Whipped Cream Difficulties

I missed it, but I hope not by too much.

May 5th was the 100th anniversary of the birth of Herb Parsons. I, of course, was on the road at the time: even if I hadn’t been, I was unaware of this until yesterday, when a copy of Showman Shooter: The Life and Times of Herb Parsons came into my hands.

Who was Herb Parsons? He was a famous exhibition shooter: he worked for Winchester from 1929 until his untimely death in 1959 (with, of course, a break during WWII, where he served as a gunnery instructor). Quoting from the Showman Shooter website:

He would toss seven clay pigeons into the sky and shatter the last while pieces from the first were hitting the ground. He would “center” a handful of eggs between his legs, wheel around with a shotgun and scramble ’em, one at a time. He would suspend a can of gasoline over a candle inside a 55-gallon barrel, then render the whole works to a towering inferno from a safe distance. Using a mirror and two rifles, he would break two targets at the same instant—one in front, the other directly behind him.

His sons, Lynn and Jerry, are working to keep Herb’s legacy alive. The Showman Shooter website offers copies of the book, and videos of Herb, Ad and Plinky Toepperwein, John Satterwhite, and the excellent compilation, “Fast and Fancy Shooters”, along with some more background about Herb. I commend the site to your attention, and will be sending off a check for the DVD soon.

Here are a couple of videos that aren’t on the website, but that I think are interesting:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 16th, 2018 at 9:16 am and is filed under Books, Guns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.