by Hap Rocketto Three weeks before my 18th birthday, in January of 1965, the poet Thomas Sterns Eliot died. Oddly enough his wife Vivian died in January of 1947 within a few days of my birthday. Regardless of these curious coincidences I was not particularly a fan of the author of ‘The Waste Land’ and [...]
by Hap Rocketto My loyal fans will remember that I am a classic movie fan. I have just finished watching the Marx Brothers’ A Day At The Races. While trying to regain my breath after the gut wrenching comedy a thought shot through my mind. One of the great comedic scenes is that of Chico [...]
by Hap Rocketto When I made my first trip to Camp Perry I was overwhelmed by the long awaited and anticipated experience. Day after day of shooting, free meals three times a day in the Mess Hall, a Spartan but adequate bunk in a hut, the company of like minded souls, and Commercial Row. I [...]
by Hap Rocketto It was a typical early morning ride to a rifle match. As the sun was breaking free of the horizon I was at the wheel, as always. My brother Steve was riding shotgun and was awash, as usual, in an ocean of sleep in which he would, like a great Sperm whale [...]
by Hap Rocketto When I was about 12 years old The Old Man got tired of catching me in the spider webs of untruths that I regularly spun to avoid, unsuccessfully I might add, being punished for the illicit acts of my adolescence. With the aid of his thick black leather garrison belt he finally [...]
by Hap Rocketto My brother is fond of giving books for presents and passed a volume entitled Floating off the Page to me for my last birthday. It contains a series of articles taken from the Wall Street Journal’s “middle column.” James P. Sterba related a brief tale of cleaning patches, “Prisons, Guns, and Knickers,” [...]
By Hap Rocketto During Perry 2001 I bumped into Jeff Doerschler at the NRA Smallbore Committee meeting and found that he had made the Dewar Team, but had yet to secure a coach. The person he most likely would have chosen, his shooting and running mate Jay Sonneborn, was Dewar Team Captain and unavailable. Knowing [...]
Initial Preference By Hap Rocketto While sitting in the dentist’s office, awaiting a routine cleaning, I was surprised to find a magazine which was not yet old enough to be eligible for Medicaid. Amid the haystack like pile of typical medical office literature: National Geographic, Yankee Magazine, Golf Digest, Yachting, Fortune, and Gourmet-magazines which lead [...]
An Army Breakfast is no Mess to Haul…. by Hap Rocketto In my salad days, when I was green in judgment, I did a cruise in the Navy and a hitch in the Army. The one consistent element, other than the fact that no uniform ever tailored could make me look any more lean, mean, [...]
RT @NRAblog: Competitive Shooting unveils Welcome to Camp Perry video http://bit.ly/daOt11 Go team pronematch.com!! (Joe Graf, George Pantazelos, Erik Hoskins). Headin' westbound for Rotterdam Regional.
