I shot at Second Chance in June of 1980. I still have the "patch" that Richard Davis gave to all the shooters who paid the entry free so that they could go eat in selected restaurants in the town of Central Lake (provided the restaurant displayed "the patch") without having to pay your meal. There were other things that went with the patch .... I just don't remember them all. Discounts on stuff and such.

I have the baseball cap (Second Chance) although it's coming apart and a windbreaker. I went with Ron Schol, Rick Anderson and Ivan Runions who along with myself founded IPSC Manitoba the same year we went to Second Chance. In fact -- I don't care if you believe me or not but it's true -- for about 3 or 4 years afterwards there was always a page or half-page ad in American Handgunner for the Second Chance shoot and several times the photos showed either Ivan Runions or Ron Schol actually shooting. I had been there all the time with both of them and yet for some reason those two guys got their photos taken by the American Handgunner Photographer or whoever sent in the photos for the ad and those were the ones that got used and I lost every argument I had with either of them for years afterwards with the finality of: "If you were so hot, they'd have used YOUR photo in the Second Chance ads."

Every night at Second Chance, they B.B.Q.'d a whole cow and everyone ate under an open-sided roof while they screened (each night) the original Dirty Harry. The beer flowed.

On a couple of different nights, Massad Ayoob sat at our table. He talked with us and joked with us and we all got our photos taken with him (and probably those photos are still in a trunk in my sister's garage in Canada) and he was just an all-around regular guy. One of the photos I remember is Ron Schol and Rick Anderson standing beside Massad at our table with Masaad seated in front of the two of them and an M-1 Thompson sans magazine sitting on the table in front of him.

I met a few gunwriters in the years I was competing, whether it was Bob Poos from S.O.F. or Bill Jordan (I knew Dave Anderson personally before he ever became a gunwriter -- in fact at an IPSC/Manitoba party in 1980 Ron Schol debated throwing him off a third-floor balconey just to see how hard Saskatchewan boys land but it was all in fun), they were all nice guys but Massad sat with us through several screenings of Dirty Harry and made jokes about our "Canadian humor" as we sipped the suds together so he's sort of unique. All of us came away with a great impression of him. I know nothing about what Massad would have won over the years he was at Second Chance covering the match, but I can assure you that if you went to the Second Chance match you'd have probably seen him there. If you read this Massad, you may not remember us, but we thought you were cool.

And the Second Chance matches were the greatest. They were an event. They were an experience. They were unforgettable.

Photo: Ron Schol shooting his Model 29-2 at Second Chance. Ron actually won himself a Second Chance groin protector at that match, AND a Ginsu knife. The photo taken of him that was used in the American Handgun ads would have been taken within minutes either-way of when I took this one.