More Ramblin's

Some times I wonder

2010-01-10T05:52:00.001-08:00

The Battle of Mill Springs

2009-12-05T06:07:00.004-08:00

The park service maintains this historic mill which gave it's name to a Civil War battle. The Confederate general had established his headquarters in a home on top the hill above the mill on the south side of the Cumberland River. He attacked the Union forces on the north side of the river and lost the battle and his life there. Today Lake Cumberland divides the Mill and headquarters home from the area of the battle. These are some pictures I took of the mill recently.

The Winery

2009-12-05T05:50:00.002-08:00

On the way back from Berea we took a side trip to this winery. I had expected some big professional outfit and found it's store ensconced in what used to be the one room wooden Plato Kentucky Post Office. They had bottles of wine displayed in the pigeon holes. They had started growing grapes and making wine to try to save the family farm. It's a tobacco and cattle farm out in the middle of nowhere, and we had the most delightful talk with the young lady that has the winery, and tasted some of their wine. One bottle just tickled me, so we bought it to bring home. They've named it "Prohibition Repeal Red", because it's the first legal alcohol made in that county since Prohibition was repealed. It's a fairly mild, sweet wine and tastes really good. http://www.sinkingvalleywinery.com/

2009-10-17T07:08:00.001-07:00

I don't know if this fall will have as many spectacular colors or not. It's been very wet this year, and continues to be drizzly, raining, pouring, overcast, damp, humid and dreary out. I took this picture in the back yard the last sunny day we had. Not being an expert on such things, I do know if it's too dry the leaves just drop instead of giving us great color, but I don't know how it is if it's too wet. In the five falls we've been here, two have been really impressive. The good news is, we're supposed to have a few sunny days this week if the weatherman isn't wrong again.

2009-10-08T06:53:00.001-07:00

Courtesy of a Christmas gift certificate from our youngest daughter, the wife and I spent a Friday and Saturday night in an 1820's plantation mansion that's been converted to a Bed and Breakfast. There were over a million and a half dollars spent on renovations to the place. It's part of a property that was originally 6000 acres and the commerce center for 140 years for that area of Kentucky. The current owners have a full golf course there, building sights for sale, are renovating some of the old buildings (store, mill, etc.).

There is the old fireplace from the original summer kitchen behind the house 30 feet or so. Though the kitchen building is no longer there, they've built a beautiful deck with tables and chairs, and Saturday night we enjoyed a roaring fire in the old fireplace while sitting and talking with a couple that are part owners in the property.

The owner was talking about some of the interesting history of the Green family that owned this property until the last descendent passed away a few years ago. In the early days the Greens had slaves, and at the end of the Civil War one of the northern carpetbaggers came through, rounded up their slaves, told them they were now free and they were to come with him to be resettled. The Mr. Green that was the owner at the time, went into the house, came out with a shotgun and killed the carpetbagger. They threw his body into the Rough River to never be seen again. He then told the slaves they were indeed free, could do what they wanted, but he wouldn't tolerate some outsider saying they had to go with him. He told them they were free to go or to stay on the property, and they all stayed. He gave them each an acre of land, a cabin and a cow to do with as they wanted, and hired any of them that wanted to work for him just as they'd done as slaves. The Green family was such an important family to the commerce of the area they even issued their own money that was recognized as legal tender over many surrounding counties.

2009-09-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

I carry a gun. Usually when I'm out in public I carry concealed, and around home I have a semi-automatic on my side. It's not that I feel inadequate without a gun, I know full well that against a couple of armed thugs I am inadequate without a gun. Where we live we could not count on less than a half hour response to a 911 call, so I take the responsibility of being the cop on this beat. Yesterday I had to make a run in town for some stuff though, and decided just to leave the gun visable on my side. I was curious about the response I might get, because there are some people just deathly afraid of a gun (though I've never been able to understand that). I was proud of our little town. I went to two different stores, did my shopping, and just watched the other people in the stores for any reaction. There was none. At the check-out line for one store a little old lady was next in line behind me, so had a good view of the holstered gun. She didn't bat an eye. If any discussion on gun laws included the number of crimes that are stopped or prevented in this country each year by an honest person with a gun, maybe a lot of people would look differently about open carry in public. There are areas of this country that would get you arrested just for that, but the greatest deterent to criminals is and has always been an armed citizenry. Oh, the number of crimes that are stopped or prevented each year? About two million.
http://www.guncite.com/gun_control_gcdguse.html

The Old Covered Bridge

2009-08-26T05:29:00.001-07:00

I attended a birthday party for my uncle. He lives in Indiana and was celebrating 90 years, and the good news is he's in amazingly good health and could pass for at least 20 years younger than his actual age. As we were wandering back toward my daughter's home I was talking about a little community somewhere in the country near there, and how more than 50 years ago I'd found a covered bridge on a gravel road near that community. My daughter had printed out a map to direct us to the birthday party and looking at the map she found the community I'd mentioned. We turned off the highway onto a county road and with a zig and a zag found the town. Not much there. Just 10 or 12 houses, but we started out due west from there and soon found ourselves on a gravel road. When it wound down into a river valley we came to the covered bridge, not only still standing, but in wonderful repair. It's a double span bridge with a center support mid stream. I believe I'm going to spend some time in that area of the country and try tracing through some of my old stomping grounds.

It gave me a chuckle

2009-08-26T05:04:00.002-07:00

2009-07-13T07:42:00.002-07:00

We acquired a cheap ceramic dog. Our daughter declared it just too chintzy to even set outside. It's become a game piece. Since we live on adjoining properties we have easy access to each other's homes. I set the dog up in her home, not in a prominent place, but visible if you were to look there. It was several days later they found it and cracked up over our trick. Later we found the dog setting on our bookshelves in the front room. It's gone back and forth a dozen times over the last year or so, and is again in our possession. She's away until Thursday. Her husband to be creates metal sculptures and has given her one for the flower garden. I think I'll see if the dog would look good setting somewhere in the sculpture.

Hum.

2009-06-16T18:11:00.001-07:00

I wonder about this barn every time I pass it, so I thought I'd put it on the Internet to see if anyone else cared to wonder about it.

Just a ghost

2009-06-14T20:31:00.002-07:00

The other morning, having coffee on the back porch, I saw an albino Granddaddy Longlegs wandering across the concrete. Of course I don't really know if it was a Granddaddy or Grandmommy Longlegs, but it was a strange critter when compared with the standard, run-of-the-mill of it's species.

My Morning Coffee

2009-06-12T07:14:00.002-07:00

We had quite a storm slam through night before last. The power went out a little after three a.m. and didn't come back on until after eight. Now I'm one of those critters that likes his morning coffee, but since this place is total electric the coffee maker sat there looking useless. About six in he morning I traipsed out to the shed and liberated my camp stove and percolator and started me some coffee perking. My wife called our daughter next door, and before the coffee was ready she was coming in the door. She's as bad about wanting her morning coffee as we are.

We've not taken the tent and camping gear out for about six years now. We used to do that on a regular basis when we lived in Vegas, just to escape from the city for a few days. Now we live in the country and the view from the back porch is a lot better than some of the camp sites we stayed in. There just isn't that need to get-away any more, but I leave the gear stored on the off chance we'll find a good reason to tent camp again. I always enjoyed the experience, and just as our little "emergency" yesterday, one never knows when it will come in handy.

The Dog

2009-05-14T12:04:00.002-07:00

Last Sunday a dog showed up at home and refused to leave. He has a collar so I called all the neighbors, put the information on the radio, called the pound and the vet to see if anyone had lost such a dog. He appears to be a Treeing Walker Coonhound and is one of the nicest dogs I've ever seen. Loves attention and would like you to pet him until you wore his hair off. He looked starved, ribs showing, but I didn't want him to stay so didn't feed him, just gave him some water. With my wife's alergies we can't have pets, but the next morning he was laying on the back porch right up against the door. During the next few days he would be gone for a while, but then he'd be back on the back porch. I started feeding him all he would eat. All he would eat was a whole lot of food. I gave him dry dog and cat foods, canned foods, table scraps, even some stale peanut butter crackers. He ate it all. Today the animal warden came and took him to an adoption shelter that is really good with animals, an all volunteer place. He won't be there long enough to get comfortable. Around here people love coonhounds, pay hundreds of dollars, even thousands for them. All they have to do is pay $40 to adopt this one so you know he won't be there long. I wish I could have kept him. About as nice a dog as I've ever had the pleasure of meeting.

Some Things Endure

2009-05-06T10:18:00.002-07:00

When I was a kid in the late forties, early fifties, I would sit with my grandmother and listen to a country music show called "The Renfro Valley Barn Dance". I never had any idea where Renfro Valley was until we made our first trip to that area of Kentucky. This past week we had to make a trip to Berea Kentucky and as we passed through Renfro Valley I stopped on the road and snapped this picture. It's nice to see that some things do endure in our rapidly changing society.

Flocks of Flox

2009-04-21T10:50:00.003-07:00

We have one of the half barrels with Flox growing in it. This time of year it goes crazy blooming.

River Town

2009-04-16T13:06:00.002-07:00

In the early days of the country the Cumberland river was a major route for transporting people and goods into many areas in Kentucky and Tennessee. Flat bottomed paddlewheel steam boats could travel as far up river as Burnside Kentucky. Many communities grew up around the docks where the boats stopped to load and unload people and goods. The Cumberland was a wild river before the TVA constructed the Wolf Creek Dam in the late forties, and in the spring much of the bottomlands would flood, so the communities would often be constructed a distance from the river above these flood planes. One such community was Creelsboro Kentucky, the busiest riverport on the Cumberland between Nashville Tennessee and Burnside Kentucky during the 19th century. It was never a large town, but offered a church, post office, school, bank, stores and a hotel/restaurant/store combination where riverboat passengers could find lodging for the night. A little over four years ago I took this picture of the old hotel. There is now a bare lot where this historic structure once stood. Today Creelsboro is a ghost town in the sense there are a few residents but no businesses that would qualify it as a town.

Gun Show

2009-04-04T18:06:00.001-07:00

My brother and I drove up to Knob Creek's gun show today. I was looking for handguns, 9mm, .38 caliber and 7.62 ammunition, and holsters. If anyone had the 9mm, .38's or holsters I never found them. The 7.62 was about $140 per thousand higher than I can order them from the catalog. There was a great turn out, and I'm sure many of the dealers there will have good sales just from the number of potential customers. However, our opinion as we left after less than an hour was, we won't have any reason to make that trip again.

Lots of Luck

2009-03-21T18:03:00.002-07:00

It always bothers me when someone says that to me. Since there is good luck and bad luck, I never know just what it is they are wishing for me.
If you pass this on to everyone on your mailing list, it will bring you lots of luck.

Automobiles

2009-03-15T14:25:00.000-07:00

I saw an older station wagon the other day, and realized I'd not seen new station wagons in many years. Do they still make them, or are they all SUV's and mini-vans these days? That started me thinking about other ideas in the auto industry that came and went in my years of driving.
We had a '63 Dodge Dart wagon with push button drive. There were a few cars that toyed with that idea, but it didn't catch on. Ford did convertable hard-tops for a couple of years back in the fifties. One big problem with that was the roof retracted into the trunk area, so if you had the top down you didn't have room for luggage. Mercury, in the late fifties had a sedan with an electric rear window that could be lowered. That was the one with the rear window angling in toward the back seat rather than sloping back toward the trunk.
Speaking of station wagons, we owned a '73 Chevy Caprice Classic wagon back when. Instead of the standard tailgate configuration, either from a key lock on the back, or switches on the dash, you could make the window roll up into the roof, and the tailgate retract down under the floor of the car where most cars have gas tanks. On that wagon the gas tank was inside the left rear fender. With the tailgate and window retracted it looked as if there was no tailgate assembly.
An option of some "Swept Wing" Dodges in the late fifties was a record player. One big drawback to that was it would not play any standard records available in stores, but you had to buy special, smaller records through Chrysler Corporation. I understand it wasn't bad about skipping when you were on rough roads, but it was expensive.
One invention that should have caught on but didn't. My brother had a 1950 Studebaker Commander. It had a standard straight stick transmission, but also had a hill holder brake. When you came to a complete stop the brakes locked and didn't release until you'd begin to give it gas and let the clutch out. As soon as the drive train started to pull it would release. This was particularly good if you had to stop on an uphill angle. Getting off the brake, letting the clutch out, and accelerating always allowed the car to roll back some unless you did a heel toe thing with the right foot on brake and accelerator both. Once the car stopped on that uphill you could take your foot off the brake, leaving one foot free for the clutch and the other for the accelerator.
Another great idea that didn't work was the Cadillac 4-6-8. Supposedly the car would run on 4 cylinders in mild and level driving conditions, switch to six cylinders when needed, and to eight cylinders for hard pulls or accelerations. Sounds like one of those great conservation ideas, but they could never keep it working. The car spent more time in the dealership than it did on the road. One thing I always liked they don't put on cars and trucks today. The little vent window in the front doors.
Today's cars have more features and gadgets than ever dreamed in earlier years. Thermometers that give you a constant outside air temperature, digital read out compasses. Voice activated features, GPS systems, OnStar, built in phone systems, retracting antenna, cruise control. Some will stay and some will go, just as in past years, but it has been fun seeing all the ideas they've tried and abandoned over the years.

Stone Fences

2009-03-06T14:55:00.001-08:00

Driving around the other day I stopped to photograph one of the stone fences that are found all over the state of Kentucky. I've learned there is a stone fence conservancy that is working to rebuild some of these that have fallen into disrepair over the years. Most of them date back to before the Civil War and are part of the American heritage. Here's a little information and a link to a video on these if you'd care to watch it. The video is from a program on KET (Kentucky Educational Television) called "Kentucky Life". Kentucky Life explores many aspects of life in the state of Kentucky each week. The video is about 7 minutes.

"These historic fences are examples of dry-stone masonry, in which the rocks are carefully fitted to hold themselves in place without mortar. The techniques were brought over from the British Isles by immigrant stonemasons, mostly Irish, who passed them along to selected slaves who became master artisans and trained others in turn. Central Kentucky has one of the largest concentrations of 19th-century rock fences still standing anywhere in America—but once had many more. By most estimates, today’s examples represent only 5-10% of what once was here."

http://www.ket.org/cgi-bin/cheetah/watch_video.pl?name=kkyli_000106_fences

Cost of Living Increase

2009-02-23T06:10:00.000-08:00

As of October 2008 the federal government tabulated the annual cost of living increase for 2009 for anyone living in the United States. This is saying that the amount of money we have to spend for utilities, living space, food, fuel, and all other necessary monies the average person has to lay out, is 5.8% more than the previous year. Based on that tabulation they increased the funds to Social Security recipients 5.8%.
However, there is another group of people, also living in America, that has tabulated their cost of living increase at 17%. That was the "cost of living" pay raise Congress awarded to themselves. Almost three times the actual cost of living increase the same government had established as fact.
It makes you wonder how the average cost of living for a retiree in Washington DC only went up 5.8% when the average cost of living for a Senator or Representative living in Washington DC went up 17%.
Makes me wonder just when it was our representatives stopped representing us?

2009-02-15T14:05:00.001-08:00

One day in 1991, the wife and I were driving around on a tent camping trip. We stopped at an exit off of Interstate 15 just south over the mountains from the Las Vegas area. After buying some drinks and snacks we looked at the map to see where that exit road would lead. It appeared to connect with Interstate 40 to the south, so we decided to drive across that way. Several miles down the road, driving through desolate high desert country we were totally surprised to see this rather large, abandoned railroad station out in the middle of nowhere. A sign on the building said "Kelso, California". We stopped, took a couple of pictures and browsed around a bit, then continued on our way. Since then the building has been restored and is operated by the Park Service. There is a web site that shows more pictures and a brief history of the place at http://www.desertusa.com/mnp/mnp_kelso2.html

Retired

2009-01-29T14:41:00.002-08:00

During this recent nasty weather, and for future such episodes in our area of the country, this is me celebrating the joys of being retired. It's a visual of a simple formula. Stay in, drink coffee, play on the computer.

Icing on everything but the cake

2009-01-27T20:40:00.002-08:00

Thirty Two degrees, plus or minus a half a degree all day. Strange weather we're having. It was a freezing rain at 6:30 this morning with an outside temp of 31.6 degrees. It's rained all day, everything from a light drizzle to pretty heavy, and the temperature never got above 32.5 degrees or below 31.6 for the whole day. If it dropped below 32 we'd start to get ice, then it would drift above 32 and it would start to shrink from the limbs, grass and such. Still a few Sycamore balls hanging on one of the trees in the edge of the woods, so I snapped a picture of it's iced up limbs. My windmill froze to the platform so it's not turning either. I kept expecting the power to go out as often happens when too much ice builds up on power lines, but so far so good. It was a great day to stay inside next to a warm coffeepot.

Down here at the end of our lane

2008-12-30T20:01:00.002-08:00

Our mailboxes are out on the highway, and several times we've had mail stolen, mail opened, the mailboxes damaged, even had to go in town a while to pick up our mail because of an anonymous threat someone made to put a bomb in our boxes. Since our little road has seven property owners along it's length, and five residences, I checked to see what it would take to have the mail delivered down our lane. The post office said they cannot deliver on private roads, so my next step was to see if I could get the county to take over maintenance, and make it a county road. That would also save me money since I'd paid for several truck loads of gravel, and for grading. I was told I needed to go through the county attorney for this.

I presented the proposal to the county attorney and was told they'd get back with me. About once every two months I'd stop in to see if there was any progress but was never able to learn anything. More than a year passed. The election saw a new county attorney elected, so I asked for an appointment with him. Talking with him I learned it was not even up to the county attorney, but I had to present a petition signed by all seven property owners to the fiscal court for approval. He gave me the dates the court would be meeting and I drafted a petition, tracked down the two absentee owners, and had the other five owners along the lane sign it. I presented it to that court, and after they did their inspection I was told they would take over maintenance and make it a county road if I changed the entry off the highway. The lane enters the highway at about a 45 degree angle toward the south and makes it difficult to enter from the north. You have to swing wide into the oncoming lane to make the turn. Improving this would require a Y shape because the existing drive cannot be widened due to restrictions on both sides. On the south side is a valve for the water lines, and on the north side a ditch with an 18 inch culvert that runs under the highway. Over a year and a half has passed.

Of course this is state highway property. They have right-of-way 30 feet from the center line, so I had to contact the state highway department about making this change. The local supervisor came out and went over the situation with me, then presented it to his supervisor. Before anything was decided there was a change of personnel and he had to go over it with another supervisor. This happened three times. He was then transferred into a different division for four months, and with these delays another year and a half had dragged on with no decision.

I was finally able to get the district supervisor out, went over it with him, and a couple of weeks later was granted a permit for the needed work. However, it seems the rules had changed about three months earlier. Prior rules required me to purchase the culvert pipe and the highway department would do the work. With the new rules I had to hire a private contractor to do the work as well as pay for the culvert, then have the highway department come out and approve the work once it was finished. About four times as much as it would cost for just the culvert. I had obtained the estimate from the private contractor, then got a bit peeved thinking about how it was costing me a lot more money because the state had dragged their heels. I sent the Governor an email laying this all out.

Two days later I received a return email from the Governors office informing me this had been turned over to the Secretary of Transportation for review and action. The day after that I received a call from the district supervisor informing me they were going to do the work and all I had to do was pay for the culvert. I had been grandfathered in. The culvert is paid for and waiting at the local building supply house, and the first day next week with good weather I'm finally going to get the work done. Once that's completed I'll have the county representative back out to approve the new entrance so the county will take over maintenance. Now I guess I'll have to talk with the local postmaster to find out what I have to do to get the mail service down this lane. Three years and counting. Ain't bureaucracies fun?

Winter Driving

2008-12-21T15:08:00.001-08:00

It always worries me this time of year when I plan any distance traveling, so it was with some trepidation that we started a journey to South Carolina this past week. Our grandson was graduating from basic training at Fort Jackson. We wanted to attend this ceremony, then bring him back with us for a week's visit before his next assignment. If we were going to have ice anywhere the weather seemed perfect for that. It rained on us the full 470 miles down there, then again on the return trip. Graduation day was overcast but no rain, and the temperatures were in the mid seventies so that went well. We'd driven down on Monday, attended the ceremony on Tuesday, and our plans were to drive back on Wednesday. Checking the weather forecast for here in Kentucky they were saying there was a possible ice storm coming in on Wednesday, so instead of our planned departure we went to bed early on Tuesday, got up at two in the morning, and left our hotel at 3 heading home. Fortunately the temperatures did not drop as far as forecast and we arrived home to a 38 degree day. Now as to the rain. It was the kind of rain that wears out the windshield wiper controls. Turn it on, turn it up, turn it down, turn it off, back on, high speed, intermittent, faster, slower, the whole round trip. I think I used up most of the reservoir of windshield cleaner. We started out in a white car and came home in a two tone car that was white on top and black on the bottom. It's obvious that tires wear out with the amount of rubber deposited daily on the highways and Interstate system. Of course one of the big drawbacks is, it's not safe to drive in the rain with the cruise control engaged. I love cruise control and will run with it engaged as much as possible, but this trip required the foot on the accelerator the whole way.During a two day period, Fort Jackson was graduating a thousand new soldiers from basic training, and that's just one of many such forts in the U.S. It's amazing the number of enlistments they receive in this all volunteer military. I had the pleasure of speaking with several of the young men and women that were graduating that day, and what a wonderful group of people they were. At least outside the political arena, our country is in good hands.

2008-11-18T08:52:00.002-08:00

The Studebaker Avanti was a beautiful car. What became of Studebaker? Then there was Nash and Hudson that combined as American Mortors Corporation. All gone. Bankrupt. Out of business. That's been the history of automobile manufacturers in the United States. Once upon a time there were hundreds of such manufacturers. Stutz, Haynes, Hupmobile, Duezenberg, Locomobile, Crosley, Kaiser, Essex and hundreds more.

The government didn't saddle the taxpayers with huge debt to bail out any of these companies, so why do they feel it's the taxpayers responsibility to bail out the big three? Let them declare bankruptcy, reorganize, get rid of some of the excess baggage they've carried around since they had world dominion in the fifties. When the dust settles there may only be a Big One left standing, but that's the nature of the free enterprise system. We can do without an ever increasing socialism in this country.

A Note to the Republican Party

2008-11-12T20:48:00.002-08:00

It has been interesting reading all of the Republican soul searching and brow beating. There's this huge scramble to try to figure out how to resurrect the Republican party after such a thorough trouncing at the polls in this 2008 election. Well, I don't know if they want to hear my opinions or not, but here goes.

Briefly, the Republican party professes to represent the conservative base in America. They won a majority in Congress in 1994 by presenting their "Contract With America" to the nation. It was a brilliant guideline for the Republican majority to staunchly support conservative principles. Like so many political promises, it wasn't worth the paper it was written on. The Republican majority went into a spending spree, pork barreling, tax raising frenzy that would be the envy of today's liberal majority in Congress.

This isn't really a Democrat or Republican thing. It's not liberal or conservative. It's Washington DC. A friend of mine, while living in Virginia, told me there was a half-hearted campaign underway to put signs at the beltway around Washington that said "Reality stop here". It doesn't seem to matter what lofty ideals they profess while campaigning, the moment they win a seat in Congress their number one priority becomes getting re-elected. They know they have the best job in town. Work only when they want, great pay, great perks, total medical coverage for life, a great retirement program, and you get to decide what your salary is going to be.

Most people in Congress, Republican or Democrat, have never really produced anything. They've never worked for one moment at a job that contributed to the Gross Domestic Product. They seem to think of the government as the source of all things rather than the actual producers. All they have to do is borrow more money from China, raise taxes, increase the national debt, to create a greater government control over the American people.

We have been moving resolutely toward socialism in this country for most of a century. Conservatives do not see this as anything but negative. Conservatism is based in self reliance, not government dole. Conservatism is based on the individual rights enumerated in the Constitution, not governmental micro-managing. Conservatism is based on individual freedom, not trying to force everyone in the country into group-think sameness.

Republicans today look at the red and blue states on the election map and beat their brow, unable to understand how there is so many blue states. Okay. Here's my suggestion. Ignore the 2008 map and instead study the 1984 map. Republicans, look at what was being done under the administration of President Reagan that made the map look like this in that year. Maybe you will get a clue of where you went wrong in the last 24 years. Just maybe you will get the conservative base behind you once again.

Venison

2008-10-12T06:22:00.002-07:00

We finally had a couple inches of rain on the 8th. Prior to that only about a quarter inch had fallen in nearly two months. The yard was pretty brown, but the grass over the leach lines for the septic was green and growing because of more moisture in the ground. The family of deer (mom, pop, 3 offspring) that have been around the area all summer, have been in the back yard keeping it mowed for me. I snapped this picture out the back door on the morning of the 7th.

I think there's an election coming up in about three weeks. Was anyone aware of that? Senator McCain was certainly not my first choice among Republican candidates, and the Democratic nominee was by far my last choice of their candidates. It just utterly baffles me that O is not only running, but that he looks so good in the polls. It tells me far too many Americans operate strictly from an emotional base rather than injecting any reason or logic into their choices. Does anyone doubt that a Republican candidate with the garbage in their past that O has, would not only have been exposed in bold headlines, lead stories on every TV news show, and editorials across this country and around the world, but would have been forced to drop out of the race long before now. It gives me the impression the main stream media would be 100% behind the Democratic candidate if they ran an inflated sex doll.

It will be interesting to see if anything comes of this.http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/this_could_be_the_game_changer.html

Carnton

2008-09-11T19:57:00.002-07:00

We visited the Carnton house in Franklin Tennessee. Constructed in 1826, it has a basement and three floors above ground. It's constructed of red brick but in the restoration process they've painted the front of the house white. The baseboards are of marble throughout the house, and the third floor contains the ballroom and the gentlemen's smoking parlor. The front of the house faces north and you will notice in the picture how the front porch extends some little distance beyond the west side of the house. That was so the family, sitting on the porch to catch the evening breezes, could catch a breeze even if it came from the south by sitting on that end of the porch.

On the back of the house you can see two dormer windows for the third floor. There are also two windows in each end of the third floor. During the Civil War battle of Franklin Carnton served as the hospital for the Confederate army. The battle of Franklin was the bloodiest battle of the Civil War and the floors of Carnton are stained ebony with, the blood of the wounded from the surgery performed in the house.

After the battle the Union having been victorious, gathered their wounded and dead, but the fields were covered with the Confederate dead. The owner of Carnton set aside a portion of the plantation as a cemetery, and they gathered and buried 1,496 soldiers there. At first they marked the graves with wooden markers, but later collected enough money to replace these with stone. To this day the cemetery is well maintained with a wrought iron fence surrounding it. You can read a bit more about Carnton and the battle of Franklin here... http://www.carnton.org/history.htm

The Devil went down to Georgia...

2008-09-02T13:09:00.006-07:00

...and my wife went with me. We spent a few days with a good friend in Rome Georgia. Interesting town. Like its namesake in Italy it's built on seven hills. Also three rivers flow into town, two of them join and two rivers flow out of town. Because of the hills and rivers there are no straight streets or roads except in the old downtown area, and that's only for a few blocks. One hill is called Myrtle hill and the cemetery is terraced up the sides of it. Another hill is topped by the clock tower. It has a nine foot diameter clock on each of the four sides, and the tower itself was the original water tower for the city, built in 1871. There is a statue of Romulus and Remus being nursed by the she wolf of Rome Italy myth. This statue is a smaller version of the one in Italy and was given to the town of Rome Georgia by the city of Rome Italy. We also visited the campus of Berry college there. It's the largest college campus in the world with over 26,000 acres. The old mill sets on the campus and is a remnant of the days when the college provided all it's own food. We also toured the Berry mansion, home of the lady that started the college. We were quite fortunate to have a tour guide on our visit. A lady that is a neighbor of our friend, is a member of the old families and has lived there her whole life. She rode along two days and gave us a running commentary of the history, the gossip and the scandals down through the years, identifying houses, buildings and areas by telling their historical significance. It was a fun trip, fun visit, and a very pleasant get-away.

Just listening

2008-08-23T12:25:00.001-07:00

When we think about our lives, we remember all the fascinating things we've done and seen, places we've been, adventures we've had. If we just bear in mind the people we meet have just as many memories and wonderful tales to tell if someone is interested enough to listen.
I learned so much about my little home town as a kid by simply visiting and talking with the old people around town. Many of them had lived their entire lives there, and their stories were never written down. Now they're lost forever except what little I remember now and then.
In the large scheme of things, none of that would have made it into the history books, but history books deal with the big, world changing events. Most of what I knew shaped a town, and that shaped the people growing up there, ultimately shaping all that those people touched as they passed through life.
Ripples. Everyone's life creates ripples in tomorrow, some big and some small, and everyone has their stories to tell.

Leave Early

2008-07-20T20:02:00.002-07:00

It's dark now. I just came in off the back porch when the last light of the day passed. On any nice day we have morning coffee out there, and I love to finish the day sitting on the porch. We don't use a garbage disposal but toss all left-overs in the edge of the woods just off the back porch. Critters come up to browse and eat our offerings. There is an opossum, one large and one smaller raccoon, and a couple of foxes that frequent our buffet that we've seen. Deer and wild turkey frequent our woods and wander through the yard from time to time, and the Pileated woodpeckers are a regular presence here. We do seem to have inherited a stray cat. He shows up once or twice a day to be fed so we've been buying cat food for him, and give him some milk. He's wandered into the house a few times but goes back out and off to where-ever it is he goes. I call him the Stealth Cat. He will just suddenly be on the back porch, and just as suddenly be gone.

There's an entirely different pace living here in south central Kentucky than we had in Vegas. You learn to leave a bit early if you have somewhere to be at a particular time. In the little more than seven miles between here and town, there are only five brief areas that are passing zones. Lots of curves and hills. Driving around this area of the state you soon realize there are people that drive 35 mph maximum, and there will be farm tractors and equipment on the roads running even slower. On a narrow road you may meet a pick-up or tractor with a trailer loaded with the round bales taking about a lane and a quarter. County equipment will be out mowing along the roads. You may be contending with those 4 wheel off road bikes, or Amish buggies. A while back we waited while some farmers herded cows across the road. It doesn't matter. There are very few times we are on a schedule, and I'll gladly settle for a day where the only excitement was getting behind a tractor on the highway.

Today I did a little work on my daughter's riding mower and showed my granddaughter how to operate it. She was driving it around cutting the grass with a smile on her face, and singing the theme song to "Green Acres". We took our son and daughter-in-law to the local Mexican restaurant for lunch, and took the wife's computer in for a tune-up.

Retirement agrees with me.

What's Your Sign?

2008-06-24T15:22:00.001-07:00

I was at an impressionable young age when first I heard about Astrology. Then I found out my sign is "Cancer".

Cancer?

A malignancy?

Other people were Sagitarius, Gemini, Capricorn but I was stuck with Cancer.

Now, as if being a malignancy wasn't bad enough, it's represented by a crab!!! Everybody knows crabs is the slang name for body lice, so my sun sign isn't just a malignancy, it's an infestation of the private parts.

The only saving grace about the Cancer sign was the symbol. It looks very much like a 69 lying down. Now that's about as suggestive as you can get.

The end of June the symbol will seem significant in yet another way, as I will celebrate my 69th birthday by taking a nap.

Now you know why I never put much stock in Astrology

Our Graduate

2008-06-08T19:41:00.003-07:00

Our granddaughter graduated high school this month. She decided she wanted grandpa to take pictures to exchange with other students rather than having studio pictures made. These are a couple of the pictures. We're quite proud of her. For the senior year she had two B's and the rest of grades were all A's.

It has been wonderful having our daughter and granddaughter next door, having the great privilage of sharing these last two years of her schooling and all that goes with being that age.

We visited Stonehenge

2008-05-25T06:25:00.003-07:00

At least it's Kentucky's version of Stonehenge in the small town of Munfordville. Creator Chester Fryer relocated nearly every large rock he could find in the surrounding county to create his masterpiece. Kentucky's Stonehenge doesn't strictly follow the layout of the actual Stonehenge, but reflects the points of the compass with additional rocks marking the cardinal directions. The line of stones leading to his Stonehenge in the one picture will cast a continuous shadow straight into the center of the circle at sunrise the first day of summer. Surrounding areas are divided into other rock displays he calls Earth Mysteries, the Garden of Gethsemane, Rock Gardens, and Rock Park. Munfordville is an old town with many beautiful old buildings and homes. One little log cabin a block off the main drag was built as the Munfordville Inn. I'm not sure of the date, but it's old enough President elect Andy Jackson spent the night there on his way to Washington DC for his inauguration.

Pesty critters

2008-04-27T08:23:00.001-07:00

It's a Crane Fly. Okay, so I looked it up. Each year we get a few of these critters showing up in April, but this year I've counted more than 38 billion so far. Of course you realize that's just a rough estimate. Fortunately they don't bite or sting, but you can't open a door without getting some of them in the house. I'm having to take down light fixtures and empty their flimsy carcasses out, and when I mow the lawn there will be hundreds of them flying up as I cut near the woods. I keep my mouth shut because they're lousy navigators, and will fly into you. I don't know if their tasty to humans, but fish love them. I'm not a fish, that's just my nickname, and I don't want to find out what they taste like. They're shameless too, and mate in mid air. The good news is, they have a very short life span, and will be only a memory in a few weeks.

Orange Juice

2008-04-25T20:35:00.001-07:00

I decided I wanted some fresh squeezed orange juice, so went to the market to buy oranges. They didn't have any oranges, just blues, reds and yellows. I had to buy some reds and some yellows and mix my own oranges.

Grillin'

2008-04-25T20:31:00.001-07:00

For many years we had charcoal grills. Every so often we'd cook outside, eat at the picnic table, and just have an "escape the house routine" type meal. I always wound up being the chef (using that term very loosely), but I've never really been into creative cooking. I could manage a reasonable steak, some BBQ chicken, burgers and dogs and the like, but gourmet it wasn't. I was always happy to settle for edible, and the closest I ever got to shish-kabob was roasting a hotdog on a stick over a camp fire. We gave the last charcoal grill away about July '87 and other than a few wiener roasts, and propane stove cooking on a camping trip, our home cooking has been in the kitchen.

Then about a month ago we bought a small outdoor grill made by Char-Broil. One of those $99 dollar items, but manufactured in the state of Georgia. No sense in spending a lot unless we decide we really want to do this sort of thing on a regular basis. After I assembled it and tried to fire it up, I found I couldn't get a spark from the igniter. I called the manufacturer. I got a three or four number menu, selected the appropriate number expecting a secondary list - but immediately reached a live person. It took me a second to orient to the idea I'd reached a live person that easily. Of course that's one of the differences between a for-profit business and a government bureaucracy. I talked to a very nice lady that was American, residing in America, spoke very distinctly and pleasantly, apologized for the problem, and they shipped a new part to me free of charge. If I ever upgrade to a larger grill it will be that brand just because of that.

The secondary Primary

2008-04-22T06:25:00.002-07:00

WOW! In about a month (May 20th) we Kentuckians get to vote our choice for President of the United States in our primary election. Pictured here I've clipped that part of the sample ballot. Gee, I just don't know which candidate to vote for. Do I want Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee, Alan Keyes? That's why I say they should hold all these primaries on the same day nation wide. Many of these candidates might have had a better showing, or someone might have received more votes than John McCain if everyone had a say in it. Oh, I'll go vote. There are choices on the U.S. Senate race and the State Senate race where I actually have a choice of candidates, but putting this section in for U.S. President seems an exercise in futility to me.

Fast Food

2008-04-18T06:27:00.002-07:00

Sounds like an oxymoron. When your are fasting, you don't have food.

What is it with fast food joints wanting to be all things to all people? You can go to McDonald's or Burger King and get fish or chicken. You can go to Long John Silver's and get chicken or burgers. They have menus that stretch across the room, but a burger joint should serve burgers, a fish place should serve fish, and a chicken place serve chicken. So far KFC and Popeys have managed to stay away from fish and burgers, but for how long? Speaking of KFC (Kentucky Fried Chicken), it really is kentucky fried chicken here in kentucky. It's false advertising in all other states. One of the more successful burger joints out west is the In-N-Out Burgers. Their menu? Hamburger, Cheeseburger, Double-double cheesburger, fries, drinks. That's the whole menu. That's it, and they're always busy. Their fries are really fresh too. You can watch them cut the potato just before it goes into the deep fryer, and they have a great burger. Service is just a little slower, partly because there is usually a crowd, but also because they do not start anything before it's ordered. No heat lamps, hot trays, warmed over or (?), just fresh, jucy, delicious. I like a burger joint that serves burgers, a fish place that serves fish, a chicken place that serves chicken, and I don't expect to get a roast beef manhattan at a Mexican restaurant, or a prime rib dinner at the Chinese restaurant. Don't confuse me. I can do that all by myself.

Gun Show

2008-04-13T20:18:00.002-07:00

My brother and I decided to take in the gun show and machinegun shoot at Knob Creek on Saturday, April 12th. The two of us along with his son-in-law, and two grandsons left here about 7:30 in the morning and made the 140 mile drive up there. I guess I should have checked their web site one more time before we left. The April show was cancelled because of flooding, and they had this picture of their entrance posted on their site. We then made a 140 mile return trip.

My Old Kentucky Home

2008-04-13T20:15:00.003-07:00

My paternal grandmother was born and raised in Kentucky. For all the years I was growing up in Indiana she subscribed to the newspaper from her home town in Kentucky, and she always got a bit misty eyed when she heard the song "My Old Kentucky Home". In early April my wife and I along with our daughter and granddaughter, decided to have a fun day. We drove up to Mount Vernon Kentucky to the railroad museum spending a few hours there, then on up to Bardstown for a late lunch. While there we took the tour of the home that was the inspiration for Steven Collin Foster's song. He was a cousin to the Rowan family that had built and lived in this particular home, and he wrote that song while staying with them for a while. The state eventually bought the home, and made "My Old Kentucky Home" the state song. It's an impressive house and property, but the rooms didn't have closets, there was no bathroom in the house, they heated with fireplaces, had no electricity. It may appear grand, but I much prefer today's life style.

Superstar

2008-04-01T20:52:00.001-07:00

When we moved here almost four years ago, we noticed our little adopted town had a theater for live stage performances. The "Barn Lot Theater" which sets just off the square. Over the years I've enjoyed attending various performances in other theaters, and even acted in a couple of productions (I'm a terrible actor, but they were desperate). With one thing and another I kept postponing attending this particular establishment, but last Saturday my granddaughter wanted me to take her to see "Jesus Christ Superstar" because some of her friends were in the production.

I must admit to a bit of trepidation at attending because I've loved the music and production of this particular program for many years. When the music albums first hit the market in the '70's I wore out at least one set of them, saw the movie when it hit the theaters, watched a live production of this in Indianapolis, purchased the video tape of the movie and have watched that several times. I like "Superstar" and was a bit apprehensive about seeing a production that might be butchered by a small town theatrical group.

To my surprise and delight just the opposite was true. The sound, choreography, settings and direction were superb, and the rather large cast pulled the whole thing together with a perfection that I had not expected. There were variations between the movie and this local performance, not in the songs but in the action. They were a plus. I thoroughly enjoyed the evening.

I presume there has been a change of heart concerning "Superstar" in the years since it was first introduced to us. I remember at that time many church organizations condemned it for one reason or another, and I do not think it would have been performed as a live stage production here in the middle of the Bible belt back then. But then several church organizations condemned Handel's Messiah when it was first introduced in the mid seventeen hundreds, and now it's performed in all sorts of churches.

My personal opinion is, the music from Jesus Christ Superstar will go down in history as some of the finest music of the 20th century. But what do I know.

Recording and Playback

2008-03-24T21:25:00.001-07:00

The first playback unit I was around was a hand cranked 78 RPM record player my grandparents had in their basement. Then some time in my late teens I bought a Wilcox-Gay Recordio. This was a wooden cabinet table-top unit with a 78 RPM record player and an AM radio, but it also had a microphone and a cutting arm so you could cut (literally) your own records. The sound quality was the pits, but if you enunciated properly someone could play your recording on a 78 RPM record player and understand what you were saying.

My older brother had a wire recorder around for a while. A great big bulky thing with a little spool of wire, and you could not only record on it, you could record over previous messages.

After those days I had a small, reel to reel player/recorder, a variety of cassette player/recorders, 8 track units, multi-speed record players, and eventually graduated into the television VHS player/recorders.

Now I have one unit in the livingroom that will play 3 different speeds of vinyl records, play and record cassette tapes, has an AM - FM stereo radio and also a three disk CD playback feature. 8 track tapes have been gone for years.

I have an analog 27" television that gives me wonderful quality pictures, with a VCR player/recorder and a DVD player hooked to it. I also have a large section of one wall in the office covered with shelves of VHS tapes and DVD disks. Now they tell me if I was on antenna I wouldn't be able to receive television signals after next February, but my cable company assures me the set will continue to work fine through their system.

I'm just wondering if and when my television burns out and I have to switch to HD television, if that wall full of movies will even play on the new system. And when DVD's change to high definition will I have to then install a third playback unit just to be able to use old and new movies.

Of course I could keep up with the Jones' and have all the latest gadgets for this
sort of thing, but I have a feeling we're not too far from eliminating all of that conglomeration anyway. I can see how not too far in the future you will simply choose the movie you want to watch through the cable service, and never have to own a copy of. Like Pay Per View, but the movie starts when you want it too, and you can pause it just as if you had it in your home. Even burn a copy if you thought you might like to see it again later. About every movie ever made could be available in some giant Internet type server available at your beck and call. They system I have right now, suits me just fine. But I have a feeling I will be forced to part with more of my cash to keep up with the changes.

I may just go back to comic books and forget about the whole thing.

The First Oil Well

2008-03-13T09:01:00.001-07:00

Titusville Pennsylvania claims the distinction of having the first well drilled for the purpose of striking oil in 1859, and much of the history of oil revolves around this discovery. However, a well at Burkesville Kentucky hit a gusher thirty years earlier in 1829. The oil shot up out of the ground fifty feet into the air, filling and flowing down a nearby stream into the Cumberland River where it covered the river from bank to bank to Selina Tennessee, a distance of 200 miles. It spewed forth an estimated fifty thousand barrels, and someone or something ignited the Cumberland, creating a two hundred mile river of fire for weeks. Where's an environmentalist when you need one.

To be fair to Titusville Pensylvania's claim to fame, the Burkesville Kentucky well was not drilled for oil, but for brine. Salt was an essential commodity to the pioneer settlers and one way they acquired it was by boiling off brine water. A fellow named Martin Beatty had accepted the job of drilling a brine well for a Dr. John Croghan from the Burkesville area. The drilling equipment was a crude, home make apparatus operated by foot power, and he had been laboriously drilling for weeks. Exasperated it's said he exclaimed one day "I will strike salt or I will strike hell". Some time after that his bit broke through into a pocket of gas and oil rocketing the rope and bit into the air followed by a fifty foot gusher of oil. It was reported he ran off into the woods never to be seen in the area again. I wonder if he was anywhere around to see the Cumberland on fire. He might well have thought he'd indeed unleashed hell upon the Earth.

When we think of oil producing states, we don't normally think of Kentucky. From where I sit here in south central Kentucky there are hundreds of wells pumping away in any direction you care to travel, several within two or three miles. Some of those wells have been steady producers for half a century and are still flowing. Most are not gushers, nor can they be pumped steadily. They determine the oil flow in any particular well and set the pumps on timers. It will pump for a while, then shut off long enough to allow the oil to flow back in before the pump comes back on.

He killed the Doughboy

2008-02-26T13:17:00.002-08:00

We lived in Jamestown Kentucky for three years around 1980. In the middle of the traffic circle on the courthouse square (yes, they have a circular square), the American Legion had a statue of the Doughboy, the First World War infantryman, erected on a pedestal in 1937. The other day a drunk driver speeding down one of the approaches to the traffic circle hit the steps at the edge of the raised circle and launched his pick-up truck through the air straight at the statue. He was high enough in the air to clear the pedestal, but destroyed the bronze statue before coming to rest at the far edge of the circle. He now is resting in jail. The Doughboy fought a valiant fight and the yellow paint of the truck on his bayonet suggests he inflicted a severe wound before succumbing to his injuries.

The Dreamsicle is an ice cream bar covered in orange sherbet, and a fond memory of my childhood. I don't believe I've had one since I was a kid, but I saw a box of these delights (though they weren't called Dreamcicles) in the freezer section of the grocery the other day, and brought it home with me. Today my wife and I decided to have one. It tasted so good we had a second one and even thought about a third. That seemed a bit much though and we resisted.

When we first move here the old court house in the middle of our square town square was a bright white. Quite picturesque I thought. Now it seems it's on the National Registry of Historic Structures and they spent a basketful of money blasting the many year's accumulation of paint from the original red brick, repairing and painting window frames, remortering areas and the like. Supposedly it now looks like it did when it was first built in the mid eighteen hundreds. We have a brand new, state of the art court house on one of the corners of the square where they hold traffic and criminal court, but they still hold fiscal court in the old building. At least for now it also holds the Sheriff's department, the license branch, all the deeds for the county, and a couple of other bureaucracies, but I understand the Sheriff's department is soon to move to another location. There is a large lawn around the old court house with walkways, benches (liars benches?), and a lot of mature trees. It's an inviting place to sit in the shade on warm summer days, and the various events and festivals held here center around the square. Care for a fried apple turnover?

Caucus or Primary

2008-02-11T14:20:00.000-08:00

Periodically we have a primary election in the state to choose who will run on the Democratic and Republican tickets. This primary is set for a particular day and every county votes their choices. After the votes are tallied we have one winner in each category for the Democratic contenders, and an equal number of contenders on the Republican ticket. On election day we get to choose between the two parties candidates for each position. It seems to work well, so why in the world is the Presidential caucus or primary such a mess?

For instance, Iowa then New Hampshire gets to vote. There choices were - Republicans - Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Ron Paul, Rudy Giuliani, and Duncan Hunter. Democrats - Barack Obama, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, Joe Biden, and Chris Dodd.

From there it goes through other states, one after another, and on occasion some states voting the same day. By the time it gets to the last states in these "primaries" many of the candidates have dropped out from lack of support, or it can even be down to one candidate for each party, which completely nullifies any reason for the last states to even bother.

Such a system costs each candidate many millions of dollars, sends them running around the country in an exhausting succession of whistle-stop speeches, and in the end the final states get no say-so in who your party will run for this most important job in the world.

It's possible that holding such primary elections in all 50 states at the same time, some of the "losers" in the early primaries with the current system, could well come out on top in a lot of the states that never get a chance to cast their votes for any but the frontrunners.

If they gave each candidate a fifteen minute spot on television (which the candidate would pay for), then let them post their positions on their web sites, and/or mail a flier to every home (which they would also have to pay for), it would level the playing field. I'm sure it would cost them less than the multi-millions each now have to spend just to campaign, and all states would get a chance to put in their vote. The way it is now there are states that don't even bother because it's all been decided before they would have an opportunity to hold a primary.

Cold Weather Stuff

2008-02-04T05:58:00.000-08:00

I had a new package heat pump installed last spring. For anyone that doesn't know why the word "package" is in front of heat pump, that simply means the whole thing sits outside, and the only thing in the house is the duct work and the thermostat. It was a simpler installation since I'd had a package air conditioner and an indoor electric furnace combination.

It stopped working one Wednesday afternoon. There wasn't even a digital read-out on the thermostat, so I wasn't getting power some how. I opened the breaker box and flipped the furnace breakers off and on to see if that was it, but nothing happened. I called the company that had installed it but the best they could do was some time the next week. It was supposed to drop into the low 20's that night. This is a total electric home, so I turned on a small ceramic heater and the oven on the range for a while, then decided to drag in a kerosene heater.

When we moved in here in the spring of '04 I realized we were a bit remote, and there was only one power source coming through the area. A good ice storm, or high winds can take out our power for two or three days or more so I bought a couple of kerosene heaters. I figured one in each end of the house would keep the temperature above the freezing mark, but little did I know. I'd also bought two five gallon containers and filled them with kerosene, and they've been sitting here unused for the last three years. I filled the one heater, set it mid house and fired it up. It seemed to be putting out a lot of heat so I just turned it to about three fourths on the control. This was eleven o'clock at night. When I got up at six the next morning it was still cooking away and the temperature was about 85º in the kitchen and dining area, and over 75º at the farthest ends of the house. I shut it off for a while and refilled it, then fired it back up a couple of hours later. Those things are serious heaters, and I was duly impressed.

And now for the rest of the story. About the middle of the next day I had called another service company to see if I could get the heat pump back up and running, and they scheduled me for the next afternoon. Just after I hung up from talking to them I was struck with one of those "duh" realizations. There are two sets of breakers. The ones that had controlled the original electric furnace, and the ones that had controlled the package air conditioner. I opened the breaker box and flipped the AC breakers off and on, and the whole system was back up and running. Two more phone calls to the two service companies to admit my ignorance and I was back in business.

All is not lost though. It made me realize just how effective those kerosene heaters can be, and if one can heat our home during a power outage, I can set the second one in my daughters place adjacent to us to keep them comfy during such an outage. I just have to make sure I have enough kerosene on hand because if it's a wide outage the service stations will not be able to pump more.

New Year

2007-12-30T12:41:00.000-08:00

Another year winds to a close. The idea that the year changes at midnight tonight is an arbitrary idea. The calendar could just as well have been set up to have the year end on the winter solstice of December 22nd, or the spring equinox in March, or on April Fools day for that matter. Never-the-less tonight is the night for the western world to celebrate the change. Las Vegas expects about 300,000 celebrants from around the world. The police will block off more than a mile of the Strip and it will be shoulder to shoulder people as sequenced fireworks explodes from atop numerous casino/hotels at twelve midnight. We were in Vegas for 17 New Years Eves and were never once tempted to join that roiling mass of humanity. I can think of little I would like less than being jostled by hundreds of thousands of total strangers in the middle of the street, then trying to retrieve the car and find a route through the traffic jam afterwards.

The New Year comes in 24 different times around the world, once in each time zone. If we had Star Trek's ability to beam a person from one point to another we could celebrate the new year 24 times in one day. I don't think I would make it through all 24 glasses of Champaign though.

We look at the new year as a dividing point, another category to segregate our lives into manageable segments of time. It's a time to reflect on the year just passing, the good the bad, a time to consider changes we need or want to make in the new year just dawning. Many people make new year's resolutions, then break them the first week. Personally I like to think about the year just passing, recalling the good memories and good times, and be thankful for the many blessings the year has brought.

I wish for each of you a fulfilling new year of love and joy, of wonderful times and memories. Whatever may come, strive to enjoy 2008, creating fond memories to reflect on a year from now. Happy New Year.

Christmas

2007-12-25T19:38:00.000-08:00

We had a call from our daughter about 6:30 Christmas morning informing us they were up. We were to join them for opening Christmas presents so the wife and I ambled over to their home just a couple hundred feet from us. Our granddaughter is eighteen, a Senior in school this year and will be in college next Christmas, so this is probably her last Christmas living at home. Most of the gifts were for her and it was such fun watching her sit in the middle of the floor surrounding herself with wrapping paper as each treasure was exposed for all to see. To me one of the best parts of Christmas has always been watching children opening presents, and this morning was no exception.

The four of us had spent Christmas Eve watching the old classics, "The Miracle on 34th Street" and "It's a Wonderful Life". My wife had a turkey in the oven slow cooking all night, so we four adjourned to our home for Christmas dinner. Of course we had green bean casserole (one of the first things a Midwestern girl learns to cook). We also had dressing, cranberry sauce, candied yams, hot buttered rolls then pumpkin and cherry pie with whipped cream to finish. So far I've upheld my end of things by diligently over-eating - again. It's been a perfect Christmas.

It's interesting thinking back over the Christmas' of my lifetime from a child believing in Santa Claus, to an older child joining in the gift giving and sharing. Later came marriage, children of our own and the joy of watching their faces Christmas morning.

One year we had a slender Christmas when we were struggling to get a new business off the ground, and the tree was a small cedar cut from the field of a friend. A neighbor gave us some potatoes and a squash he'd raised and a sack of black walnuts he'd shelled. We incorporated his gift into Christmas dinner with mashed potatoes, a squash pie, and a chocolate cake with walnuts in it. He made Christmas special for us that year.

One Christmas the family was in Kentucky and I was in Arizona. We talked that morning, wishing each other a Merry Christmas, but the rest of the day I was by myself. I didn't have a tree or decorations but decided to spend the day meditating, thinking on the blessings of my life and of the season rather than feeling sorry for myself, and it was another wonderful Christmas.

Then there was over twenty years when we might have two, one or none of our children around on Christmas day, and finally everything worked out for us to be with all four of our kids and their respective families on one grand and joyous Christmas at my eldest daughter's home in the wilderness of Northern Arizona. Not exactly the traditional Christmas though. Instead of turkey or ham we'd brought about forty pounds of top sirloin, and our eldest son knows how to cook a steak to perfection regardless of how you want it. We all slept over a couple of nights.

We may never have another Christmas with all of us together, but that's all right too. We get to see each other now and then, only once with all six of us since moving here in 2004, but quite a few times with one or two of the kids around.

Christmas really isn't shared in a locality, but shared in the heart.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas this year.

On your AM Radio Dial

2007-12-13T13:37:00.000-08:00

I saw my first television broadcast just before my tenth birthday, and it was another three or four years before we had our first television set in the home. Prior to that we listened to a table model Philco AM radio with a wooden cabinet and an external antenna wire. Radio was king in those days, and your radio personalities were national or local celebrities. Radio, much like books, required you to use your imagination to create the scenes portrayed by the characters. Television could never have created a set as foreboding and drear as my mind portrayed Jack Benny's money vault down in the dungeon of his home, and Fibber McGee's closet would never have been as funny as a sight gag as it was in my own mind. You knew the Shadow was there in the room with the bad guy, but on television you just see the bad guy by himself in a room. The same thing happens today when they take a book you've enjoyed and make a movie from it. To start they have to leave so much out to make it into a two hour movie, but the scenes and characters never resemble the ones you've created in your mind. It's almost always a big let-down. So much so I generally refuse to see a movie made from a book I've liked.

My grandmother had one of the huge old floor model radios with a cabinet that was a fine piece of furniture. It used such large vacuum tubes it must have made the electric meter spin when it was turned on. On a cold day you could stand next to it to keep warm. With an outside antenna that ran most of the length of the property it could, when the weather was right, pick up signals from around the world. There were actually spots on the dial identified by city names such as London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Tokyo, and with the proper weather inversion you could actually receive these foreign language broadcasts. FM radio is primarily dependent on line of sight, but the AM signals could skip around the world. My brother-in-law and I, sitting in central Indiana, listened to "Music of the Islands, from the Islands", Honolulu Hawaii for a couple of hours one night, and it was the strongest station on the dial. That was on a small, table model AM radio with no external antenna too. At times radio was an adventure.

If I could return to those days and the programming we enjoyed, I wouldn't. I still remember how magical it seemed to have movie shows in your own living room once television hit the scene, and today's news from around the world in real time is sheer magic. I'll never forget how the radio brought me the world, entertained me, and added so much to the pleasant memories of childhood.

One program I remember from childhood was called "The Renfro Valley Barn Dance", a country music show that was on every Saturday night. Last week-end we drove through Renfro Valley, Kentucky and that's what started this train of thought. I'm happy to announce the barn dance still goes on, though I don't know if it's broadcast these days.

I'm Back !!!

2007-12-01T14:56:00.000-08:00

My "New" computer went belly up again. After more than a week in the shop with them trying everything, they concluded the hard drive was really dead. The odd thing, when they hooked it up to their diagnostic equipment it showed the hard drive there (which indicates it is working), but they could not access it no matter how hard they tried.

So, with a new hard drive, here I am trying to reorganize it to something similar to what I like, reinstalling all my pet programs, trying to pick up everything I need from back-up disks. Of course you never back-up often enough to have everything up to date when you start over.

Anyhow, we had a great Thanksgiving in Indiana with the daughter and son that live there and their families. Our daughter and granddaughter from here went with us so we had three out of our four youngsters with us. I upheld my end of the day perfectly. I over-ate, and continued to graze throughout the day.
------------------------------
A man walked into a bar in Lexington, Kentucky and ordered a drink. While he was sitting at the bar watching T.V., one of Hillary's political ads came on.
After it went off, he stood up and announced to everyone, "Hillary is a horse's ass!" The bartender reached under the bar and brought out an oak club about 18 inches long and hit the man square across the mouth, knocking him off his stool and onto the floor.
After a minute or two, the man got up, straightened himself up and said to the bartender,
"I'm sorry. I didn't know this was Hillary country."
"It's not!" replied the bartender. "This is horse country!"

What's a Hali ?

2007-11-13T14:35:00.000-08:00

My wife told me were having Hali-butt for dinner.

When I'm watching television I always mute the commercials, but there's been one I've seen several times that worries me. You see some hapless person has left their bedroom window open a little and this green glowing radioactive moth flies in and hovers over them. Then you see their eyes close as they pass out. I think this moth is killing people - beware.

I think I need a vacation from projects.

Alternative Energy

2007-11-05T06:18:00.000-08:00

Maybe someone can explain to me why so much money and effort is being applied to the production of Ethanol from corn. Why aren't they creating biofuel from beans? It makes sense to me that if they wanted gas.....

This is a Recording.....Aaaaargh!

2007-11-02T07:51:00.000-07:00

An ex-daughter-in-law had a bill with a hospital and had left our phone as a contact number. I suppose it had been turned over to a collection agency because I answered the phone to hear a recorded message, something to the effect of..."Please hold for an important message about a past due bill for (her name). I hung the phone up.

Had an actual person called I would have been happy to provide them with whatever information I could, but recorded messages have become the bane of telephone business transactions from my point of view. When I want something it aggravates me no end to dial a company number and hear "Your call is very important to us. Please hold for the next available operator" and fifteen minutes later my arm is cramping from holding a phone to my ear and listening to elevator music. One thing I can guarantee you, if that company has a competitor that uses live operators, they will get my business every time.

I understand the reason for a company to use such a system. In order to have enough operators to handle rush times they would have a half dozen operators on the payroll sitting idle during slow times. The electronic message systems are a cost savings to them. That said, I also understand that if most callers are waiting fifteen minutes to a half hour for a live operator to respond, they are understaffed. They are looking only at the bottom line difference between the cost of the electronic system vs. paying live operators. They need to do a little research to see how many people get tired of waiting and hang-up. That is a lost customer and it doesn't take very many of those to pay for more operators. If the hang-ups are like me, I will have changed to a competitor that actually answers the phone (at least with minimal time) and they've not just lost my business this time, but for all times.

There is a balance between bottom line profit margins and customer satisfaction. If a company is just looking at the balance sheet and ignoring customer satisfaction, their business will eventually decline and fail. I've seen it many times in this country. A competitor is drawing business away and instead of looking for ways to better please and provide for the customer, they start looking for ways to cut costs. Laying off people seems always to be the first step the financial advisors propose in cutting costs, which simply means you have less people to take care of your customers. Hence, more disgruntled customers taking their business elsewhere.

Then there's the menus. Press one for choice "A". Press two for choice "B". Etc.

Press one for English.

Manual Labor

2007-10-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've been building a porch on my daughter's mobile home for several months now. When it's too hot, I quit. If there's something more interesting happening, I quit. If it's too cold I don't start. If it's raining I don't start. If I just don't feel like it, I don't start. After all, I'm retired. Maybe they'll get to enjoy it next summer. I'm up to the point I'm ready to put down the outdoor carpeting (that's the roll laying on the porch in the picture). I decided to leave the railings off until the carpet is down to make it easier, so they'll be installed once that's done. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. One more detail will be lattice work around the bottom, or something (depending on when she makes up her mind). I've never built a porch before. In fact a couple of sheds and a dog house are about the extent of my construction credentials, so after buying all the materials I needed I've made a half dozen more trips to the builder's supply house for stuff I forgot.

"B" Sandwiches

2007-10-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

We decided to have a light supper this evening, so we had B sandwiches. That's kind of like a BLT but without the lettuce or tomato.

Saving our history

2007-10-20T07:35:00.000-07:00

I've been following the progress on the restoration of a circa 1820 house in Glasgow Kentucky. It's an interesting old structure with a kitchen separated from the house, and slave quarters in the basement. There's a covered porch between the kitchen and the house, and a door in the porch leads to a root cellar beneath the kitchen. One feature I found interesting is the three doors between the porch and the dining room. The center door leads into the dining room, but the doors to each side open into closets. The kitchen slaves would open the door to the right and place the clean dishes, tableware, napkins and the like in there. The closet door on the left is where they would place the prepared food. Once these outside closet doors were closed the serving staff would open inside doors that provided access to the same closets, set the tables and serve the food.

Shades of Carrie Nation

2007-10-18T19:59:00.001-07:00

Back in the days when prohibition was repealed, the state of Kentucky decided to allow each county to set their own liquor laws. As the result there are many "dry" counties around this area where it is illegal to buy or sell alcoholic beverages. We were in Glasgow the other day, the county seat for Barren county, and there are signs all over the place saying "Vote NO to legalizing alcohol". A sign in front of a church said "We don't want liquor in Barren County". Evidently residents of Barren county were able to submit enough signatures to get the wet or dry vote on the ballot once again. This is generally the case in every dry county in every election, then comes the hysteria, the signs, editorials in the papers and ads on radio and television all asking you to vote no. I never see signs, ads or editorials in favor of legalized alcohol.

The wet/dry county question is a classic example where emotion wins out over reason every time. There is the huge emotional outpouring against allowing liquor in the county, but simple reasoning will tell you there is already liquor in the county via the bootleggers. Now bootleggers today aren't like in the days of prohibition with stills cranking out white lightning. Though that is still done in limited supply, your main bootleggers in dry counties simply truck liquor in from the nearest legal source, mark it up and sell it to locals. All you want, any time of day. The thing they never consider when talking about such a vote is, if they had legal liquor the county would be drawing taxes from these stores, the store owner would have a license to protect so wouldn't sell to minors. Bootleggers don't care if your 21 or 12, if you have the money you can have the liquor. Many of them also sell drugs which a legal liquor store owner wouldn't do. Most bootleggers will also take stolen merchandise in trade, which again a legal store would not do.

In other words, the emotional votes against legalizing liquor sales encourages the availability of alcohol to minors, makes drugs easily available, and offers a fencing operation for stolen merchandise. Emotion trumps common sense because their slogans sound better to the uneducated. Obviously we still have an abundance of people in that category that go out and vote their ill informed emotions.

us kids

2007-10-14T19:53:00.000-07:00

I was happy as a lark just being a kid, and some busy-body adult asked me "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Grow Up? I'd not thought about growing up. I was perfectly content being a kid, and now all of a sudden there was this question in my mind, "what do you want to be when you grow up?" After watching adults for a while I realized they didn't seem to be having any fun, so I decided my best choice was just not grow up.

So far so good.

Do Your Own Thing

2007-10-06T19:37:00.000-07:00

I had a friend for years that enjoyed life more than most people can even imagine. He was always very presentable, kept himself in good physical condition, was interested in every subject you could bring up, and could generally comment intelligently on them. The last few years we lived in Vegas, about once a week he'd drop-in for a few hours in the evening, and we'd just talk. He had his quirks though. When leisure suits came out he'd bought several. He loved them, thought they were comfortable, and when we went any place dressy he would wear one of them. Of course there would be that occasional stupid comment by someone much younger. It didn't bother him. He'd spent the entire day at Normandy on D-Day driving a landing craft between ship and shore, and anyone who has some knowledge of that day understands the carnage along that beach. Some jerk making a snide remark about his leisure suit was not about to bother him. He'd earned the right to damn well dress as he pleased.

Another friend was a hippy. In fact he never got over being a hippy in many ways. He is very intelligent, a responsible citizen, earns his own way, has his own home and the like, but he still smokes some grass now and then, and even though he's bald on top, still wears his hair in a pony tail, wears an earring, and dresses pretty funky when he's lounging around home, or even out in public.

Older people dressing young or funky or wearing a pony tail, seem to be a source of mirth to many youngsters. Often criticized by the younger crowd. Makes me wonder where the younger crowd gets off griping about criticism by older people when they insert metal in all parts of their body, wear brightly colored hair spiked like the Statue of Liberty or someone that just stuck their finger in a wall socket, and sixteen earrings in each ear. They act like they invented the idea of "doing your own thing", rather than just being the inheritors of the concept. A lot of a double standard there I would say.

Personally, I never was into fads. I've never pierced anything intentionally, have no tattoos, never had a pony tail, hell I didn't even wear bell bottoms when they were popular. Blue jeans are a great piece of attire, and a button up shirt without any messages printed on them works just fine for me. I guess I missed most of that while playing "up-the-corporate-ladder" during the sixties and seventies with three piece suits and ties. But if you want spiked hair, body studs, tattoos as a kid, or want to wear a gray pony tail behind a bald head, or speedos under a beer belly, have at it. Just stop belly-aching about how someone else chooses to "do their own thing".

2007-10-05T05:40:00.000-07:00

Thumbnails

2007-09-22T08:55:00.000-07:00

I was going to post some full sized pictures on this blog, but decided to just post thumbnails.

If I'm Elected...(fill in blank)

2007-09-19T18:49:00.000-07:00

At this time when it seems a significant percentage of the American population is running for the office of President, we're hearing a lot of promises for change. It seems anyone running against an incumbent, or running against the party in power, promises they're going to "change" things if elected.

No one ever seems to want to make the changes I think are needed however. I'd like to see a thorough review done on all the bureaucracies they've established in the last half century and eliminate the ones that have been relatively ineffective.

The "War on Poverty" has not only not worked after a bunch of trillions of dollars were thrown that way, it's had the reverse effect of the stated desires. The way it was set-up it encourages people to not work, to stay on the dole, and carries over into second and third generations. It encourages absentee fathers. It encourages indolence. It has failed miserably so why is it having it's budget raised instead of being eliminated? Make the Change.

OSHA (occupational safety and health act) had it's effectiveness reviewed after it had been in effect just ten years. It's stated purpose was to make the workplace safer to reduce on the job accidents. During that ten years on job accidents had increased by greater numbers each year than any year before OSHA. They never took into consideration the psychological aspects of what they were doing. They would come into a factory, force the company to make millions of dollars in changes to make the place safe - and on the job accidents would increase. Since the workers now knew the workplace was safe, they stopped being careful. That's called failure so why are we still funding it decades later? Make the Change.
The War on Drugs. Failed. Make the Change.

All 22,000+ anti-gun laws they've passed to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Failed. Make the Change.

Who's idea was it to pay Congress and at the same time allow them to set their own salaries, establish their own perks, get their medical coverage, vacations, plane fares around the world, at taxpayer expense, and give them huge tax breaks on top of that? Failed. Make the Change.

Has the country benefited by Congressmen that make a life's career out of "serving" in Washington DC, or would term limits suit the country better? Easy question. The arguments for term limits for the President were valid. They are just as valid in arguing for term limits for Congress. Current system? Failed. Make the Change.

If we listed all such changes that need to be made, this would not be a short article, but a large volume of books. Give me a candidate that is willing to make the changes we need, and someone willing to dump the nanny state idea out with the trash.

Rose of Sharon

2007-09-17T19:53:00.000-07:00

Last year a neighbor gave me a little stick of a plant she called a "Rose of Sharon". I stuck it in the ground and it's still a stick of a plant with quite a few leaves and maybe five feet tall. All summer it has put out blooms. Sometimes two but usually just one bloom at a time, but each bloom is a startling pink shade. I hope it survives and grows into a bush like her plant has.

What do I do Now?

2007-09-12T07:35:00.000-07:00

Who says you can't go home

2007-09-09T07:26:00.000-07:00

My little home town in Indiana has an "Old Fashioned Days" festival over Labor Day week-end each year. We decided to take that in this year then stay over and visit with family members that live in the area. It was the town's 32 year to hold this celebration, and over the years they've added to it making it quite an event for a small town. They have a stage with various musical groups, there's a parade with floats commemorating one thing or another, marching bands, antique vehicles and tractors, horses, mule teams and the like. This year's parade was about an hour start to finish. There are demonstrations of antique farm equipment, tractor pulls, all sorts of booths with craft items for sale. A couple of the churches do meals. One church had a smorgasbord breakfast/brunch that ran til ten, then at one o'clock another church took over serving porkchop meals until four. There were dozens of yard sales around town.

I enjoyed wandering around town noting all the changes in the 50 years since I last lived there, chatting with people I new from back then, and some that were later arrivals. Now I'm back home, and it's cooled down a little so I'm back into building a porch and skirting my daughter's mobile home. Other than checking my mail and one other project, I'm not getting much computer time.

My home town will be celebrating it's 175 year in 2010, so they're putting together as much information as they can. Interviewing old timers on tape that will transfer to DVD for sale to anyone interested, creating a book of histories and remembrances and the like. Since I've been doing an E-newsletter for more than five years for my fellow alumnus of that town, I've accumulated quite a bit of information about the town. I'm in the process of gleaning just the information from those that are pertinent to the town. Having put out five newsletters a week for five years, I have a lot of material to sort through. It may take me until 2010. There are two names that designate a 175th anniversary, Septaquintaquinquecentennial or Terquasquicentennial. Since no human tongue can pronounce either of these the town has decided to call it a 175 year celebration. Good choice

Idiot Lights

2007-08-27T09:39:00.000-07:00

I was trying to remember. Was it the fifties or sixties they started replacing gauges in cars with idiot lights? I've never cared for the lights because by the time the light pops on you're in trouble. With the gauges, if the car was starting to heat up you could see it at a glance and try to remedy it. With the lights the only indication you have is the car has overheated. You might have passed a station just a couple miles back where you could have stopped if there was a gauge indicating a problem, but basically when a light pops on it means "You may already be too late to save your engine". Our Blazer is wonderful in this respect. Besides the fuel gauge, it has gauges for engine temperature, oil pressure, and alternator like they used to do on all cars. The Cadillac is an entirely different creature however. It's taken the idiot light concept to a whole new level. It doesn't even have a gas gauge, but gives you the number of gallons remaining. It will have an "F" when you've just filled up, and an "E" when you'd better get to a station quickly. In between these two it will show something like "16", meaning there are 16 gallons remaining in the tank. As to oil pressure, engine temperature or whether the alternator is charging it doesn't just give you a light, it will give you a little message. Something to the effect "We hate to be the ones to tell you, but you've just burned your engine up because you ran out of coolant".

This morning I'm out mowing the lawn and start to get too hot. The thermometer on the back porch is saying 92°, so I take a break in the air conditioning for a while. My wife had taken the Cadillac and headed over to another town about 35 miles away to have lunch with a group of lady friends, and while I'm inside the phone rings. She says she'd been trying to call me. The car is heating up so she stopped at a station, bought some coolant and added it to the reservoir, even though it didn't take much. I figured she had received one of the cars little love notes telling her she was in trouble, but not so. She said as she started back out it was showing two hundred twenty five and still going up, what should she do. I asked "where are you reading this temperature" unaware there was anything in that car that would actually give you some useful information. There was silence on the phone for a second, then she said "I was looking at the "Trip Counter" and thinking it said "Temp". Now she did make me swear not to tell a soul, so if she asks, you didn't hear it from me.

The Environment

2007-08-23T06:46:00.000-07:00

My childhood in the 40's & 50's was in a town of five hundred some people in Indiana. We didn't have all the amenities of a city. No theater, skating rink, swimming pool, bowling alley or such, so I spent much of my childhood in the woods along the streams. Then I bought my first car in '58 and drove every little road leading to anywhere over several surrounding counties. Never once did I see a deer or wild turkey. I was in my mid thirties the first time I saw a wild deer, and about 45 when I saw the first turkey in the wild. Since then they've both become plentiful.

After high school I started working in downtown Indianapolis. I lived about 35 miles west and would leave home to a bright, sun-shiny day, but by the time I was near Indianapolis the sun would be hidden behind this dome of pollution that covered the city. There were smoke stacks belching black smoke into the sky, sewers and packing plants that emptied raw sewage into White River. You could generally tell about where you were in the city by the smell. The river was dangerous. No one ate fish from there or boated there, let alone swim. Today there are parks on the river, they have an annual float race, the skies over the city are clear, and it's a beautiful community.

In 1900 we had 46.52 million acres of forest lands under the National Forest Services control. In 2000 that number had grown to 187.74 million acres, over four times as much. This does not count the lands owned or controlled by the lumber and paper industries. These industries know that to run out of trees is the end of their business, so each year they plant more than they harvest.

In the late fifties the Great Lakes were in trouble. Lake Erie was classified a dead lake. Today there is commercial fishing on lake Erie. Contrary to what the environwackos have to say, the United States, in cooperation between government and the private sector, have done a lot toward cleaning up our environment and the efforts are ongoing. Hysteria, lies, fabricated evidence and falsified statistics do nothing but hurt the cause the wackos profess to be working for. In point of fact, very few of the most vocal "environmentalists" do anything but talk. It's the individual out there picking up along the roadside, industry finding better ways to manage landfills, government when it finally manages to pass reasonable regulations (based on fact rather than sensationalized feel good legislation).

Most people would prefer to live in a clean environment, and we're making it happen. Flying around the country in huge private jets spouting slanted, incomplete statistics and outright fabrications does nothing but hurt the efforts of the genuine environmentalists.

Next Blog

2007-08-21T20:44:00.000-07:00

Usually, when browsing through blogosphere, I'll click the "next blog" link at the top of the page just to see something new. Recently this has been giving me sex and porn pages with no "next blog" link to click. Since I watched my first porn movie many moons ago I've had this realization about such things. That is, Sex is not really a spectator sport. If you aren't one of the participants, you're missing the whole point.

I'm not offended by pornography, but I haven't been excited by such things since I first found out how delightful it is to be with a real live lady. Somewhere about puberty I figure. It just aggravates me that I have that popped up instead of the possibility of finding an interesting new blog to read.

2007-08-19T19:02:00.000-07:00

We strange humans

2007-08-16T20:02:00.000-07:00

Several years ago when New York was having a garbage strike, it became a health risk. Trash built up on street sides attracting rats, and creating quite a smell. So the city told everyone not to put their trash out until services resumed. When his small waste basket became full, one interprising bachelor, would tie it up in a plastic bag then seal it in a corrugated carton. He'd drive to a business district and park at the curb. He left the box on the passenger's seat in plain view with the window down. He'd go into a shop and watch, and within a few minutes someone would steal the box.

A fellow bought a new, larger refrigerator. The old one was still good so he set it on the front lawn with a sign saying "Free". It sat there more than a week with no takers, so he replaced the free sign with one that said $50. That night someone stole it.

A farmer had a problem having cows injured or killed during every hunting seasons. He had multiple no hunting and no trespassing signs posted around his property that were ignored. Finally he extended the barbwire up another foot and replaced the signs with ones that said "Do not feed the lions". He never had another cow injured.

Many years back a college student finding himself way short of tuition money, placed ads in several inexpensive papers. The ads simply said, "Chance of a lifetime. Send one dollar to (giving his name and address)". Eventually the law asked him to stop because of the complaints, but couldn't charge him with anything since he'd not promised anything in return for their dollar. He made his tuition.

Country Livin'

2007-08-11T18:37:00.000-07:00

Living in a small town is such a pleasure after all those years in Vegas. When I had to renew the plates for both cars, I walked into the county clerk's office. There was no one else there and three people behind the counter, so all three worked on it for me. I'd forgotten to bring the proof of insurance for the one vehicle so they called my insurance agent and had them fax this over. I was in and out in under five minutes.

I ordered materials for a back porch for my daughters mobile home. The building supply place knows where I live so I didn't even give them an address.

We were going into town Wednesday so my wife made out checks for the utility bills and we dropped them in a drop box in front of the post office. Back home later that afternoon she realized she'd forgotten to put stamps on the four envelopes and called the post office. The clerk paid for stamps and put them on the envelopes and my wife paid him back the next day.

Even though my youngest son lives in Indiana they had to buy their marriage license here, because they were going to be married at our place. After a week had passed and they'd not received the license in the mail, he called me. I called the clerks office and was told it had just been returned to them as an incorrect address. The address was correct and totally legible, so I don't know why their post office in Indiana returned it, but they did. Since I was to be in Indiana that week-end I told her I'd just pick it up and deliver it to them. When I walked in her office she picked up the envelope and handed it to me, knowing who I am.

When my brother wanted to build a couple of duplexes, he bought a piece of land and was clearing it getting ready to build. The president of the local bank has a farm adjacent to this land and walked over to the fence to see what was happening. My brother explained what he was doing and asked if he knew where he could get a loan for X amount to build them. The bank president said he would have the papers drawn up and my brother could come in and sign them.

We tend to overtip for service. A lot of people around here do not tip at all, and the ones that do only leave small tips. When we go into a restaurant here we get immediate service and lots of attention. The glasses and cups never go empty and they'll fix things that aren't even on the menu if they have the ingredients. Bag boys at the grocery always get us immediately because they know they'll get a tip when they take out stuff to the car. The station that pumps our gas for us always makes sure we get immediate attention because we'll give them a couple of bucks.

In a small town you're not just another face. People remember you. You've become a "local" so people chat. They show us pictures of their kids or grandkids, tell us the latest gossip, fill us in on things that are coming up in the community, tip you off on the best buys, or the best produce, or services. Yep, I think I'm home.

River trip pictures

2007-08-10T14:41:00.001-07:00

Rollin' on the River

2007-08-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

My brother is having around 75 members of his wife's family down to their river home on Saturday. He decided he wanted the pontoon boat there to take them out on the river if they wanted to go. Instead of using closer boat ramps, he decided to set it in about 12 miles or so up the Cumberland at the nearest town and float down, and I went with him. Three of his grandsons decided to join us, so Thursday we spent about six hours mostly drifting with the current and only using the motor to steer into deeper channels at the shallower areas. The boys caught some rainbow and brown trout along the way. We took plenty of food and drinks, had the canopy up for shade and set out in a fog shrouded river. I took the camera with the zoom lens and got a few shots after the fog lifted. We'll see how those come out after the roll is shot up and developed.

After their shindig he's decided, instead of going back up river, to float down about 20 miles farther to take it out. I'll be going with him for that trip. He'll drive the truck and boat trailer to the pull out destination and leave it there. I'll follow along in the car to take us back to his house to get on the boat. The kids will be back in school by the time he does that, so it will be just the two of us on that trip. There are some homes, farms and cabins along the Cumberland, but miles and miles go by with no sign of civilization at all. We didn't see but four fishing boats in the entire six plus hours, so pretty much had the river to ourselves. Little experiences like that are the icing on the cake of life. It was a great day.

In a little bit

2007-07-27T18:34:00.000-07:00

When we moved to Kentucky the first time over 25 years ago, I opened a print shop. I needed some wiring in the shop and called a local electrician. He said "Okay, I'll be over in a little bit". Two and a half days later I called again to see if he'd forgotten me. He seemed miffed I'd called again and said "I told you I'd be over in a little bit!" That's when I began to realize the meanings of words varied from place to place. The other thing I learned was part of the reason the area was financially depressed. A lot of people won't do a job even if you hire them. That still seems true around here today.

When my daughter bought the acre adjacent to our property and had a mobile home set up, the people that put in the water and septic system, the phones and lights, were all johnny on the spot. Now months later she's still trying to get someone to skirt the bottom of the trailer. The mobile home company was supposed to send someone out right away, but no amount of calling has accomplished anything. We contacted others that do that work and no one gets back to us. I saw a fellow in a local restaurant I knew to be a builder, and a native of the area, so I asked him if he could recommend someone for the job. He told me he would do it and would call me that evening with a quote. That was a week and a half ago and I've not heard from him. We picked up skirting material ourselves and tomorrow I'm going to see if I can become a skirting installer, at least for one mobile.

I've also ordered the material for a back porch about 12 x 25 feet complete with roof for her place. If anyone has some free time in the next week or so, drop on in. I have an extra hammer. Claw hammer, not ball peen.

Nuttin' much happening

2007-07-22T06:13:00.000-07:00

I gave up on the old weed-eaters and bought a new one, then started eating weeds around the place. The Yahoo weather report said fair and sunny today, possible showers tomorrow a.m. I wonder what those dark clouds rolling in could mean? It's about eleven at night now and the rain gauge says we've had over three inches of "fair and sunny" today. It's still raining. I had to retire the weed-eater long before I was finished. Ah for the good old days in Las Vegas where they were right about 360 days out of the year. All they had to do was say "hot and dry" for the summer, or "cool and dry" for the winter. I had desert landscaping there too, so no mower, no weed-eater.

Okay, I didn't really give up on the old weed-eaters. I've still got them sitting in the shed, and I'm going to play with them a while. I know the one has a problem with the motor locking up when it gets hot, but I think the other is just carburation. I'm going to take the carb off the one and put it on the other. If that doesn't do anything, then I'll trash them. Promise.

You can see I have lots of important things to do since I retired. It's my job to set the coffeepot up each night so all one of us has to do is turn it on of a morning. When I worked I had it on a timer, but we never know if we're getting up at five or eight or whatever. Generally it's when we wake up and feel like getting up, but usually around six. We download the email, take a quick look over that while the coffee brews, then retire to the back porch for cigarettes and coffee. If our daughter is working she'll generally walk over and join us for a half hour or so before starting out.

I'm investigating the idea of turning our drive over to the county. I've spent quite a bit of money and time in maintenance on it this year, but mostly I'd like to bring the mailbox down from the highway and put it in front of the house, and have trash pick-up here rather than on the highway. The mail deliver and trash pick-up won't drive on private roads.

It dawned on my I'd not seen a ball peen hammer in stores for a while. I wondered if they still made them so checked online. Yep, all sizes and prices. I'd buy me one of those if I had a clue as to what you do with that ball end of the hammer. Does anyone know why they make them in that configuration?

Okay, a wedding party picture.

2007-07-17T10:18:00.000-07:00

Some of the wedding party left to right. Brother preacher with his two shot, 9mm Derringer, myself with 15 round, 9mm semi-automatic, the bride daughter with a 5 shot .38 revolver in an ankle holster, the groom with an 8 in the clip .45 semi-automatic, and my youngest son with a 9mm 8 in the clip semi-automatic.

Click to enlarge the picture.

Ramblin' on and on and...

2007-07-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

I hope that's the last for a while. Our youngest daughter was married Saturday in Indiana. Her new husband was her secret heart-throb as a kid. He was a friend of our eldest son, and when she first saw him when she was about ten, she thought he was it. We moved away from Indiana when she was 13, then about six years ago he found her name on Classmates.com and wrote to ask if she was my son's little sister. The rest, as they say, is history. I think those two have a goth thing going though and both had black hair for the ceremony. He wore black leather and had a .45 caliber semi-automatic strapped on his belt. She made her own gown, floor length of heavy black lace over silver and had a snub nosed .38 in a holster on her ankle. I gave the bride away and had my 9mm semi-automatic on my side, and the preacher had a derringer in his pocket. Just because the 2nd amendment says we can. Quite a few people attended, and I got to talk with family members I rarely see. The Patriarch of the family was there, my uncle, mother's brother. He and one aunt are the surviving members of that generation but from the looks of him he may be around past a hundred. Amazingly healthy and looks twenty years younger than his 88 years. A couple of months ago he drove to Florida and back for his granddaughter's wedding. It turned out to be a good day. Of course my brother officiated. I told him this should qualify me for the family package, having two kids married in a month.

As I've said before, I do a daily e-newsletter for graduates of the high school in my little home town. Occasionally we get some interesting debates going via the newsletter with everyone sending me their comments and letting me put it all together and send it to everyone else. I just learned our little town has it's own urban legend. It seems, according to this legend, it was originally set up as two towns. One where the business district has always been to be named Salem, and another where the railroad and depot sat that would be called Jeru. The thought being as they grew together they would become JeruSalem. Fortunately I have a copy of the centennial booklet that was published in 1935, and includes the history of the town. It gives the details of the establishment of the town, even to it's size and the surveyor's notes, along with the three men that established it, and the justice of the peace that registered the paperwork. That was 1835, and the name they gave it at the time is the same as it's current name. The railroad, according to that book, ran it's first train into town in February 1880 a full 45 years after the town was established. Cold hard facts often ruin the best of urban legends. Ya gotta keep those things more vague.

Anyone big on repairing weed-eater's? I have two now, one of which runs somewhat thanks to my ministrations today, and the other may or may not run after I buy it a new spark plug. Of course the smart thing is to just buy a new trimmer. Both of those were under a hundred bucks, but there's something about a piece of machinery I just hate to give up on. By the time I get done fiddling with them I'll probably have several hundred dollars worth of time figuring at minimum wage, then I'll throw them away and get new ones.

SHUT-UP ALREADY !

2007-07-11T19:53:00.000-07:00

You know what I'm sick of hearing? Our troops are killing civilians! The last time I looked Al-Jihad, al Qaeda, al-Islamiyya, Al-Ummah, Abu Nidal organization, Palestine Liberation Front, Asbat al-Ansar, Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, HAMAS, Harakat ul-Ansar, etc. didn't wear military uniforms. THEY'RE ALL CIVILIANS AND THAT'S WHO WE'RE FIGHTING! Will someone please tell the main stream media?

Running hot and cold at the pumps?

2007-07-09T10:55:00.000-07:00

So they're suing the gasoline companies to force them to regulate the temperature of gasoline coming from the pumps. To date such suits have been filed in California, Delaware, New Jersey, Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana, New Mexico, Nevada, Florida, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia. The idea is, in warmer areas and warmer times of the year, gasoline expands considerably. Since there's only so many BTU's of energy per average temperature gallon, the "hot" gasoline will give you far less miles than cool gasoline.

I can see how people in places like the southwest or south might gain by this since their average temperatures are higher than in the north, but it would seem to me states that are suing like New Jersey, Delaware or here in Kentucky we would average out over the year. Hot weather we get expanded gasoline and less miles per gallon, but freezing weather it's contracted gasoline thus giving us more miles per gallon.

The other thing would be just how they would determine what temperature to set for dispensed gasoline. Would it be the same nationwide, or would they set it for an average for that area. Let's say for instance that Arizona has an average annual temperature of 82° so they set all Arizona pumps to dispense gasoline at that temperature. The end result would be the residents of Arizona would wind up spending exactly the same amount for gasoline each year, but now we've installed expensive temperature control devices on every pump. People in the very south of Arizona might well gain a little from this, but places like Flagstaff, where two foot snows are not uncommon in the winter, they would be buying warmed gasoline and get less mileage per gallon on average.

One major problem I do see with the idea of cooling gasoline as the pump dispenses it. Once it's in the tank of your car on a hot day, it's going to start warming up and expanding. Automobile gas tanks are designed not to explode in such situations, but the gas cap is going to be venting gasoline fumes out into the air like crazy as this expansion takes place. That means in towns and cities we'd be smelling gasoline fumes much more strongly, and someone smoking near a venting gas cap could well create a major fire hazzard.

To me it looks like another lawsuit trying to get something for nothing.

A new rudeness

2007-07-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

Our ancestors had to content themselves with a communication system that often took months to get a letter through, then Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. I'm old enough to remember "Central" when you rang the local operator to make a long distance call. She would patch the call through to the county seat, and it would be plugged in to the state capitol. From there it would be routed from one operator to another all the way across the country. With each additional connection you would lose a bit of volume and quality so a call several states away might require you both to shout to be heard at all. It could also take a couple of hours to make the linkage and the operator would ring you back when they'd completed the connection to your party. I think the realization of direct dial really hit me when we lived in Arizona. We had a couple of girls from Holland living with us a few months, and they wanted to call home to let their parents know they were okay. In the front of the phone book it told how to dial international. They punched in the appropriate numbers and the phone rang in their parents livingroom in the Netherlands. Amazing.

Then they invented to mobile phone. Originally it was mounted in the car, or was carried in a small suitcase but as technology progressed they got smaller. Now I think the only limitation is enough space for buttons and ear to mouth capability, and we've created a whole generation that must be in instant communication with everyone they know. It's become the new measure of rudeness. Drivers so engrossed in their conversation they don't notice they're doing 30 in the left lane of the Interstate in a 70 mph zone, or drifting between lanes, running stop signs, and basically oblivious to the fact they're supposed to be controlling more than a ton of hurtling steel. Running into you in a supermarket because their mind was on the conversation rather than their surroundings, having the phone ring in a movie theater, a wedding, a funeral, just anywhere. Rudeness. They come to your home to visit you and half the time there they are taking and making calls on their phones like you have a hold button and will wait for them to get back to you when they finish with their chat. We even had an uninvited insurance salesman ask to show us his wonderful plan. During the presentation his phone rang and he answered it. He may not have noticed, but his sales pitch ended right there. Any chance he had of selling me a policy went right out the window. If they were talking to me and I just walked away in mid sentence, they'd think me extremely rude, but when they answer the phone in the middle of our conversation that's precisely what they are doing. I had to carry a cell phone for business for several years. If I was in heavy traffic or on the freeway when it rang I let the answering system pick it up and take a message. If I was with a customer the phone was shut off during that time. It doesn't take a genius to understand simple concepts of courtesy concerning this new bane on the American scene, so why is it most cell phone owners can't seem to understand this?

Universal Healthcare

2007-07-02T20:56:00.000-07:00

During Bill Clinton's first term in the presidency, Hillary Clinton pushed for universal healthcare (dubbed Hillarycare by the media). It was resoundingly voted down in Congress. Now Mrs. Clinton is running for president and we're hearing talk of this again.

Every time the idea pops up we hear talk of how wonderful the Canadian system works, how much smaller European countries have government run healthcare, but here in the U.S. 45 percent of our population is uninsured. 45% is a deceptive figure because only about 15% have no medical insurance because of cost. That other 30% can afford it but choose not to. Even if you're uninsured, like all the illegals currently residing here, you can go to the emergency room and get treated.

In Canada you can count on long waits. Over twelve percent will wait more than a year for medical procedures - thirty percent for over seven months for treatment. Canadians that can afford it have insurance policies that are good in the U.S. and come across the border for their medical treatment. When government regulates the medical profession, they regulate the practitioner's income too. After eight to twelve years in medical school you can count on making less than a bricklayer in some areas. It doesn't exactly encourage people to go through all that schooling to become doctors, so you wind up with a shortage of medical professionals and medical facilities.

Free Health Care? It ain't free.

Government never runs anything as efficiently and cost-conscious as private industry that must make a profit to keep the doors open. By the very nature of government, it never will. That simply means government run healthcare will cost more and be less efficient. It isn't even as cheap as healthcare here. Forty percent of every earned dollar in Canada goes to national healthcare. In other words, if your health insurance here cost you forty percent of everything you earned, you would be on an equal footing with Canadians, except our medical facilities are the best in the world, and you don't have to wait for months. Like someone said, "if you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free".

Seems appropriate

2007-07-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

Not far from here I saw this mailbox along the road. Seemed a very appropriate design for someone with that name.

You might be a redneck if....

2007-06-26T19:01:00.001-07:00

If your local deli also sells fish bait. Yep, it's just down the road a bit over three miles from us, and we do eat there on occasion. Don't order the spaghetti.

More Odds n Ends

2007-06-24T21:45:00.000-07:00

Once Upon A Time. I've heard that all my life as the lead in for stories, but isn't that an odd thing to say? Once in a distant time maybe, or once way back in time, but once UPON a time? I could understand once upon a horse because one can get upon a horse, but how does one get upon a time? They must have been sitting on a Time magazine.

We'd had about three eighths of an inch of rain in nearly two months. I couldn't mow the grass because it would snap it off it was so dry. Then we had 3¼ inches of rain in less than 24 hours and nearly an inch three days later. Today it showered a few times too and the lawn is having a party.

I figured out how you can halve your cake and eat it too. It's all in the spelling.

The step-granddaughter and her three kids came for a visit, fortunately staying with my daughter next door. As she seemed nearly oblivious to her 2 and 4 year olds wake of destruction through the place, she casually mentioned how this home wasn't childproofed. I said when my kids were little we homeproofed the kids. It would seem Dr. Spock is spreading insanity in yet another generation.

You don't have to be as cross as a bear just because you have a cross to bear.

The Hershey bar is a staple in my life, but I'm protesting their gender inequality. It's pronounced Her-She, that's two feminine pronouns. I think they should be called Him-He bars when they have nuts.

If Australia is called "Down Under" would America be "Up Over"? Or would that be Europe. By the way did you ever notice Europe is the odd man out when it comes to continents? Everything else starts with "A". The two American continents, north and south, Antartica, Asia, Australia, Africa.

The Outback

2007-06-21T21:46:00.000-07:00

When you're a kid playing outside all day, it's kind of handy having a toilet right there in the back yard. When it's dark, five degrees above zero and blowing snow at bed time, that little house behind the house doesn't seem near as convenient though. One Halloween our little house suffered a horrible indignity as it was unceremoniously tossed onto it's face and split open at the corner. Dad stood it back up and hammered it back together to serve just long enough to get a new one constructed. There was a man that had a sawmill down on Railroad Street in that strip of land between the street and the railroad. He built outhouses among other things, and he constructed a new three-holer for us. That one never did get turned over because dad sank some deep postholes, set up big timbers to either side of the outhouse, and bolted them to the building. It wouldn't budge. It served us well until dad installed indoor plumbing and we joined the modern world of flushables.

A vaguely associated memory. Dad was in the back yard digging a hole for the septic tank when a vacuum sweeper salesman came to the front door trying to sell mom a sweeper. She told him he'd have to talk to dad around back, so he walked back to stand on the edge of the deepening hole. He started his spiel by saying something to the effect his little machine would do practically everything the housewife could do. Dad said "Can it bake biscuits?" The salesman laughed and said no, it wouldn't do that, and dad told him he wouldn't be interested then. That was pretty much the end of the sales pitch, but the guy stood there and talked with dad for quite a while, both seeming to enjoy the conversation.

Thinking back one wonders about the sanitation of earlier days in our home town. Many people drew water from dug wells right on their property, and about every home in town had an outhouse. Okay, that's enough thinking back.

Retirement ain't for wusses

2007-06-16T20:01:00.000-07:00

The house came with an electric furnace and someone had added a package air conditioner. A package unit does not have cooling coils in the furnace, but the entire thing sits outside, has it's own air return and is connected to the duct work. It was getting feeble and needed quite a lot of repair costs. I figure if I put that money into the old unit, it wouldn't be long before I had to replace something else in it, then I'd start having trouble with the furnace too. I opted to toss the whole works and put in a new package heatpump. Now everything is outside except the ductwork and air return.

This left a space in the hallway between the kitchen and laundry rooms where the furnace had previously resided. It's about two foot square and eight foot tall. When they removed the furnace they sealed the duct beneath it and now I'm in the process of creating a cabinet that will just fit in that area and have shelves floor to ceiling. It will be anchored into place then wood trim that matches the rest of the house put around it, and a door that will hide the whole thing. Momma has several appliance that are only used on occasion and this will be the storage area for them. Things like the large pot she uses only when she makes chicken and home made noodles, her 30 cup coffee maker dragged out when we have a lot of people over, the dehydrators, meat grinder and such. Currently a lot of these things are in the shed, so it will leave me shelf room to better organize my tools.

I'm not sure just where I went wrong with this retirement thing. So far my 3½ years of retirement have seen me working harder than when I had a job. Of course it would have been simpler to drywall the space vacated by the furnace, then paint over it - but no - I had to come up with this bright idea. Worse yet, I have a list of tasks of this sort, changes I want to make, things I want to build. I think I'll leave the list hang on the wall and take a road trip when I get this one finished. I'm overdue.

ASDF JKL;

2007-06-13T14:20:00.000-07:00

My Sophomore year, in our little farming community I took a year of typing. Most guys didn't bother because that was something a secretary needed to learn, not a farmer. Since I was neither raised on a farm, nor had any intention of going into farming I took the class. We didn't have hundreds of different classes from which to choose, and I was down to a choice between Typing or Agriculture. I knew I would never need to be able to identify a Spotted Pollen China hog, nor judge which was the superior between two seemingly identical cows, but I thought some day I might like to know how to type. Boy was that a good guess.

After that one year of classes I didn't have an opportunity to touch a typewriter for more than ten years, then a friend gave me an old typewriter he'd picked up somewhere. It was a classic. A 1901 Underwood with a metal frame and no side covers (see picture). You could look at the workings from any angle, and being a manual machine it was great for venting your frustrations on paper. You could stand up, lean forward for leverage, and just beat the hell out of the keys and it went right on typing. Of course you were punching holes through the paper when you typed a period or comma, and some times there was a circle missing out of the paper where the center of the "O" should have been, but it was built durable. It's demise came not from frustrated abuse, but from rust as the result of a leaky roof in the building where it was stored.

Typing served me well when I had my own print shop and did the typesetting, was writing for some magazines, corresponded with several people around the world, and today playing on the computer. My old Underwood had been replaced with an electric typewriter, later replaced by an electronic typewriter, then the computer about ten years ago. I still can't identify a Spotted Pollen China hog, but I can type.

Odds n Ends

2007-06-11T06:42:00.000-07:00

Our youngest son was married in our back yard Sunday. It was a nice day, warm but with a good breeze much of the time. My brother the preacher performed the ceremony. It was a few friends but mostly family, and we sat around for hours on the back porch just talking and eating. We had all sorts of food and drinks. Since the actual wedding only took about fifteen minutes, it would be accurate to say we had a family pitch-in get together, and oh by the way, a wedding. I enjoyed it, and everyone else seemed to be enjoying themselves too. The bride walked from the house to the site selected for the wedding with her two sons, one on each side holding her hands. They then stood up with her instead of bridesmaids. My grandson (grooms nephew) stood up with the groom. To me this was so much more pleasant than the grand, formalized weddings. There wasn't the lengthy wait for things to start, but at two thirty everyone stopped their conversations, put down their food and drink, moved from the porch to chairs set up for the occasion, the minister, groom and best man took their places, and out came the bride. The woods that wrap around the lawn was the backdrop, and to me God's own creation beats the most elaborate cathedral ever constructed by the hand of man. May God bless this new union.

A few days ago I learned there's a fellow south of town that works a yolk of oxen. The Amish will hire him to break new ground for plowing, and he takes them around to old fashioned festivals to do demonstrations. Each ox well weigh in close to a ton and according to him are more intelligent than a horse. He said his lead ox knows and responds to about 30 different word commands. I'm going to make a point of giving him a call to see when I can visit with him, or catch a demonstration. That's another little part of Americana I've never witnessed.

In October my brother and I are going to make another trip up to Knob Creek Kentucky for the gun show and machinegun shoot. Twice a year they have quite a large event with a lot of dealers in all things relating to guns and shooting. They have a controlled "jungle" range you can go through and shoot at pop-up targets, and the centerpiece of the show is about once an hour they cut loose with the machineguns. If you own a fully automatic weapon you can shoot it there, but they have all sorts of these weapons you can pay to shoot. Put on good ear protection if you're going to shoot or watch. They even have a modern Gatling gun that fires so fast it's just a roar. They will drag old cars onto the range, 55 gallon drums, etc., and swiftly reduce them to scrap metal since there will be a dozen or more all firing at once.

Islam in the U.K.

2007-06-06T20:03:00.000-07:00

This may have been around for a while but it just came to my attention. Makes sense to me.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=418_1176494781

Idle Thoughts

2007-06-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

When I was young if they thought you were a righteous dude they said you were cool. Now they say you're hot. Is this another sign of global warming?

Whatever happened to Soap on a Rope?

I have noticed so many commercials for drugs on television these days and wondered when this became the latest thing. Then I remembered listening to the radio as a young kid and hearing commercials for Doanes Pills, Carter's little liver pills, Anacin and various other liquids, pills, liniments and ointments. I guess they've always advertised drugs over the airways.

I've never been a big beer drinker, but a cold one now and then does hit the spot. This being a dry county, a round trip to the liquor store is 130 miles more or less. Our youngest son and his fiancé were coming down from Indiana so they picked up a couple of 12 packs. My wife, daughter, son, his fiancé and I sat on the back porch that evening knocking back a couple of cold ones. It tasted real refreshing after such a warm day, and we still have 14 in the refrigerator for later. Life's little pleasures.

We've been busy around these parts of late. My son and fiancé are becoming man and wife this Sunday (June 10th) in a ceremony in our back yard, with the woods as the backdrop. My brother the preacher will be officiating, and we're having the cake and punch thing, but we're also setting out a spread for everyone. Most of those attending will just be close friends and family, so we'll eat and spend most of the day visiting. Nice of the kids to give us an excuse to get together. I've got to remember to charge the batteries on the video camera. I'm just going to set it on a tripod, focus on the area, then turn it on and forget it until after the ceremony. I hate watching home movies when they bobble around all over the place.

400 Mile Yard Sale

2007-05-30T21:57:00.000-07:00

We live just a bit off of highway 68 and Thursday through Sunday they're having what they bill as a 400 mile yard sale. In other words, everyone so inclined, along that four hundred miles of highway 68, will load up their tables, hang clothes on lines and barter and visit with all the bargain hunting folks that salivate over the idea of thousands of yard sales end to end. We put out our sign.

Years ago before yard sales, garage sales and the like, I read about a closed neighborhood that had a recycle day once a year. They didn't let the general public in at first, but would put anything good they wanted to get rid of on the front lawn. Any resident of that neighborhood could pick up anything from a front yard free of charge. Later in the day anyone from outside the neighborhood could come in and pick up anything that was left. It struck me as a very sane system.

I have no idea just when and where the yard sale idea cropped up, though it's probably documented somewhere, but it has become an American institution and a week-end pastime for all sorts of folks. Next week we celebrate our 47th wedding anniversary, and in that 47 years we've probably had six or eight yard sales. My best guess from the hours spent in preparation, making and posting signs, pricing everything, setting it up and taking it in each day, and sitting there morning to evening, we've probably made a good 6¢ to 8¢ per hour for our labor.

Now as I'm sure you can guess, these sales have never been my idea. I'd load the stuff up and truck it to the Salvation Army store instead, but I think Mrs. Fish gets a big kick out of seeing someone just delighted to find our cast-off is their treasure, and visiting with people through the days. I know the last such sale a couple of years ago, we had a lady stop in. Her and her family had been burned out the previous week, losing everything. They were poor, renting, and didn't have renter's insurance. A bunch of the clothes were just her size and Mrs. Fish just let her take all she wanted free of charge, along with a lot of household items, games for the kids, puzzles and the like. That was a good yard sale.

Pistol Packin' PeeWee

2007-05-30T05:36:00.000-07:00

Our youngest son came down early Sunday morning from Indiana, along with his fiance and her eight year old son. They stayed until Monday afternoon. They brought along a BB/pellet gun made by Remington and we took the eight year old to the range and taught him the proper handling of a gun. He did pretty well with it managing to keep a lot of the BB's in the target at 25 yards. We also let him shoot the .22 revolver and he was better with that than with the BB gun. It's a single action (have to cock it before each shot) Colt Frontier model that had been Dad's. Of course with this being the boys first experience with shooting, our son was standing right with him to intercept any dangerous act with the gun. He did really well, lowering the pistol to point toward the ground between each shot, cocking it while pointed down and keeping his finger off the trigger until it was leveled toward the target just as he'd been instructed. It's just a six shot and we let him fire 48 rounds through it. Each time we'd reload and hand him the gun, he would put on his ear protection before taking the gun and keep it pointed down as he turned toward the target. I was impressed with his attention to safety details.

I think every boy and girl should learn to properly handle and fire guns along about that age. If they can become comfortable and have fun with a weapon while young we wouldn't have so many grown people terrified at the sight of a gun. Then maybe we could get rid of at least the stupidest gun laws that are on the books.

Magic Bugs

2007-05-28T07:35:00.000-07:00

I was just sitting on the back porch watching the last of the day's light give over to total darkness. I had been enjoying the sparkles on the meadow of lightning bugs rising up from the grass and flashing their presence to the world. When we first become old enough to realize such things, these magic little bugs become an adventure. You just have to capture some and put them in a bottle to have your own personal firefly lantern. Once I forgot to release my half dozen or so bugs and they were dead the next day. I never captured them again. I've held my hand in the path of one and allowed them to land on me. If you hold your hand up they will climb to the highest finger and launch into the air again.

The 23 years I lived in the southwest I never saw a lightning bug, so it's such a pleasure to have that little bit of magic in my evenings once again. I loved the southwest with it's amazing vistas, mountains, the surprise of the brilliance of cactus blooms in the spring, and wide open spaces. I still have it's sands running in my veins, but the midwest has equal numbers of delights. I love the thick woods behind the house, four seasons, waterfalls and streams, the profusion of growing plants and lightning bugs. Isn't America an amazing place?

There Oughta be a Law

2007-05-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time I owned a 1970 Oldsmobile Delta 88 with a 455 cubic inch engine. A very quick and powerful vehicle. Stomp the accelerator at 70 miles and hour and it would bury the speedometer so quickly it amazed me. It would even beat Corvettes from a standing start. The power plants may have been similar but the Vettes were lighter and would spin while the Olds just dug in and ran. Just a family sedan but the dangest hotrod I ever owned.

Then I bought a 1973 Chevrolet Caprice Classic with a 454 cubic inch engine and a VW could beat me off the line. What was the difference? The federal government had mandated a certain fuel efficiency in sedans and Detroit had monkeyed up the engine trying to get that efficiency in a large block, full sized sedan. They couldn't of course because there's only so much power in gasoline. Instead, they made later model cars smaller, lighter, more streamlined (all looked like they'd been designed by the Jelly Bean company), and with smaller engines. The government once again had stepped in with legislation trying to force private industry and the American people into a place they didn't want to be, and the results have been just exactly the opposite of what the government wanted. They wanted to reduce the demand for gasoline. Obviously they expected a more fuel efficient car would help with this, but they didn't take the desires of the average American into account, looking instead at some figures on a sheet of paper.

Like this: "Fuel efficient cars = less gasoline usage".

They needed to look at the bigger picture.

At least consider "Fuel efficient cars + America's desires = ?"

The problem came when they realized they could not mandate the same fuel efficiency in trucks they were requiring in automobiles. People use trucks for work, for hauling, for industry. They need power. Of course, the American public had grown up with muscle cars, with ever increasing cubic inch engines and ever increasing horse power. The people that wanted economy bought a VW or Datsun. The people that wanted power stopped buying cars and started buying pick-up trucks and the demand exploded for trucks. Then Detroit got the idea of building a large car on a truck frame and called it an SUV (Sport Utility Vehicle). The demand for family cars decreases, the demand for pick-ups and SUVs increases, and the average SUV or pick-up gets worse gas mileage than my 1970 Delta 88. All the government managed to do was nearly destroy the U.S. automobile and increase gasoline consumption. Just the opposite of their stated intent when they passed this legislation.

Unfortunately we have reached the stage in the development of our government that they feel it is their mandate to micromanage every aspect of American life. We have a bunch of elected officials listening to whiners, passing feel-good legislation, throwing perfectly good tax dollars at every conceived problem in our lives, and most of their efforts are predictably about as effective as the fuel economy legislation. Now if it were you or I making decisions for our personal lives, and we found what we were doing was counterproductive, we would immediately stop that and try something new. Not the government. Every failed, feel-good mandate they've handed down stays right there and receives ever greater amounts of money to try to make it work. Wouldn't it be great if Congress would start listening to the Government Accounting Office occasionally? At least that agency has had the good sense to point out some of Congresses failed experiments from time to time. They've never managed to get any of them discontinued, but at least they've recognized a white elephant when they've seen one.

At one time they amended the Constitution to make alcoholic drinks illegal and get it out of society. The result of course, was a huge crime syndicate providing illegal alcohol to the public.

We've spent what portion of the GNP in the "War on Drugs" to get drugs off the street? How has that worked?

More than twenty two thousand gun laws on the books to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Yeah, right!

You can go on for several pages with this sort of list, but when they're campaigning for re-election the Representatives and Senators can point to the fact they supported this bill or that bill of feel-good legislation. Passing a law does not solve a problem, it just allows you to spend fortunes trying, convicting and housing the law breakers.

York Mill

2007-05-23T20:49:00.000-07:00

I finally had the pictures developed of the trip we took into Tennessee a while back. This picture is the York Mill at Pall Mall Tennessee turned out rather nice so I thought I would share it.

You can see a larger version by clicking on this picture.

Some pictures

2007-05-22T06:10:00.001-07:00

My daughter sent the pictures she'd taken on our jaunt to The Shades state park. I just thought I'd share some. The old guy in the first picture is me, sitting at the base of Bridal Veil falls.

Armed Forces Day

2007-05-18T20:37:00.000-07:00