Project Excelsior was a series of parachute jumps made by Joseph Kittinger of the United States Air Force in 1959 and 1960 from helium balloons in the stratosphere. The purpose was to test the Beaupre multi-stage parachute system intended to be used by pilots ejecting from high altitude.
This is Mack — a truly great American.
I have a friend named Mack. Mack is the salt of the earth. He and his kind are what made America what it is. In addition to a lot of other positive attributes, Mack also has a superhuman work ethic.
Mack has a crew. They can do literally anything. They spend their weeks replacing roofs, building sheds and resurrecting derelict kitchens. They built me a new bathroom. Mack’s crew includes his son Corey and his friends Justin and Dave. They are all comparably awesome. Within the first half hour of their working on my bathroom, one of them had asked where I stood with Jesus. They’re the kind of guys who would gladly give you their shoes or shirt if they felt you needed them.
Justin is covered in tattoos and talks like a drill sergeant. That’s because he spent a career in the Army as a grunt and a drill sergeant before he settled down with Mack to build stuff. Justin did five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
On the weekends, when most normal people are kicking back and relaxing, Mack runs his own restaurant called Harmon’s in Paris, Mississippi. Harmon’s offers superlative Southern home cooking. I can tell you from personal experience that their fried shrimp and catfish are to die for.
Here we see Mack and Justin preparing breakfast
for 40 or so hungry veterans in rural Mississippi.
Harmon’s Restaurant dishes up great Southern food served with love.
The first Saturday of every month, Mack opens his restaurant up for a free breakfast for military veterans. Justin helps with the cooking. Donations are accepted but are neither sought nor expected. The food is basic Southern fare — scrambled eggs, grits, biscuits, hash browns, bacon, and the fixings. Anyone who has ever eaten in a military mess hall will recognize it. None of it is terribly good for you, but it is both delicious and filling. Mack feeds 40 or so grizzled old vets on Saturday morning out of his own pocket just because he is a great American.
Once word got out, the place filled up. It is amazing the extraordinary guys who just came out of the woodwork in small town Mississippi. One guy flew F-111 Aardvarks in the Air Force. Another spent a career underwater in submarines. A smattering served time in the Mississippi National Guard. All of the old WWII guys have passed, but Vietnam is ably represented. One gentleman was a Green Beret officer who did three combat tours in Vietnam. Another was a Special Forces doctor who treated both friend and foe alike during his time in Southeast Asia.
As you might imagine, there is no shortage of entertaining stories to be found in that place. I bring along a handful of machine guns each month for everybody to paw over, and we kill an hour swapping lies. Many of the guys in attendance used those weapons for real. Each meal starts with prayer, and wives get dragged along every few months just to keep the place civilized.
I typically toss a few machineguns in the truck
to give the guys something to paw over while we talk.
If you partake in the mainstream media, all you are fed is doom and gloom. Americans hate Americans. The economy is in a freefall. Neighborhoods burn, and we rob each other blind. It’s all we ever see. One might be forgiven for believing that our Great Republic is on its last legs. Should you feel that way, I would assert that perhaps you’re getting your news from the wrong sources.
Down here in rural Mississippi, we’re doing just fine, thank you very much. In my neck of the woods, everybody is armed, yet nobody seems to get shot. Folks really don’t care what color you are anymore. We still go to church, and we raise our kids to respect authority and love their country.
Far be it from me to seem all judgey, but the folks running California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois are all idiots. Urban spaces have become a hell of their own making. Tolerating lawlessness, disrespecting law enforcement, and paying people for bad behavior is a great way to let the inmates run the asylum. How is that working out these days?
By contrast, our streets are clean, our cost of living is low, and our people are friendly. The biggest problem we have in my little Southern town is that a lot of folks are moving here. But that’s okay. We’ll keep building houses and restaurants. We may even eventually land a Target to go along with Kroger and Wal-Mart. Down here where I live, America is still quite awesome.
Day at the range: Will and Danny didn’t have ready access to a battery like this back in the day. But now …
It’s really a wonder we survived adolescence. We first met in 9th grade and it was initially a mutual interest in firearms and the military sparking our friendship. School shootings were not a real thing, so it was okay to talk about guns in school back then. It’s indeed been a wild ride. His name is Danny, and we are the archetypal gun buddies.
He goes by Dan nowadays. It seemed somehow more appropriate for a successful electrical engineer working for a high-tech defense contractor. However, we lived together for three years in college. I’ve seen him at his best and I’ve seen him at his worst. He’ll always be Danny to me.
The gun shows were a blast. We’d plot and scheme all the way there, buy an antique surplus MRE for lunch, then trade and barter until they turned off the lights and ran us out. On the trip home it was always exciting to pore over our newest conquests. Our resources were meager and our acquisitions comparable, but it was always fun.
I’m much better funded these days, but I can’t get nearly the rush out of a proper gun show as I did back then with Danny. In this regard I suppose it’s not unlike an addiction. It’s hard to recapture that first serious high.
Danny tries his hand with an oldie Beretta 38A. Full-auto is big fun,
but more so with a shooting buddy.
Now nearly four decades later, his wife still accuses me of trying to kill him. I’m not exactly sure that’s fair. There was of course the homemade spud gun I gave him for Christmas that exploded on his shoulder. He was answering the phone for a couple days when it wasn’t ringing, but there was no lasting harm. Then there was the home-built mortar at the bottom of the thick cardboard shipping container we used for a launcher. It detonated and shredded his pants leg. That ultimately turned out fine, too.
A blank 12-gauge shell and an Estes model rocket engine powered the ridiculous contraption. It did indeed pulverize the tube and simultaneously blew a not-inconsiderable hole in the ground, but of course that could’ve happened to anybody. There were a few others the details of which I’ll keep to myself as I’m not sure if the statute of limitations has yet fully expired. Regardless, we burned untold thousands of rounds together, it was always good harmless fun.
We inadvertently set fire to a shooting range in Oklahoma one time. My quick thinking saved the Porta-John from certain incineration. The mental image of us valiantly dragging that nasty thing out of the smoldering grass in the nick of time still brings a wry grin. It’s amazing the number of furry critters that can quickly exit a stand of tall grass when it is vigorously burning. That debacle ultimately claimed about three acres of Oklahoma grassland and allowed me to meet several very nice firemen. Once again — on balance — no lasting harm.
When I was in the Army and Danny was building military radar systems, we often lived on opposite sides of the world. However, our wives were (and are) best pals, so we made a point to visit at least once a year. Each time the ladies talked about kids and we retired to pore over our latest firearm acquisitions. Some things never change.
The Wayback Machine: A youthful Will and Danny took a serious “Man-cation”
when Will was stationed in Alaska.
We each had three kids. They had two girls and a boy. We had two boys and a girl. They were each within three months of each other. The running joke was we would get one church with one preacher and one set of flowers and marry all six of them off in one fell swoop. Alas, his girls found husbands elsewhere so our plans were ruined.
Sadly, our kids have all moved away, though we do finally have a little freedom as a result. It’s a long drive, but we talked them into coming our way this year. Danny and I spent two full days pawing over the gun collection and burning bullets, swapping old lies and ones of more recent vintage. Nobody got blown up, blinded, or incarcerated. It was an altogether great time.
Guns are in the news these days for all the wrong reasons. If you really wanted to save children you’d outlaw skateboards or cigarettes, not AR-15s. But all of you know this already.
Firearms are used for recreation, hunting, personal defense and countless other wholesome American pursuits. And they also build some splendid friendships. No matter how much time elapses or how much hair turns gray or falls out, sitting down in the gun room surrounded by the inimitable smell of BreakFree always takes us back to better days.
We are gun buddies then, now and always.
