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Over the years I’ve picked up a few WWII relics at estate sales. I don’t know why, but I did.
Pacific Theater Marine Kabar
Japanese bayonet from the same sale.
US Ranger jump knife
British made Fairbairn Sykes commando knife marked with an “I” that designates it was a contract knife made for French Commandos specifically for the Normandy invasion. I didn’t know it was French issue until I researched the “I” mark. Production records indicate it a contract for 181 knives. These are nasty knives for quick kills. The bolster or butt has a brass point for clobbering your foe on the top of the head and cracking the skull.…and my best….a 1941 German Luger. It was a take home by an Army lieutenant. He was selling his ww ii equipment and we got to talking about his tour from Italy, France, Belgium to Germany and he mentioned the luger. I told him I always wanted one so he went and got it to show me. Really nice with number matching holster and cartridge. He confiscated it during a surrender at the end of the war but never turned it in. I guess I gawked over it and he offered it to me for $300. This was back when person to person guns sales were still legal in NJ. I gave him $20 and jumped in my car heading to an ATM.
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This reply was modified 8 months, 4 weeks ago by
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This reply was modified 8 months, 4 weeks ago by
Wow, that’s a pretty cool story about the luger. And all that other stuff is something else. I haven’t done that. I’m not really a collector of things. Although I have a wall of guitars. Not that I play that well, but I have them. My old bass from college when I was in a band. Epiphone Les Paul and ES-335, two acoustics, and my son’s wood shop project that sounds nice and plays well. It’s cool just to have that.
mspart
At first I didn’t have intent to collect them. I bumped into the Kabar and thought it would be a good fishing knife for $15. The I ran into the Ranger jump knife and also from WW II. Then the French commando knife and said what the heck, make it a collection.
Well, it sounds like you have a great collection going. We just put the finishing touches on the tiny library. Our neighbor is a roofer and I asked if he had any spare underlayment that I could use. He said yes and he had cap shingles as well. I guess he later came over and decided he could have one of his junior guys just do the roofing. Drip edge, trim, the works. It will be a professional job. I was like, well ok if you want to. So next week we will get a pro roofing job on the tiny library, roughly just less than 3 sq ft. There will be more waste than what goes on the library word.
mspart
Just curious, is the library roadside for book sharing or just a backyard stash for outdoor reading on a whim.
A tiny library is normally found on walking trails. In our case, on a horse trail adjacent to our property. It is a small little box that holds books and movies. People are free to take a book and keep it, take one and put it back, add to the library. It is a fully community thing. We built it out of wood we had hanging around. I’m not a hoarder but I don’t throw away lumber. We do a fair amount of building because my wife keeps coming up with projects to do. This is an example of why I keep all the wood, even cut wood that isn’t normal size. We used all that on the tiny library. She may have bought a few 2x2s but that is about it. Construction is with 2x2s to cut down on weight. We set a 4×6 post and have the library supported on it by three 4x4s cut at 45 degrees on each side. These were made from similar use for our daughters bedroom. Worked out pretty good.
I hadn’t heard of such a thing until she said she wanted to make one some years ago. Unfortunately, she and my sons used pressboard for the siding and that did not last very long in this climate. We tore it down a few months ago and neighbors walking the trail kept asking when it will be back. It is back word!!
mspart
Some community groups build in the parks out here. Headed to Europe for a couple of weeks. First stop is to see a distant cousin that owns the oldest bakery in Zurich. The link which involves 2 brothers goes back to the 1500’s.
We hosted a family reunion of sorts for my wife’s family two weeks ago. That was fun. I like my wife’s family. Then last week we drove to UT to deliver some stuff to our son and brought Grandma with us. He is starting a Fabrication tech degree that will take 11 months and has a 100% placement. So he was happy to get his stuff. I guess he has to have his own welding safety equipment and other metal tools. So we brought that stuff as well has his video racing game rig that has a steering wheel, emergency brake, shifter, gas and brake and clutch pedals. Quite the setup. Anyway, we are back.
Have a great time in Zurich. We are thinking of stopping there before hitting Naples. Let me know how it is and things to do word.
mspart
Had an absolute blast everywhere. Zurich is a great city, a bit expensive as Europe goes but great food. We most of our time in Old Zurich. Across the river, new Zurich is very commercial with high end retail and banking. We did get a kick of looking at all of the high vehicles parked on the street. There had to be more Lambo’s per city block than anywhere else. Every imaginable color. Stopped by my cousin’s bakery and ended up at dinner with them. They make the best darned buttered pretzels on the planet aside from all of their other pastries. We stayed at a hotel on the lake and took the ferry into and out of the city each day. They make the best veal, beef and pork worsts in the city.
Next stop was Lake Como. Nice little village and took a boat ride around the lake with a stop in Bellagio, another little village on the lake.
Then on to Turin. The Shroud was yo be on display when we planned the trip but it was held back because some experts state showing vertically stresses the fabric. Still, the Church Of John the Baptist was quite a sight. Built in the 1400’s it survived numerous allied bombings runs in WWII. While there we took a tour of 2 wineries in the Barolo region.
From Turin we went to a beach Savona on the Mediterranean. 2 days of relaxation. From there we went Monaco and a hotel on the beach, and another in Saint Jean Cap Ferrat on the French Riviera of the Mediterranean. The Sea water was great. It weas a busy front end with all of the R&R on the back end. Train travel was great, through the Alps. From Savona to Nice where we flew home we hired cars through Uber. We almost got stuck between Savona and Monaco as the driver lost first gear. He was ready to call in for replacement car when I showed him how he could start from 2nd gear. That could have been a 2-2.5-hour delay.
it’s a long ride home that was made a bit longer by Hurricane Erin. It was lying off NJ on arrival day and pilot had to fly west to Pittsburgh then turn and come east to Newark Airport. I didn’t mind a bit as he avoided all of the east coast wind.
16 days 2 flights, 3 train rides 3 rides from uber, 3 ferry rides on Lake Zurich (crystal clear water down to 30 ft. None of the train rides or Ubers were more than 2:15….and a lot of walking. Our hotels were not more than a few blocks from the train stations, so we eliminated a bunch of cab rides. The train from Zurich to Como was most expensive at $81. The uber ride from Savona Italy to Monte Carlo would have had some nice views of the Italian and French coast on the Mediterranean but the highway guard rails were set at the car window height. That stunk.
I told my wife about your trip. She was envious to say the least. I’m all for Italy. Specifically, I’d like to go to the north more than we did last time. Torino definitely on the list. Lake Como as well. Genoa and on into Nice or similar. She wants to go to southern Italy which I would like to do as well, but also wants to go elsewhere in Europe. I think everything is in Italy. The other countries were barbarians while Rome was civilized with aqueducts etc. I will probably lose the argument, but I did find that it seems cheaper to fly to Zurich and get to Italy from there. So training through the Alps might be amazing and after your stories of Zurich, it sounds great.
We went to the West Coast of WA this weekend and I actually got sunburned. I don’t think that happens too often. It was very nice there, but Westport is a small little town. There are resort areas but they were booked word.
mspart
The rail system in Italy, throughout Europe is quite efficient. All of the major cities and some key villages are connected. Milan is about an hour from Como. From there Florence and Genoa and Rome, then on to Naples. Sicily is still disconnected; I think the only route in is by Ferry to Messina and Palermo. My wife’s grandfather is from Sicily so we want to go there. We aren’t sure, but there is a village in central Sicily with his last name and also a palace in Palermo. It’s unfortunate but she never got the full story on her family heritage, so we want to explore some town historians. They keep incredible genealogy records in Europe. We found the ship’s passenger list for her grandmothers crossing in the 1920-s but not her grandfather’s as yet. It lists the town where she lived so we hope we can find the same for her father. 10 years ago we visited the same in a little town in Germany and found a wealth of information on my great grandfather’s family. He even steered us to the family cemetery where we found to large memorials for distant relatives that were killed in WW I.
My wife’s grandfather is full on Sicylian/Italian. Unfortunately, Palermo is the place and somewhere back in the day the main cathedral suffered a catastrophic earthquake and it destroyed all the records that were held there. So it is tough to get too far back. She called someone and asked for info and they said, “why do you want to know” in kind of a menacing tone. She backed off. She didn’t need Guido visiting. Her paternal great grandmother is from Minori which is just outside of Naples. So we are planning Naples and will do Herculaneum, Vesuvius, Minori, Amalfi Coast, perhaps an island, and maybe Bari on the coast. That’s a lot but I am hoping for a 3-4 week trip. I would love to do a agritourism thing where you work at a farm for free room or reduced rate. I think that would be a great way to get into the culture that otherwise you wouldn’t see. But my wife is not as enthused. I want to go there for extended periods. It looks like 90 days is the max for US citizens. Unless you get a longer term visa from Italy before going. But 3 months would be good. I would love it word.
mspart
I could do 3-4 weeks easily but the wifey was getting antsy to head home after14 days. I think part of the problem was laundry. We never got the chance to get anything cleaned. We weren’t in a hotel long enough to send out and get it back before leaving. We had planned on a couple of 3 night stays while there but we encountered a bunch of national holidays where the launderers were closed. We ended up buying some detergent at a local mart and washed shirts and such in the sink. It was in the 90’s everyday but the day we departed so everything dried fast on a terrace.
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