Fall 2025 - Just got mine today|The Winchester Collector Magazine.|Forum|Winchester Collector

PRELUDE.  Yesterday I drove about 30 miles North to the TGCA show in Denton, amidst threatening clouds that turned into drenching rainstorms as the morning wore on. Met my fellow shootist TxGunNut as he was leaving his table to do an outdoor chore further North.   I expect he got back to the show looking like a drowned Water buffalo (Mike is not small.)  Saw Ben and Elliot and managed barely to escape the show without buying a factory-scoped Model 69. Elliot can mess with your mind about those things. 

IMPORTANT SAFETY TIP.  If you should come to one of the excellent gun shows at the Hilton Embassy Suites in Denton, and you drive up I-35E from Dallas to get there in bad weather, AND you become so unnerved by the redneck kamikazes weaving in and out of high speed traffic in Super Duties and Hemi-fired Rams that you look for another route back to metro Dallas —- heed me. Do not EVER consider driving East on U.S. 380 to the most northerly end of the Dallas North Tollway and taking it Southbound back to Big D.

From McKinney all the way West past Pilot Point, a Big Box Exurbia construction zone has sprouted like a social disease and it’s bumper to bumper, stop and go at walking speed, most of the way. By the time you turn onto the Tollway,  everybody is half-insane with frustration and all Hell lets out for noon. In my case, in a blinding rain and on a friction-free road surface. 

As all 4 columns of traffic race toward Plano at 80-85 mph, I’m in the second from the rightmost lane because I know the rightmost splits off to join the southbound lanes of the Sam Rayburn Tollway, just before the rest of us  disappear downhill into a giant rabbit hole underneath the  Rayburn northbound lanes. 

To make things more interesting, our rightmost lane is stopped and backed up with those trying to get onto southbound Rayburn. We are flying by the stopped traffic, our doors maybe 6 feet apart, when Mr. Horsetrailer gets tired of waiting and pulls his Escalade and horse out into my lane, less than 20 yards away.

At over 70 mph I don’t have time to look left, I just stay off my brakes, swerve left to avoid becoming one with the horse and flash past the Escalade within inches of its driver side door. Mercifully, the driver in the lane to my left must have seen it about to happen and tapped his brakes to avoid sending my high and narrow Tacoma into a fatal two-axis roll. If I knew who he was, I would buy him fresh underwear and an interior detail job for his car. 

WHAT ABOUT THE COLLECTOR? What’s this got to do with the Fall issue of the Winchester Collector ?  As soon as I got clear of the Tollway, I pulled off into a parking lot to recover my composure and called my wife. When I got home, she laid out the just-delivered Collector  next to my reading chair, along with a cup of hot coffee and a couple of her teacakes. There’s nothing better than enjoying stories written by your friends while you are still intensely grateful to be alive.