Guest Post: Visiting the Sconce
After the end of our Gunsite class, we were invited to visit Mrs. Cooper in her home. One of my fellow Gunsite students, JT, wrote this excellent reflection on the experience:
At the conclusion of our week long training at Gunsite, the entire class was invited to the residence of Mrs. Cooper–I shan’t call her Janelle without a direct and personal invitation to do so–for refreshments.
A gaggle of dusty, hot and tired students trudged unceremoniously up to the home built by Gunsite’s founder, the late Colonel Jeff Cooper. We were warmly greeted by Mrs. Cooper, and welcomed to look around. Mrs. Cooper was as gracious and charming a hostess as I’ve ever seen. To her, class and warmth and grace come naturally.
The views from the deck are priceless, stretching out over the vast expanse of valley to distant mountains. But the real majesty of this house lies inside.
A cross between a museum and library, gun vault and shrine, the interior of the Sconce (meaning a small, detached fort), as Mrs. Cooper’s home is known, is as magnificent as the views outside.
Col Cooper had a vast library of books, to match his varied interests, and a few singular mementos. Of course, it almost goes without saying that trophies taken around the world and firearms–each with some particular significance–were there, as well; I will leave them for others to describe in greater detail.
Photographs of Col. and Mrs. Cooper, along with other family members, line the walls and shelves. Mrs. Cooper is, by any measure, a devoted spouse and her love for her husband is evident in almost every thing she does. The attention she devotes to his memory borders on worship. Yet, who can blame her? Col. Cooper was, in many respects, larger than life, and a true American hero.
The entire home is, in effect, a tribute to Col. Cooper, from its site to its construction to its contents.
But perhaps the greatest tribute to the late Col. Cooper is not some object or saying or slogan or view, no matter how spectacular. The greatest tribute to Col. Cooper is that his legacy of preparing–one class at a time–Gunsite students to defend themselves and their loved ones from violent criminals is both ongoing and enduring.
Thanks, JT, for the thoughtful post!
Why I love surplus rifles
I recently acquired a 98k Mauser. I had been leery of buying surplus guns for a long time…afraid that I would end up with an expensive piece of junk. But I decided that the time was ripe to pick one up. If nothing else, I figured I would have an action that I could use for something more tricked out.
What I ended up with was a Russian capture 98k. For those who don’t know what that means, let me ‘splain. At the end of the war, the Soviets captured a whole mess of German rifles. Russians being Russians, they packed them away in cosmoline, waiting for the time that might be needed to arm peasants. Then, at some point in their history, the Soviets signed a disarmament treaty with the US. The treaty specified a certain number of arms needed to be rendered unfit for military service. The Soviets, a pratcial people, promptly disposed of the front sight hoods, cleaning rods, and action locking screws for these rifles, and declared them de-milled. Everyone left happy. The Russians later sold off them off for surplus.
When I got the gun home, I cleaned off the crusted cosmoline and wiped down the stock with Murphy’s oil soap. I looked up the manufacturing codes. It’s not a rare rifle. The bolt serial number doesn’t match the reciever. There is ugly Soviet electric pencil serial numbers scratched on the top of the bolt, where it was force matched at whatever Soviet arsenal it was refinished. My original intent was to strip it down to the action, and have it be a project gun that I could build up and practice my gunsmithing “skills.”
But the more I held it, and worked the action, and thought about the history behind the gun, I decided I just couldn’t do it. My wife is a history teacher…and this gun was a piece of living history. Did some poor German hold it while shivering on the Eastern front after being sent to his death by that madman in Berlin? Or did it sit in some arms room until being captured and maimed by the Russians and dragged back behind the Iron Curtain? And isn’t that maiming part of history, too, and a monument to silly, feel good treaties?
Firearms are history distilled into an object that you can touch and hold and smell. You can look at the rough workmanship on a ’43 Nagant and really see the effects of the war on a country rushing to produce enough arms to defend itself. Or pick up the weight of a Garand and imagine, in your minds eye, what a trooper ready to hit the ramp on D-Day must have felt.
So, my 98k will go into the safe, unmolested, until some day in the future, when I tell my daughter stories of what her great-grandfather did during the war, at Normandy and beyond. And how her British great-grandmother had two houses bombed out from under her. And let her hold my my guns and touch and feel and smell a part of history.
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Do your part!
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