Living a life is a funny thing. Because we tend to live many lives throughout our one turn on this Earth. Many years ago, around 1998, I started a life with the Indiana Jones fan community. It was during this time that I found out about the many artisans that worked on Indiana Jones that were still alive and providing the parts of the Indiana Jones outfit just as they had for the three original films. As we all know, one of those men was Noel Howard, and he sent me this original W&G "Raiders accurate" gas mask bag with strap, buckle, and my gunbelt and holster.
Noel is now deceased. As are many of the artists that contributed to Harrison Ford's signature look back then. Back in the late-90s, we were trying to get details from laserdiscs and still images, and sometimes we convinced ourselves that we'd seen things differently and somehow the original craftsmen had forgotten things. It was in that fervor that we went through a period of thinking Noel's strap and buckle were "incorrect." So I swapped them out for one from another vendor, but like the packrat I try not to be, I kept the strap and buckle from Noel. Something told me I needed to hold onto them. Sure enough, within the past few years, attitudes have softened a bit toward Noel's strap and buckle, and that they might have been a lot closer than we gave him credit for all those years ago. Eventually one of the snaps on this bag broke too. This bag had some quirky mismatched materials probably dating back to WWII, and it was always something of a "runt of the litter." You could tell it had been used by someone as a haversack after the war because the middle divider had already been removed from the interior. But it was from Noel himself, it was a proper W&G make, and it was MY runt.
A few evenings ago, I went to the workbench, I pulled the old strap and buckle out of mothballs, replaced the broken snap button cap, Pecarded the strap overnight, and then reset the buckle and re-riveted the strap back onto the bag as Noel had originally installed it. This bag isn't just part of my personal history, but because of who made it, it is a small piece of pop culture history too. Noel is gone, never to return. So I'm glad I wasn't stupid enough to throw away or sell the pieces to his work that he sent me over 20 years ago.
It's only right that this bag is whole again, (almost) exactly as Noel built it.
