GENTLEMAN FARMER

Okay, we now had a liveable house with all the necessary conveniences, an orchard, vineyard, and a large garden.   What now?  Why, of course, we should raise some livestock.

Wade's class in school was hatching some eggs to educate the kiddies about animal husbandry and each one had an egg they were in charge of.  Well, they hatched, some died, actually most died, but Wade's lived and survived and he was able to bring home one of our earliest farm animals.

Wade named him "Bowser", of course.  He generally had the run of the place.  He got along with the dogs and survived life outside but he was a real pain.  His bathroom habits were not good and he was a fairly useless critter.  Finally, we talked Wade into giving Bowser to my brother, Bob, because Bob had some hens and was wanting a rooster.  

I wish video had been available back then because it would have been priceless of Billy, Wade, and me trying to catch Bowser to send him to my brother's place.  He was fast and we didn't have anywhere to corner him and he could turn quicker than we could.  For a while, it was great sport trying to catch the chicken.

After we all had some scratches and skint knees, I decided that we had to put some thought in it and I took a wire coat hanger and straightened it out and put a small crook in the end to catch his foot with and we tried to catch him again.

We finally caught him and sent him to my brother's happy farm with hens to keep him company that was just down the road .  Well, I would like to tell you that Bowser lived to be an old rooster with many grandchicks but such was not to be.  Apparently, Bowser was just as annoying at Bob's place because later Wade asked Bob how Bowser was and Bob said, "A little gamey".  Bowser, RIP...... 

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.
C. S. Lewis 

A CONTRARY VIEW TO POLITICALLY CORRECT THINKING...

I'll move on soon but first some observations on the passing scene.  Only about 8% of the people our leader has appointed to his administration have ever held a job in the "real world", including himself.  (I'm not racist because I don't like his white half either.)  They have mostly been political hacks or from the hallowed halls of academia.  They have never refinanced their house or risked their money to start a business.  They have never had to meet a company payroll.  They have never tried to compete with the other dry cleaning store a couple of miles away or do any of the things that it takes to run any business but they think that they are perfectly qualified to make all the rules since they are so smart and the rest of us are so dumb.  Okay, look at the last two elections and I'll grant you that most of the voters were dumb.  (On the average, half of the voters are always below the average of voter intelligence.)

A local story is developing about the Southern Company passing on the cost of a new nuclear power plant to it's customers.  The talking heads say that the company should pay for the plant and not the customers.  The company doesn't have any money that it does not first get from the customers!  DUH, how smart do you have to be to know that all expenses of any company, or government, are paid by the customers.  Otherwise, without funding, there will be no company or government.

Our fearless leader is closing down the coal industry.  Most of the electrical power generated in our country is generated with coal and that is why we have lower costs for our electrical power.  Everything we buy has a component that will have a higher cost if he is allowed to do this.  His aim is to make other forms of energy more expensive so that solar, wind, and geothermal will be more competitive.  Solar and wind have their place but we are a long way from either being competitive with coal and fossil fuels without government meddling.  Solar is now competitive for heating but not electrical power.

 Even forgetting the massive unemployment that will continue to happen in the area of West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and others, our home and industrial electrical bills will skyrocket and our industry will continue to lose the fight to stay competitive with the rest of the world.  Our media and the public will continue to blame "BIG BUSINESS" for sending our jobs overseas while we slowly slip into third world status.

Buy American you may say.  Do you have an American made TV, VCR, or DVD?  Not unless it's fairly old.  You may still have american made washers, dryers, stoves, refrigerators, or lawn mowers but have you noticed that the newer names like LG and Samsung?  Some Sears Kenmore appliances are now made by foreign companies.  Even the older American brand names like RCA, Westinghouse, and Emerson have their products made overseas.  We are losing the competition with the rest of the world and it's being blamed on evil "BIG BUSINESS" that has to move production overseas to stay in business because government continues to impose regulations and taxes that make us more non-competitive.    China and India, to name a couple, are not going to impose the same restrictions on themselves.

I have to close now, IRS is knocking at the door.

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.
Ayn Rand 


  

GROWING UP IN THE 40'S - Part 7

My Grandparents lived near the Grove Park Theater and the theater always had a Saturday morning matinee.  (The theater is now a pawn shop)  They always had a cartoon, a cowboy movie, and a weekly serial.  Some of the kids were even wearing,... OH MY GOD, Does he have a toy gun on?  Yes!  Someone call the police!  I'm sure that they all grew up and became serial killers. 

Of course the movie was always full of kids and just a few parents.  The serial lasted maybe 15 minutes and always ended that weeks episode with the hero in a situation where you were sure that he would be killed.  The next week, ... It's a MIRACLE,  he was able to jump out of that car just before before it went over the cliff or he got out of the burning building just before it blew up.  Well, it was real to us little kids.

We earned the money to go to the movie by working during the week. We would cut grass, carry advertising circulars, or do home chores to make enough for admission.  Maybe we were overpaid for doing some of our home chores but our parents and grandparents wanted us know that you should work for what you received.  A trait that seems to be rare in today's world.

You will be happy to learn that we were the vanguard of the environmental movement even though we didn't realize it at the time.  We didn't use machines powered by that planet killing gasoline.  We used only environmentally friendly landscaping tools.  Believe me, it was not our choice.  

Yep, you pushed the mower, chopped with the hedge clippers, and stepped on the edger that some of our clients wanted us to use.  You would just get the mower moving briskly along and you would find that stick or rock the hard way as it would lock the blades and you would jam the handles into your stomach.   We would look the yard over pretty well before starting to mow but you would always miss some and we were careful to not throw rocks into our customers yards.

Speaking of being environmentally conscious, back then all soft drink bottles were made of glass and you had to pay a deposit or bring your empty bottles when you bought soft drinks.  The bottles were returned, cleaned and reused.  We didn't fill the land fills with plastic that won't rot for a thousand years.

People even drank water from the tap instead of buying bottled water that usually comes from some city water supply, anyway.  If you go to a Quick Trip station to fill up your car with gas and buy a bottle of water you should be aware that the water cost was higher than the gas per ounce.

Milk was delivered or bought in the store in glass bottles that were returned to the dairy, sterilized, and reused.  (We once had a neighbor that had the milkman deliver her milk and the milkman was so dedicated that he would return to her house after he finished his route and he would stay there a long time. Must have been for good customer relations?)  That big white milk truck with the red printing on the side sure stood out.

Cloth diapers were used that were washed at home or by a diaper service and reused.  Few folks had a clothes drier back then.  Well, they had a solar powered drier made from wire in the back yard.  You learned not to run through people's yard at night, in the dark.  Guess how we learned not to play chase after dark.

Grocery bags, lunch bags, etc. were made of paper that was a renewable resource and many were recycled in the school paper sales.

Newspapers were returned and made into different things and the school PTA made money for the school by having paper sales.  We had some neighbors that would save the newspapers for the kids to collect for the paper sales.

(Jumping ahead to the 1970's.)  While we are on the subject...   The NEW YORK TIMES NEWSPAPER (All the news that fits, we print) had a front page story and the panic went on for months that WE ARE GOING INTO ANOTHER ICE AGE!!!  That, of course later turned into the "GLOBAL WARMING" hype until they found out that the globe was not warming anymore and it then became "CLIMATE CHANGE".  That way they won't have to keep changing the spiel every few years.  

They were even able to carry it on after some whistle blower in England leaked some of the emails where they were contriving the stats at that UK University.  But, good ole Al Gore was able to make millions off of selling indulgences by planting a tree somewhere in Brazil to make up for a factories smokestack pollution.  He said that the oceans would rise and flood the coastal cities but after his wife kicked him out he went to California and bought an ocean side mansion.  I guess the Pacific ocean won't be one that raises.

First you forget names, then you forget faces. Next you forget to pull your zipper up and finally, you forget to pull it down.
George Burns 

GROWING UP IN THE 40'S - Part 6

We spent a lot of time riding or building things that rolled.  A 
pair of wheels on an old wagon, baby carriage, or tricycle never stayed on the curb long enough for the trash pickup.  We built coaster wagons, usually without brakes and we had some great hills to coast down.  We were smart enough to not coast down when there was traffic. The one who had just coasted to the bottom of the hill would look at the traffic and wave us on if it was clear or hold his hand up if a car was coming.  The problem with this was that a car had quite a while to appear while we were riding down the hill but nobody ever got hit.

Well, nobody ever got hit but I was almost run over by a car while riding down the Johnson's driveway on my buddies Flexy Racer.  I was lucky that the driver saw me early enough to slam on the brakes and skid to a stop just before running over me.  Yeah, my Mom found out about it..... , she was driving the car that almost ran over me.  Yes Mam, no more flexy riding for me.  The flexy racer was a convertible coaster sled type thing that had skies or wheels would be put on depending on the season.  Notice the bumper on the front that protected the racer from front bumps.  The problem was you laid down on it on your belly and your head would stick out way in front of the bumper.  

Does anybody here know what a "Skate
Key" is?  The skate key would fit all nuts and screw heads on a pair of skates to adjust or put the skates on your shoes.  Back then kids wore leather shoes with soles sewed on.  The skates that were common then would clamp onto the shoe sole and a strap would go around the foot.  It worked pretty well but they did sometimes come off while you were skating..

Not us.

Even when parts of the skates were shot they were still of use.  We made skateboards and skate scooters.  The skate would come apart and could have the front and back separated and nailed on a board.  I made one one time that even had a seat on it.  Usually we would just nail a board across the skate an let her roll as the kids in the picture did.

NOTE:  All pictures are internet images.



Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.
Thomas Jefferson 

GROWING UP IN THE 40'S - Part 5

Something that I should have mentioned was that before Daddy went in the Army we lived in Millegeville in a small coal heated house on a dirt street.  We didn't have an ice cream truck come by with music playing but we did have an ice man.  We had an ice box as many other folks did back in the early 40's.  The ice man was a nice older black man who would be very free when he chipped out the big blocks of ice to deliver to the houses and he always had a big piece that "accidentally" fell off to give to all of us kids.  In the hot summer time it was quite a treat and we would shift it from hand to hand when our hand got so cold that we couldn't move our fingers.

I mentioned before that we made our own games and that every boy had his own pocket knife.  The knives also went to school with us and we would play with them at recess.  No problems.  We played a game we called "Root the Peg", also known as "Mumblety-Peg.  If you don't believe it you can Google it and see.  It was played with our pocket knife in a sort of follow-the-leader fashion. we would churn up an area of dirt and then pack it down so that a knife was easier to stick up in the ground.  The first kid would choose a throw or

drop of the knife and try to stick it up.  If he missed the next kid would get a turn.  If the knife stuck then everyone else did the same maneuver. If the knife stuck the first kid picked another maneuver but if it didn't stick, the looser had to root the peg.  The winner would pick up a stick and drive it in the ground until the peg extended above the ground the thickness of the losers knife handle.  The loser would have to root the peg out of the ground with his teeth.  Some of the moves used were blade tip on one finger and flip the knife down with the other hand, tossing it up and let it turn in the air and stick, or the hardest was flipping it over your back.  The pocket knife most wanted was the Barlow knife.  It was probably not the best knife but kids would proudly say that their's was a Barlow.

CLICK HERE FOR THE HISTORY OF MUMBLETY PEG.

Every boy had a stash of marbles.  We would scratch a circle

in the dirt and scratch a straight line in the center of the circle.  We would each add the same number of our own marbles to the line.  If you were lucky you would have a "steely" for a "Taw".  What's a Taw you may ask?  the Taw was the marble that you used to shoot and knock the others out of the ring and everybody had a favorite to use.  When you knocked the marbles out they were yours to keep.  No crying allowed.  A steely was a steel ball the proper size to play marbles with and was used as a Taw.  If you hit a marble with a steely it had a better chance of moving out of the ring.  The steely was not allowed unless everyone had one.  We flipped a coin for first and that boy could shoot from anywhere outside the ring as long as he was knocking out marbles.  When he missed it was the next ones turn.  The next game someone else would be first.  It was a game of skill and not gambling but you could loose a pocketful of marbles fast.

If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right.
Henry Ford