Category Archives: 2011

I Can’t Stop Illegal Aliens, But I Can Slow You Down, Old Timer

Posted on August 10, 2011 by | 14 comments

In 1961, I joined the US Army for three years with the intention of killing young Russian men to keep this from happening in the US:

On a regular basis,  I join the throngs of US senior citizens crossing the International Boundary to trek a couple of blocks into Mexico to buy prescription medications.  The reason we  all brave the hot, the skyrocketing gas prices, the long drive and the short walk?

A block south of the border prescription meds cost a tiny fraction of their cost a block north of the International Boundary. Plus, you don’t need a prescription.

But that’s another issue for another time.

Coming back waiting on the US side behind a line of oldsters in the US Border patrol station the fun begins.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “Do you have anything to declare?”

Elderly lady pushes through the turnstile to stand in front of his table.  “I have this.”  She holds up a bulging plastic bag.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “I didn’t tell you you could come through the turnstile.  Go back to the other side.”

She goes back to wherever a person is when on the other side of the turnstile.

Guy with a gun, a uniform and a Hitler mustache:  “OK.  Now you can come through.”

She goes back through the turnstile, stands in front of him.  “Do you have anything to declare?  Medications, anything?”

She holds up the bag again, but before she can speak, elderly hubby, the other side of the turnstile, holds up a bag.  “I’ve got the medications here.”  Pushes part way through the turnstile holding up the bag.

“DO NOT COME THROUGH THAT TURNSTILE UNTIL I SAY YOU CAN!”

Old man, startled, backs into never-never-land, turnstile clicking.

Hitler mustache to woman:  “Do you have anything to declare?  Medications?  Anything?”

Hubby across the turnstile to wife:  “God damn it!  I told him I have the medications over here.”

And so, ad infinitum.

Mr. Uniformed Mustache with a gun never came out and said,

“I am one stupid son of a bitch here to give elderly US citizens a hard time after they have to walk into another country to get their medications at a reasonable price.”

He didn’t need to.

Old Jules

Tom Russell– Who’s Going to Build Your Wall?
http://youtu.be/LZkAoosVLkA

Note:  I wrote this after my last trip to Mexico.  Afterward I curtailed my trips and started buying my blood pressure and other med off the Internet from Canada and India.  But I decided to post it after reading this yesterday:

Border Patrol Antics or (I got searched), Tire
http://terlinguabound.blogspot.com/2011/08/border-patrol-antics-or-i-got-searched.html

7:30 AM musings over coffee:

Maybe it’s just me, or maybe it’s a piece of a paradigm shift [whatever the hell that is] but one of the corner-of-the-eye changes I believe has happened in my lifetime within the US is a morbid fascination and indulgence in, patience with and capitulation to fears.  Maybe it’s a replacement for anger, maybe just boredom needing to speed up the heartbeat.

Back when every day was a brink-of-war crisis with the USSR the attitude was duck and cover, build a bomb shelter and bomb the bejesus out of them.  A conspicuous absence of fear.    Contrasted half-century later with a citizenry frightened so badly by a microscopic possibility a terrorist will harm them, they hire a few new layers of police, agree to be searched, and humiliated for their own protection, and indulge in a series of self-bankrupting foreign adventures with the stated intention of finding an outlaw gang hidden in fantasyville, Asia.

Hiring thugs to protect us from other thugs has probably been around for a longish while.  But never worked all that well.


14 Comments

Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Mexico, Senior Citizens

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Thumbing Rides on Throwaways

Posted on August 9, 2011 by | 12 comments


I’m a lucky man because I don’t have the money to go buy ready-rolls when it comes to getting done what needs doing. In this instance I needed a garden, but I didn’t want 86 deer, 23 wild hogs and a dozen chickens in there being Communists 24/7 messing up my diggings. But I also din’t want to have to be digging holes to support any fence I wanted to put the trouble into erecting. The layered limestone wasn’t in a mood to give up any ground in favor of having posts stuck in it.

This place has a lot of old pipe lying around wishing someone would find a use for it, so a few pieces of it became the mainstay for the structural side of the job. There were other things up behind the buildings around the owner’s workings pricking him in the conscience by not being used, as well.

A roll of 3-times used/3 times discarded chain link was also among them crying for a job after being out of work longer than a US factory worker after the guys the patriots love sent all their holdings off to be done in Mexico and China to manufacture and sell back to us.

The ‘frame’ includes two welded steel triangles used to support something long forgotten, a bit of galvanized discarded water pipe, and that’s about all besides one hell of a lot of tie-wire. Ah. There’s that gate frame gives it some support on this end. But it’s strong, self-supporting and didn’t need any violations of the sanctity of the limestone substrata to allow it to become respectable.


I lacked a couple of feet having enough chain link so I made up the difference with the refrigerator shelves wired together you see beside the gate.


The whole shebang is pulled inward against itself by wires stretched across crosswise, lengthwise and diagonally from the corners, but held back from collapsing inward by the horizontal pipes. Meanwhile the chain link keeps it from falling outward.

Meanwhile, I needed support for my tomato plants:



Two scrap illuminum storm doors and old goatwire served the need.

The only cost of this fence in dollars was a couple of rolls of tie wire.


One more bug scraped off the windshield of life.

White Trash Papa rides again.

HiiiiiOhhhhhhhh Silver! Awaaaaaay!

Old Jules

Marty Robbins – Little Green Valley

http://youtu.be/WT5qegD28Wo

12 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Homesteading, Texas, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs

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Got me a new truck!

Posted on August 6, 2011 by | 12 comments

My old Toyota 4Runner went Communist on me in December, had to be parked facing downhill to allow it to be started next time.  A Catch 22 involving if-replacing-the-starter-doesn’t-fix-it has left me having to borrow a vehicle anytime I need to go into town, or have someone pick up what I need has existed from then until now.

Meanwhile this old ranch truck has been sitting up there for the last five years unused after he twisted off a fuel line.  Gale, my old bud who owns this place and the F350, has had a long run of guilt-not-bad-enough-to-cause-him-to-fix-it, but too bad to just free him up, solved both our problems in one fell swoop:

“You can have that old F350 if you’ll fix it.”

“Whoooooopeeee!”

It’s an ’83 and hasn’t been registered for public roads since the early ‘90s, but he says it ran fine until he broke the gas line.  Unfortunately, over the years other people tried to fix it, coons lived under the hood, the wiring is chicken noodle soup.

I bought a vintage Chilton Manual from Amazon dirt cheap, but it didn’t have anything much about the wiring.

The coil appears to be made of scrap iron, the electronic ignition might be a retrofit.  Not even going to tell you what the inside of the distributor looked like when I popped it.

It’s not getting fire and I’m about out of fancy ideas.  If I don’t figure something out soon I’m going to have him tow me into town and let a real mechanic work on it, put an inspection sticker on it, and register it for the highway.

I think it’s going to make a pretty good old truck.

Robert Earl Keen – The Road Goes On Forever
http://youtu.be/_tMDXgf2cH4

About 11:30 AM Saturday

Reading the Terlingua or Bust blog  http://terlinguabound.blogspot.com/ I see he’s blowing out tires something awful out there even when they aren’t on the ground.  Some of the comments suggested it’s the heat, which makes sense. 

I don’t think the roads here are much better than his are likely to be, so maybe I ought to be glad I haven’t gotten that truck on the road yet.  Getting up to Gale’s is the worst of it… about half-mile of badly eroded 2-track rotten limestone trying to tear up tires at the best of times.  But his house to the pavement is another half-mile, better maintained but still rough.  Then the three miles of pavement to the mailbox has several lousily maintained cattleguards a person can never predict whether they’ll have a loose somethingorother pop up and take a whack at something.

From the mailbox to the main highway is a lot better, state road with no more than the usual fry-an-egg-on-it hotter-than-a-$2 pistol   asphalt.

Once again I owe the Coincidence Coordinators a debt of gratitude for sparing me stuff I didn’t even think about might happen.

Thankee Coincidence Coordinators.  I tips my hat to you.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Texas, Transportation, Trucks, White Trash Repairs

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That Lucky Old Sun

Posted on August 4, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Sunspots visible to the naked eye yesterday

http://spaceweather.com/

News flash: The sunspots are back. “The sunset conditions of August 2nd were just right to show the massive sunspots AR1260, AR1261 and AR1263 to the casual observer who happened to glance at the sun for a brief few moments,” reports Stephen W. Ramsden of Atlanta, Georgia. “You could even see the penumbra with the naked eye!” He had a camera handy and snapped this picture:

“The size and broiling movement of these sunspots just boggles the mind,” he says. “You could fit every planet in the solar system with all of the known asteroids neatly inside the largest group…wow!”

Every day that sphere of interlocking bands of horizontal magnetic fields comes across our skies and we comment among ourselves, “It’s hot!”

We’re mostly right on that score.

But it’s also constantly changing and there’s so much about it nobody understands, nobody even guesses that even what we humans believe we do know about it is largely mysterious, unexplained outside a body of equally fluid theory.

The face of old Sol moves across in front of us every 13.5 days telling us about its moods. Nowadays they’re even able to monitor what’s going on across the side we can’t see. Quite a breakthrough because what’s going on there will have bearing on our lives when it becomes the face to us again in the 27 day spin cycle.

But all over the planet, humanity having to gone to the trouble to find out what the sun’s been keeping hidden from us until recently, when that side twists around where we can see it for ourselves we’ll say again, “It’s hot.”

We’ll be right again, as we almost always are.

A solar wind stream flowing from the indicated coronal hole should reach Earth on Aug. 7th or 8th. Credit: SDO/AIA.

Friday Morning 5:30 AM

On August 4th, active sunspot 1261 unleashed a strong solar flare, the third in as many days. The blast, which registered M9.3 on the Richter Scale of Flares, hurled a bright coronal mass ejection (CME) almost directly toward Earth.  Moving at an estimated speed of 1950 km/s, this CME is expected to sweep up an earlier CME already en route. Analysts at the GSFC Space Weather Lab say the combined-CME should reach Earth on August 5th at 10:00 UT plus or minus 7 hours: “The impact on Earth is likely to be major. The estimated maximum geomagnetic activity index level Kp is 7 (Kp ranges from 0 – 9). The flanks of the CME may also impact STEREO A, Mars and Mercury/MESSENGER.” High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras.

http://spaceweather.com/

It’s a Beautiful Day– Hot Summer Day
http://youtu.be/VxaoJdfVw9w

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Posted in 2011, Astronomy, Nature, Science

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Black Hole Sucks in 140 Trillion Times the World’s Oceans

Posted on August 1, 2011 by | 6 comments

It’s no doggoned wonder we’re suffering drought.  This news piece lets the cat out of the bag.
Black hole sucks in 140 trillion times the world’s oceans:
http://news.yahoo.com/black-hole-sucks-140-trillion-times-worlds-oceans-163503124.html

Seems there’s a moon of Saturn spewing water out into space faster than Saturn Moonians can catch it to make proper use of it.  That whole Saturn ring fiasco is mainly chunks of ice out cluttering up what would otherwise be a nice, clean see-through piece of real estate with nothing in it to offend drought-stricken city people who have grass needs watering, golf courses needing to be kept green, swimming pools and hot-tubs to frolic in, and other important uses.

But that’s not the worst of it.  A growing body of evidence argues Mars used to have plenty of water for golf courses and whatnot, but it got ripped off and wasted by parties unknown.

Investigators among the astronomical community recently discovered a black hole off a few hundred million light years away is doing something similar there.

They’ve been bragging for some while about creating ‘baby black holes’ in the super-colliders and at Sandia National Laboratory.

Another dramatic climb toward fusion conditions for Sandia Z accelerator:
http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm

Probably no connection to this little drought we’re suffering though.

Old Jules
Creedence Clearwater Revival– Have You Ever Seen the Rain:
http://youtu.be/TS9_ipu9GKw

6 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy, Current Issues

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New Chinatown for Idaho

Posted on August 1, 2011 by | 2 comments
I’ve read somewhere that Chicago sold off their City Parking Meters and Towing Services to Arabs, maybe other public services, as well.  Evidently some other cities are looking into similar measures, maybe already doing it.  Haven’t heard of any National Parks, National Forests or other federal holdings being handed over to the Chinese to allay the servicing of our debt to them, or our trade deficit.
However, maybe that’s also coming down the pike.

“We’re getting calls from investors from all across Asia who are interested in Idaho,” she said.

Idaho’s location, only another 45 minutes farther by air than Seattle from Asia, will open many opportunities, state and local officials said.
The state’s low cost for doing business will help, too.Fact is, the government debt is owned by every US citizen.  When the nation is mortgaged the people who hold the note loaned it with some assurance they’d either get the money back, get paid back in kind, or they’d get concessions to their advantage to make the loaning of it worth doing.
There’s no indication that industrial zone in Idaho would put any US citizens back to work, but it might do a lot to put Chinese to work on US soil, so’s they don’t have to ship their products so far to US consumers who can’t manufacture their own products such as toasters, television sets, kids toys and shoes.
Old Jules

Kingston Trio–Merry Minuet
http://youtu.be/bp6dsKleGpU

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Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Human Behavior

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White Trash Repairs: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Posted on July 31, 2011 by | 15 comments

It’s a slow day here, is the reason I’m posting this.  It’s not because I was over reading White Trash Repairs/There, I Fixed It – Repairs blog http://thereifixedit.failblog.org/ and got riled with their uppidy attitudes.

No, I just feel a need to be forthright about the kind of person I choose to be.  Maybe that can best be expressed with a sneak preview of some projects I’ll be discussing here later.

After I haul some more rocks the above is going to be a woodshed with a watertight roof.  The hot tub was on the porch when I moved here, cracked, home to wildlife.  Now it’s metamorphosing into an eventual place to keep my firewood dry.
There’s a lot of work yet to be done raising that roof a few more feet.

Then there’s this.  A nesting box for brooding hens to keep them separate until the chicks are old enough to mix with the flock, but still protected from predators.  Refrigerator shelves cut down to fit the cable spool, mounted on a sawed-in-half lawn mower platform for mobility:

Or this:  A chicken-house fabricated entirely from salvage, discarded shower doors, camper shell roof, refrigerator shelves, whatever came to hand free:


There.  I fixed it.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Internet, Poultry, White Trash Repairs

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Make my day, stranger!

Posted on July 30, 2011 by | 11 comments

I don’t know when we began giving power to strangers. I think it’s a relatively recent phenomenon. Maybe we watched too many Westerns during our formative years, learned from those steely eyed men in saloons that what strangers think about us is worth a gunfight.

Nowadays the extreme version happens in city traffic. Someone shoots someone else a bird. Next step is an exchange of gunfire.

Here’s how the scenario runs:

Some complete stranger pronounces a bias we don’t share.

Our thought response:

“This offends me.”

That thought process is driven by a deeper one:

“I want to be offended. I give this stranger the power to offend me. I assign enough value to what this stranger says, or believes, to allow it to trigger a negative emotional path within me. What this stranger says or believes matters.”

We know better.

Strangers cut too wide a swath in their traits to have any real value. They span the breadth of potential human biases. But even knowing this we give them the power to ruin a moment.

I say this is a recent phenomenon because humans of the past behaved differently. Our forefathers didn’t care what Brits thought about us because they recognized that Brits live within an entirely different set of interests.

Even today a Zuni doesn’t care what a Navajo thinks about anything because from the perspective of a Zuni, Navajos don’t have anything valid to contribute to any meaningful discussion. Navajos live in a different reality from Zunis.

Both Navajos and Zunis choose to allow themselves to be offended by the opinions of Anglos and Hispanics, but there’s a reason. They’ve found taking offense is a means of gaining power over those groups.

But neither a Zuni, nor a Navajo would bother being offended by the thoughts and words of the other because to each there’s nothing the other might think that carries the weight of validity.

Not long ago the same was true of people almost everywhere. The people in the town where I was reared cared about the opinions of people within that town, but they couldn’t have cared less what the people in Clovis, twenty miles away thought. It was generally understood that Clovis people were stupid and might think and say anything.

Today we care what everyone thinks about almost everything. We pretend to believe what they think carries value, but we know better. We just like the feel of being offended..

Make my day, Stranger! I’m handing you the power to offend me.

This leaves me cold.

Human opinion hasn’t held up well under scrutiny. It’s worth about what it costs. Mine aren’t that reliable and I haven’t found those of others to be any better.

Instrumental Theme to Dirty Harry:
http://youtu.be/ZDKRD2q3bYo

11 Comments

Posted in 2011, Human Behavior

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The Lost Coon Diggings

Posted on July 27, 2011 by | 9 comments

I try not to be too humanocentric in my  dealings with the wildlife population here.  I’m willing to put up with some inconvenience and irritation in most instances in favor of the critters having their own jobs to do,  not directly intending anything personal.  I haul away snakes and try to discourage the deer.  If a creature will agree not to bother my cats and chickens I’ll generally agree to keeping the .22 behind the door where it can be peaceful and quiet.

But sometimes an animal gets insistent about leaping out of this lifetime into whatever place it figures members of its own species go when they die.  Coons tend to be of this nature.

This particular one’s been fighting a protracted battle with me for a month, at least.  Trying to dig into the chicken fortress at night, me stretching chain with treble-hooks wired to the links to discourage it days.  Brother Coon moving to another spot, starting again.  Me cutting prickly pear, putting in the holes, stacking rocks, him digging past, gradually winning me over to his own point of view that he was destined for some help getting into the next lifetime.

Last night I finally broke down and put out the live trap.

http://youtu.be/vmQKryGxwF4

9 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading, Poultry, Wildlife

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The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2

Posted on July 19, 2011 by | 4 comments

I’ve described a few of the attributes of the GSB on another entry, http://tinyurl.com/4yxat2b,  but I didn’t get around to mentioning another  facet of his complex character traits.  He’s a liar.

When he finds food he’ll burble in a special way for the hens, he won’t eat, but pecks it, lifts it with his beak and drops it, bringing the hens running from all directions to fight over whatever it is.

But sometimes GSB gets lonely when he hasn’t found any food.  He’s crippled up and has to move about with a crow-hop, so chasing hens down when he’s lonely doesn’t come easy the way it does for other roosters.

GSB’s developed a practical solution to the problem.  He lies.

When things get slow and GSB wants companionship he’ll pick a spot where he might have found food if there’d been some there, and he’ll burble, scratch and peck, picking up imaginary food and dropping it.  The hens are wise to this tactic.  Somehow they’re able to sense he’s faking it, so they keep on with whatever they’re doing.

But GSB knows hens.  Keeps right on, insisting he’s actually got something they’d like.  Gets excited, urgent in his pronouncements about what he’s offering.  Eventually, one or another of the hens will begin to meander toward him, curiosity overcoming the weight of her experience and common sense.  Usually when one hen heads toward him the others can’t stand the thought she might get something they’ll miss, so the momentum increases and becomes a race to see who’ll get to him first.

When a hen reaches him GSB lifts the imaginary morsel one more time, burbles, and mounts her for a quickie.  The other hens lose interest, GSB dismounts and wanders away, and the hen stays squatted on the spot a couple of minutes on the chance he’ll come back for more.

But if it’s to be done, best it were done quickly.

Old Jules

The Taker – Kris Kristofferson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfkN2i-yS04
He’s a giver, he’ll give her
The kind of attention that she’s never known
He’s a helper, he’ll help her
To open the doors that she can’t on her own
He’s a lover, he’ll love her
In ways that she never has been loved before
And he’s a getter, he’ll get her
By gettin her into the world she’s been hungerin’ for

’cause he’s a taker, he’ll take her
To places and make her fly higher than she’s ever dared to
He’ll take his time before takin’ advantage
Takin’ her easy and slow
And after he’s taken the body and soul
That she gives him, he’ll take her for granted
Then he’ll take off and leave her
Takin’ all of her pride as he goes

He’s a charmer, and he’ll charm her
With money and manners that I never learned
He’s a leader, and he’ll lead her
Across pretty bridges he’s planning to burn
He’s a talker, he’ll talk her
Right off of her feet, but he won’t talk for long
Cause he’s a doer, and he’ll do her
The way that I never
And damned if he won’t do her wrong
’cause he’s a taker, he’ll take her
To places and make her fly higher than she’s ever dared to
He’ll take his time before takin’ advantage
Takin’ her easy and slow
And after he’s taken the body and soul
That she gives him, he’ll take her for granted
Then he’ll take off and leave her
Takin’ all of her pride as he goes

4 Comments

Posted in 2011, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Human Behavior, Liars, Outdoors, Poultry, Relationships

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