Post Falls Pilgrimage and a Potpourri of Ponderings
The other day, I decided to make a special trip over to Post Falls, Idaho to tour the Buck Knives factory and check out some other outdoors-related stores nearby.
The Buck reception area is quite nice. A huge fireplace dominates one wall, and there is a cozy seating area between the fireplace and the front desk. There is a store selling knives and apparel further back, and they sell prototypes, factory blemishes, and discontinued products at a discount. There is also a small museum upstairs showcasing products and advertisements from Buck history.
A warranty office handles walk-in claims. I was able to get these replacements for two old pocket knives. One had a broken handle at the blade hinge, and the other would not lock open anymore. The Buck Forever Warranty is quite good.
The factory tour was informative. Almost all the production work occurs in-house, from stamping or laser-cutting the blade blanks all the way through final finishing. No photography was permitted on the tour, but I got a halfway decent shot of the factory through the museum window overlooking a portion of the factory.
There was a fair bit of work going on, and the usual factory smells of hot metal, oil, and assorted chemicals filled the air. I recommend the tour, whether you're familiar with manufacturing processes or not.
After the tour, I stopped by the Tedder Industries factory in an old outlet mall space. They make and sell Alien Gear holsters there. No factory tours are available there, but they can make holsters to order for almost any pistol, and I was amused by this sign in the parking lot.
After that, I meandered over to Cabela's in Stateline. This may be the ultimate sporting goods mecca, but I also visited Black Sheep further east in Coeur d'Alene, too. It's smaller, and sometimes has better prices. There's less of a pretension surcharge, after all. But Cabela's does have nice taxidermy displays and a huge fish tank. I also got a nice shot of the mountains from the Cabela's lot.
I also stopped at S.O.S Surplus, just up the road. It's not far from Patrick McManus' descriptions of Grogan's War Surplus. There is a crowded and cluttered front shop with display cabinets and a small gun room, and then further back are huge warehouses stuffed with surplus gear, camping supplies, and odds and ends of all descriptions. Paintball markers and other hobby items are here, too.
Pondering the Past
Well over a decade ago, I worked in this vicinity at various jobs. The call center from hell was not far from the Buck Knives factory, and before the soul-crushing desk job of answering phones and selling more phones, I also worked at an agricultural job near Stateline in the spring of 2007. I remember that my boss was quite enamored with left-wing talk radio and an enthusiastic supporter of Democrat politicians. This was around the time I discovered Ron Paul during my shift away from mainstream Republicanism when I was disillusioned with the results of Bush II's presidency.
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The Democrats haven't earned my support as a substitute for the Republicans, though. The US two-party system relies on a false choice between two gangs of liars, each promising to make you half-free if you submit to their control. The zero-sum game of politics is rigged so no matter who wins, liberty loses. Various third parties can only corrupt themselves by trying to play this game, and they're all amateurs facing seasoned pros who are also more than willing to cheat. It's as rigged to favor the house as a casino, and at least one enters a casino voluntarily.
OK, enough of that tangent. On to another?
I was in the area again because of the outdoors-related attractions, but Stateline has indoor attractions as well. That venue doesn't really appeal to me. I admire the feminine figure as much as the next guy, but I'd really rather not be in close proximity to that next guy in a noisy environment while admiring feminine figures. In addition, based on my co-workers at the agricultural job and their enthusiastic discussions about spending their pay every Friday night, I really don't think I have a high opinion of the average clientèle IQ. It's just not my crowd. I may be a prude by some standards, but I'm not puritanical. I may be libertarian, but I'm not a libertine.
I have been told by old-timers that at one point, Idaho had a lower drinking age than Washington, and consequently, Stateline was the destination for young Washingtonians eager for legal alcohol, so it seems the hedonistic party atmosphere isn't new. Now that drinking ages are standardized by federal law, the Washington marijuana laws mean those seeking to circumvent prohibitions against different intoxicants flow across the state line in the other direction. No matter how it is structured, or how those structures change over time, the regulation and taxation of vice for our own good will always perplex me.
The same prohibitionist power grab is involved whether deciding what people can smoke, when they are old enough to drink, and what sort of gun people may own. Public safety is always the excuse for these authoritarian impositions, but the reality is violent enforcement of bad laws that criminalize people who have harmed no one. If there is no victim who has suffered an articulable and demonstrable violation of life, liberty, or property, there is no crime. When government dictates a prohibition, it necessarily enforces it with threats of articulable and demonstrable violations of life, liberty, or property. That isn't progress, no matter how loudly you proclaim yourself to be a progressive.