A few months ago there was several of us bad mouthing the American Rifleman magazine and all of us felt that it had gone down the tube. In my opinion it has sunk to the lowest level that exists.Guess what? A couple of weeks ago I stopped by a friends house for a little visit. We've been friends for several years but due to the fact that he worked all over the U.S. we would have little contact for long periods of time. He has retired for the second time and swears he is going to stay retired so maybe we can have our old friendship again.
One of his uncles had passed away and left him all of his belongings. He took me down in his gunroom to show the latest firearms he inherited from his uncle .He should have charged me a admission for that viewing. Of course I couldn't trade him out of any of them. He said that he had hauled back a bunch of early American Rifleman magazines and wanted to know if I would like to have them. Of course, I said sure. I couldn't believe what they were when we opened them up. They were complete sets starting with 1950 through the late 80's. There may be earlier ones because I haven't gotten through all of the boxes yet .A lot of the sets have duplicate copies. There was 9 copy paper boxes full and I even found several old playboy magazines .Get this, he said that there were about twice that many more still at his uncles house and the next trip he made he would bring all of them to me .I think that all of the ones that he will be bringing are probably even older thatn 1950. I'm 75 years old and am in Gun lovers heaven when I'm reading all of this old info. I absolutely love it. My wife didn't like the smell due to the years of being boxed up so I have them out in the shop at the present. I've been trying to deodorize them by taking a big black garbage bag and laying a few criss-crossed magazines in them and throwing in some baking soda, putting in more mags and more soda &etc. It is working pretty good. I just brought some in the house tonight. She hasn't complained yet but she does have a very bad cold.. Does anyone have any suggestions for deodorization procedures? Back in the early 70's I used to go to gun shows and buy the old rifleman magazines for about a dime a piece. I just had to share this.
Mashburn
David a. Cogburn