National Championships in Camp Perry, Ohio? From St. Anthony, where I grew up, that was a 1,875 mile journey. Not a short drive, by any means, especially in a raggedy old Buick with no air conditioning. But it became the absolute perfect way for a father and son to spend time with one another. This was the first of many trips, and hindsight tells me that this time with my Dad saved me in many ways.

Shooting is a great mystery to the women of the family, and it might always be that way. I look at the fabric stores and craft shacks of the world and all I see is a cloud of bewilderment. But I have not tried to understand those things. Likewise the magnetism of wind flags and the smell of burnt powder are lost on our loving wives. But the sport has become a big part of us, not merely due to the technique, the task, and the challenge, but it has also become a metaphor for life: Breath! Where is your natural point of aim? Focus. Control your wobble zone. Don’t jerk! Follow through!

Gun Fever

The sport of highpower rifle shooting, like other fringe sports, attracts a large number of strange competitors. Whether in New York, California, North Dakota, or Texas you'll run into them. Though most are streaked with varying degrees of oddity, most that I have met have been bitten by the same genus of bug: a full-heart, unabashed, overflowing, profess-it-to-the-world love of guns. It's like a sickness infecting the participants, a rare brain fever whose symptoms can be treated, but for which there is no real cure. A sufferer will get the shakes, develope a pit in the stomach, and will be unable to focus or concentrate. The only real way to momentarily curb the symptoms is to purchase a firearm. This will break the fever for a time (months? weeks? days?) and bring relief to the shooter.

Lucky for these sufferers the United States Government has provided one of many means whereby these gun lovers can satiate themselves. In 1916 the U.S. Congress created the CMP (Civilian Marksmanship Program). Its purpose is mainly to promote the safe use of firearms, to educate the public, and assist youth that are interested in marksmanship who may, in the future, be interested in military service. One of the services provided by the CMP is the sale of M1 Garand Service Rifles. These are the genuine article. Actual rifles that were made by the U.S. Governement for combat and were either used during WWII, the Korean War, and sometimes in early Vietnam.

Collectors of the M1 can pick one up and tell you who manufactured it, what type of wood the stock is made of, what the date was, condition of its various parts, and where it has been the last 50 years. I met a fellow this weekend who, in the course of the last few years, has ordered seven of these rifles from the CMP. When he was shown, by a fellow shooter, the one that had just arrived in his own mailbox, this guy started to itch, his eyes started to wander, and soon the fever had set in. I won't be suprised when he shows up in two months with number eight. The CMP, after all, only has a limited supply of these (though we're not sure how many), and they will all be gone someday (though we don't know when). Above all, you never know when it comes right down to it, whether those seven M1's you have in the safe are really enough.

Spent Powder

Here is a poem I wrote recently:

"Spent Powder"

It's the smell.
Awakening the soil, the stickers,
Creased jackets and the morning.
Eyes open and moving about
Calling on the odor.

In the nighttime Asian jungles
Someone's son's spleen
Decorates arching palm fronds
Lighting them up like a
Yellow Christmas bush.
Yards away a crisp, pungent trail of smoke
Stagnates on water-soaked air,
Driftless as a war,
Its musk
Weakening in dispersal
Never to remain, as smoke cannot,
Forever burning an acrid brand
Into noisy memory.
The smell remains. And the spleen.

Another hemisphere, another hour
My father, prostrate to the earth,
Squints, pulls, and fires the aroma
Giving it ride again
This time on a bloodless plane, in drier air.
It carries a blackened coat
Empty dreams, sour letters,
And the fruitless bare blossoms
Of generations that never were.
But today,
Today it is redemptions perfume
Savored between father and son.