There is a Gunny USMC I know that recently retired and I told

 him I'd let the cat out of the bag and tell him what I did to a couple of his guys last summer at Camp Perry when I set up my ham rig there.
Generally when I go to places like Camp Perry I cram the biggest cooler I can find full of beer, soda, and water for visitors and drag it with me when I crash a party.

During the day shooters will occasionally swing by and grab a water or soda and after the guns are cases they will swing by for a beer or two.

In top of that I generally bring a jug. At Camp Perry this past summer it was a bottle of Jim Beam I snagged somewhere along the line. I toss it into my pack and every now and then I hand out a snort to guys that don't drink beer.

The bottle I generally keep in the bag so as not to advertise even though if I were to drink out of it anyone seeing me would know I was brown bagging.

Still, there it was, still in the bag several days into the National Matches and I guess a few guys had downed a pull or two. The jug was down about a solid half-pint.

In came a couple of young Marines and they sat down and had a beer and told me about their day.

These two were not shooters, they were a Marine reporter and a cameraman. Of course, the guys on the shooting team referred to them as Joker and Rafterman.

Joker and Rafterman dropped by my little radio station just about every night and would share their day with me. It was kind of fun listening to them. Joker was actually pretty sharp and was pretty knowledgable about a lot of things that were well before his time and never ceased to amaze me.

One night he asked me if I felt less able to defend myself because I was older.

I said to him, "Nope. I'm Old School" and headed quietly reached into my toolbox.

"How Old School?" he asked.

I pulled a switchblade knife out of my toolbox and snapped it open and the blade shone in the lights coming off of the barracks in the distance.

"West Side Story, huh? That's pretty Old School!" he said, somewhat startled.

Anyway it was getting late and while I didn't want to run them off. I did want to rack out so I picked up the bottle of Jim Beam and slipped the bag down exposing the tip of the neck of the bottle and grabbed the top and twisted it. My body english looked like I was unsealing a new bottle.

Then I put the jug to my lips and started blowing a little air into the bottle and acting like I was guzzling down straight bourbon whiskey. In truth I has only taken a small sip but it looked like I had sure pounded down a lot.

I pulled the bottle out of the bag and put it on the table and said, "Help yourself."

A good half-pint was missing out of what they assumed had been a full bottle and they looked at me pretty wide-eyed waiting for me to fall over or something.

One thing about young guys is they feel a need to compete with older ones and these were no exception. If an old man could down a half-pint in a single gulp, so could they.

So in turn the pair of them did just what they thought they had seem me do. They downed a pretty good sized snort and when they were done showing off there was about a third of the bottle left.

It wasn't long before the whirlies set in on the pair of them and they made up some damned fool excuse and headed off to the barracks. They were about halfway across the field and I watched them start stumbling a bit and I kept an eye on them until I saw they had made it.

Then I had myself a little sensible sized taste before bed and hit the rack.

Of course, the next morning at breakfast I showed up bright eyed and bushy tailed and watched the two of them sitting there picking at their breakfast as I wolfed down a double order of biscuits and gravy, four eggs, a quart of orange juice and a couple of cups of coffee and got ready for a long day.

From the looks of them I knew their day would drag on until early afternoon when they would finally recover.

It was fun watching them and just one more fine example that old age and treachery can alway overcome youth and skill.
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In other news here's a pretty good Craigslist ad if it hasn't been flagged.

http://pittsburgh.craigslist.org/bar/3641557908.html



To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html