Once upon a time, there was a gunwriter.
Said gunwriter ran across mention of a particular fantasy model long-slide 1911 pistol, in 10mm, manufactured by Junior, at his dad's facility in a certain Southwestern state somewhere down near Mexico.
Dad was well known for arrogance and....other things.
Junior, turns out, inherited Dad's arrogance.
The fantasy pistol looked mildly interesting, and gunwriters are always looking for guns to write about.
After getting the editorial go-ahead, a test sample was requested of Junior, and duly delivered.
It was a polished-up tricked-out theme pistol, with "engraving" and other "improvements", and the sale price was $2700.
Herman Munster might have liked it.
After the writer fired it, he got back with Junior to discuss the range results.
Junior was not happy when the writer questioned performance and one or two of the "improvements".
The writer pointed out, politely, that the slide action was sluggish and seemed undersprung, asked about the thought behind the thumb safety modification that no longer locked the slide in place when activated, and mentioned that the $2700 custom pistol did not shoot as accurately as a box-stock Colt 1911 in 10mm that he'd worked with a few months before.
Junior became so indignant that he demanded his pistol back immediately and refused any further participation in the article.
He also contacted the writer's editor at the publishing company, informed him that the writer was obviously incompetent, knew nothing whatever about high-dollar custom pistols, and that his Dad's company was pulling their ad account until the writer was fired.
The writer, incidentally, had worked with a $4500 full-on custom Cylinder & Slide long-slide 1911 within a year of this occurrence, had worked with a number of high-end custom pistols from other custom shops previously, and had actually experienced a broken link during testing of the C&S pistol, which was discussed with Bill Laughridge, C&S owner, over the phone.
When that writer had a question about test results, or wanted to discuss & give a company a chance to explain, he commonly would call, to get a good overall picture for readers.
When he described the broken link to Laughridge on the C&S pistol, Laughridge said "We apparently fitted the barrel too tightly & the link was stressed. Go ahead and write it up the way you found it. We goofed."
No tantrums.
A class act.
An honest man who stands by his work, and is one of the biggest names in the 1911 biz.
As opposed to Junior, who has no real credentials, falls apart when his work is discussed (by a QUALIFIED writer), and throws a major hissy-fit in vindictively striking out against that writer and throwing power around that he didn't actually have to get him fired.
That writer was never fired, incidentally.
Junior got his pistol back, and the article was canceled.
Just a story, of course.....
Denis
