My Friday Gun Shop Adventure

So last Friday after I picked up my new gun, I was on the hunt for some half-decent factory ammo to run through it, namely the Remington UMC. It's about the hottest factory practice ammo you're gonna find on the shelf, drives a 180-grain FMJ at about 1150 fps, or so they advertise. I'd only seen it at one gun store around here, Shooters Supply, which of course closed earlier this year. I'd seen references to another little shop in Vidor here and there, Gary's Guns out on Highway 12 just northeast of where it runs into the interstate.
So after I took care of my Friday business, I rode out there to pick some up. I'd called 'em before and the clerk told me they had plenty of it.
"You might wanna stock up now, my friend, 'cause it's only gonna go up from here." One more reason I am quite glad I took up reloading.
Anyway, I got out there late Friday afternoon. They had a pretty good selection of pretty much anything gun-related you'd want, at least with what I could tell with my somewhat cursory glance around the store. The guy at the counter told me, "We got anything you could want, what do you like?"
Bet you could guess what I told him, too. "Well, I have a bit of a fetish for 1911s."
The ole boy didn't miss a beat. "What caliber? .45, 9mm, 10mm? How 'bout a .38 Super?"
"Well," I said, as I glanced down at a Kimber 10mm identical to the one I picked up last year, "I do like the 10mm, in fact, I picked up a Dan Wesson Razorback earlier today."
"Well then. You need a .38 Super. Check this out." With that he pulled out one of the most beautiful Smith & Wesson 1911s I'd ever seen -- a Doug Koenig model from the S&W Performance Center, with the square trigger. As far as I remember, the price on that thing was somewhere in the neighborhood of $1500.
"Try it out and see what you think."
Lord have mercy. They say the 1911 generally has the best trigger pull of any pistol, but this was out of this world. The trigger pull alone would have been worth the price tag, you just wouldn't belieeeeve. But I'd have been paying it off forever. Speaking of that, the store clerk piped up again.
"We got this little thing called layaway..."
"Yeah, and I have this little friend in my pocket called a credit card, but it'd hate me forever, and I already shoot one esoteric caliber, I can't quite afford another right now..." I did say that as I laughed and grinned, though. "But I do have another little friend at home, an RCBS turret press."
And off the discussion went into reloading. He said he loaded a bunch of calibers, though I don't remember which ones he said he loaded the most. 9mm, 10mm, .45, .38 Super, 9x23 were some of the ones he mentioned, though. I asked him if he had any pet loads for the Centimeter, but he said he only played around with that one. My impression was pretty favorable, though. The guy sounded like he knew his stuff pretty well. All that and virgin 10mm brass, to boot -- the only place in the Golden Triangle I've seen it! No once-fired, but none of the other shops I'd frequented had that either. As far as I remember it was about $15 per hundred, With that price, and the other components, one could load 10mm at a price that runs neck-and-neck with factory .45acp, and that's hardly a bad thing. Like I say, I'll be checking them out more...