acles” occurred after his three years in vaudeville.
On a tour of Mexico with a circus, he was request
ed by the Chief of Police of a small town to shoot
some souvenirs. He complied by shooting out the
centers of three pesos in mid air at the town’s bull
ring. The coins flew over the wall. When Ad and
the Mexicans trooped out to pick them up they
came upon a threadbare old woman, hands clasped
in prayer. Between her clenched fingers was one
of the plugged pesos. She had prayed for money
and the coins had almost immediately tinkled
down at her feet.
Ad was also responsible for the "miracle of the
bell.” While on a hunting trip near the border,
Ad and his friends noticed a tumbled down wreck
of a mission. The mud walls were caved in but the
bell still hung at a crazy angle. Challenged to hit
the bell, Ad took aim and hit it several times from
several hundred yards distance. It was an easy shot,
but soon they heard a clamor of voices drifting
toward them from the mission. A group of awe
struck Mexicans were staring incredulously at the
bell. "A miracle,” they shouted. "Our bell has
been ringing and it has had no clapper for twenty
years.”
Vaudeville began to pall on Topperwein shortly
after the turn of the century, and he looked around
for more stable employment. He found it with the
Winchester Repeating Arms Company. He had
been using their rifles and ammunition. They
hired him to demonstrate their products. Thirty
years later when the New Haven company was ac
quired by Western Cartridge Company, later to be
come Olin Industries, he had become famous and
as one of the company’s assets, he was included in
the transaction. The big letter "W” on his uni
form now served two great companies, Western as
well as Winchester.
About the same time, he acquired his lifetime
companion, and life became very wonderful for Ad
and also for Plinky. He married Elizabeth Servaty,
a pretty red head just eighteen years old, who
worked at one of the ammunition loading ma
chines in the big Winchester plant in New Haven,
Conn. She saw him walking through the plant one
day and told one of her girl friends, "I’m going to
marry that man.” They met one day "accidentally”
in New Haven’s Common. They fell in love at
once, were soon married and Mrs. Topperwein’s
career as a marksman began under the tutorage of
her husband.
Unbelievable as it sounds, within three weeks
after Mrs. Topperwein’s first lesson, she was shoot
ing pieces of chalk from between her husband’s
fingers with a 22 rifle, a stunt they abandoned
when they found youngesters attempting to im
itate them. She got her name "Plinky” from
her habit of saying "Plink” every time she hit a
target.
It was not always the skillful stunt which the
crowds found the most enjoyable. For example,
they loved to see Plinky toss an egg in the air with
Ad splashing it to a yellow streak with a well
aimed shot. Undoubtedly Ad’s most popular per
formance was drawing pictures with bullets which
was what you would expect an ex-cartoonist to do.
Exhibition shooting was not the Topperweins’
only chief claim to fame. Plinky was rated the
greatest woman trapshooter of her time. She was
the first woman to break 100 consecutive targets,
a feat she repeated 200 times.
On November 11, 1916, at Montgomery, Ala
bama, with a 12-guage Winchester 97 repeating
shotgun, she broke 1,952 out of 2,000 l6-yard
clay targets in 3 hours and 15 minutes actual shoot
ing time, an average of 97.6%. This was the great
est shooting achievement of its kind ever accomp
lished by a woman or man. In another amazing
performance she broke 1,460 2V4 inches square
wooden blocks without a miss.
It was a quarter of a century after Ad had first
seen Doc Carver’s exhibition in the Buffalo Bill’s
Wild West Show that he attempted to outdo the
old master. Carver’s record in the past years had
increased from 5,500 consecutive hits to a tremen
dous 60,000 out of 60,650. He had accomplished
his record shooting at glass balls, but broken glass
was dangerous so Ad used wooden blocks.
It was a cold rainy day in San Antonio when Ad
assembled 50,000 of these blocks and a group of
stalwart fellows to toss them, three automatic 22
Winchesters, and what he thought to be enough
ammunition. His plan was to shoot 5,000 blocks
each day, but he changed that to 6,500 the first
day. On the second day his first miss occurred
when the 8,000th block was thrown. That was the
end of Carver’s record No. 1.
When Ad had shot 50,000 of these targets, he
had established a mark of 14,651 without a miss,
and even more amazing, he had failed to hit only
four of the entire 50,000.
Everyone was exhausted, block throwers and ref
erees. He was out of blocks, but Ad was still ready
for more. He obtained additional ammunition by
buying up all the 22 cartridges in the nearby hard
ware stores. Since no more wood blocks were
available, 22,500 of the largest scraps left from
the original 50,000 were selected, and a new crew
of throwers and referees resumed.
After 12 epic-making days of shooting. Ad had
hit a record which probably never will be assailed.
He had hit 72,491 out of 72,500. No one has ever
"attempted to try for the record.
The greatest aerial marksman America has ever
produced retired from Western-Winchester after
50 years of service on January 29, 1951. Wherever
marksmen gather there will always be good con
versation about this fabulous, colorful Texan whose
achievements had to be seen to be believed.
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