The Salvation Army Thrift Store, July 2009
- Tube, flange and swivel – Salvation Army Thrift store – July 2009. No eyepieces, broken tripod. Looked too much like junk to find a willing buyer.
It’s been a longish while since I owned a good telescope, an 8″ tube with a tracker drive to allow watching deep space objects or the moon without having to constantly chase the targets. Since that time I’ve confined my star gazing to a pair of binoculars on a camera tripod unless some acquaintance owned a good one and invited me in for an evening.
But in July, 2009, I found an Orbitor 8500 Chinese tube in the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Kerrville with a sad, badly-used look to it and an unrealistic price tag. I examined it carefully, then wandered around the store pretending to look at other merchandise while watching other customers when they got near it. My thought was that if I saw someone getting too interested and likely to snag it I’d beat them to the counter and plunk down the unrealistic money with a pre-emptive strike.
After a while I moseyed back and talked to a couple of guys who were scowling at it. I shook my head about it, talking about it not having a drive, speculating how much it would cost getting eyepieces, what a shame it was the tripod was junk. We agreed a person would be a fool to take it home at any price. Likely that mirror, I pointed out, was as much a piece of junk as the rest of it.
We all wandered away, and I picked up a couple of books off the 25 cent shelf. After those two guys left I went back and made a show of frowning at it a while longer before I went over to the counter to talk it over with the lady I’d done a goodly amount of haggling with in the past who knew what to expect from me.
“Somebody’s going to be back arguing with you if you sell them that telescope and they take it home and try to use it.” I fiddled around in my pocket for change to pay for the books.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“If they don’t know what they’re paying for they’ll get it home and end up with something they can’t use. It’s a cheap Chinese-made thing to start out with, but the tripod’s broken, for starters. Someone didn’t take care of it. Probably a kid got it for Christmas and lost interest by New Year, pushed it into the corner until he broke it.”
I plunked down my money for the books. “Do you suppose the guys in back let the eyepieces get separated from it? Nobody can use it without eyepieces and they’re expensive. Might not even be able to get the right diameter ones easily. If you could find the eyepieces someone might buy it at some price.”
Eventually I agreed to haul it off for five bucks if she’d promise to try to find the eyepieces and hold them for me if they turned up. She doubted seriously they’d be found, but I had in mind to buy salvage lenses off the web and turn down something to put them into out of wood on Gale’s lathe.
But there was still the problem of the drive and the tripod. I spent the next couple of years picking up junk telescopes and parts at garage sales and other thrift stores.
Collecting parts from other stores:
- Primarily I was after a tracker drive and eyepieces but I ended up with a lot else.
Then, this summer I found this for $5:
- Batteries are dead, telescope is trash, wrong size cove for tube. Tripod’s great. One good eyepiece. Great price. Humane Society Thrift Store July 2011. In a thrift store environment dead batteries most equal disfunctional. They might be right. These are still dead.
I have a permanent position selected out in the meadow for the observatory once I’ve got something with a tracking drive put together and have hauled enough rocks and tin for walls and dome.
If I’m around long enough and if this place remains available for me to live here, I’m going to have an observatory.
Meanwhile I use StarCalc 5.73 [free download] to keep track of what’s going on in the sky, along with the Multi-Year Interactive Computer Almanac software from the US Naval Observatory for fine tuning calculations.
Old Jules
Pendulum Star
Pendulum star
Swings to and fro
While maggot-earth
Digests his legions
Tick tock
Tick tock
Minute-hand moon
Sucks tick tock tides
Through Paleozoic hours
Quaternary days
Pleistocene weeks
Tick tock
Tick tock
Sub-microscopic
Parasites
Scurry flourish
Scratch peel
Posture
And rot
Tick tock
Tick tock
Pendulum star
Swings to and fro.
Minute-hand moon
Sucks tick tock tides
Maggot-earth digests
Tick tock
Tick tock
Copyright 2003, NineLives Press
Choose Something Like a Star– Randall Thompson
words by Robert Frost
http://youtu.be/8dg2iE2ixeE
So Far From Heaven 
All right jules! White trash rules.I always wanted to get either White trash or yuppie scum must die! license plate for the front of my work truck.But the yuppies up here wouldn’t get my sense of humor.Good score sounds like you will have that observatory !
China
III
Morning China. Thanks for the read and the visit. I used to have an acquaintance who lived on the Pine Hill Navajo rez drove a truck with a WHITEY WILL PAY bumper sticker in the rear window. The windows were tinted so’s someone outside the truck could only see the driver through the windshield. Sometimes I’d borrow his truck and sometimes he’d borrow mine, but when I was driving his in town I’d have Navajo raising fist salutes at me yelling, “Alllllll right! Right on brother!”
Maybe your “Yuppie Scum Must Die” would get you that sort of response. Or it might just get your tires slit in the parking lot of the grocery store.
I enjoy your blog. Thanks for coming by and the encouraging comment. Gracias, J
Jules, have you ever read “Juneus Maltby” by Steinbeck? The story is always appended to “The Red Pony” paperbacks I have seen. You are the kid who was in the story and that is high praise, my friend.
Morning Cletis. Good seeing you. I thought I’d read everything Steinbeck ever wrote, but I either missed that one, or the decades since my Steinbeck obsession have pushed it too far back into my memory banks to allow me to retrieve it. I’ll put an order out to the Universe for a copy and likely it will turn up in a thrift store when I least expect it. Thanks for the visit and the comment. I enjoy your blog and read it frequently, but your comment button puts me on hold whenever I try to use it is the reason I never say anything. Thanks again. I appreciate you. J
The closest I’ve been to a telescope lately was when my wife and I spent an evening at McDonald Observatory in December 2008. We were tent camping at nearby Davis Mountains State Park. Another highlight of that outing was spending an afternoon at the Chihuahuan Desert Research Institute south of Ft. Davis and the Museum of the Big Bend at Sul Ross State University in Alpine.
Morning Fearguth. Thanks for coming by. I haven’t been to McDonald Observatory since the 1980s, but I loved it back then. My ex and I used to go out to Fort Davis and stay in an old hotel restored from the late 1800s, then drive to the observatory. I surely like that country. When I die if I have to come back to this planet I’d be obliged if the Coincidence Coordinators shot me spang at a richly deserving womb located somewhere out near Fort Davis. Never been to the research institute, but if I ever get a chance I surely will. Thanks for the tip. Gracias, J
Amazing what patience and a dollar’s worth of ingenuity will buy. Good work.
Roxanne
Morning Roxanne. Thank you for the visit. I’m blessed with a lot of patience and determination, but I try not to rely much on ingenuity. Pure luck is my tour d’ force. Gracias, J
Good Find on the Scope and parts. ( I think) ,.. Sounds like a heck of a rig.
BTW, another star gazer you might enjoy since he plays with telescopes as well. is Dizzy Dick at http://dizzydick.blogspot.com/
Hi Ben. Thanks for coming by. Also thanks for the dizzydick tip. I swing by his blog some, but I didn’t know about his interest in astronomy. I’ll start watching for him to post things about it. Gracias. Hope it cools down over where you are today. J
Sounds like a great project. Back in the late ’80’s, I was given the opportunity to look into a telescope that had a fairly large lens, set up on a bank above the lake I was living on at the time. I have always liked the night sky just as it is, but that close-up look was mind-bending. I walked away changed. It made it all more real. Been wanting one ever since and I have perfect viewing here. Now, if the Coincidence Coordinators think this is a good idea, I’d be ever so grateful for any assistance they could provide. Just throwing it out there.
Thanks for clarifying your sense of humor on the Turkey thing. Humor is a hard thing to convey in cyber-space. I can be a tad smart-alecky and never know if people understand it’s just my humor.
“Coincidence coordinators”. Nicely said. It’s a pleasure to read your blog.
Hi Teresa Evangeline. Thanks for the read and comment. Depending on a lot of things, you might look into a Celestron 8″. It’s a stumpy thing sits almost on your lap, but with a drive and half-dozen eyepieces it will store easily, be quick to bring indoors or set up, and easy to use. Good instrument. If the Coincidence Coordinators bring one into your life the might choose to do it on Craig’s List. Incidently, should that happen, you can also get great buys on eyepieces on an optics salvage site I can shoot you a link to. I’ve thought for years I’d someday have one, a Celestron, but they haven’t sent one my way yet. Gracias, J
Brenda: I appreciate you coming by commenting. Hope to see you again. Gracias, J
Jules, I will try to change comment services. I just noticed my comment button is now totally gone but I did get your comment even though it didn’t post. What a great life you lead!!! The Red Pony consists of several, somewhat related, sories and has stayed in my head for forty years. The Juneus Maltby story is my favorite and seems to fit your life in several ways.
Hi Cletis: Good knowing you know about the comment problem. Yeah, I’m a lucky man. Thanks again for the visits. I do recall Red Pony, just not Juneus Maltby. But I still see Red Pony in the thrift stores so I can probably find it. Gracias, J