In Range

Many years ago, a psychiatrist of my acquaintance told me about an unnamed patient, a senior executive in a large company, who suffered from periodic bouts of severe depression.

When he felt it coming on that malady Winston Churchill called the “black dog,” and Ernest Hemingway “black ass” he would get out his collection of dress shoes and spend an hour cleaning, conditioning, polishing, inspecting the laces and so on. When he was finished, having accomplished something worthwhile and having enjoyed the refreshing aroma of shoe cream, he usually always felt much better. The black dog had been driven from his door.

That was nearly fifty years ago, but it’s stuck in my mind. Which made it exceedingly odd when I came across a description of a particularly good brush for shoe polishing, made with very fine goat hair. The copywriter seemed to be speaking from experience when he added, “The process of dusting one’s shoes with this beautiful brush is as relaxing and therapeutic for the user as it is effective at cleaning dust from the shoes.”

Of all the reasons given in favor of handloading accuracy, economy and power we rarely see a reference to the simple enjoyment of it. It’s as if our Puritan heritage in America makes us frown on fun, even when it’s solidly productive. I don’t recall ever reading about handloading’s therapeutic benefits.

An old friend of mine, whose wife was bed-ridden for many years, kept a set of loading tools in her bedroom. Each evening, he would spend a few hours with her, chatting and loading, chatting and loading. He told me it made them both feel much better.

Something I’ve discovered is that there are certain cartridges I love to load, others I load only under protest or dire necessity, with the majority falling somewhere in between. It does not seem to have anything to do with the particular rifle or handgun, whether I love it or merely tolerate it, but with the nature of the cartridge itself. Some are simply more sensual than others, or look prettier sitting in the loading block. The bullet also plays a part in this, with some seating like gentlemen while others fight you every step of the way.

One cartridge for which I have a long-standing affection is the 257 Weatherby, which, when completed, polished and lined up in the block, looks like a platoon of Grenadier Guards ready for inspection. Another is the 44 Special, and a third is the 32 Smith & Wesson Long. It could be that I associate something particularly memorable with each of them. The 257, for example, was a star of my first couple of safaris in Africa, while the 44 I used to load in bulk to shoot IPSC back in the days when IPSC was big in Canada. The 32 S&W Long, well, I just love the little devil. I don’t know why.

There are even specific loading activities that impart this feeling of accomplishment. Resizing, cleaning and priming brass does it for me, even if I just bag it, label it and set it aside for later. Conversely, washing and cleaning in the Thumler’s Tumbler, necessary and laudable though it be, with its uncontrollable soap suds and ever so annoying magnetic steel rods, is unrelieved tedium. Same with a standard tumbler and its load of ground-up corn cobs. Ugh.

Another sensual loading activity, this one notable for its olfactory benefits, is casting bullets, especially if I’m melting Linotype.

Admittedly, this is a personal thing, and here’s why. When I was 19, I started my first newspaper job on a daily that still used “hot type.”  You might think there’s not much excitement to be had, working as a copy boy on a newspaper, but it ain’t so. Late in his life, Robert Ruark looked back on his own early days in newspapers, in the 1930s, and recalled that “it was all too exciting to be borne.”

There is an urgency about the newspaper business, and it communicates itself to every employee. You crawl in to work at six in the morning and, climbing up to the composing room, you can hear the soft click-clack of the Linotype machines. The newsroom is bedlam with reporters on deadline, pounding manual typewriters, editors threatening all manner of mayhem in voices borrowed from the hinges of Hell, too many cigarettes and cheap rye whisky.

Over it all, pervading every corner, is the hot, metallic, evocative and quite pleasant smell of molten Linotype.

The alloy itself is composed of lead, tin and antimony. It moulds hard, exact and sharp-edged, necessary for printing precise letters, and it’s these qualities that also make Linotype ideal for hard-cast bullets.

One whiff of Linotype and I’m back in the 1960s with all the suspense, tension and excitement of early morning at a daily newspaper, with bank robbers, corrupt politicians and train derailments outside, and us rushing about inside, preparing to tell the world about it.

On occasion I’ve melted some Linotype, even though I had no immediate purpose for it, just for that seductive hot-lead smell and a trip into the past when it was all, indeed, too exciting to be borne.

Everywhere one turns, these days, there are tales of psycho-trauma, especially among the young, the same young who are addicted to cell phones and similar digital impedimenta. The problem, it seems to me, is that most time spent on a computer, whether playing games or keeping up with the latest social media drivel, is spent doing…nothing!

Nothing is produced, nothing is accomplished. At the end of an hour, you emerge knowing, probably, less than you did before, with nothing to show for it but another hour’s growth of beard. No wonder it’s depressing. And the answer?  Well, to hear the so-called therapists tell it, it’s whatever the latest pharmaceutical craze happens to be.

The psychiatrist mentioned above did not espouse pharmaceutical solutions, even in an era when antidepressants were starting to seem more productive than endless hours on a couch reliving your childhood. Instead, he believed in activity as a counter to inactivity and depression.

Another of our mutual acquaintances, when he felt the black dog scratching at the door, went out and bought three bottles of vodka and leapt headlong off the wagon. He always alerted the shrink ahead of time, although why I’m not sure, and then crawled in for an appointment when it was all over and he was ready again for the straight and narrow.

I was assured that the shoe-shine solution was better, both psychologically for the patient, and for the shoes themselves, to say nothing of the patient’s liver.

The same is true, I believe, of conditioning brass, casting bullets, loading a few hundred 44 Specials, or putting together some light practice loads for your 500 Nitro.

One can even look at it another way: I believe spending time loading ammunition may actually prevent the kind of self-absorbed navel-gazing that afflicts so many these days. It’s an actual activity that leaves you with something concrete to show for it, and a genuine feeling of accomplishment.

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time on a computer, where the temptation to look on the internet to see what’s happening is a constant irritant, what with algorithms and pop-up ads, I’ve had to come up with antidotes.

My two favorites?  I either set up a shotshell loader and get up from my desk periodically to crank out another couple of dozen rounds, or I get out the shoe creme and brushes, line up the brogues and take ten minutes every so often to spiff them up.

If I end a day having written a thousand words, turned out 50 rounds of 28 gauge and produced a high polish on my Oxfords, it’s not a day wasted – and that’s what counts.

The next time someone whines that you spend too much time at your loading bench, just tell them it’s therapy.

And, oh yeah, I ordered one of those goat-hair brushes.