Turkeys and Bears, Muskets and Books

Thanksgiving came and went at our house with all the expected goings-on: We all over-ate, the dog-ass Cowboys lost in Dallas, as did the Longhorns in Austin, as even did the Aggies in their newly adopted state for Thanksgiving football rivalry- Louisiana.

On Friday, our younger son Ben and his girlfriend Meredith went to a local outdoor gun range to live fire black-powder muskets. The range was a beehive of activity, and really loud. It was fun to occupy a shooting station sandwiched between guys and gals blasting away with their ultra-modern military-looking rifles. They had boxes of ammo to feed into long clips that enabled those black (or camouflaged) beauties to spew lead out at an amazing rate. Pity any home invader at their houses.

Meanwhile, we lined up our paper cartridges of powder, a tin of brass priming caps, and a few dozen cone-shaped and well-lubed lead Minie balls. They are “Minie balls” because a French officer named Minie invented the bullet’s cone design with 2 or 3 ribs circling the hollow base of the lead cone. The hollow base was so the tail of the cone would expand when the powder exploded right behind it, and the ribs were to grip the grooves cut inside the barrel to spin the bullet for accuracy. They are lubed with tallow to make them easier to push down the barrel. How’s that for high tech? But it was definitely 2G technology in 1861 because repeaters and breech loaders were already in limited use, but were too expensive for the army to produce in huge numbers.

Back to the range, we pulled the ramrods and laid them on the table, ready for use, because without them, muzzle-loading muskets are just long steel and wood clubs. Not even good for golf.

Loading the muskets is labor intensive, for sure. The army manuals during the Civil War called for “Loading by the Nines.” Nine steps: Put the musket butt on the ground; Remove a paper cartridge from the leather cartridge box; Tear the cartridge open with teeth; Pour loose powder down the barrel; Remove ramrod from under the barrel; Cram the lead bullet and paper down the barrel and return the ramrod; Move musket to the ready position; Remove priming cap from leather box on belt; Put the priming cap on the cone. Now you’re loaded and can aim, fire, and repeat.

Another side story, maybe even true: The US army took almost any willing recruit-if they had four front teeth. If any of those teeth were missing, the recruit was labeled 4-F, as in without four front teeth, and deemed ineligible for service. The Rebs were less discriminating, it’s said. They only required one top and one bottom tooth, one over the other, to pass their physical.

Back to the range again, the upshot of our slow loading was probably a 50 to 1 ratio of the number of rounds fired by our shooting neighbors’ modern rifles to us. Rapid musket fire is 3 bangs per minute, starting loaded.

As to the success rate of the 1860’s technology as evidenced in Ben and Meredith’s marksmanship, it was a bit shy of perfection: At 50 yards, they got a third of their shots somewhere on the rectangular targets. It’s said that for each Civil War soldier actually hit by a fired Minie ball, a man’s weight in lead was exchanged. From our experiences on the gun range, I don’t doubt that one bit.

Ben did pop the Big Bad Bear target a couple of good ones right on his snout. After a few shots fired, both quickly learned that black powder residue gums up a barrel, making it progressively harder to ram the next Minie bullet to the base of the barrel, making slow loading even slower and harder the longer you do it. The stories of Civil War soldiers emptying their canteens down the barrels to clean them during long battles are true enough, as I suspect are the tales of a quick pee down the barrel when a man’s canteen ran dry.

Going back in time a week, the weekend before Thanksgiving I opened my outdoor book shop at a Civil War reenactment just outside of Hempstead, near Houston. My inventory was limited: Just my two Civil War novels. To encourage folks to stop and shop, I set out a musket and some gear on the table next to the stacks of books. Not unlike at the gun range, dads and kids are drawn to the long muskets and like to handle them. Then it’s my job to turn their attention from guns to books. Good luck with that, huh?  I confess it’s a bit of bait and switch, a time honored marketing tradition.

Of course, the weather included a couple of rain showers passing through on Saturday, impacting the number of people who came out to watch the reenactment. Nonetheless, enough people looked past the muskets to buy books that I can say I popped the bear a couple of good ones right on his snout, sales-wise.

Promoting my own writing to others across a table doesn’t come naturally, but it is fun to gab about the Civil War, and it’s not even too bad to be told over and over about other people’s ancestors who were Civil War soldiers. Heck, I do that too. I even went so far as to craft a novel around one of them, so I can’t complain as I listen, waiting for my chance to work in a word about Tangled Honor or Whittled Away. I’m shameless, but a sale is a sale.