Tales of Poor Dave |
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Dances with AutoMags
Callahan's Auto Mag Joined: 13 Oct 2011 Location: Valley Glen Status: Offline Points: 530 |
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Posted: 05 Jul 2021 at 3:17pm |
Tales of Poor Dave By Bruce Stark July 2021 I
first met Poor Dave (a.k.a. Auto Mag Dave) while I was working a table at the
old Great Western Gun Show at the LA County Fairgrounds in Pomona, California. It was 1979 and this was one of the first gun
shows at the fairgrounds in Pomona since the gun show moved from the old Great
Western Exhibit Center in East LA. I was
selling Auto Mag parts with Ed O'Neil. Ed
was the personal gunsmith of Harry Sanford who manufactured the Auto Mag
handgun. I
asked Ed why he was referring to Dave as Poor Dave. Ed said, "You'll learn, you'll
learn" and boy did I. Dave
was about 5 foot 10 inches tall and overweight.
He had a voice that seemed to be a mix of Floyd the barber on the Andy
Griffith show and Kermit the frog from Sesame Street. Ed said that Dave was his own worst enemy by
continually doing things that were not in his best interest. Ed
and Dave spoke about Dave's Pasadena Auto Mag that he had loaned to a movie
company that was filming "Scared to Death." Dave said he had not gotten the gun back
yet but he got the gun back a few weeks later. The gun had been
beat-to-death during the filming of Scared to Death. If you watch the movie you can see how the
gun is mistreated. Dave
had several friends with him that he had met at the many Star Trek conventions
he attended. A couple of them were prop
makers that Dave worked with at several prop houses and studios. The crowd of guys physically moved Dave along
like an unruly child who was liable to do something wrong. Dave
and I spoke and I discovered that he lived less than a mile from where I lived
in Van Nuys, California. We decided to
get together to discuss and review the Auto Mags, and other guns, that Dave
owned. Dave's
apartment was a sight to behold. The
living room appeared to have no floor as boxes were piled up to eye level and only
narrow canyons allowed movement in the room.
The room was freezing cold as a hole in the wall belched out freezing
air and water dripped down the wall.
Dave explained that when he moved into this apartment, there was a sheet
of plywood covering the air conditioning hole in the wall. Dave complained to the landlord that his
apartment was too hot so the landlord removed the plywood and this is what he
had to put up with. When Dave moved out of the apartment, he didn't get his
deposit back because the landlord claimed that Dave had ruined the wall with
the water coming out of the air conditioning hole. We
had looked at a couple of guns when Dave asked for a several hundred dollar
loan. I loaned him $300 and took a
Whitney Wolverine as collateral on the loan.
It was summer and Dave said he would pay back the loan in 45 days. I told him he had until Christmas to pay me
back. He never paid me back on the loan
and I still have that Whitney Wolverine.
Dave
knew how to make molds and cast polyurethane items. Dave and his friend James T. Kirk made
reproduction Star Trek props that they would sell at the conventions. Dave branched out and also made a model of the
spacecraft used in sci-fi movies like Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Dave also made silver and gold copies of the
ring that was used by Blofeld, who was the head of Spectre in several James
Bond movies. Dave had a connection to a
studio prop house that would loan Dave the original props to use to make
copies. Dave taught me the basics of making molds and casting so that I could make polyurethane grips for the Auto Mag. We worked on guns and on making molds on my kitchen table as there was no room at Dave's apartment to do much of anything. Every time Dave came over to my house he would take cans of food home with him as he always seemed to be broke and hungry.
Dave
was laid up for about a week after he was supposedly hurt by a cop. He explained that some of his friends had
invited him to go along on a midnight fishing trip off of the Santa Monica pier. There was to be a run of sculpin that
evening. The sculpin fish has semi venomous
spines that are to be avoided by a fisherman.
The guys filled a bucket with the fish and drove back to Van Nuys with
their catch. At dawn the guys were spotted by a pair of
cops unloading their car at Dave's apartment.
While they were explaining to the cops that they had just come from a fishing
trip, one of the cops said, so where are the fish? They pointed to the bucket. The cop said that he didn't see any fish and
was about to put his hand into the bucket.
He was warned that the fish were sculpin and that they had piousness
spines. The cop stuck his hand into the
bucket and immediately screamed in pain.
Dave must have said something that the cop didn't like because he
handcuffed Dave and , as Dave reported, beat him up. The cop had a bad reaction to the sculpin
and was taken away in an ambulance. Dave
sat in the back seat of a squad car for a long time. They couldn't find anything to charge Dave
with so they let him go.
I
introduced Dave to a friend of mine named Mike.
Mike and I had camped out all over the Mojave desert and Death
Valley. Dave said he would like to join
us on the next camp-out. Several of us
were going to a favorite camping place we called the Oak Tree. It was about 20 miles east of Palmdale, California. When we started to tell Dave what he might
want to bring to the campout he assured us he was an old hand at camping and
not to worry about him. When we picked
him up he only had a large paper grocery bag with him. When asked, Dave revealed that he hadn't
brought any food or anything to drink.
We stopped at a liquor store and Dave came out with another bag he said
was food for the campout. Apparently
Dave only bought candy and had it all eaten before we got to the campsite. The large grocery bag only contained a white
bed sheet. Dave begged for food from
some of the other campers and the next morning we found Dave sleeping in a hole
in the sand that he dug under the edge of a tarp that someone else had brought
and was using. Shortly
after this, Dave reported that he needed a new windshield for his diesel VW
Rabbit. On his way back from a shooting
session up San Francisquito Canyon, two boys with a fully auto BB gun took out
Dave's windshield as he was making a turn in the road. It
had been raining but Dave wanted to go shooting. We got into his VW Rabbit and headed for our
shooting spot up San Francisquito Canyon.
There was less than a mile of off-road driving to get to the shooting
area. The road was a deep muddy mess
that ran a couple hundred feet on the side of a cliff. Once Dave had committed himself to the road,
I told him to keep up his speed to keep us from getting stuck. Once we were out of the mud, Dave didn't slow
down. I told him to slow down but he
charged into a creek bed where he hit a rock with his oil pan. A minute later we were at the shooting area
where Dave's VW leaked out most of his engine oil onto the ground. As we left the shooting area on the muddy
road, two guys were casually walking down the muddy road in the tire
tracks. We could stop for them and get
stuck in the mud or keep going. Dave
decided to keep going which forced the two guys to jump off of the side of the
road into a muddy hell. We didn't look
back. We made it to a gas station where
we left the car and my wife picked us both up and drove us home. After
Dave replaced the oil pan, someone stole his car. He called me about this and later called to
say that his car had been returned with a broken drivers window. His car would disappear for a day and then reappear
several times in the next couple of months.
A mother cat had given birth to a litter of kittens that were living in
Dave's back seat. He had tried to move
the cats out of his car but the mother had really torn up Dave's arm. Shortly after the cats were out of Dave's car
he drove to Simi Valley to visit a friend.
When he got back into his car, he found that another cat was sleeping in
his back seat. He ran the cat out of his
car and then a neighbor started to chase him for dumping a cat in front of his
house. The
VW continued to be stolen and returned. When the car was returned Dave would
tape a piece of cellophane over the broken drivers window to keep out
cats. The VW was gone for about a week
and Dave called me about it. I told him
that he might as well report it as stolen.
Dave called the police and reported his stolen car to them. A short time later, the car was
returned. The next time Dave used the
car, he was arrested for being in possession of a stolen car. He was kept in jail even after proving that
the car was his. There were over $1,000
in unpaid parking tickets that had been charged to his car while it was being
used by the car thief. When
Dave was moving out of his apartment, a short Spanish speaking young woman
thanked Dave for the use of his car. She
said it had really helped her and her children.
The
end of the VW Rabbit came when Dave was driving on the Simi Valley Freeway. Dave recalled seeing a truck tire jump over
the K-rail and into oncoming traffic, which he was part of. Dave says that the next thing he remembers, an
angry guy was on his hood pulling the truck tire off of his lap through the
broken windshield. Dave tried to talk to
the guy but he only heard Spanish before he passed out again. The next thing he
remembers is that he had been handcuffed and was sitting in the back seat of a
Highway Patrol car. Dave eventually
convinced the cop that he was not drunk.
Dave got a ride home and the VW went to a wrecking yard. The
next time I was selling at the gun show, Dave and his friends came by my
table. I walked the show with Dave and
his friends for a while. They were real pushy with Dave and usually had him
surrounded by them as they ushered him around.
One of the guys explained that Dave was prone to just drift off and get
lost. He said Dave was easily distracted
by shiny objects. As we passed a table
full of Barbie dolls, the guy I was speaking with loudly said, Dave, look,
Barbies. Dave rushed to the table and
couldn't be pried away from it. He never
had any interest in Barbies but the excitement in his friends voice was all
that Dave needed to have an interest or infatuation with the dolls. I
sold at the gun show in Pomona for eight and a half years. I only sold on Friday and Saturday because
the Sunday show was not very good for
selling. On Sunday I went to the show
but not to sell. My friend Mike could
only go on Sunday and Dave wanted to go with us. When we got to the show, we briefed
Dave. We made him write down the parkinglot
space where we parked. We made him write
down the time of 5:30 pm when we would leave the show, with or without
him. We told him that the number one
rule was that he was not to leave any building without us. This was repeated several times. Dave ran into one of his studio friends and
handed me his Auto Mag to hold for him.
He had taken it to the gun show to wear in his hip holster. The next time we looked, Dave was gone. We scoured the building and found no
Dave. We walked the rest of the show and
found no Dave. The last shows here at
the LA County fairgrounds had nine and a half miles of tables. We stood by the exit and polled people as to
what we should do about a lost child so to speak. At 5:30 there was no Dave at the car. We waited until about 5:50 and didn't leave
the parking lot until 6:00. The
phone started ringing about 9:30 when the show closed. I wouldn't pickup. The next afternoon Dave called from his
apartment and he was mad at us. He had
to take several different busses and had to sleep on a bus bench until the
busses started running this morning. I
told him he was lucky. How was I lucky
he asked. I told him he was lucky I was
holding his Auto Mag or they wouldn't have let him on the bus. When
I asked Dave why he left the building we were in without us, he replied that he
didn't leave the building. He only
stepped outside the building to lay down on a bench where he fell asleep. Dave started to tell me that he was at the
car at 5:30 but we weren't there. I told him we were there and that he
shouldn't tell such a story. It turned
out that he had walked the show with his friends until it closed. He only started calling me once he discovered
that his friends had no room for him in their car. I
was working in Japan and received a two week trip back to the States to resolve
a union problem. I had a rental car and
I wanted to go on a camping trip. My old
friend Mike was up for the trip and Dave asked if he could also go along. Having seen how Dave camps, I told him he
could sleep in the back seat of the car.
I verified that Dave had enough money for food and I volunteered my ice chest
for Dave to use. We drove to a store in
Dolan Springs, Arizona where we stocked up with groceries and beer. We drove out into the desert and found a good
place to camp near Red Lake, north of Kingman.
Again, Dave had only bought candy and had it all eaten before we got to
the camping site. Dave had to defecate
but he went less than 40 feet out of camp to do it. It was dark but the campfire and the moon
lit-up Dave so he was in full view. We
told him to move farther out of camp but we were ignored. Mike and I had the same idea and we both
started firing bottle rockets at Dave.
He finally moved but was really mad at us for firing the bottle rockets
at him. I
went for an evening hike. I went about a
mile out of camp and then circled our position.
When I came back, Mike was laughing and Dave had wandered off
somewhere. Mike said that Dave was
hungry. With me out of camp, Dave went
through my food and snagged a can of chili with no beans. He told Mike he was going to eat it after he
warmed it in the fire. Mike cut the lid
on the can but left it attached to the can to use as a handle. Dave tore off the lid. He put the can in the fire. As expected, the cylinder of chili started to
rise out of the can. Mike told Dave to
poke a hole in the chili with a stick to prevent it from rising out of the
can. Dave argued that he wasn't going to
put a dirty stick into his chili. The
cylinder of chili rose out of the can and fell into the fire. Dave cleaned up the evidence and later denied
that he had taken my can of chili. Dave
slept in the car that night. Later, Dave
moved the ice chest into the car so he could eat whatever he could find in
it. During the night, Dave had somehow
removed the drain plug from the ice-chest which soaked him and the entire back
seat. Dave complained that he was wet
and cold. Poor
Dave continued to borrow money and always promised repayment in 45 days. I now had two Whitney Wolverines, an Auto
Mag, a Luger and a Bren Ten. Instead of
paying me back, Dave tried to work out a deal where I would take the $500 owed
for the Luger and apply the loan on the Bren Ten to the Luger so he could get
the Bren Ten back. I said no because as
of this time, Dave had not paid back any money to me, and he never did. I decided to get Dave a job at the animation
company I was working for, Creative Presentations. We were gearing up for another big project
and the company was hiring talent for sculpting and in the plastics shop. I told Dave that I wanted him to get a job so
he could pay me back on his loans and get his guns back. Dave said not to worry because he was to
receive a large check. I made an
appointment for Dave to interview with the company. Dave said ok and added that he had received
his check and had the money to pay off the loan on the Bren Ten. He said he really needed it back because he
only owned half of it. The
day of the interview, Dave never showed up.
He never called and didn't answer his phone. He called me that evening to tell me what a
lucky guy he was. He was lucky that a
friend called to let him know that his membership in a Star Trek organization
was about to expire. Dave was able to
pay full fare to get into the last day of a Star Trek convention to renew his
membership. There was also news that
Dave had spent all of his money and couldn't pay me back. He wanted to know what time the next day he
should show up for the interview. I told
him that I was told he would not be considered for any position with the
company. Dave
continued to beg for the Bren Ten. I
told him to contact his friend, who owned half of the gun and see if he wanted
to pay me back what he, Dave had borrowed on it. I got no answer so I told him I was going to
sell the gun. Again no answer. I sold the gun to a gun writer in Capistrano
Beach, California. Dave drove to
Capistrano Beach and broke down in tears as he begged the gun writer to just
give him the Bren Ten. David
is presently living with his mother in San Diego, CA. |
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TRX302
Callahan's Auto Mag Joined: 02 Dec 2011 Location: Arkansas Status: Offline Points: 680 |
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I think I know that guy...
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AndyC
Callahan's Auto Mag Joined: 04 Jul 2015 Location: Dallas, TX Status: Offline Points: 455 |
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Good lord, what a trainwreck...
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KMP
Callahan's Auto Mag Joined: 05 Jun 2010 Location: North Idaho Status: Offline Points: 261 |
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Oh, so many memories of Poor Dave. The stories were never ending. Bruce, you summed up Dave's life perfectly. Thanks for sharing.
Eric
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Dances with AutoMags
Callahan's Auto Mag Joined: 13 Oct 2011 Location: Valley Glen Status: Offline Points: 530 |
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Hey TRX 302 Dave, Andy C and Eric. Eric, thank you for your words about this writing. I believe you met Poor Dave several times at the gun show. If you can remember any Poor Dave stories, I'd like to read them. He was a likeable guy who may have been an idiot-savant. I hope the best for everyone.....Bruce
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An armed society is a polite society.
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