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.

[Whiskey Delta]

Turns out it was a "Fitz Conversion" that he was seeking out.

Apparently back in the 1930s a gunsmith created chopped revolvers for detectives who would have to pull their pistols from jacket pockets and not holsters like their uniformed counterparts. Check out this nifty wiki pedia article on this trend...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FitzGerald_Special

[jthrelf]

Cool story, thanks for sharing (and bumping after all these years).