I don’t have anything much to offer this thread, as I rarely if ever visit this cubby hole on the board. The only thing I’ve got is that when I opened the thread and saw the pics of Mike’s gun room, it immediately brought back some fond memories.
I was in Anchorage in 2007 getting ready to start a new job up around the Fairbanks area. I got ahold of Mike and he invited me over to his house. What an experience. The first place he took me was up to his research office. Spent and hour or more up there just looking through old books and pictures and listening to him talk about past and present projects. Amazing stuff up in that office, oodles of historical information, almost too much to really take in.
Next, we went to the garage and he sternly told me not to tell anyone about what we were going to see next (I think the statute of limitations has run out on that…), I said ok, and he moved a panel off of the wall, there was a door behind it and he unlocked it and we went in….I was floored. What an amazing collection of guns, exactly what you see in the pictures here on this thread. For the next two or three hours we sat down there pulling each and every gun off the rack and Mike would go through each guns history. Unbelievable experience. I remember him showing me several old grainy pictures of a rifle. I don’t remember all the details but it was an important gun, built by Ackley or Niedner I don’t remember exactly, he told the story of him trying to find that exact gun in the pictures. 30+ years of research, sleuthing, etc….just trying to find this elusive gun….and then he pulled it off the rack and showed it to me. It blew me away. What tenacity!!
My favorite gun in the rack was his W&C Scott Excellentia. It was gorgeous and in unbelievable condition. I coveted that gun and always wanted one just like it from that day on. He had a very nice W.W. Greener in the rack as well that was in beautiful condition. My favorite was the Scott though.
I miss Mike. His generosity and wealth of knowledge was amazing. I really enjoyed my initial visit and subsequent conversations and visits with him. I still think about him from time to time, and it makes me happy to see his name and guns come up in conversation. One of my favorite “gun people” ever.
