I read, with great distress, what one can only call “The Red October” letter from last week, and realized the dire predictions had come to light. Luxembourg has proven itself to be all that they were feared to be. The Italians showed up with their fowling pieces and shot Ruger’s black eagle from its roost like a poacher in the dark. Now the Blackhawk is dead. Ruger 2030 indeed. One can dress up the future and call it “consumer demands” to hell and back, but to chase the wind is the folly of a fool. Ruger’s strength as an American gun company was never in a pursuant race to the future. Rather, it was harnessing designs of our heritage and improving upon them.

The Blackhawk became America’s post-war Single Action Army revolver after Colt banished the thumb-buster’s tooling to the parking lot in Hartford in the name of “consumer demands”. Which is what they called the war effort. We won the war only to lose the Peacemaker.

Consumer demands indeed. I have seen the “keep list”. It is no small notice that the steel guns are being thrown into the dustbin to favor the alloy and plastic market. One does not need to be a soothsayer to warn you that in years to come no one is going to look at “Ruger 2030” with anything other than derision. Shareholders included. Beretta Holdings be damned.

Rimfire semi-autos, .380 pocket guns, 9mm auto-pistols, plastic rifles, a 5.7 and cast aluminum rimfire wheelguns. This isn’t Ruger 2030, this is Kel-Tech 2015. Young men aren’t running to the Security-9, they are running to the heritage and essence of America. The Sixgun.

No one ever saved a corporation that once built world class products by pivoting and selling economical plastics in a market already flooded by economical plastics. That has all the hallmarks of pink slips, shuttered doors and equipment auctions.

Without the Blackhawk you are not Ruger. You are only destined to become the outlet mall Eddie Bauer selling rebranded 10/22s as the last available thing, trying to hold onto a legacy that ended in 2026. Ruger will be sold, resold, and sold once more until the Ruger eagle is a ball cap sold in the side aisle of TJ Maxx.

Ruger doesn’t need the SR1911. It doesn’t need the Charger, but there is no Ruger without the Blackhawk. But what does Luxembourg know ?

What does Luxembourg know about the heft of a Blackhawk in a chest rig as you hike through Montana’s Grizzly country. The dip in the waistband of your Levi’s as you watch an Independence Day Parade in Hailey, Idaho. The slow cock of a stainless steel Blackhawk’s hammer in the swamps Louisiana, with one foot on a john boat’s transom and one eye on a big ol’ ‘gator. Has a suit from Italy ever nailed a west Texas rattler with a whiff of No.9 shot from a five and a half inch barreled sixgun. I doubt they have ever shoved the barrel of a .45 Flattop into a carjacker’s face at two in the morning while sitting on a frigid winter’s night surveillance.

None of us ever wanted Ruger to give us a flying car. All we ever asked was that you keep doing what everyone else stopped doing, and keep making us a V8 engine in a cab-and-a-half 4x4 pickup. In the end, if you stay this course, all we will have is a eurotrash four cylinder that no one asked for.

When you are in trouble you play to your strengths not plastic wildcards. You don’t fight for the mainstream, you go boutique. What Ruger does not need is the RXM. Glock already has that. Nor do you need the 5.7, or the Precision Rimfire. Anyone can tell you the 22 Charger was just an NFA work around, and that era died the same week as your letter.

So I will help you out, because Luxembourg clearly is not going to.

Build the Blackhawk. In fact make them Flattops. Two offerings, and two offerings only for the next four years, a .357/9mm and a .45 Colt/.45 ACP convertibles. Build the 10/22 with some wood stocks and 12 inch threaded barrels. The Mini 14 has the legs to hold on into the mid-century. The Mark IV need not go anywhere. Sell the youth of America on the M77 in a Safari package complete with canvas belt. Blued steel and wood stocks. Remington is gone. Winchester is…well there. We all had high hopes for you to save Marlin after the Remlin years, and now someone needs to save you from the Buger years now that the Italians have come. We all know you have to keep Academy Sports and Farm and Home stocked with the .380 LCPs , and we get it, you have to have some sort of 9mm, even though it was never your strong suit. Keep the Harrier if you must, but read the room for the love of God. The young men have burned themselves up on the “fantastic plastic”. They now see their generation having no heritage guns, only the endless sea of tactical black plastic.

Because one can read the tea leaves rather clearly. In a couple years the panic will come and then the “solution” will be the economical offering of an aluminum framed, black painted “Blackhawk” under a new name. Perhaps you can call it the Albatross and hang it around the neck of some suit in Luxembourg.

As I tell all of my clients. I can only help you so far as you let me.

Sincerely,
Bendigo Strange

For an urban surveillance it is nearly ideal. In some recent history the city had condemned a few blocks of houses and brick buildings that had sat vacant long enough to be problem. A few of them had been torched. Either by crack pipe, arsonist or some citizen who was through with the drug dens. Now there were just vacant lots, a long stretch of them, giving you an unobstructed view of the target house a couple hundred yards away.

Then you hear the incessant barking, wondering if you had tuned it out or, if he had just started again. He cuts across one of the lots, wandering back and forth, stopping to either throw himself on the ground and writhe or just bark at nothing like a mad man. Pulling up the field glasses you look at him for the fortieth time in two days. The hair is splotchy and there are open sores on him, including the one on his face. You lean into your eyes in an attempt to get a better look at his mouth, wondering if there is foam. He is all Pit Bull. Scrawnier than he probably was six months ago, like an underfed fighting dog.

One day you’ll tell your kid “just because I love dogs doesn’t mean I trust all dogs. Remember that.” It also makes you think of the guy who tried to turn his doberman on you. It’s head stuck between the storm door and jamb snapping and barking, your .45 pressed against it’s head telling the man “Get him back inside or I will blow his head off” and thinking how it would have torn you up to shoot the doberman because of some jackass owner. You pull the glasses down, packing them up, saying to yourself as you sit in the back of the third gen 4Runner “yeah but those three dogs killed that little girl not a mile from here last year.” Remembering the news story. Shuddering at the fact someone showed up far too late with a pistol.

Gear stowed you climb over the driver’s seat and fire the truck up. It’s has been perfect weather for surveillance. Warm enough for the Subject to want to be outside, cool enough for jackets.

Shifting to “Drive” you feel the 4Runner make a big lurch, then another…then another. One of the front tires is flat. “Shit” you mutter. If you can drive a couple of blocks down it will get you out of the immediate view of the target house, as you limp the vehicle up the street. At a stop sign you get out and see it’s the driver’s side front tire, so you hobble into one of the vacant lots, making a wider loop than desired because the flat tire makes steering difficult. You want the passenger side to face down the street so as to obstruct you from view of target house.

Years of surveillance work has taught you to be a one man pit crew and very adapt at changing flat tires in all sorts of weather. With a little luck this will be done in the next ten minutes, as you pull the flat tire off.

Then you hear the barking.

You look under the truck and down the street but don’t see him. That barking is close and you look behind you to see the Pit Bull on the other side of the lot near. Barking. Furiously barking. At you.

Squatting next to the tires you find a chunk of broken red brick, give an embarrassing throw, and yell “GIT!” The dog steps forward a couple of times and you debate throwing the tire tool at him, instead choosing to stand up with another chunk of brick throwing with more deliberation. It lands right in front of him and he lops to the side dodging your intimidation tactics. You squat back down to hurrying the tire changing process along, but not before glancing back over at him

He’s running now. Directly for you. Mouth open, more barking. Standing up and getting into the truck could take too long. If he lunges at the truck it might knock off the jack. Getting in the truck might knock it off the jack. You pull the .45 from the holster that rides in the waistband of your jeans.

Instead of getting tunnel vision your brain does the opposite, creating too big of a picture. There is a house behind him. A front door. A car. He’s closer. Inside twenty five yards. You see the front ramp sight of the pistol very, very clearly. The safety was off the moment your drew the Colt. “Take him” you say out loud, a voice inside says “wait….wait…” You see the teeth and the mouth. The short ears. The blunt head. Somehow in your head you expect him low to the ground but, he comes at a gallop. You center the sight on the white patch on his chest, and wonder briefly about your hearing after the shot. He’s at ten yards. You know ten yards. The trigger breaks.

You feel the .45’s action cycle. Spent case ejected, fresh cartridge chambered. Your brain naturally assumes you missed. He is just off the back of the truck when his nose drops. The front legs fold under from the momentum as he skids face first into the rocky and broken pavement. You need to be on your feet in case this isn’t over, and push up too quick. Your shoulders rock too far back, over the back of your heels causing a stumble rearward. Any second the dog will recover and nail you to the ground.

Awkwardly you fight to stand up while the muzzle of the pistol covers him. You feel hollow about it. You see the misshaped pink and red oval where the bullet went in dead center of the white patch on his chest. Even in later years your brain wants to believe it was a hard ball round and not the 230 grain Federal Hydra Shok that it was.

The back leg is rigid for a moment, aiming like a pointer stick behind him, then relaxes. It feels like the shot was hours ago and you are only now revisiting the scene, though mere seconds have passed. Not trusting to luck, you walk around him at a wide berth keeping the .45 in a low ready. Safety off. Your brain does a side glance for the spent brass laying somewhere and you hear yourself say “knock it off”. There. Just above his hip, low on his back is a garish pink flower of flesh that has been turned inside out. Exit wound. “Near perfect” the investigator in your brain says as you wonder where the bullet landed. In your head you get a sick feeling of it sailing through the dog and into that house where some old woman is…was..watching television. “No” you say again to yourself, reigning it in. That bullet is laying in the dirt, probably not two or three yards away.

“YO!” A voice says “You A’ight?” You nod to a scrawny old man in pants, with suspenders holding a Smith & Wesson Model 15. “Stand back a sec” and you give way thinking you probably shot his dog, only to see him fire a couple rounds into the back of the dog’s head. “Security round” he says .“He’s dead” you say . Both of you look at the dog, “Yeah, till he ain’t. He’s been running around here for a while. I think he must have gotten bit by a raccoon or something. Started acting wild. I’ve been sitting on my porch with my pistol when them kids get on and off the bus for a week. Glad you shot him. I haven’t shot in years.”

You talk for a few minutes, standing over a dog you killed in a vacant city lot, the spare tire still laying next to the 4runner. You shake hands. Then with an unexpected deftness, the old man grabs the dead Pit Bull’s leg and drags him off. You squat down to finish changing the tire, shaking your head. By dinner you will have convinced yourself that you got lucky on the shot. You don’t think about having to put the dog down. Despite your love for dogs, that is not what bothers you. What you will ruminate over and over is “what if I had missed? What if I would have sailed that bullet into someone’s house?”

Later on, years down the road you will hear “experts” talk about not being overly concerned with precision in a self-defense shooting. That is “Fudd Lore” they crack and, all you will think about is that front door behind that damn dog.

She was a large woman, as was her daughter, and of the variety that wore sleeveless shirts to show off the extensive, albeit non-sensical collection of tattoos that adorned their arms.

“You backed your (insert your preferred truck stop expletive here) truck into my car bitch!” All the while pointing to the alleged damage on a small blue sedan that seemed to have been the physical manifestation of repeated poor life choices.

My wife, visibly agitated, angrily denied the accusation and was prepared to get into a shouting match over the ordeal, though she failed to realize she was outmatched. Not simply by body weight of the two women but, also by life style. “Mother”, who was clearly in her fifties wore behind her elbow, the faded ball point pen ink of a prison tat. Both women had the hardened look of being comfortable with physical assault and drug use, toss in a dash of the instability of some personality disorder, and add the fact both had folding knives clipped inside the pockets of their jeans was more than enough for this to end badly for both my wife, and them.

The travel stop in Colby was bustling with the normal activity of a summer weekend as we stopped for fuel, food and coffee, heading home after nearly a month camped out in the Rockies. It had been the large volume of traffic coming in and out of the truck stop that had prompted my wife to move the truck from the fuel pumps to an open parking area. Given this fact, I knew it was not outside the realm of possibility that she may have in fact hit another car. Things do happen after all.

“Mother” however showed her face cards. Pointing to a scratch and small dent on the rear bumper of our truck as further evidence of the collision. All the while screaming obscenities with the continuance of “you backed into my car!”

Walking up I looked at the dent on our F150, knowing I had put them there. With enough baritoned inflection that I wasn’t having it I said “No she didn’t.” Followed by telling my wife to get in the truck as the accusations reached apogee.

Then we drove off. There was no chase. No road rage attempt. No one was stabbed, nor was there any gun play. The confrontation had not escalated into a situation. There was only the amped up feelings of a fight that never happened. As we got to the highway entrance I asked my wife if she had hit the car. No sense in lying about it. The vast array of surveillance cameras would have captured the moment. We could simply call the police ourselves, waiting further down the road away from any potential altercations. She assured me, no she had not. No law came for us.

In another era I would have suspected it was a cash grab scheme, but here in the Time of Madness, casual violence has simply gone mainstream.

Once during an executive protection detail, the Principal (my client whom I was protecting), his date for the weekend, and I had been chauffeured from the airport to the Seelbach hotel in Louisville for a quiet weekend trip. On such trips I often presented myself at times as an executive assistant. In other instances as the protective agent. Checking in to the hotel, where we were known to them was to exist in both roles simultaneously. It was also not uncommon to act as the bellman. My Principal did not like having his baggage handled by anyone other than himself or me. Because of this I often packed my own kit in a medium sized backpack, rolling suits up and having them pressed at the hotel. This became a sort of magic trick as my principal packed his suits in an expensive garment bag that matched his suitcases. He suspected that I either kept suits at various hotels or had them shipped down a few days prior.

We made our way to his suite. His garment bag in my left hand, his suitcase in my right, backpack across my back and the girlfriend-of-the-moment left to the care of the bellman who walked with us. A splendid fellow whom I always tipped well, even after he had been tipped by the Principal. Once in the room, the girlfriend decided she needed to flex her expertise in the realm of executive protection by stating that surely I couldn’t be much of a “bodyguard” if my hands were compromised by the impediment of luggage. With a rather non committal flat face I looked at my Principal, who looked at me, shrugged his shoulders and then we both looked at the bellman who cocked a knowing eye brow.

I opened my fingers, let the bags fall to the ground, while in the same moment completed a perfectly executed draw stroke of John Moses Browning’s most iconic pistol as the bags hit the floor. Without missing a beat the bellman simply remarked “ah gravity. It’s not just a good idea. It’s the law.”

Very early in my career, various people in the protection business told me to expect beinga glorified baggage handler, and I saw no issue with this. Time and time again I would encounter “professionals” who never seemed to exist long in the Fifth profession of protection work that they did not carry bags. Full stop. Thin is the ego of fragile men one could suppose.

You have to let things go, and more often than not you have to learn to let them go. Sometimes it’s the simplest things that need taught to us by other people.

In an earlier era I had the opportunity to attend a privately held defensive shooting clinic that was invitation only. During one course of fire I went to execute a mag change on my pistol. Pulling a spare reload from the leather mag carrier on my belt with a good yank it slipped from between my fingers, spun into the air and landed in the dirt in front of me. Before I could pick it up the instructor put his foot on the magazine, grabbed my shirt collar, hoisted me upright saying “Leave it. Pull a new mag.” What I found interesting was despite the clear reasoning that my pea brain understood, my body still wanted the .45 magazine that lay underfoot. I reloaded and engaged the three targets.

Later, he told the story of a S.W.A.T. raid where during the course of a hallway gunfight an officer dropped a magazine while conducting a reload. In bending down to retrieve it he disappeared from view of the guy behind him only to reappear a moment later as his partner fired a burst from his submachine gun. Into the back of his head.

The heat of a gunfight, the close quarters of the hallway, the tunnel vision of life or death, and man’s simple reflex to fix a problem he thought was important ended his life.

All these years later when I drop something like a water bottle, car keys, anything of the ilk, my brain goes into a non-Pavlovian response. Avoiding the hurried reliance of a directly stimulated response to chase after whatever has fallen.

By taking a moment and looking around, you can assess the world in your immediate vicinity. Placing a pause on what would otherwise be an infuriating moment, take a breath, then casually retrieve that which was fumbled. That simple act once kept me from stumbling forward into the path of car driving across a parking lot.

Not letting go is a hard thing. At times I have had mastery of it. At other times, been it’s slave.

Drive down a four lane road at 35 mph and have someone try to pass you at 38 mph or worse 50 mph. The brain in most instances goes “Nope. Can’t allow that.” And I have often wondered if this is some ingrained predator response. Psychologically we desire to give chase. We have all policed the fast lane believing that the driver behind us doesn’t need to be going any faster than what you have established as the “safer’ speed.

Yet I can think of a half dozen instances where lives were ruined because road rage turned into gunplay. In 2023 two men became so enraged at one another on a Florida highway it resulted in the two firing into the other’s vehicle. Each man shooting the other’s daughter.

A couple months back I got on a local road via an entrance ramp that narrowed quickly due to construction. My mind was not in the best place and without changing speed I entered the roadway cutting off the car behind me. That was his problem after all. A couple miles up the roadway widened again to two lanes at a stop light. As it was a warm afternoon I had the truck windows down. Then the guy, about my age, rolled up along side ready for the fight “Hey!” I looked over “I had the right of way back there.” I felt myself bristle and prepared to say “Oh? Is it your first day driving?”. Instead what came out was “You’re right. I apologize for that, I’m having a shitty day and I just didn’t care.” He looked at me for a moment then said “Same brother. Have a good day.” And we left it there.

There are some confrontations, some fights you have to have. Ones where the choice has been taken from you. But, do not be deluded into the belief that you are always in the right. Nor that you have to correct someone else’s wrong. The world is overladen with people willing to choose violence on the cheap ,and destruction on the whim of the mood.

Know when to let baggage go. Especially when it belongs to other people.

As it was a cold December night my .45 was buried under a surplus European woodland camo jacket and heavy shirt. Realizing what was about to happen I discarded the idea of going for the Colt and wrapped my hand around the .22 Beretta Bobcat, stowed in the coat’s right. My mind was made up in an instant to shoot him twice as he got close. Turn and if necessary engage his partner, who was coming up behind me, bicycled as well, and help him figure out the rest of his life. There was a brief debate if I should turn and engage the guy behind me first but, I sensed that he was farther behind me than the trouble in front. Stick with the plan. This plan was solid. I was going to stop in my tracks. Shoot twice. Turn and decide to shoot or not. Simple as you please and thank you very much.

Then my brain pulled a dirty trick on me. My hand came off the tiny Beretta, went to the large folding CRKT knife that rode horizontally across my chest between the buttoned closures of the jacket, pulling and opening it to the click, and covered the distance between us.

A moment later he skidded to a stop, perpendicular to my path while I all but ran into him. Bare knife in hand. Now the screw driver was locked between his right hip and my left leg. The point of the knife now through the fabric of his pants. “You don’t want this.” was all I said, putting my face in his face. Waiting to get a knife in the ribs or a hammer to the head from his partner. I felt him adjust the grip on the screwdriver and knew this was over. That simple adjustment meant that mentally he was trying to decide. Go? No go? And he knew he didn’t have it. If his partner clubbed me from behind I would have collapsed under my own weight and the five inches of knife would have sliced through the meat of his leg and into femur.

He gave a short reverse nod, leaned on the left side of the bike to veer off and a moment later, both crossed an empty four lane street, disappearing along rail road tracks on their bikes.

Continuing up the street I eventually came to my reason of the evening, pulled the door open and felt the cold night give way to a warmer inside.

It was not well lit inside, and much of the light in the underground, unlicensed bar seemed to come from a combination of illegal slot machines, an area that passed as a stage where the less than attractive stripper attempted to whirl her body around one of two poles, and blue track lighting that followed the interior outline of the place.

Hunched over a two dollar can of beer, I caught a glance of myself in a Budweiser mirror, looking like the broken down, always busted “old man” I was attempting to look like. It was no wonder the two bad actors on bicycles had taken an interest in the man in the mirror. He had all the markings of an easy target.

Unbeknownst to them, we had encountered each other an hour earlier on the same street. Only then I had been postured and dressed somewhat differently when I conducted a foot reconnaissance of the area.

Earlier that evening, I had parked the truck in a used car lot up the street, pulled on an Orvis woodland camo jac-shirt, a black watch cap and tucked my 1911 into the waistband of dark blue jeans.

It was one of those areas that was seedy without trying, and set against a cold mid winter’s night. A block in, I saw the brace of bicyclists-in-question riding zig zag patterns in the middle of an empty street and, wondered if there would be something of it. They rode past.

The target building was noted by a steel fire door and a narrow slit of a window that ran parallel to it with a neon cigarette inside it. Lighting up one of my own from a pack kept in my undercover kit I walked around the back like I was suppose there. An exit door opened next to a homemade grease trap, then a dumpster. There was no fence to interrupt a hurried just-in-case exit out the back. The only camera was over the main entrance door. With my advanced detail done I cut down a side street making my way back to the truck.

I checked into a decent enough corporate hotel, rode the elevator up to a nice clean room with white sheets tucked fast to a king size bed. Not wanting to be out any later than I had to be after the four hour drive to get here, I set about changing my clothes. The dark jeans were traded for an old pair of faded Levis that had soot and grease stains. The frayed pockets told the tale of wear from pocket knives with G10 scales. I put on fresh socks, then some beat-to-hell-but-still-comfortable work boots. From the bathroom I took a large bath towel from the rack, to the bed where it was rolled. Laying it across my shoulders I pulled on an oversized shirt to help hold in place, giving me an immediate change in appeared posture. Back in the bathroom I worked a piece of charcoal along my cheeks, blending the soot to give the appearance of of skin condition someone could remember but did not exist. The .45 Combat Commander slid into an old Dillon Leather holster at the five o’clock position, then covered it with the surplus army jacket. But not before adding the Otanashi Noh Ken tactical folder and the Beretta Bobcat to the mix. An old fedora with a turkey feather stuck in the hat band, and a few inches too short walking cane that encouraged me to hunch further over completed the look.

The outward appearance was that of an older man who was not in the best of shape in life. Someone no one would look twice at. I looked like nobody.

A half hour later I also looked like easy prey.

The modern dictum of the “gray man” philosophy is that you are to blend in. Disappear. The physical embodiment of a specter amongst the living. Having no one take notice of you.

It certainly sells. It’s mental pornography for the tactical world, and it is very effectively marketed.

While one can easily justify a plain looking pack that has been retrofitted to house a compact AR or PDW (Personal Defense Weapon) for the average rank and file person that is about as far as it needs to go. The moment someone starts selling you shirts and jackets to be a “gray man” just know that you are the product.

For a while, after the corporate career ended I disregarded any type of professional dress. My mind immediately recalls a meeting with a high level executive who was being blackmailed. We were to meet at his office at corporate headquarters. He was in a suit, I was in a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a black leather jacket, with my .45 in a shoulder rig. I had all the cocksureness of youth and actual ability. The bravado to my credit was not false, but it was “a bit” much. I had all the subtleness of a wrecking ball at a grand opening.

A week or so later, after I had resolved his personal crisis, we met again at his office. Though I still wore jeans, I traded the t-shirt for white buttoned down, and covered my pistol with a sport coat. He had not asked me to do so, but I felt it in the room during the first meeting, and had adjusted accordingly.

Learn to read the room, and treat the world around you as the room. Because the “culture” that tells you to be a “gray man” isn’t a culture at all. It is a marketing team spread across electronic devices selling you their wares.

You might have need for a “low vis” piece of gear. You also may be trying to justify your desire to chase a trend. We often talk about “the war” against this, or that. The Country. The Family. The Environment. History, etc., but the one we don’t often talk about is the covert war against your wallet.

I spend an enormous amount of time observing the world from street level, and have done so for decades now. Long enough to span two different centuries across much of America and good swaths of the globe. Sitting in vehicles, cafe’s, airports, hotel lobbies, walking through conventions, sitting in hotel bars eaves dropping on conversations, and taking notice of it all. The harder you try to blend in, the less you often do.

The wind was coming off the dunes somewhere at around 35 mph, and with the wind came the sand that pelted any exposed skin. The problem wasn’t that there was three hours of daylight left. The problem was that in the course of twenty-four hours Utilivu and I had undergone an elevation change of five hundred feet to eight thousand feet above sea level. The fact that we just climbed out of the truck after an eight hour drive from Hays that morning, quickly loaded our packs and thrown them on as the sun would soon begin to wane was not much of a recipe for success. Despite both the teenage girl and the fifty year old man being in good shape, the twenty five pound backpacks and the dramatic elevation change had us sucking wind. Fifteen minutes in we had managed to cover roughly a quarter mile of flat ground. Per the regulations for camping overnight on the dunes at Great Sand Dunes National Park, you had to be over the backside of High Dune. In essence out of sight of the visitor center far below. “Can we take a break for minute?” She asked. This being our third since starting out. Regretting every cigar, ever smoked I nodded my head in affirmation.

Leaning on our hiking sticks trying not to show weakness to one another, some old folks began their climb up with little effort it seemed. The girl gave that look of teenage befuddlement. “If it makes you feel better, I think they are actually from Colorado.” I remarked, “I wish we were. Especially right now.”

The top dunes sat far away against the raised horizon of a late afternoon China blue sky. “What do you think? Should we call it?” I asked“You mean quit? “Yep.” She hesitated for a minute before saying “But…quitting…it feels kind of…” “Wrong?” finishing her sentence for her.

Uncoupling the chest strap on the old Eddie Bauer pack that had traveled the world, I gave a short nod, indicating her to do the same. The bulky packs slid to earth and we leaned on our walking sticks, as sweat that soaked our shirts began surrendering to the warm, dry air of southern Colorado. I stretch, then raised my sunglasses so that they rested on a bandana that covered my bare scalp and look into a beautiful early evening. “Kid…quitting is what got me here.”

A moment later I am no longer in the Colorado Rockies of the 20s but have traveled back to an autumn in Virginia and it is suddenly the mid 1990s. My beard becomes the clean shaven faced of a younger man, and my clothes change to that of a grey pin stripe suit, with a perfectly tied Windsor knot. It’s the memory of a place that I have carried with clarity for thirty years.

I had never felt more out of place in my life, trying to figure out how in the hell to make small talk at a cocktail party full of ex-spooks, Vietnam era Snake-Eaters and retired cops who literally founded the S.W.A.T. teams of America’s major metropolitan areas. To complete the rogues gallery, there was even a British Spy Master who spoke six languages that included flawless Mandarin.

Then, like a specter, the “Old Man” appeared. He had been shot at least three times on two separate occasions while being in the employ of the Chicago Police Department. Later he would end up in a gun fight on the streets of West Germany while attached to INTERPOL, when he and his German counterpart, (along with their wives) stumbled into a bank robbery. He was an expert on terrorism, counter-terrorism, and more to the point, on executive protection.”I heard you and Bruce Danto talked all evening?”, “Yes Sir. Stalkers seem fascinating to me.“ I answered “He’s a smart guy. Stay in contact with him. His words by the way.”, “Yes Sir, I will.”

“What else?“ he asked. Now I was confused, as he fished a cigarette from a silver cigarette case, tapping it twice against before bringing it to his lips and lighting it. Pondering the question for a brief three or four seconds, not wanting to come off looking like a fool, knowing no matter what that I would. “If you could go back to the very beginning of your career and give yourself one solid piece of advice, what would that be?”

His large and un-groomed eyebrows cocked as he side eyed me, then in a casual tone I had not heard, “Know when to quit. Most don’t. They think ‘oh I am doing this thing and I have to keep doing it, even if it ruins my family, destroys my health, wrecks my knees, gives me an ulcer’, whatever… I would tell myself ‘know when to quit’. The people we get paid to protect. To theoretically throw ourselves in front of a gun for, can be outright sons of bitches. They are generally under a lot of stress and that comes with a temperament that rolls down hill. All of them will test your limits, your ethics, your morals, and that is the thing. You have to know your limits. And when you find your limit, whatever it is, don’t go past it. Quit.”

Despite not having a single moment of experience, it could have seemed insulting to someone who had yet to start in any career let alone in the world of executive protection. Instead it was stowed away in my mind, as though a gold coin carried by fighter pilots in case they were ever shot down in enemy territory. Six years later the weight of that coin pressed against my heart as I sat behind the steering wheel of my Jeep Cherokee.

Parked in my Principal’s driveway in what I referred to as “the servant’s parking area”, it was 3 am. The engine was off. Eyes closed. And my finger’s had a death grip on the steering wheel.

For the better part of two years I had been running a one man protection detail for a Fortune 500 Executive on little more than four or five hours of sleep a night. Throw in that he was a confirmed bachelor with some level of alcoholism and Bi-Polar Disorder, it was an endless cocktail of near self-destruction. Any semblance of time off had been working the advance detail a week before the Super-Bowl. But it had at least been some quiet time in my brain. That had been winter. This was summer.

My eye’s were still closed when I heard the ground sprinklers activate. It was 3:11am. Turning the key, the engine hummed to life. I shifted to “D”, opened my eyes and drove into the pre-dawn hours.

I was done. Done, the very moment that my Principal’s spit hit the side of my face in the midst of his drunken scream filled tantrum. I had felt my hand lighten off of the steering wheel in the second after, and then tighten once more around it. My right hand had made an unconscious attempt to move to the pistol that hung from the Galco shoulder holster under my suit. The gun hand never traveled more than a tenth of an inch from the steering wheel. But in my mind…in my mind I had cleared leather. It was not a good situation.

There had been an attempt at an apology, a half-hour later. This coming after I had the audacity to pull the black Suburban over, wipe the spit from the side of my face and say, while staring straight through the windshield “If you ever spit in my face…you won’t ever spit again.”

I was reassigned, and given an office assignment. I was being punished. I was outcast, having been told that “in a few months…with good behavior I could go back to running the detail.” The era of having sold my soul to corporate America was over. It was time to move on. Bill, whom I consider the only other mentor I had, cautioned me against burning bridges before leaving. I nodded. Then I walked down the street and tendered my resignation to the head of corporate security. A man who enjoyed lording his authority over anyone he could, me included. An angry man of frail ego. “In ten years you will look back and regret quitting this job. You will never have this opportunity again.” I remembered what Bill had said. He had cautioned me against myself or more specifically, my mouth.“If in ten years I am picking up trash on the side of the road in Texas, I will not regret quitting this job.”Then as if to reinforce my point I slid my resignation letter over to him. Under the signatory line I had rephrased Henley’s poem Invictus to read “ Out of the night that covers me, black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank God for my unconquerable soul. Beyond this place of wrath and tears, looms but the horror of the shade, and yet the menace of the years finds, and shall find me unafraid. For it matters not how strait the gate, how charges with punishments the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.

Burn the bridges. Burn the ships. I signed my name, and that was that. He never struck me as much of a reader anyway.

Six months later, laying awake in the dark of night, flat broke, I did not regret my decision even in the slightest. Six years later a hostile corporate take over would eviscerate the entire security department. I would have been out of a job anyways. My former principal would be bought out with a nine figure deal.

“Dad?” She asked, and I was back in the dunes. “Are we going to quit? I mean I think we could probably…” but her heart wasn’t in it. “Listen kid, we live in a world where everyone has bought into this mantra of ‘Never quit! Never Ring the Bell!’ and all of that motivational poster shit. They run themselves into the ground with never quitting and in doing so they trade most of their life for someone else’s goal. One of the most important things you can learn in life is knowing when to quit. Because if you know when to quit, you learn when not to quit.”

Quitting is antithetical to the American idea of hard work. Some philosophers of late have taken the idea of the stoics to a somewhat maniacal belief to over burden yourself with such immense responsibility that it pushes you to your stoic death. Don’t get me wrong, there is a time for hard work. A time to take it all on. To push yourself past the limit of what you think you can do. But there is something else to remember.

No matter the task, no matter the job that you undertake to survive in this world, do not get lost in it. Do NOT allow it to become the sum of all that you are.

Knowing when to quit did not end my life, it gave me life. It gave me a marriage, a kid, and the freedom to be my own man.

That night, in a hotel room in Alamosa I awoke to a sound followed by a massive flash of light. Stumbling over to the third floor window I looked out just as a massive thunderstorm caught and rain pelted the window. For the next several hours lightning dominated the sky as the wet heavy sheets of rain fell. It was a good night for quitting.

Big Horn Mountains (near Cloud Peak Wilderness)

July 4th, 2022

Originally you were supposed to get up just past sunrise and take the girl to climb those big rock faces just north of camp, then head to town to see what Buffalo, Wyoming does for Independence Day. Yet neither of those things had occurred.

Instead it’s the last day in one of your favorite camps, on one of your best trips, where nothing bad had occurred except for both the kid and the dog scraping their chins open. The later coming through an open mountain meadow on a dead run not seeing the rock, and going over it chin then feet. When she stumbled to her feet she tested her jaw in such a human way that you expected her to say something about the pain. That was early in the trip and it had all been fine after that.

So with nothing else to do you start to pack up what parts of camp you can, drink coffee and fish one of the last donuts out of the box. You wander over to the creek that is pure snow melt running off the peaks above camp to watch the last vestiges of youth in your little girl, play in the cold water as you sit in the camp chair almost feeling the chill of the water on her bare feet against the smooth stones of the creek bed.

The full shade of the pines feels perfect, unlike the tent just up the slight rise that sits in full sun not twenty feet away. And now on the last day at 3 0’clock you run a hand over your head feeling the six days of stubble that you had planned to have shaved when you all made the trek to Sheridan for lunch. Then the old school hipster barber closed early that day, having missed out on the opportunity of a stranger take a straight razor to your skull.

Finally you succumb to it. Pulling yourself up, and throwing the latches on the camp box you dig around to find a stainless camp mug. The one you bought in Colorado twenty years ago when you spent a week in the Rockies investigating a scheme for a Client who is probably long since dead, and pair it with the camp mirror you bought at the Sports Lure in Buffalo. Finding your shaving kit, along with towel you set it all to rest on the pine needle floor.

A few minutes later, you feel the tingle of the shaving cream on your head. The first few razor strokes leave clean, smooth lines of bare skin, the razor clanking around the steel mug of water that came out of the creek. The cup rests again on the upended bundle of firewood used as a makeshift table and you look into the mirror, making another pass with the razor.

In the old days they wore what was termed moccasins around camp, not a true buckskin moccasin but something more akin to a soft leather slip on shoe, like the Sperry Topsiders you loved as a kid because you didn’t have to wear socks with them. You replaced that idea with the ever popular river sandals that mark the passage of summer with their strange tan line on your feet that are now outstretched against the forest floor. Remembering the summer, as teenagers, when you and Bill went hard after black tipped sharks and the day you sun burned the top of your feet so bad you couldn’t wear shoes for a week. Back then you loved the ocean and the beach more than anything, but it was the only place you were cut loose as a kid to roam. The mountains of course would sing their siren song and you hadn’t seen the beach in a long while, and the mountains never as much as you wanted. You had made the choice years back to keep an urban life so you could make a living that involved people and not mountains. “Fool”.

The razor scrapes the last of the hair from your head, while the towel removes the wayward bits of shaving cream. The scalp now feeling soft, clean and slightly rubbery as a slight breeze makes itself known. The wide brimmed hat hangs on a bent pine nearby with your gun belt and shirt. Stepping back out into the sun, especially now having been freshly scalped requires the hat, but you’re not ready. Not ready to see the big tent drop tomorrow, to hear the tail gate on the Ford close, not ready to lose the stars that don’t appear in the summer night mountain sky until damn near eleven. Your toes feel the conflict of pine needles against bare feet, their sharp and soft contrast mingled together. Pleasure and pain always seemingly equidistant apart.

The old teak wood chair squeaks as you look down the creek to see the girl, still in the cold mountain runoff that makes the creek, and reach for your coffee. Looking past the clarity of the creek and as deep into the stand of pines as possible, knowing you won’t get a lot of shaves like that.