I was also a big fan. I read his articles over and over again. I can even look to my right at the bookshelf. Immediately above SCSW's (all 3 editions) I can clearly see Skeeters books (on the top shelf!)
I'm cheap at heart. Not just a little, really cheap. Back in my poor days, It was a major expenditure to invest 35 cents on an ST. So I didn't throw them away. I even remember when we had "Used Book Stores". When my wife wasn't watching me closely, or went shopping, I'd go across the river to the big ones. I new the Saturday clerk. He'd just laugh when I'd come in and head down the stairs (Acres of Books.) I'm pretty certain they didn't pay much for the periodicals they had. Selling price was fairly high and the sign even said "1/2 listed retail." But when you came back upstairs with 10 or more the price dropped. If you could find 50, you got another big price break. Gun books were on a table of their own.
I came from a background of making lists. My dad did it all the time. Maybe we have a genetic link to bad memory, I don't know. But I had a list, as in written on paper not a computer thing. It was just every edition I had at home. Any ST that I didn't have, I simply bought. It was a winter project. You can't imagine the riches when it would snow too much to go to work, and I had "nothing" to do but find a couch and read 10 or 12 of Skeeters I'd never seen before.
We built a new home 2 years ago. Not a single old magazine was damaged in the production. Yes, we have a wire roll around rack, probably over 6' high, 5 shelves on each (and you can use both sides.) Full of old magazines. Every AR from the end of WWII to recent. Some prewars, too. And then Gawd knows how many ST, F&S, SA, you name it. Oh, I left off my FILs collection of Shooters Bibles, merged with mine (when he was alive I didn't know he had so many). But I've bought more since, too. Also to my right as I sit are the Stogers (forerunner) shooters bibles from the 1930s. Maybe the Librarian who started this thread will understand.
And no one has made mention of K22 and Skeeter. He wrote many times of his quest for an early postwar Masterpiece. That and surviving on the GI bill and ramadan noodles to finance his K22. That was back in the day when folks saved up (foreign concept) to buy what they wanted and needed. No credit cards back then, just cash on the barrelhead.
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Dick Burg
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