Coming Home Again

A short but strange story of a handgun, and an indication of the kind of life’s trail I’ve always led.................................

They didn’t have any S&W mod 10s to issue the day I was to receive my first duty revolver. So they let me pick from a number of good solid Colts. Among the hanging guns on pegs in their barrels, clean and shiny in the armory vault, I saw one that stuck out slightly from the rest of the row. When I pulled it from the peg, to my surprise it was a Colt Officers model 38/heavy barrel...four and ½ inches in ribbed barrel length. I had it issued to me pronto. It has a six-hundred-thousand plus serial number. This is the frame and action the later Python is built on. (Or was until Colt dropped the Python from it’s catalog this year). My first shooting in that dark city, on a very dark night...was with that gun. The wadcutters worked fine. And in those days they didn’t suspend you, test your gun and ammo, and try to build a case against you in case it became politically correct and necessary....they patted you on the back, said; ‘good job kid’, and asked if you were OK...or needed a day off. End of issue.

In a short time I was an Investigator...I carried a 45 ACP Colt 1911a1. But I still had the Colt 38 as a back up, I liked it, smooth action, very accurate and strongly built...when the time came to move on to other agencies I purchased the Colt Officers 38, and it followed me around through the years. It was always with me as a back up...and it has a number of stories to tell. The worst with it was a shooting in an underground parking garage in New York. If you ever have to get into a shooting, God forbid...Pray it’s out in the woods...in a park...on wide open streets with no one on them, at the very least. But never...never in a parking garage. For those who have never seen one, these underground things are huge, parking a hundred cars on one level. And it’s like being in a totally wide open cement cellar...roof, floor, walls, no windows...one entrance/exit before the city passed restrictions, calling for many exits.

RICOCHET CITY! Talk about skipping rocks over a pond...you hit a wall right in that kind of tomb, you can get a bullet to bounce around at least three times......heavy 230 grain 45 round noses, 38/158 gr round noses, the two bad guys with their pissy 32s, things were whizzing around in all directions for a few very intense minutes. It was like a hail storm with thunder.

We won that night by attrition...the bad guys ran out of ammo, we didn’t and they had to give up. Only one bad guy got hit, in the ankle, but we killed all kinds of car bodies. Very expensive car bodies...and car windows...boy you could tell the ones hit with the hard ball 45s. They went thru doors and windows and anything else in the way. The 158 gr 38s bounced off even side windows...but left big ugly crush marks two or three inches in diameter. Car windows in those days were double layered thickness, with heavy plastic sheet in the middle.

After that little lesson, I went to reloads using the issued 158 grain ammo components, put back together over 7 grains of Unique. Out of the Colt, which is a very heavy mid-size revolver, I’m sure I was getting 1100 plus fps. Those soft lead round nose bullets leaded somewhat. But a jacketed bullet fired backwards always did well clearing out the lead fouling in the barrel. Regular cleaning did the rest. No one was ever the wiser. And those reloads did not bounce off...anything.

The 1970s came and I was made the first Director of Drug Abuse Control for the state of Virginia. The first Yankee to hold State Commissioner’s rank..ever in that state. It was also the year the first Republican Governor in 89 years won office. He was fiercely independent, and wanted nothing more than to drag the state into the 20th century. And he wanted drug abuse out of his state with no excuses. I had been a Federal Narcotics Agent for three years in Virginia, and had racked up a hell’va score on drug gangs.

Like him, I’m a bit on the independent side. During the interviews for a head of the new agency which he held...I told him I would get the job done, I was the only one that said we would, and not offer excuses or reasons why it would be so hard. I also was honest and told him if I were appointed I would be controversial...because neither me or any one in the agency I built for the state, would take any crap from dope dealers no matter who they were. Or from any state agencies that had responsibility in some area of drug control, and didn’t live up to it.

I was appointed that day..April 1970. I put my 38 Colt away for a while. It was a time in this country that the liberal doves were screaming about Viet Nam, hollow point ammo, magnum handguns in the hands of police...and a bunch of other nonsense. The new agency carried, by my order, what every we could qualify with that had MORE than 600 lbs. of muzzle energy. We qualified with full loads. Used mostly Super Vel Ammo in hollow points or soft nose jacketed...more striking power, less propensity to over penetrate or ricochet. I had been there and done that, I now had the power to stop it from happening to my people, and exercised it..

The liberals went nuts when it became known I authorized my people to carry magnums and/or auto loaders, with hollow point ammo. The liberals called for a hearing in Richmond, the Capital. I refused to attend. A referendum was passed by the city that only 38s with 158 grain ammo was allowed for lawmen in the city of Richmond. The city planning commission sent me a letter asking me to follow the city’s ordinance.

I told them, I and my people were state officers, we would carry what I told them to carry. A liberal delegation came to my Capital office and demanded to see me. I had the state police escort them off the property. Some of their liberal legislators went to the Governor and demanded my firing. He nicely told them to go to hell.

Then a Richmond city policeman was shot and killed after hitting his assailant several times with his duty 38. He had been shot with a 44 magnum. A city detective had his fingers severed when a drug crazed individual tried to cut his throat after the detective emptied his snub 38 into the charging criminal. The two resulting law suits hit national attention...suits against the city for not allowing the officers to adequately protect themselves. The city lost. The city then quietly stated officers could carry 357s at their own expense. The liberal antigun and ammo types went and hid their heads....

After five years the state of Virginia’s drug problem went from the third highest in growth in 1970 to the third from the bottom of the 50 states in growth. It wasn’t just supportive law enforcement...we also opened drug rehab centers and got the State’s Office of Education involved, State Health, and Mental Health and the State Police...they all had a place in the States recovery....as the Governor said to me in 1970, drag them all in to fill their part of the needs of the people. And I did...whether they screamed when we pulled them in or came willingly. We did the job. I left Virginia in 1976...went back to Fed Service and transferred to Arizona.

Because... of a number of unusual circumstances the Colt 38, my old friend was lost. Two decades later...I walked into gun shop in Tucson and there it was, in the used gun case. I couldn’t believe it was the same revolver. I checked the serial numbers....I left the gun and went home and checked old records, to check my memory of the serial numbers. I told my family of the strange happening. By that time it was evening and the store was closed. The next day around noon I went back to buy back my old gun. It was gone again!...Someone, that morning had bought it. I couldn’t believe it..lost again by two hours...the store couldn’t tell me who purchased it...saying the paper work was buried and I would have to wait, while they found out if it was legal to even give me the information

Seventeen days later was Christmas...and my youngest daughter (who is a grown woman), gave me the Colt for a present. She had bought it...even had her mother slow me down that morning so she could get to the gun store first. She had the folks at the gun store promise not to tell me...The Good Book says raise a child up straight...etc...

Strange as it is....the 38/357 cartridge didn’t come into my life until a few years after using a Colt Single action in 44 Special....and 45 Colt. My first exposure was with the military in Africa...military 38 Special ammo then (and most likely now) was the pits...worse then the 158 grain lead commercial load.

My reloads with Unique under reassembled 158 gr lead commercial ammo was in the 38 plus P+ area. But I didn’t used them enough to realize the potential of heavy loaded 38s and 357s. It was in 1959 in a ‘A’ Camp in Viet Nam that I realized the power of the 357, and in the wild back country in the 1970s in Virginia that, I discovered the other good qualities of the 38/357 loads.

This February 1999 has been my 33 year in some form of Law Enforcement. Soon I will hang it up....but like the old fire horse, every time I hear an emergency police siren I will always know, they are playing....My Song..

Paco with a pair of .44's
south of Vail, AZ.

Click on the small photo for a larger view