Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. His was an interesting childhood. Photo: Public Domain
Elon Musk is the richest man on Planet Earth. Elon made his billions producing rocket ships and electric cars, among other things. He was a darling of the Left right up until he declared his friendship with Donald John Trump. Now they think he’s the Antichrist.
Elon is a delightfully weird guy with a delightfully weird past. He’s certainly diagnosable on a certain level. However, he has weaponized his curious form of Asperger’s syndrome into financial success the likes of which have not been seen in the modern age. Having invested a little time researching his Dad, it seems the nut doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Left: Like his uber-wealthy son, Errol Musk is a pretty fascinating guy. He once killed three murderous cannibals with only two shots from a .357 Magnum revolver. Below: Elon Musk is the richest man in the world. His was an interesting childhood. Photo: Public Domain
The Father Of The Savant
Errol Musk was born in Pretoria, South Africa, in 1946. His father was South African, and his mother was English. Errol married Maye Haldeman in 1970. Their first son, Elon, was born the following year.
Errol Musk was a successful businessman in his own right. He was politically active and served in a variety of roles in local government. Along the way, he developed office buildings, subdivisions, retail store space and an air force base. He also owned an auto parts store and had a substantial interest in several emerald mines. He once boasted that his emerald dealings were more smuggling than anything respectable.
These sundry enterprises brought the elder Musk a great deal of money. He used these proceeds to buy himself a yacht, an airplane, several luxury automobiles and a couple of palatial homes. Among all that was a large estate that he used as a rental property.
In the days of high-capacity concealable 9mm wonderguns, never underestimate the manstopping power of a classic magnum revolver.
The Gunfight
My source was an in-person interview I watched with Errol Musk himself. The man looks vaguely like an aging Al Pacino and sports that same lyrical South African accent as does his famous son. I have no compelling reason to doubt the details.
Errol and his six-year-old daughter went out to this remote rental property to check on things. The house was empty in anticipation of its next set of renters. They were hot and sweaty, so Errol set his daughter up in the tub for a bath. He then heard noises coming from downstairs.
When he went down to investigate, Musk found several strange men in his living room. The spokesman for the group was wearing a coat and tie. Musk assumed they might be prospective renters and introduced himself. Without preamble, this man presented a handgun and opened fire.
Musk retreated miraculously unscathed. He scrambled back upstairs and retrieved a loaded .357 magnum revolver. Posting himself in the doorway between the gunmen and his daughter, Errol waited until they came up the stairs. As soon as he got a decent angle, he shot the lead assailant through the head.
The first shooter was dead where he stood. That same bullet also struck and killed the man behind him. Then all hell broke loose.
The Bad Guys fired a total of 52 rounds, one of which would have struck Musk in the chest had it not fortuitously lodged in an aluminum door frame. Musk fired twice total. His second shot struck a man in the groin who bled out on the floor. The rest of the crew then fled in disarray. Musk scooped up his daughter and leapt through a shattered window to safety.
Details
Musk claims that these men were practitioners of muti — witch doctors who would kill adults to kidnap kids. They would then harvest limbs and organs from the stolen children to make traditional medicines. Along the way, they would supposedly nibble a bit as well.
This seemed pretty far-fetched to me. However, Google claims it’s real. In 2010, traditional African healers and the South African government held a conference with the published goal of rooting out the “Evil practice of mutilating human bodies for purposes of muti making.” It is actually plausible that the three men Musk killed really had broken into his home with the intent of killing and eating his daughter.
The Rest Of The Story
Errol Musk is not a terribly nice guy. He divorced Elon’s mom in 1979 amidst allegations of abuse. Elon has described his Dad in the media as a “terrible human being.” Apparently, he’s not wrong.
When Errol was 45, he married 25-year-old Heide Bezuidenhout. He and Heidi had two children. Errol later fathered two more kids by Heidi’s daughter from a previous relationship.
He was once quoted as having said, “The only thing we are on Earth for is to reproduce.” Regardless of the man’s character, when Errol Musk was threatened by a mob of armed witch doctors, that guy took care of business. Dropping three murderous cannibals with two rounds from a magnum revolver is undeniably fine gunmanship.
Part utilitarian, part shrine, almost furniture: Grandpa’s gun cabinet always held fascinating treasures.
Even better, every item had its own special backstory.
Let’s face it — your gun safe is boring. Mine too, for many of the same reasons I’ll explain. It’s full of matte-black polymer rifles, a few optics you bought because some guy on YouTube told you to, and a mountain of gizmos you don’t really need.
Old school
Grandpa’s gun cabinet? It wasn’t so much about storage but more like a shrine — an oak-and-glass monument to a time when guns had a different role, hard-earned character, a certain aura and, above all, stories.
This short pontification is inspired by a recent GUNS Magazine Podcast. In episode #298, Roy Huntington and I discussed the changes in gun culture over the years and were instantly reminded — yet again — some AR owners don’t accept anything less than glowing praise about their favorite “weapon system.”
Roy and I have taken every possible pain to explain we don’t hate ARs; in fact, between us, we probably have several dozen, yet the angry comments keep coming.
Guns such as grandpa’s Lefever Nitro double-barrel 20 gauge have more character in their splinter fore-end
than an entire cabinet full of black rifles — never mind the stories it represents!
In such remarks, the writers are unconsciously reinforcing the negative stereotypes of certain shooters as they completely miss the point by at least 50 MOA. What we were trying to analyze is the significant changes in how shooters relate to firearms nowadays.
There is nothing wrong with our “modern” gun culture, but anyone with an ounce of honesty will admit the all-encompassing black rifle and pistol craze has a dull, certain sameness. They’re useful, yes, and there is a certain beauty in function over form, but generally the word to describe them is “monotonous.”
Down home
Grandpa’s gun cabinet was so much different. Open the door and you were hit with the glorious sweet petroleum aroma of old-formula Hoppe’s No. 9, 3-in-1 oil, aged walnut and maybe a trace of cigar smoke. Your safe smells like plastic, silica packs and unfilled dreams.
Grandpa didn’t own five ARs that are identical except for different bolt carrier groups. His cabinet was the firearms version of the Whitman Sampler (look it up).
The stereotypical “load out” included a lever gun with honest bluing wear from countless deer seasons, a pump shotgun with a small crack in the stock that still dropped birds every fall, and a .22 rifle that taught three generations how to shoot.
There was also a center-fire bolt-action rifle, maybe an old 98-pattern or a 1908 surplus Springfield. On these workaday guns, every nick, scratch and dent had a story attached.
Grandpa’s gun cabinet drawer often held a museum of old dog-eared, half-filled cartridge boxes,
each representing something interesting.
Even the ammo shelf was cooler. Grandpa stocked cartridges with names you’ve only heard of — .300 Savage, .257 Roberts, maybe a half-empty box of .32-20 that hadn’t been made since before you were born. These cartridges were for guns he used to own but (regretfully) sold years ago, while those partial boxes of ammo were kept “just in case.”
For pap, buying ammo wasn’t a bulk-online experience seeking the lowest cost per round of “commodity” calibers — it meant going to the hardware store and asking for a certain dusty green-and-yellow box behind the counter.
Furnishings
And there was the cabinet itself. It wasn’t a giant steel monolith hiding in the basement or closet. It was a piece of furniture, often prominent in the dining room or front hallway, with a plate-glass front and a tiny brass lock that wouldn’t stop a semi-determined raccoon.
The lock was primarily to keep the kids and other semi-honest people out of the guns without adult supervision, and it worked well, even though certain unkempt children wondered if a paper clip or bent wire would trip the simple mechanism. Yet, I — sorry, I meant to say “those kids” — never tried it because it would break an important trust with somebody you never wanted to disappoint.
The glass front made a dangerous yet reassuring rattle when you opened it, a hollow jangling noise you can’t describe but one you’d recognize instantly. While not flashy, the whole thing was essentially a monument to the household armory. Grandpa wasn’t ostentatious, but he was quietly proud of his guns.
Ever “need” a 16-gauge bolt action Mossberg 190? The best place to find one was Grandpa’s gun cabinet!
Heart of the matter
The coolest thing about Grandpa’s cabinet wasn’t even the firearms within; it was the stories. When he opened that door, you didn’t just gain access to firearms—history came pouring out. “This one kept the coons out of the chicken coop back on the farm,” he pointed out.
Up until the 1950s, a fox or hawk snatching a chicken was nearly as serious as someone kidnapping a kid today because it meant soup for dinner. “This one’s been to deer camp every year since Eisenhower,” he said with a certain wistful tone, as you considered he hadn’t gone deer hunting in years. But, no matter…
Your safe just beeps angrily if you punch in the wrong code twice.
You’ll never know what you’ll find but treasures abound in Grandpa’s gun cabinet!
Long memories
Spend all you want on Cerakote, carbon fiber and aircraft aluminum, but you can’t buy Grandpa’s perspective, the experiences or the miles he put on those guns. His cabinet was cooler because it wasn’t just about what was inside — it was about the man who kept them, the history of a life he and his guns lived, and the stories he passed down every time he turned the little brass key.
My own grandkids will grow up with shooting memories of polymer handguns, beeping keypads and digital displays, but it just won’t be the same — and I think we’re all poorer because of it.
