I am desolate and devastated! The Superhero of MY generation,
THE LONE RANGER
has been proven to be a fraud, a sham, fake news, with feet of…. well, not silver.
The story always was, that the cave that Tonto found him holed up in, turned out to be a silver mine. The Lone Ranger used the silver to buy supplies, and make his bullets from. Just how he found time to dig out and smelt the silver, when he was so busy ridin’, and shootin’, and generally saving the west, was never explained. Perhaps he had Tonto’s undocumented relatives do it for minimum wage.
Recently, I was ambling through an online science article, maintaining a brisk pace so that not too much of that learnin’ rubbed off on me, when suddenly I was stopped in my tracks.
Melting point of silver: 961.78°C (1,763°F)
WAIT! WHAT??
The melting point of lead, to make bullets with, is only 327.50°C (621.50°F). Hell, that stuff is so soft and ductile that you can almost mold it with your hands on a warm, sunny day. Silver though, requires nearly three times the heat. It’s not something that you just warm up like a skillet of beans over a campfire. It requires somewhat sophisticated equipment, often more than merely a rustic, frontier forge.
How could I have missed that??! Even the writer for the Canadian group, The Five Man Electrical Band understood it. In their song, Werewolf, a father must melt a tiny, silver dinner bell into a musket ball, to kill a son who has gone Loup. The lines of lyric read:
We went down to the blacksmith,
Got him out of bed, said, “Get your fire hot!”
We gotta close all the doors, shut up the shutters
We’re gonna need all the heat we got.
Even after you get it melted, this stuff don’t take to being cast in molds none too well. The surfaces all have cavitations and spalling, making any bullets so non-aerodynamic, that he’d be more likely to shoot a passing buffalo, than the gun out of the hand of some cattle rustler.
I never saw him and Tonto, sitting around the fire at night, singing away, like Roy Rogers or Gene Autry. Maybe because they were busy polishing those bullets smooth with their socks – if Tonto even wore socks. 😯 Aagghhh, he was probably just some rich dilettante from back East, who had his ammunition shipped to him, c/o Sitting Bull, by pony express.
A major portion of my childhood is/was not to be trusted. 😳 What’s next??! Somebody will tell me that Aquaman can’t actually talk to sharks and whales? 😕 😀
Hmmm..I don’t know much about The Lone Ranger. The superhero of my generation is Superman. LOL! ~((Φ◇Φ)‡
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By the time that I could read about Superman, in the papers and comic books, he had already graduated from Canadian, Joe Schuster’s idea of having the strength to leap tall buildings, to being able to fly – with no explanation of how that was possible. 😳
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LOL! (´∇ノ`*)ノ
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There’s no Batcave?
Say it isn’t so! And
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That’s how the wife refers to my computer room. 😉 😆
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The Lone Ranger is mine and my Dad’s favourite superhero and I love that we’re not the only ones. Our love is based on the comic books, particularly the annuals, that were put out when he was a kid. For years, I monitored news of the Lone Ranger movie and when it was going to be made and released but we were very disappointed by the Armie Hammer/Johnny Depp interpretation. So unworthy of its great source material. FYI, Jim (an old family friend and former ranger) worked the silver mine and made the bullets for the Lone Ranger. 🙂
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Interesting. Between my paper route and household chores, I must have missed that detail. Thanx. 🙂
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This was a special and magical silver, just like his horse of the same name.
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Did the Pope bless it??! Like the loaves and fishes, it could multiply from Judas’ 30 pieces, to enough to tame the West. 😯
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Enjoyed this post! Lone Ranger had a modern reprise I think.
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I thought it was spelled Fiasco. I took one look at the promo photo of Johnny Depp, realized the boat from Colombia had docked, and skipped the movie.
Jay Silverheels, who played Tonto, was born just down the highway. I don’t think NASA has discovered the planet that Depp or his character came from. 😛
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Haha! I love reading your posts!
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There’s a Summer Rerun due tomorrow morning. 🙂
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Read it and enjoyed it!
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hahaha 😂 funny and unique post! I understand you perfectly! The hero of my generetion and sport activity was Lance Armstrong … I was devastated ioo when he admitted the truth. I had defended him all over the net, blogs, cycling forums, social media for two years! 😌 😥 🙄
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