Gaston Glock, Inventor of the Gun That Bears His Name, Dies at 94 on December 27. A reclusive Austrian billionaire, he created the handgun worn by two-thirds of America’s police officers and the security forces of at least 48 countries.

“She’s not my sweetheart anymore. She was going to glock me.”chap. 29, p. 261, I. 32 

Maria's Girls - Jerome Charyn

 Gaston Glock wrote Jerome Charyn a thank you note 30 years ago.

In my four years in a Catholic school, St. Edward’s High School in Austin Texas beginning in 1958, my fabulous teachers, Brothers of the Congregation of Holy Cross, taught me very well. One way of making us interested (in a century without the distractions of cell phones and the internet/Google) was to shower us with what we thought were useless facts.

This is why I know, and few Americans don’t, that there was a third Texan president besides Lyndon Johnson and George Bush pater. This was Dwight Eisenhower who was born in Denison, Texas. I was told this by Brother Francis Barrett, C.S.C. in his American History class.

Brother Hubert Koeppen, C.S.C. told us about the first incidence of someone taking a bath in ancient history. Alexander and his father were destroying most of Thebes. Alexander went to Pindar the poets house. Pindar was out in the garden sunning himself. Alexander told him, “I admire you so I have saved your house from being razed.” Pindar replied, “Move out of the sun you are blocking it.”  To this Alexander said, “If I were not me, Alexander, I would like to be you.”

On Wednesday when I spotted the Gaston Glock obituary in my NYTimes I immediately remembered an interesting (useless?) fact of the first person to use glock as a verb. It was my friend, novelist Jerome Charyn in his novel Maria’s Girls (one of a series involving a wonderful left-wing police commissioner who becomes in the last of the series, president of the United States.

I fished the book from my library and was further reinforced in gazing at the lovely cover by a very good and very short female designer who goes by one name – Bascove. 

And there is another Jerome Charyn novel where a policeman is shot to death while playing ping-pong. The first Canadian Paliamentary Poet Laureate George Bowering has read 66 of Charyn's books including the one about ping-pong.