Samuel Colt

None of them were all that great.

Then, in 1831, a 17-year-old merchant seaman named Samuel Colt dreamed up a new design.

Colt was this New England kid who loved to blow things up.

When one of his pranks got him expelled from school, his father had him sent off to sea.

This guy's gluing shoe soles.

After Springfield, he went to Colt in Hartford, where Sam Colt's revolvers had been coming off the line with interchangeable parts since before the war.

And then to Brown and Sharp in Providence.

The company made the micrometers that everybody else measured with.

It was the most powerful handgun in the world for an impressive 88 years from its introduction in 1847 until the 357 Magnum cartridge hit the scene in 1935.

It also saved Samuel Colt from bankruptcy after his first commercial revolver design tanked.

So what's the deal with the gun's name? Captain Samuel Hamilton Walker of the Texas Rangers began his military career at 19 with a brief stint with the Washington City Volunteers during the Creek Indian Campaign in 1836 in Alabama.

He then traveled to Florida as a scout and finally ended up in Texas in 1841.

I was prepared.

I had camping gear, emergency gear, a satellite phone, plenty of food and water, enough jerry cans for the trip there and back, and Sam Colt's greatest invention in the center console.

Just in case.

For the unfamiliar, that's the 1911.

His name is Clarence Dayton, and he writes for the Boston Herald.

His pen has made heroes of more men than Samuel Colt's six-gun ever did.

He looks a little out of place in this small Kansas town of Smokes End, but he didn't intend to be here.

His train broke down, and he's merely waiting for another one.