Jim Austin and I go back to the mid-70's, when we were both grad students at Northern Iowa, me in French, Jim in English. Believe he was teaching English at Coe College in Cedar Rapids at the time. Hunted grouse and quail with him one day. Started in NE Iowa, moved a few grouse, didn't kill any. Jim was using a Remington 12ga of some sort, me my first classic sxs, a pre-war Sauer 16. We then chased some quail down around Cedar Rapids, and for that occasion, Jim dug out a Diana Grade Superposed 28ga. I was suitably impressed. Back then, he was living in the 2nd floor apartment of a big, old house in Cedar Rapids with an arthritic shorthair and a serious collection of Lugers.
Fast forward 20+ years, I visited NE Arms while on vacation with the wife in New England. That was when Jim was a guest of Uncle Sam and McCarthy was running the place. I mentioned to McCarthy that I knew Jim from long ago in Iowa. "Would you like to talk to him?" he asked me. Trying to be very diplomatic, I said: "I understood that Jim isn't . . . here, just now." "Oh no," says McCarthy, "but he calls in every day about this time." And a few minutes later, sure enough, he did--and we talked.
They were importing FAIR OU's when they went out of business. Cabela's bought up most of those, as well as several SIACE hammerguns. Quite a bit of the really high dollar stuff ended up at a place called Dewing's in FL, which eventually went out of business as well.
NE Arms was quite a place. Just the property, on the water in Kittery Point, had to be worth a bundle.
