I've just received a (cough) rather charismatic Springfield Model of 1922 M1I (Armory-upgraded M2) .22LR, sporterized to order for a customer by Griffin and Howe in 1958. The rifle is a beefy, heavy-barrelled charmer; its lines, to my eye, are unimpeachable, if slightly incongruent: It looks like someone decided they needed a full-sized African stopper rifle for shooting belligerent ruffed grouse straight through their brain-boxes at ten yards. With a Lyman rear peep. The crazy thing has a barrel-banded front sling-swivel attachment point, a jewelled bolt, and a checkered steel trapdoor buttplate concealing a socket for a magazine. Among other features. Nothing this crowd ain't seen, I imagine, but I've never held something like it in my hands before. I feel like I'm custody of an artifact.
It's sort of the Marilyn Monroe of mid-century .22LR sporters, by my lights. A one-off, and a bit much to carry around, but I ain't gonna complain.
Well-assembled blondes aside, what might be of more interest to this archivally-bent hive-mind is the wad of paperwork that came with the rifle. It fills a letter-envelope beyond standard postage rates, and it's a summary of the entire ordering process, bi-directionally, with each of G&H's replies signed by Phil Johnstone. Receipts, work-order numbers, conversations about the suitability of the customer's supplied stock for customization... Echoes of a gone-away world, no doubt dictated, typed, and signed in ink. Mailed with stamps someone had to lick. My eyebrows are still sailing over my forehead.
The rifle's had only two owners, prior to me: the man who ordered the custom work to be done on his supplied rifle, almost sixty-five years ago, and the gent he willed it to upon his demise in 2017, and who just sold it to me, who's not put a round through it since it went to him. Because, as James McMurtry would put it, he's gettin' on in years.
Any interest in seeing pictures? Of the rifle, its paper-trail, or all of the above? Because I'd like to record this critter's existence for posterity, and this seems like the proper place to do so. Even if it's primarily a shotgun forum.
