The Colt wound up in the hands of a young officer who loved Terry Tussey’s work, and equally loved guns which could murmur stories in the night; tales of standoffs and shootouts; face-downs with felony fugitives; SWAT missions and stakeouts; drug lab raids and cornered killers; horrors, hostages and heroism. He got both with the Tussey Colt. That young officer was our own Roy-Boy, now the Publishing Potentate, long before he was even His Illuminated Editorial Immenseness. Who’d a thought?
I know Roy shot it a lot, punishing, polishing and praising it. Ultimately it became his Bedside Boomer; his Bumpin-the-Night Gun. Rivers ran, fortunes changed, years passed, paths crossed and recrossed. Terry and Roy became friends, as did Roy and Uncle John. I fit in there somewhere.
Uncle John rarely spoke of that gun, and only when he was delivering his patented parable about letting things go. No matter how much you value something, he said, when letting go is the right thing to do, you walk away and never look back; Shut Up, Get Over It, and Move On.
Tale Of A Roamin' Pony
The Colt That Came Home
A gunfighter’s grail: A Tussey Custom Colt, ‘smithed 30 years ago — now reborn.
It was late 1980 or early ’81 when a stone-faced man in a dark suit stepped into the shop of up-and-coming gunsmith Terry Tussey. Stoneface surveyed the room with scorched-earth eyes, and then closed the door. Terry quickly spotted the bulges under Stoneface’s arms, and felt a little relief when his coat parted to reveal a gold badge clipped to his belt.
Though decades younger then, Terry already knew serious armed thugs had occasionally hit gunsmiths’ shops. After all, that’s where the good guns were. And this guy looked nothin’ but serious. Sure didn’t look much like “Officer Friendly” though. He wasn’t.
Stoneface laid a blue box and an envelope on the counter. The box contained a spanky-new Colt Mark IV Series 80 Government Model 1911A1 pistol. The envelope held a sheet listing operations to be performed on it. Most were reliability mods, like lowering and flaring the ejection port; throating the barrel and polishing the ramp; tuning the extractor and smoothing the trigger; combat sights and more, finished off with a frosted matte industrial hard chrome job. Terry spontaneously started to ask a routine question.
“So, the primary purpose of …” and Stoneface cut him off.
“Gunfighting,” he said, and tapped the list. “You may shave a little accuracy for absolute reliability, but she’s got to shoot into eye sockets at 15 and fists at 50 — with government hardball.” He dropped his card on the counter and turned to leave.
“Fists?”
The man silently laid a big fist over the center of his chest. Terry nodded; he understood.
“I’ve heard you’re good,” Stoneface said. “Show me.”
Terry looked at the card, made a coupla phone calls, muttered “Hmm …” a few times, and then — Oh, boy, did Terry show HIM! When his two descending Ts in an oval were finally stamped on that Colt it was a gunfighter’s grail, brutal and beautiful at once; elegant and ominous; a pure bullet-launcher and deadly serious, like the man it was made for.
Two little Ts — the mark that cracked the Great Stone Face.
From Roy’s and Terry’s hands, back to where it belonged.
The Man, The Missions
That stonefaced man was my Uncle John, then commanding officer of one of the nation’s largest and most active SWAT units. He had risen through the ranks of SWAT the same way he’d earned combat promotions as a Marine: by single-minded ferocious dedication to the mission, whatever it was, at whatever risk. He was at his best — even his most comfortable — when playing the game “You Bet Your Life” with dangerous men. He didn’t do so well with what he called “politics, platitudes and patty-cake.”
He may tell his own story someday, but I’ll tell you this one to sorta illustrate the man: When unit commanders were ordered to generate yet another piece of PC feel-good fluff — a “C.O.’s Statement on Race and Color” — he gathered his SWAT cops and said, “This is our policy on race and color: We have two races — the 440 and the mile, run quarterly. We have one color: camouflage. Dismissed!” He got thunderous cheers from the troops, and a thorough reaming from the brass. He didn’t care. Only the mission counted.
The damages of duty caught up with him a decade later, and he found himself disabled, retired and financially strained. Some guns had to go, and the one he could get the highest return for was that Tussey Custom Colt. It stung him worse than shrapnel and he grieved to let it go, but the stone face never slipped or sagged. He sold it and never looked back.
Rat-Bite Times Two
When Terry learned Roy had that Colt, it sorta bothered him. He built guns for individuals, and he’d built that particular gun for a very particular man. He filed it under Other People’s Business and tried to forget it. But like a lone rat in a vast ship’s hold, it nibbled at him on a thousand nights, and finally, it bit. He didn’t know his rat had a cousin in another ship’s hold a thousand miles away, and it bit — hard — on the same night.
When Terry called Roy the next morning, he was prepared to be forceful; his sense of righteousness was simmering. “Roy,” he began sternly, “About John’s Colt — where is it right now? It’s his gun, Roy, and he should have it!”
Roy was stunned. That Colt was on his desk, lying under his hand; removed from his nightstand in the gray dawn. He had already dug out a shipping box for it.
“Ummm …” he muttered, feeling the hair on the back of his neck stiffen and rise. “Uhh … Last night, I, umm … I was gonna send it, umm … today, you know … to John … Holy smokes, Terry! What’s goin’ on?”
They talked. Terry asked Roy to send the Colt to him, first. Once it was in his skilled hands, Terry lit it up, tore it down to the last pin, and commenced … magic. It was not reworked; it was reborn; not face-lifted so much as forged anew. Our conspirators enlisted an accomplice …
Neither Terry nor Roy could be there when Aunt C handed Uncle John a plain cardboard box and said simply, “Open it” — but I was. He lifted out what looked like a spanky-new Colt Mark IV Series 80 Government Model 1911A1 pistol; new, but far from “stock.” Realization began to dawn as Stoneface read the port side of the slide and, and even the Duty Dummy — me — could see clouds breaking over the Man With a Mission’s face. He slowly turned the pistol to its starboard side, and his eyes fell on those twin Ts in an immaculate oval — Terry’s earliest logo. It was several minutes before he could even rack the slide and gently, reverently pull the trigger.
I can’t do the moment justice. Perhaps no one can. It was like seeing an old samurai presented with the lost sword of his ronin years; watching as spirits rise from the steel in wisps of smoke, whispering tales of ancient battles.
After 30 years, the roamin’ pony returned. The Tussey Colt came home. Terry Tussey’s hands twice made it superior; gave it excellence. It is now in the hands of the man who made it memorable; gave it history.
Why tell this story? First, because it warms and gladdens me, and I can. Second, because some of us, all of us, now and then need reassurance that among good and honorable men, sometimes what goes around comes around, and that can be a good thing. Thanks for reading.
Connor OUT.
