Word: flintlocks
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Davy Crockett (Disney; Buena Vista) has already been seen twice on TV; its theme song brays steadily from the nation's jukeboxes; coonskin hats, flintlock muskets and some 100 other Crockett-inspired products flood U.S. stores (TIME, May 23). Now at last, the film has reached movie theaters, but its belated arrival is far from an anticlimax. Technicolor and the wide screen combine to make this classic tale of derring-do bigger and better than ever. The episodic story has been shortened by 40 minutes but not changed: Davy still fights the Creek War, gets elected to Congress, dies...
...flint attached to the hammer of the flintlock (the standard Revolutionary War weapon) strikes a fixed steel, sparking the priming powder in the open "pan" just below. The hammer of the caplock (patented early in the 19th century) explodes a small percussion...
Muzzle-loader fans have to be devoted. Their guns are handmade (many fans make their own), and firing them takes effort. To load a flintlock rifle, the marksman 1) measures out a charge of powder, 2) pours it down the barrel, 3) moistens a cloth patch with saliva, 4) puts a lead ball on the patch, 5) sets patch and ball in the muzzle, 6) taps the ball with a little mallet or some other appropriate tool, 7) trims away the excess cloth, 8) shoves the ball down the barrel with a short ramrod called a bullet starter, 9) works...
Incidentally, Brandon, the next village, is the home of the world's last flint knapper and used to be famous for its flints which were exported to all parts of the world. Flints are still exported from Brandon to the U.S. for flintlock guns (some years ago a request was received from an Eskimo for flints for his tinderbox) and to West Africa for the same purpose. Sadly enough, the craft is rapidly dying out, and mining ceased with the death of the last flint miner some years...
...Payoff. Under the tax passed in 1913, a married man with two children and $10,000 a year paid $60. There were a good many complaints. The tax brought in $28 million. As a weapon against the rich, the income tax was little better than a flintlock. In 1902, there were 2,000 U.S. millionaires. In 1920, there were 42,000. There are many more today. Reason: millionaires rarely get to be millionaires by thriftily saving income; they do it through increasing capital values...