One of the benefits of cruising Google Books, Internet Archive and similar sites is unexpectedly tripping over something useful or entertaining (or both). Today's surfing uncovered three such pearls, all in Outing magazine.In the July 1922 issue, writer L.E. Eubanks gave us "Your Emergency Camp Fire." His guidance -- from making the last match count (even if it's wet) to more aboriginal techniques -- is ageless and valuable, presented in friendly fashion.
Is this one-pager the sine qua non of firemaking? Of course not -- the ultimate authority, for each of us, is our own experience. From that perspective, what Eubanks wrote is well worth our time.
Published seven years earlier, "Fire-Making in the Wet Woods" was a quarter-page filler that Outing's editors attributed only to "a correspondent." The author revealed that there is, in fact, dry fuel in damp landscapes -- we simply have to know where to look.
I'll flip back to that 1922 issue for the final clip, "Let's Get Rid of Everything: Just a Few Precious Thoughts for the Anti-Firearms Agitators." It lacks a by-line, but I suspect that it was an editorial.
Clearly, the author was a crank -- a constitutionally righteous crank, but a crank just the same. His rant should remind present-day Americans that gun-grabbing legislators were around even back in the (mythical) "good old days."
