My odd-duck S&W 1917, with a story.

[Whiskey Delta]

I had a friend named Joe.

Joe was the kind of guy who had no enemies, and the people who knew him cherished him.

He was a paramedic and a flight nurse, and dabbled in his FFL on the side. He was an avid hunter, and loved very esoteric things like old watches and HAM radio.

He was, in short, a great guy and a bad influence

He liked really odd things, talking me into at various times, a Moisin Nagant pistol (very cool arsenal refinish..I STILL don't have any rounds for it!)

At one point, he purchased a re-import Brazilian 1917 S&W to do a 'chop' on it that he had read about in a magazine.

Since he was not the kind of guy who would cobble up a museum piece, he found these reimports were not that valuable and would make a great base for a project.

In short, he had it chopped, action jobbed and tuned, finally parkerized it. He topped it off with a grip whose maker's name is lost to the realm of infinity.

Now, this was a neat gun. As he would buy and sell things from his collection, I used to always try and get him to sell it to me. He would laugh and say "ahh, maybe someday".

One day he went to work with a belly pain he had been ignoring for a few weeks, and it doubled him over and finally he was seen by a doc. From there he went to UofP, and was gone in a month and a half.

Piff. Just like that.

We lost a good one, let me tell you.

When he died, he left all his worldly possessions to his fiance, who was not a gun person. She had all his firearms taken by a mutal friend to a gunshop nearby. The original plan was that all of Joe's friends would have a 'private' day to walk in the shop and have first crack at buying his things. We would get a memento, and his fiance would have solvent cash for settling his affairs.

Unfortunately, a snafu occurred and the gunshop sold things the moment they came in. A mutual friend of mine grabbed me at work one day and told me in great anguish that there was practically nothing left.

I was really in the pits. Lost my friend, rather WE all lost a friend. Whatever comfort a memento would bring us was a lost cause.

I stopped by the shop later in the week.

Walked up to the counter and said "What do you have left of Joe's things?".

"Well" they replied " we have a couple of hunting rifles and two pistols."

This represented a small fraction of his total collection, and I was sick.

"What do you have?"

Then I looked.

On the bottoms shelf, where it had laid for almost 2 months, ignored by the hundreds of gun hounds who HAD to have seen it, was that S&W .45 pistol.

It was priced CHEAPLY too. To this moment, I cannot fathom how it came to be that that gun was still there.

Waiting, it seemed , for me.


Do you believe in fate?

Do you believe in ghosts?

Do you believe that a man's intentions can influence things long past his physical form?

I can't fathom any reason for that gun to be there after all that time but for one thing.

Joe's promise.

I have it now, and it resides amongst more flashy guns that cannot equal its value.

How do you say "Thank You" to the infinite?

[Whiskey Delta]

found a pic!

[ROCK-IT3]

Good story WD, I'm glad you have something tangible to remember your freind. I do believe God works things like that sometimes, just to make us think a little about Him.

[ithinkimamedic]

W.D. that's a wicked nice wheelgun you've got there and clearly it means more than ANY store bought production gun. I remember reading this a while ago but that picture of it just adds so much more to the story. Thank you for taking the time to share, He sounds like a man I truly would have enjoyed being around... Firearms AND EMS... WOW!

Cheers!
Josh

[Karys]

Wow! Cool gun and even cooler story.