Next week, the "Crossroad of the West" gun show returns to the Salt Palace, in downtown Salt Lake City. I went last year, at the direction of a sleazy local tabloid, with instructions to smuggle in a hidden camera and take incriminating pictures. You see, although there are ethical hunter types who attend this event, there are also those folks who enjoy collecting KKK and Nazi paraphernalia. And so they go to the gun show, to purchase Nazi armbands and KKK hoods and books like How to Hide a Dead Body.

Maybe I should have bought a copy of The Poor Man's James Bond first. I bribed my friend Chrissy into being my photographer, and after a visit to Fred Myers, where we purchased a tote bag, a disposible camera, and lots of duct tape, we jury-rigged a spy camera. We managed to take lots of pictures of the foam lining of the tote bag, and every time Chrissy went to take a picture, she pretended to look for chapstick. It was obvious we were up to something, which is why security palookas lurked behind us the entire time we were there.

We were going on the assumption that we would find something evil. You see, when I was 20, I actually went to the gun show on a date. This guy knew everything about guns. His dad made them. He told me about sitting in the basement as a kid, melting lead, making bullets with his daddy. The first thing he and I encountered at that convention was something that was much more than a "gun." It was made out of black fiberglass, and looked like some kind of irrigation device. The video they were running at the table explained that it was designed to pick people off from two miles away, especially if they were from the Divsion of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

We saw elephant guns and grenades and special slide shows about Armageddon. The worst thing in my mind was the fact that they featured table after table full of old SS handbooks, Nazi armbands, Nazi daggers, Nazi uniforms. And very nearby to this curious flea market, there was a family: a skinhead mom, a skinhead dad, and a kid who couldn't have been more than three years old, wearing a Garanimals jacket with a swastika embroidered on the back.

Don't get me wrong. I despise lentils. I wash my feet. My dad taught me how to shoot a rifle when I was twelve. I have shot the hell out of Folger's coffee cans with a Smith & Wesson, and I have torn Sprite bottles to shreds with automatic weapons. I had a crush on The Man With No Name for years; I have a crush on him still.