The Left-Handed Sportsman - Uh-oh, I Bought A Right-Handed Bolt

Fella's;

I sell gunsafes, true safes, not tin boxes. Consequently, I attend gunshows as there seems to be a pre-qualified audience there to listen to my fascinating sales pitch.

However, being the sort of guy I am, I've been known to wander the aisles & check the merchandise. Occasionaly, I've even been known to hock a child or two & actually buy something. True, the wife gets on my case about it and without fail redeems whichever sprat it was, bending my ear for an intermitable time thereafter. Therefore, considering the inevitable fallout from nuclear wife, I purchase only after most careful consideration.

However, the eldest child, relatively unscarred by my parenting skills and still speaking to me, had requested that I find a good bolt action .22 rimfire for itself. Ergo, I had a reason, a mission as it were, to cruise the aisles and peruse the proffered wares for a suitable progeny specific pop-gun. And there it was, it said BRNO on the side & was in .22 rimfire. The wood looked weird, but the metal looked great. Knowing as I did, that if I handled it for more than 15 seconds the price would go up, I dropped it like a hot rock, said "foriegn crap", and walked off.

The next day, I waited (skulked actually) until the table person sucumbed to either of the two irresistable pressures ( I most certainly did not bother to find out which ), left the tables and I spent some few minutes going over the gun. Which had a price tag of $265.00 on it. I also noted that next to the BRNO was another firearm that purported itself to again be a BRNO, but looked more like the red-headed stepchild of a third-world family.

Later in the day, negotiations were opened with the resident table-toad over the sibling firearm. The one that had obviously recieved the tender attentions of a cosmetician weilding a large and effective ugly stick. I had said that I was looking for a cheap kid's gun, but the one he was showing me had been pre-kidded. I then allowed the person to show me the better looking of the two guns, but told him that he'd obviously forgotten that the word cheap had been included in my initial statement. I wasn't gonna pay $265.00 for some oddball import. He then found out that I would pay $225.00 for an oddball import.

One of these days he's gonna find out that I took a new, in cosmoline, BRNO #1 off him for somewhat less than it was truly worth.

Subsequently, I contacted TOU on Rimfire Central about the gun. I wasn't sure just what it was, only recently getting the CZ bug & being real thin on information about BRNO's. Well, come to find out, TOU was going to be in the area & we arranged for him to look at it. I thought it might be a #5, however, he identified it for me as a 1952 #1 with a non-adjustable trigger. He says I should hug it, and squeeze it, and name it Udo, and never let it go. Other than that, he seemed sane. Real nice guy, pleasure to have him in the home. So nice a guy, that the nuclear wife was as pleasant to him as she ever gets to people I discuss guns with. And that's saying something.

900F