Beating Bullets Into Wine Corks

or… something like that. Anyway, today's news from the crypt is that we finally sold our collection of Civil-War-era cartidges. Yay! I pocketed the cash and made a dash to the wine store.

A couple drove from Ohio to see the relics. We negotiated a price. They paid cash on the barrelhead. Then Jim and I gazed on as they took the more delicate packets of paper-wrapped man-killers into plastic coin tubes and padded them with cotton.

I labored hard on this sale, taking dynamite photographs (see...