The Wandering Minstrel

How about some Chocolate Ammo for Halloween?

We were in Phoenix a few weeks ago to arrange for some building materials for the new house. On our way to view granite slabs, we passed a pasture where several longhorn steers were grazing. This was right in the middle of a residential and industrial district where we also observed some goats and sheep.

The horns on these dudes are so huge that one steer (on the left) can’t seem to get one of them off the ground. Clickable image courtesy The Better Half.

I was halfway watching a program on the history channel this afternoon. They were discussing automatic weapons and showing footage of the weapons in use. The narrator got my full attention when this beauty became the topic. They showed some WW2 footage of an American fighter strafing a German railroad train. Using the airborne version of this gun, the pilot unloaded on the locomotive, disabled it and commenced to take out the rail cars. Pretty impressive.

The following information came from this link.

The M2 .50 caliber machine gun is an automatic, belt-fed, recoil-operated, air-cooled, crew-operated machine gun. This gun may be mounted on ground mounts and most vehicles as an anti-personnel and anti-aircraft weapon. The gun is capable of single-shot (ground version M2), as well as automatic fire and was used to a very limited degree as a sniper weapon during the Vietnam war. The weapon provides automatic weapon suppressive fire for offensive and defensive purposes. This weapon can be used effectively against personnel, light armored vehicles; low, slow flying aircraft; and small boats. The M2 machine gun uses the M3 Tripod. The principal night vision sight used with the M2 is the AN/TVS-5

I have been searching through my Firefox bookmarks to try and eliminate some of the stuff I seldom use any more. I found a site that I used to generate some graphics a while back and discovered there is an online slideshow maker tool. It produces a Flash™ (.swf) file that you can download along with the example embedded HTML code.

I uploaded a few pictures to the tool just to try it out. It only took a few minutes and it seems to work pretty good. Check it out for yourself at Frobee.com.

Earlier this month, The Better Half and I attended the Wickenburg Fly-In and Classic Car Show. The Wickenburg Chamber of Commerce, Town of Wickenburg, Wickenburg Airport Advisory Commission, Experimental Aircraft Association “Wickenburg Dust Devils” Chapter 883, and Master Aircraft Services were this years sponsors.

One of the classics we saw that day is this shiny 1932 Chevrolet Pickup Truck. It was parked next to the 1954 Pontiac Chieftain that I posted on October 9th. Clickable image courtesy The Better Half.

We spent most of the day on the road, so I don’t have much blogging inspiration this evening. Since I posted a weird mailbox yesterday, here’s another mailbox weirdness we found a couple blocks away from the Gee Bee Racer. Clickable image.

We’re on the road again tonight heading back to California. We’ll be back in Arizona in a week or so. Meanwhile, check out this interesting mailbox that The Better Half photographed in Wickenburg this afternoon.

As soon as I saw it, I immediately recognized the short airframe, short wings and landing gear fairings as being those from the famous Gee Bee Model R racing airplane built by the Granville Brothers back in 1932. It made us both laugh. Clickable image.

Screamer’s Drive In is over on the main drag through Wickenburg. The Better Half and I have been threatening to go and have a meal there, although we seldom eat in Restaurants.

Clickable image courtesy The Better Half.

This 1950’s style drive in regularly attracts the old car crowd to enjoy the old-time burgers, fries and milk shakes. Today, it was vintage Fords parked in the stalls on the west end of the drive in. One of the old cars was decked out with police lights and siren.

Maybe the next time we’re back in a week or so, we’ll stop and get all nostalgic by splurging on a couple cheeseburgers, some fries and a milkshake or two.