I had a Literature professor in College who constantly told us that as a student he was headed for a career in Physics when he came across a copy of Moby Dick. He read it, he said, and it "changed my Life." He changed his Major from Physics to Literature, and never looked back.
"I decided that instead of building better H-Bombs, I'd work toward a world that might be able to do without H-Bombs," he would say, solemnly.
(I don't mean to cast any aspersions on my old Lit Prof that I didn't come in line for myself, back then. It was a new University in the Sixties, and many of our teachers were only a few years older than us students. We were all plenty brainless and Idealistic and we all took ourselves way, WAY too seriously. But I would venture to say in hindsight, that the current world doesn't seem to have any fewer or less efficient H-Bombs than it did back then, for all the extra literary appreciation in the meantime.)
But I was bemused by the first sentence especially. We, of course, had to read Moby Dick, with comprehension, and I decided I liked the Movie better, though of course, I didn't voice this opinion in our Discussions. But, I did read it, every word, and for the life of me could not imagine how the stilted, overblown, convoluted nineteenth-century narration that obfuscated what I thought was otherwise a pretty decent adventure yarn could "change somebody's Life."
A few years later, as a starving Graduate Student on the scout for cheap thrills, I went into the University of Arizona Library, which had a great collection of basic Americana, and found this tome:
Attachment 206111
And I read it and I suddenly knew exactly what my old Prof meant. In the parlance of the times (or slightly earlier), I was Sent, man! I've never been the same since.
I think if Sharpe's book had merely been a compendium of loading recipes, it might not have had the effect it did on me. Would have been more like a cookbook; only as interesting as the most interesting recipe. But Sharpe went into the mechanics of everything handloading related: manufacture of powders, primers, bullets, making and use of tools, history, personalities, and so forth. That was it for me; the start of a path that led to shelves full of books, a safe full of guns, benches, shelves and drawers full of loading tools, components and stuff and never for a moment being jaded or bored with any of it. "It Changed my Life!!"
