I love being in the great outdoors, feeling the sun on my face, the wind, the sounds and smells of nature. If I’m going to be inside though, one of the easiest ways to convince me to stay inside a building is to put a gun and knife show in it, which is exactly what happened today. The Southern Classic Gun & Knife show at Jacksonville (Florida) Fairgrounds. Talk about a kid in a candy store. I’ll get to what I purchased later, I’m not at the gun show yet, at this point in our narrative friends, I’m still driving toward it.

I must confess, I don’t frequent downtown much. At 885 square miles, land wise, Jacksonville is the largest city in the contiguous United States. I’ve been to the Fairgrounds a few times in the past, but I had to look it up on Google Maps before heading out to get a rough idea of where it is located, which I did exactly that, get a rough idea. I figured I’d just follow the cars once I got down there, it’s not difficult to spot large numbers of people gathering, in general.

I’m downtown now folks, and I see traffic backing up all over the place. Wow, I don’t remember this many people showing up for a gun show before. This is huge! There must be some major vendors that came this time, there are people and cars all over the place. I’m excited as all get out! Fantastic!

I follow the trail of cars like a dutiful worker ant, straight into the parking lot. It’s several blocks away from where I thought the Fairgrounds were, but a little exercise would be good for me, so I think nothing of it. I hop out, lock up my vehicle and become an ant again, following the merging lines of people. Hmm, I thought the Fairgrounds were a little more to the North, it looks like we’re walking toward Metro Park. Maybe I misread where it was being held. No matter. Everyone is walking toward Metro Park, so that’s where it must be. Crikey, there are a lot of people showing up, this gun show must be absolutely massive!

The walking is slowing down, and I see a line up ahead. A huge line. Thousands of people long line. Erm. Huh. Erm. I’ve never seen a line for a gun show waiting to get in. Not literally thousands of people. I begin to suspect that something is perhaps amiss. I turn to a person next to me, and open my mouth to speak and happen to glance at the t-shirt they are wearing. “Obama” blazoned across the front of it. Odd t-shirt for a gun show, that’ll cause some comments, I’m certain. Maybe I’d better ask someone else, I turn my head to ask the next person, who is also wearing an Obama t-shirt. They must have come together. I search for someone else to ask, and I might as well have been a caveman at the beginning of 2001 – A Space Odyssey with the title track playing as, as a torrential flood of epiphany poured through my brain cells, I looked upon a veritable sea of Obama shirts and buttons, and it dawned on me that somehow I was not in line outside of the Southern Classic Gun & Knife Show. I began to suspect, however, that I was, in fact, in line for an Obama political rally of some sort. Oh … that explains the helicopters flying overhead then, which my subconscious had been filtering out before hand. I’m not a morning person, I’ll be the first to admit, but I’ve never accidentally found myself standing in line for a Democratic political event thinking that I’m at a gun show. This one takes the cake, I think to myself as I start walking back in the direction I thought it was in the first place. I see a police officer directing traffic, and head over to get the facts. “This isn’t the line for the gun show, is it?” The officer’s expression only very briefly began to change into one of utter incredulity before he roped it back in again like a champion rodeo star. Keeping what was now an expression blank enough to gain the admiration of professional poker players, and perhaps enough to make a Marine Corps drill instructor shed a tear of pride, he told me that I was in line for the Barak Obama rally, and that the gun show was a few blocks away, and gave me directions. Never did his expression crack again after that brief moment before he reined it in. Ebert and Roper would have given two thumbs up on the spot.

I walk the few blocks, and find the Fairgrounds, and the gun show. There are several hundred people there. Nothing compared to the throngs I had just left. (I have since read that approximately 18,000 people showed up at Metro Park, which would probably explain the line.) I meet up with a friend, and proceed to shop. Nothing exciting, I just needed some bare necessities. I pick up a Tapco Fusion tactical stock with a forward grip for my Ruger Mini-30 (conversion is a breeze if you read the manual, which I did the second time around, I’m very happy with it) and a military surplus ammo can packed with 300 rounds of steel cased 7.62x39R to feed it with. There wasn’t really anything else I was looking for, so I decided to call it a day.

Needless to say, a tactical rifle stock does not fit into a plastic shopping bag, at all. Not even close. Neither, does a heavy ammunition can. There is nothing in the universe that would cover up the fact that I look like a guy carrying a tricked-out rifle stock and a heavy can of ammunition. It’s time to go back to my vehicle, parked, as it happened, in the parking lot of the Obama rally. Oh.

As I’m walking down the streets of downtown Jacksonville once again, this time carrying a rifle stock and ammo can, walking head on toward the Obama supporters, I can tell you that it’s quite possible that I may never, ever, forget the expressions I saw on some of their faces. I saw everything from “Holy cr*p!” to looks of outright seething hatred, and everything in between. I don’t remember a single face that I was walking towards that did not, in some way, as soon as they did the double take, have a sudden and dramatic expression on it. If someone had been with me, as my mother pointed out later as I relayed the experience to her, it would have been great to post on YouTube.

Needless to say, I was very happy to finally get back to my vehicle, and loading my gun show purchases into the back of my 4x4, it occurred to me that some of the stickers on the back must have raised some eyebrows from the Obama supporters I was in line with just pulling into the parking lot. Aside from the obligatory “Support our troops” I also have an American Legion sticker, the NRA logo (front and back), and one that says “I’m the NRA”. If I had been a little more awake this morning, I’m thinking I might have noticed if I actually started leaving a trail of facial expressions in downtown Jacksonville today much earlier than I was aware of. Huh.

At the conclusion of a very interesting day, which I always seem to find myself having, I can only sit and wonder, as I write the story of my experience, how many people have been telling stories about me this day around the dinner table. It’s a shame I’ll never hear them, I’d be fascinated in hearing how their stories went.