Category Archives: Redneck Repairs

A Poem as Lovely as a Tree – An Oak Ponders Oak-Wilt

Posted on December 3, 2011 by | 22 comments

 

Possibly  this one would choose something by Arthur Rimbaud,

“True, the new era is nothing if not harsh.

“For I can say that I have gained a victory; the gnashing of teeth, the hissing of hellfire, the stinking sighs subside. All my monstrous memories are fading. My last longings depart, – jealousy of beggars, bandits, friends of death, all those that the world passed by. – Damned souls, if I were to take vengance!

“One must be absolutely modern.

“Never mind hymns of thanksgiving: hold on to a step once taken. A hard night! Dried blood smokes on my face, and nothing lies behind me but that repulsive little tree!… The battle for the soul is as brutal as the battles of men; but the sight of justice is the pleasure of God alone.

“Yet this is the watch by night. Let us all accept new strength, and real tenderness. And at dawn, armed with glowing patience, we will enter the cities of glory.”  From ‘Farewell’ by Arthur Rimbaud

Or Baudelaire:

“— Enjoyment fortifies desire.
Desire, old tree fertilized by pleasure,
While your bark grows thick and hardens,
Your branches strive to get closer to the sun!

“Will you always grow, tall tree more hardy
Than the cypress? — However, we have carefully
Gathered a few sketches for your greedy album,
Brothers who think lovely all that comes from afar!”

From ‘Flowers of Evil’, ‘The Voyage’,  by Charles Baudelaire

Or Edgar Allen Poe:

The breeze—the breath of God—is still—
And the mist upon the hill,
Shadowy—shadowy—yet unbroken,
Is a symbol and a token—
How it hangs upon the trees,
A mystery of mysteries!

From ‘Spirits of the Dead’, by Edgar Allen Poe

My own saga with Oak Wilt and this particular tree is sung in these past posts:

Oak Wilt, Firewood and Sawmilling

For Want of a Nail – Something Worth Knowing Chainsaw-wise

Outsmarted by a Dead Tree

I’d written about possibly trying to salvage some of it for sawmilling, but that’s not in the cards:

The interior of the trunk is riddled by cracks caused by the rapid shrinkage.

Oak Wilt came on it fast from the roots.  By the time anything showed topside the tree was evidently already dead. 

Arthur Rimbaud, Charlie Baudelaire and E.A. Poe should have put their heads together and written something immortal about how to get the rest of it down.  The job has the potential for being right there in the target zone for their kind of writing.  It’s going to be a booger-bear any way I cut it.

Old Jules

Everything else being equal I think I favor pines:

 

All that tree-stuff hanging up there leads me to think our songsters are too humanocentric about hanging trees.

 

22 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading, Poetry, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Texas, White Trash Repairs

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Outsmarted by a Dead Tree

Posted on December 1, 2011 by | 12 comments

Tree Numero Uno didn’t agree to my offer to let it go down without a fight.  The trunk broke but the uppidy part refused to answer the demands of modern physics.

I’m not the sort of man to sit still for anything defying science and gravity.

I got my digging bar and proceeded to put forward reasoned arguments as to why that tree needed to obey the law.

The top part of the trunk moved over on the stump every time I applied pressure to the bar.

I cut the trunk at an angle so the trunk couldn’t slip back this way when it fell and get in the way of the path I was leaving to get the cut wood out.  But now, by cunning Communist refusal to do what’s right there are several tons of potential energy trapped in the upper trunk.  If I use the bar to pry it further this way that upper trunk’s going to snap out of there like a catapult and knock the bejesus out of everything downrange.

But if I leave it standing it’s going to pick its own time to come down.  And it’s already demonstrated a lousy set of values and ideals enough create a suspicion I’ll be under it when it does.

Maybe I was actually supposed to go to Kerrville today.

Old Jules

4:04 PM edit:  I got it down, but with more style and panache than I consider tasteful under the circumstances.  No broken bones, no serious injuries, nothing destroyed I can’t live without.  On the other hand, there’s still a lot more tree left propped up on dead branches 10-15 feet in the air, so there might be another dance left in the old dame yet.  Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Current Issues, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, White Trash Repairs

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sunday Morning November 27, 2011 Musings

Posted on November 27, 2011 by | 21 comments

Old Sol’s finally recovering some dignity, getting some of the southern hemisphere melodrama behind him.  He’s spun around about 90 degrees and you can still see some of it lower right near the horizon.  But all-in-all he appears to be getting back to the business at hand. 

Nobody’s sure what the business at hand is, there’s a nice little solar breeze flowing out of that coronal-hole complex mid-south, leading us the way a hunter leads a goose he’s trying to shoot down.  It ought to reach us around the 29th of November.  Interesting stuff happening down at the south pole.  Remember where you heard it first.

I went up to turn out Kay’s chickens just before daybreak and kicked up a herd of about 20 wild turkeys, which we haven’t seen on this property in a goodly while.  But the country’s filled with hunters now, and there was some shooting not-too-far from the property lines yesterday.  They’re skittish critters and might have decided this side of the fences is safer, everything else being equal.

I swung into Kerrville yesterday to finally pick up that primer-bulb for the chainsaw and get chain and bar oil.  In the AutoZone store I noticed a couple of things I think might actually be worth buying as new tools after studying them a while.  One is a ratchet with 1/4 inch drive on one side and 3/8 inch drive on the other.  It has a comparatively short handle and a break just where the ratchet handle ends with a swivel on it to allow the handle to be bent allowing access to communistly personal space invaded places.

The other was a set of two box-end wrenches with ratcheting heads covering 8mm, 10mm, 12mm, 13mm, 14mm, 17mm, 18mm and 19mm.  If someone had told me yesterday morning I’d buy some new tools if I went to town they’d have lost intellectual standing in my eyes.

But looking at these I’m figuring I’m a pretty smart puppy.

Afterthought:  Jeanne found a discarded copy of Chancellorsville, by Edward J. Stackpole and sent it to me for my birthday.  I’m up to my elbows in it, finding it particularly interesting because the Stackpole generation of Civil War historians have such different perspectives about so many facets of what went on in that war.  He goes into loving detail about Hooker’s history, his behaviors throughout his career, his relationships with Lincoln and his various commanders and particularly with Burnside.  I’d never read that scandalous self-aggrandizing report he sent in about Antietam before now.  I’d also never encountered Grant’s “I consider Hooker a dangerous man,” appraisal of him. 

If I’d been driving my own truck I’d have had Chancellorsville propped up on the steering-wheel reading it on the drive to and from Kerrville, is how seductive I’m finding the tome.

Old Jules

21 Comments

Posted in 2011, Astronomy, Country Life, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Solitude, Survival, Texas

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

RAZ Auction and an Aborted Escape Route

Posted on November 20, 2011 by | 6 comments

Yesterday Gale and Kay were away on another craft fair and I had access to Little Red, so I decided to trip into Harper for the farm/livestock auction.

The pickings were fairly slim because fewer people showed for it than I’ve ever seen at that auction.  But things were going dirt cheap as a result.

Cheap, I should have said, by comparison with the usual fare.  On a normal third Saturday someone falls in love with this sort of thing and is willing to hock the family jewels to carry it home.

But yesterday even jewels of this sort were going for a couple of bucks:

You’d think the seat and steering wheel on this would be worth someone hauling home at those prices.

A few items did draw bids a bit higher.

This compressor that might work went for around $15.

Plenty of antlers of all description but I wasn’t sure what Gale could use or I’d have stayed around to bid on some of the lots.

The poultry barn only had a few dozen birds, none I found a compelling need for.  The livestock weren’t out in force.  A few bighorn sheep, four starving longhorns, a few ibex, maybe a wildebeest I didn’t get a look at, and a horse headed for the dogfood factory.

I could have left after one quick swing around except for this:

I’d been nosing around for different living arrangements [also here Pack Goats for the Elderly and a Youngish Hermit and here Thursday morning meanderings].  I had a lot of reservations about this domicile.  That’s particle-board it’s constructed of, the frame looked to be for something a lot lighter, the door’s so narrow I had to turn my shoulders sidewise to go inside.

It was set up for propane and water at some time, but mostly everything except the wiring and hoses were removed.  That bottom-middle vent, when opened, looks directly inside through a stripped cabinet that evidently once held a sink.

This rear window would have to be removed to get anything wider than the door inside.  It doesn’t open.  And I couldn’t help wondering why there had been a deliberate removal of the tail lights.  No evidence of a license tag ever having been on it.

Those two vents open directly into the trailer underneath the two seats at the front, which would be a problem on the road in inclement weather.

But even knowing it was going to require a lot of work, beginning with protecting that particle board, it was a possible.  This winter would be a lot warmer living in there, and that’s a factor to warp judgement to a degree.  And having something that would provide a mobile escape route if I need one, a lot easier than anything I’d come across thus far lent itself to a decision to bid if the competition wasn’t strong.

I figured it might go for $300, which I could cover.  I decided I couldn’t go more than $500, and even that would squeeze things a bit uncomfortably.  When the bidding came it went to my $475, long pause and someone bid $500.  I turned to walk away, then spur of the moment raised my arm for $525.  And the bidding stopped.

I’d just bought the damned thing.

I went to the office to pay for it, forked over the money and the young lady was filling out the paperwork when the older lady behind her chimed in.  “He told you about not being able to get a trailer title for it didn’t he?”

“Hmmm.  No.”

Her face curled into a snarl.  “That SOB!  He was supposed to announce that before he auctioned it.  You can’t take it onto the road.  You can’t get a title for the highway.”

This caused me to have to back up and try my hand at rapid thinking.  Not my long suite.

After a pause, both of them staring at me, “Do you still want it?”

“Um.  I guess not.”

She counted my money back to me, I handed them the keys and went back outdoors to re-organize my life.

Nothing much had changed while I went from one package of my immediate future back to the one I began the day with.  The world was still waiting for Godot.

But while I went about the task of getting my mind back unshuffled I watched this dog make a statement about the whole event, laying a line of cable between me and all that potential future I’d just stuck my toe into, then pulled it back out.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in Adventure, Country Life, Music, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Survival, Texas, White Trash Repairs, YouTube

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Communist Toyota 4-Runner

Posted on November 16, 2011 by | 10 comments

The Got me a new truck! project doesn’t appear to be going anywhere fast enough to offer any near-future prospects for getting wheels under me.  Thursday morning meanderings,

I was out studying this problem again yesterday and this morning.

I’ve got a starter, but I hadn’t dared start the job because of a Catch 22.  At the time the 4Runner was my only transportation and even starting it by rolling it downhill was better than no transportation.  But once I got it blocked and it rolled forward a bit the blocks would be wedged in front of the wheels and I’d have no way to get them out.  My mind locked into this problem, so when the battery went dead and it rolled to the other side of the meadow without starting I didn’t back up in my thinking and realize it didn’t apply anymore.  I already didn’t have any transportation.

Believe it or not, that took me several months to figure out.  But I finally did, and studying the situation I decided if the new starter doesn’t repair the problem I can hook a cable to the back bumper and that telephone pole behind and use the 2-ton come-along to pull it back up with the battery fully charged.  The downhill roll from the telephone pole should turn it over enough to get it started.  Afterward I can try Plan B to decide what to do next, but with a truck that will work if I park it on a downhill grade.

As nearly as I could figure that wheel well is the only access to the starter.

I stuck the camera in there for a better look at how much of a Commie it planned to be.

Bigger than Dallas, a man can get to the heads of both bolts holding it on.  The Universe is kind to a man like me.

But first I needed to jack it up from a bumper so’s the brake disc wouldn’t be pushed up squeezing what little room I’d have to work. 

And I had to get that wheel off.  I’d forgotten why I always carry that wheel-puller in the truck.  The hubs are from an old Isuzu Trooper I used to own and they don’t make an exact fit.  When I torque down the lug nuts the wheel jams against the threads and it won’t come off without a lot of persuasion.

But there it is.  Hot diggedy damn!

Easy!  Easy money!

Man, people pay good money to get to do a job as easy as this one’s going to be.

And there it sits after I ran spang out of altitude, airspeed and fancy ideas.  My tools are up at Gale’s under the hood of my New Truck.

Sheeze.  I’ll have to bring them down next time I borrow Little Red.

Old Jules

 

10 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Trucks

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

House Coon and Cat Houses Update

Posted on October 19, 2011 by | 15 comments

Brother Coon and I couldn’t come to an agreement about the availability of indoors as acceptable behavior for a coon with a long life expectancy.  Whatever I did to keep him out, half an hour later he’d be poking around trying to find a way in, eventually leading to success.

Last night I’d had a bellyfull of it.  I brought the live trap in and put it down next to the sack of cat food, then went to bed.  Around 3:00 am I heard the trap slam shut and a lot of ruckus.  Transported trap, coon and angry all outdoors to await arraignment, trial, conviction and final disposition.

Original story here:  Wake-up Call – Coon in the Living Room

Cathouse Success

For once I predicted something and it came to pass.  That ice chest I salvaged out of the grader ditch actually has proved itself the popular cat-hotel I hoped it would.

Cathouse urgencies – 6:30 pm Grader Ditch Hauls

Another exciting day forming up in the Middle of Nowhere

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs, Wildlife

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Building A Salvage Chicken-Hilton – One Man Band

Posted on October 18, 2011 by | 10 comments

Follow-up construction details:

I’ve mentioned and shown pics of the chicken-house built from discarded shower doors, etc., several times here.

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

White Trash Repairs: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

From the ground:

I said when I made the post I’d be talking more about it, but way led onto way and I never got around to doing it. 

This was a one-man-band project.  The footprint of that structure has about an inch-or-less of topsoil over hardpan caliche or limestone.  Digging holes for the uprights wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate.

I knew I wanted the pickup camper as a roof, the shower-doors as part of the walls, wanted uprights with lateral stability without digging into limestone.  But otherwise it was plan-as-you go, driven partly by material availability.

Those lower walls are two sides of a huge packing crate I picked up for $5 from a guy in Kerrville.  Bought 30# of large lag-screws [$1.00 per pound] from Habitat for Humanity Recycling Store for the project because I anticipated difficulties in the lateral stability department.  The shower doors were free.  The 4x4s were from the same guy who sold me the packing crate.

I used the crate-sides to get three of the uprights generally in place by bolting them together.  Trust me when I tell you this ought to be a 2-man job.  I fudged on a lot of things by not paying a lot of attention to right-angles because I couldn’t be two places at once and knew I wasn’t going to live forever.

I took about a week building it, but probably it could have been done in a day with two people working.

As you can see I trenched below the lower walls and dug to bedrock, only an inch or two, to level the lower walls and provide a base for the corner posts.

Before putting the camper shell on top I built an interior frame and stabilized it with a steel bed frame salvaged from a junk pile:

Once that was in place I ran the front bumper of the truck up against it from whatever angles I could get to it, hooked a chain to the uprights from other angles pushing and pulling it with the truck to test the lateral strength.  We get some high winds and I didn’t want it coming down, even if the additional strength the camper shell structure would add became fractured.

I constructed a lean-to ramp using 4 2x12s and positioned the camper shell diagonally on it, skidded it up with a come-along until I had it in place, then bolted it to the top frame.  As I was finishing, Gale dropped down to see how I was doing and helped a lot during the final positioning of the shell.

The camper shell was missing the door, so for ventilation I used salvaged refrigerator shelving.  It keeps the predators out but allows a good breeze.  But to keep out the water I added the additional planks at an angle sloping away from the roof runoff.

Other than that there wasn’t much to it.

Old Jules

Three Dog Night– One Man Band

10 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Poultry, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Texas, Thrift Stores, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Trap of ‘Wanting’

Posted on October 10, 2011 by | 13 comments

A person used to hear young men say, “I’d give my left nut for [fill in the blank]” and everyone knew precisely what he was saying. 

Sometime over the past few decades I filtered out allowing myself to precisely  ‘want’ anything without consciously intending to do it.  When I get the silly-assed notion I ‘need’ or ‘want’ something I just stuff it into a file folder in my mind marked, ‘tentative’, and go into a patience mode.  That just involves waiting for the Universe to drop whatever it was, or the components to fabricate it into my life.  Which the Universe consistently indulges eventually.

But yesterday in town I saw this and it stopped me in my tracks.  “Wow!” thinks I.  “That thing could wash a lot of clothes at once, and it has a wringer.”

I’ve been using the Thrift Store busted near-freebee 1947 Kenmore for some time and I’m generally tickled pea-green with it:  Clean Underwear and Hard Times.  But it has the decided disadvantage of not having a wringer.  This results in not getting so much water out of the clothes, so they take a lot longer to dry on the line.

I tagged and numbered the concept of the washer above and sent an order for something along those lines out to the Universe.  But as I thought about it driving away it dawned on me what I actually ‘need’ if I were going to do some needing is a carwash chamois wringer.

http://www.autosportcatalog.com/index.cfm?fa=p&pid=6661&sc=58446&adpos=1t3&creative=8211616038&gclid=CMm9uK6Y3qsCFcPt7QodRGatSg

Or this:

http://www.dultmeier.com/images/prodpagethumb/LC-AT01-Chamois-Wringer.jpg

But the cheapest of those new runs almost $100, which doesn’t fit into any strong likelihoods of me ever forking out.  Even on EBay they run that price and upward.

But those things appear to be built to last.  I’m betting when car washes go out of business they end up in places nobody expected, taking up space and not getting much use.  I’m going to watch for them at flea-markets, auctions and garage sales.  And maybe I’ll post something on the Yahoo FreeCycle groups for Kerrville and Fredericksburg.

I wouldn’t give my left nut for one of those wringers, but if I wanted one I might.

Steve Goodman knew all about the trap of wanting dream things, though.  In this song he just about says it all:

Steve Goodman — Vegematic [Live]

 

Old Jules

 
 

13 Comments

Posted in Country Life, Free, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Thrift Stores, Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cathouse urgencies

Posted on October 9, 2011 by | 7 comments
 

Salvaged wheelbarrow, salvaged nightstand and salvaged material stapled over door opening

Salvaged microwave stripped of components with the back cut off makes a great means of keeping the cat food dry

Heavy rain and the cool snap last got me scrambling to give the cats a way to get out of the weather and keep the food dry.  Looks as though it will serve, but I’ve got to work on several more shelters.  They’re there, but need upgrading a bit. 

Cat houses and such

I’ll confess I’m behind the curve on a lot of things.  I should have re-wrapped that electrical tape around the busted phone line before the rain hit.  Internet’s back in tin-can telephone speeds this morning.

Artful Communications – White Trash Repairs 3

Old Jules

Gordon Lightfoot – Early Morning Rain (Live in Chicago – 1979)

 

6:30 PM:  GRADER DITCH HAULS!

Gale and Kay were working the Mesquite Show in Fredericksburg this weekend, so I borrowed Little Red today and went into town for necessaries.  But when I’m on the road I always shop the grader ditches and investigate any potentially useful items thrown or blown out of vehicles.  Today was great insofar as upgrading cathouses:

The top was missing on this, but otherwise it's in good shape

The cats will be fighting over which gets to sleep inside this

I find a lot of these lids in the ditches and this one almost fits.

 

Also found these rubber bungie cords near another bunch of trash in the ditch

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2011, Country Life, Emergency Preparedness, Free, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Cat houses and such

Posted on September 27, 2011 by | 10 comments

Three of these four worthless felines are getting a bit long in the tooth, two longer than the next in line.  It’s been a tough summer with the drought and heat wave, so I’ve had to take some measures to give them some relief I couldn’t provide for myself.

Shiva’s not one of the two oldest, but she had a health event a couple of winters ago that’s taken a long time to recover from, and she has a special job here if the cows ever come back.  She’s Shiva the Cow Cat.  Loved chasing cows back when they were bothersome. [ Artful Communications – White Trash Repairs 3 ]

I might add some other meanderings here today as other things come to mind, but what’s on my mind this morning is I need to start working on the front porch cat houses I put together last fall to give them all places to get out of the elements.  Now that the heat’s bending in the other direction I wouldn’t be shocked to see a winter rearing it’s head before I’m ready for it.

Old Jules

————————————-

7:45 AM – Escape Route Possibilities – Fridge and trailer

Another issue that’s been on my mind a lot lately is creating myself a place to live if anything intervenes to insist I get the hell out of Dodge.  The whole thing’s complicated by the contract I have with these cats, all but one of them, to take care of them until they die off, or I die off.  I’ve talked with them about it, and they have some strong views about minimum living conditions, etc, which I’m obliged to consider.  A tent or under a bridge doesn’t meet their minimum criteria.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I’m looking around for an old travel trailer I can get for a price I can afford, and the new truck up there Gale’s going to help me pull to town to let an honest-to-goodness mechanic fix the wiring mess, inspect it to get it legal, and eventually pull whatever I come up with for it to pull.

While I’m scouting around looking for an old travel trailer I’ve also been looking at this, considering whether it mightn’t offer an alternative:

http://tinyhouseblog.com/

Of course, if I select this option I’ll be building it from salvaged recycled materials.

This trailer below has been sitting there with that load on it from the time Gale and Kay moved here from Pflugerville.  His shop building was full and he didn’t have anywhere to put all that stuff, so it’s stayed there, everything on it getting ruined by the weather and the tires going flat.

another view:

That lathe, left rear, is troubling to see.  But so’s a lot of the other once-useful items on there.

another view:

another view:

If I can think of somewhere to put that junk, protecting whatever’s left worth protecting, I just might be able to talk  him out of the trailer if I decide the building a house on a trailer option seems the best  after everything’s considered.

On the other hand, the fridge is now a sure thing.  I was talking with Gale while he was doing some jewelry work the other day and noticed this, down there bottom center:

Turns out it’s the gas/electric fridge out of an old travel trailer I gave him about 30 years ago.  He says it’s mine if I want it.

It’s going to be a job getting it out of there:

Behind and under a few important things

Old Jules

Jesse Winchester, Just Like New

10 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Solitude, Survival, White Trash Repairs

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,