Warrior Pilgrimage

Featured in WARRIOR PILGRIMAGE on February 1, 2011.

VISITED MY OLD friends in Danao City on July 21, 2010. I call them Mr. Fine and Mr. Coarse. They are craftsmen skilled in the repair of small handguns and they are a father-and-son tandem. I used to go there once every 3 or 4 months to answer some of my friend's favor to have their pistol or revolver checked for flaws and to improve its features. But not anymore.

This time, I'm dropping by just to say hello and keep the lines open for good times sake. The place look the same but they have a very robust garden now and some ducks and a new member – Mr. Coarse's infant daughter. Mr. Fine's workshop is dusty as ever cluttered with tools, gun parts and other items, some of which are scrap but can be converted anytime into reusable spares. Trust that to Mr. Fine's ingenuity.

For those who don't know, Danao City is a gunrunner's paradise. It has nurtured and developed an underground gun-making industry. The availability of scrap steel in the 1930s have goaded the first gun-makers to make a crude, but workable, replica of a Colt caliber .38 revolver sans the rifling and engraving. Fast forward to the present...READ MORE (Press CTRL + mouse click)