YEARS ago I got a call from a man who came on the line by saying,"Get your copy
of Kindig's book and tell me what School your locks are from".I told him I had no
idea and maybe it was Sunday School or Reform School.
.I have seen Kindig's
book but was never that interested in getting one.
Bob Roller
10 September 2020.My personal interest in muzzle loading rifles has never FOCUSED on the
raise carved highly ornamented brass trimmed long rifle but it was and is on the rifles that
Major Roberts wrote about.The Northeastern caplock rifles have held my interest and the
cream of the crop to me are the American Schuetzen rifles most made by German,Swiss and
Austrian gunmakers and their descendants.Accuracy at ranges beyond that of a round ball
and the accessories it takes to keep one of these working has always been a fascination to me.
I DO like the Southern long rifles and the simplicity and the economic conditions that brought
them into being.Those conditions were told to me by my maternal grandfather who was born in
1873 and died in 1972.He told me of buying 10 cents worth of black powder and usually a few
caps came with it and that was the meat getter be it small game or deer.The 10 cents was hard to get.
I did not come into the Appalachian culture until I was 10 years old and right after Pearl Harbor**
my mother and I moved into a German area of Chicago and stayed there until early 1946 and
when we moved to West Virginia into a culture that seemed to thrive on stupidity and had NO
use at all for a 10 year old that spoke German as easy as English.That was the culture of my
grandfather and grandmother.They had 9 children and all of them got away from it and only my
mother came back.
.
** My father bailed out and went to Wisconsin and remarried.We had no contact with him.
Bob Roller
