The Trip - Springfield

It's Springfield, Massachusetts, not any of the other Springfields.

We drove around yesterday afternoon to look at the historic and/or fancy houses in Springfield ("City of Homes"). We saw a bunch of them.

Victorians


Streets where they believe in front porches


And some serious ostentation


I love the brick, even on smaller houses, because we don't have any brick in California. Earthquakes would destroy it.

In nearby Longmeadow, which indeed has a long meadow, some of the houses date back to the colonial period. This one was built in 1765. We don't get that kind of age out West.


Today, it was back to Springfield for the Armory, a museum of the guns that were manufactured there for 174 years.

The historic weapons industry in Springfield was stopped in 1968 by Secretary of Defense Robert C. McNamara.


The innovations over the years at the Armory included the Springfield 1903 rifle and the M1 rifle, both put to longterm use.

They had a cool display of "Mishaps" with various rifles. These are two of them. The bottom one was hit by a large projectile and was found on a Civil War battlefield. The top gun was struck by lightning as a sentry carried it on a rainy night. The sentry survived.


A World War I era propaganda notice should be a reminder for the New York Times and its secret-publishing comerades-in-print. We are at war and the enemy is listening (and reading).


The Springfield Armory is great for people with a serious interest in weaponry, especially guns. It's OK for people like me, with a mild interest in them, though I found some displays pretty cool, like the lathe for making the wooden gun stocks, since it can recreate odd shapes. One visit was enough for me.