Category Archives: Texas

Old Sol’s Bumper-Stickers

Posted on June 3, 2012 by | 2 comments

Me:  “Hey!  Up and at’em guy!  Rise and shine.”

Old Sol:  “Sheeze!  Hush you mouf, boy.  I’m sleeping in this morning.  Got a heluva headache.”

Me:  “Little too much partying, did we?  Get your lazy butt up over the horizon.  You’ve got a tight agenda today.”

Old Sol:  “Hell, I’ve got things going on you don’t even know about.  Didn’t any sooner get this Venus drama out of the way and got Mercury coming up.  And that ain’t the half of it.  Same old same old.  And I’ve got all this magnetic field crap to deal with.  Look at this damned coronal hole if you think you’ve got problems.”

Me:  “Look here, big guy.  I know it ain’t easy, but you’ve got a job to do.  If you can’t handle it, someone’s going to start talking to Alpha Centauri.  We’re already farming out everything important this side of the planet.  If you don’t want to be out-sourced you might start doing some gratitude affirmations you’ve still got a job at all.”

Old Sol: “Are you threatening me?  You?  I’ll tell you what, bubba.  You guys just try passing all that mess off to Alpha Centauri.  That sissified bastard couldn’t do half of what I do.  And you’d be in for a loooong dry spell, meanwhile.”

Me:  “It ain’t my call.  It’s the multi-nationals.  Just get on up and maybe we can both keep our jobs.”

Old Sol:  “Yeah, yeah yeah.  But look at that damned coronal hole, would you?  I need an aspirin.”

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Astronomy, Human Behavior, Relationships, Science, Senior Citizens, Texas

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Thoughts on the 1977 School Bus as a Cat House

Posted on June 2, 2012 by | 20 comments

I’ve been scratching under my hat over a number of issues regarding that old school bus as a potential escape route, studying pictures taken last time in town.  Wondering how a person might get around various problems.

One that jumps out immediately is the fact there’s no way of locking the doors, either the front, or the emergency door.  So a person who didn’t fix that problem wouldn’t want to be a sound sleeper.  Or go off out-of-sight of it if he had anything inside he wanted there when he got back.

Another is that no obvious place to mount a spare tire seems to be included in the design. I suppose a person might rig a way to keep one on the roof if there’s no place underneath to hang it. 

Those wheels appear to weigh 75 pounds or more, though, so getting them up there would be a growth experience.

Interestingly, there appears to be an old Volkswagen living underneath there.

Evidently it was retrofitted to power a huge refrigeration air conditioning complex above the rows of seats, both sides.  My thought is that the shelves are nice, but the refrigerator is gonna have to come out.  Maybe the VW engine, too, so’s to make room for a spare tire.

Meanwhile, the windows don’t lock shut and some screens would have to be rigged to keep insects out and provide a disincentive for cats jumping out open windows to explore the highway.

I’ve always wanted something with a lot of switches to try to figure out as I drive along.

Nothing about it, I reckons, that can’t be overcome, but a challenge or two if the thing decides to jump into my life.

[I was watching for a place in here to use the word ‘footfeet’ because it’s such a novel piece of language history involving automobiles.  For the unaware, people used to call the brake, clutch and throttle pedals ‘footfeet’.  But there’s not a lot I can think of to say about the footfeet of this bus.  Hmmm, except,]

The footfeet appear to be intact, adequate and functional.

Old Jules

20 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Country Life, Outdoors, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Survival, Texas, Transportation, Trucks, White Trash Repairs

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Jeanne’s Bumper-Sticker Dearth/Plethora After-Action Report

Posted on June 2, 2012 by | 4 comments

This email was waiting for me when I logged on this morning, in part:

“The total bumper stickers on a 2000 mile trip was one Semper Fi, two Obama/Biden, one home made one that said Troginator or something, and one that said “ If religious groups want to get into politics they should pay taxes” which I’ll send to you re-sized sooner than the others if you want to use it. If there are certain subjects I might have taken that you’d like me to email the pic of, let me know and I’ll resize those first just to send along quickly.
 “Saw something in a comment that the new bumpers don’t do well with bumper stickers, and since almost all the cars I saw were new, I suspect people don’t want to mess their bumpers up with something that won’t come off. Just guessing.”

Jeanne might be right, of course, same as any of us might as easily be as being wrong at any given time, on any given issue we enjoy strong opinions about. 

I hate to think US drivers have become so sissy they’d quit spewing their certainties, hatreds, biases and half-baked simple solutions to complex phenomena just because of their paint-jobs.  I’d prefer to think they’ve become uneasy about what’s going on around them, sensed it enough to cause the hair on their necks bristle a bit.

The deliberate polarization of strong feelings in this country regarding politics, religion, environmentalism, ethnics, abortion, sexual preference and patriotism seem to me to have introduced the potential for having tires slit in the parking lot as a means of counter-expression.

The guy in the picture at the top today is Jack Swilling, founder of Phoenix, Arizona.  His hat was his bumper-sticker.  Someone shot a hole in it, ripped it in half so’s he had to sew it back together.

But in another sense, a person might figure, “Hell, if I’m going to be in Swilling’s neighborhood, I ain’t putting no bumper-sticker on my horse.”

The country’s jam-packed with people today who might be sneakier and more cunning than Jack Swilling, but have the same eyes developed listening to talk radio too much.  Or spending too much time in the slammer to love their fellow Americans.  Or snorting too much of this or that recreational drug. 

Jack Swilling’s still out there, but he’s wearing his hat backward most likely.  Instead of saying, “What the hell are YOU looking at?” most likely he’ll just drag his keys the length of your paintjob or slit your tires.  Unless he can catch you alone broken down on the highway.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2012, Communication, Education, New Mexico, Politics, Survival, Texas

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Worthy of the Displayed Petroglyphs

Posted on May 31, 2012 by | 6 comments

I don’t know much about art, except knowing what I wouldn’t want to fall on me.  Most artists I’ve known were just doing it for the same reasons I write things down.  They mostly just did it without wondering why.  And I’ve always suspected most of them secretly hoped some piece of it would survive them.

Probably the same is true of the people all over the backassed places who scratched things on rocks or painted pictures a person today often has difficulty understanding.

But sometimes in the heat of the moment those artists pulled off coups leaving no doubt what was being said, why it was being said.  Messages speaking of events in their lives still able to increase the heartbeat of a viewer looking from another world.  Another reality.  Another time.  For instance, of the hundreds of petroglyphs I’ve seen in my life, a couple come to mind that satisfy that description. 

One’s in the desert east of Socorro, New Mexico.  Under a cliff overhang 50, maybe 100 yards long someone a long time ago painted [yeah, I know.  Not a petroglyph per se] a series of scenes of people wearing jockstraps pulling men in armor off horses, beating them to death, stabbing them, generally giving them whatfer. 

I’m only speculating on this, but I’ve always suspected that scene depicts a piece of action took place with scouts or the rear-guard of the Spaniards retreating from New Mexico fleeing the Terrors.  The Revolt of 1690.  The route passed within a few miles of there, some maybe right across it.

The other is in Frijole Canyon a few miles upgrade from Bandera.   Three guys in jockstraps surrounding a bear ten times their size and a dozen times their ugly.  The two on the sides have spears in positions to thrust.  The third is in front of the bear, close, spear broken, bear paw with claws outstretched on the way to adjusting the future to contain one fewer human being.

But I’ve digressed. 

Modern art’s more subtle and a lot of it probably won’t last so long.  To clarify the message, modern artists frequently add words.  Not everyone’s able to just look at a painted likeness of a horney toad and recognize the underlying action, profundity, statement about the human condition represented.

 

A lot of people might, for example, glance at this and assume they’re seeing an automobile with red headlights belonging to some wealthy person, ready to toodle off to the hair dresser or enjoy a $5.00 cup of Latte somewhere.

But the reality is somewhere else entirely.  That steel plate depicts a piece of modern life most folks never get around to acknowledging.  KEEP TEXAS WILD is the only way the artist managed to convey the work has a deeper meaning.

Because what you’re seeing is men in Texas living behind bars, being gang raped by their fellow prisoners.  Being forced to join White Aryan Brotherhood, the Crips, other prison gangs as an alternative to constantly having the crap beaten out of them, being forced to perform oral sex on the competing ethnic group, experiencing growth experiences of the anal sphincter.

You’re seeing prosecuting attorneys increasing their power, their office space, their staffs.  You’re seeing opportunities for advancement to judgeships.  You’re seeing money allocated to new cars, sophisticated weaponry, better copshops. 

You’re seeing legions of defense attorneys wallowing around in money Scrooge McDuck-like, circulating the product through the system.

And you’re seeing corporate America at its best, building and operating private prisons.  Discovering a new product while it was sending all the others outside US borders to be manufactured.  A product able to be used over and over to feed the necessities of the artists:   private hotels for the artists and guards to admire their work.

And a plea to keep Texas wild.   Wild enough to need more of the same.  Wild enough to keep the money rolling in.  Wild enough to keep things interesting while the products enjoy brief interludes outside with the rest of us.

Seems to me overall that’s a pretty decent piece of art.  Even though it’s obviously one of a numbered series.

Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2012, Art, Current Issues, Government, Human Behavior, Police, Texas

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Escape Routes and Hideyholes

Posted on May 31, 2012 by | 10 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Gale had himself an appointment with the kidney-marble specialist yesterday to find out what they might do about getting it out of there.  Haven’t heard the outcome yet.  But what I’ve seen of him from the time they turned him out of the hospital until now leads me to think he’s going to be slow getting back into peak performance any way a person might view it.

This entire health event episode has hardened the realization for me that if things had played out differently I might have had to jump ship from this place with whatever cats I could take along, almost no lag-time.  Got to devote some attention to pounding a hole in the wall of the Universe that includes something besides hitching out and finding a bridge to live under, minus felines.

If the Coincidence Coordinators allow it, that 1977 Bluebird school bus might provide the answer.  I figure it’s going to take a month of stopping by there when I’m in town and nobody else buying it during the interim, but I might be able to beat him down enough eventually to be able to swing it.  But if it works the price will have allow me to fit in buying tags and liability insurance coverage.  Plus a tank of gas, cat food and a little for me to last the rest of the month from when it happens.

Once it’s out here I can work on it to make it capable of the cats and me living in it, while still working on the various things need doing on Gale’s place that he’s not going to be able to do for a while.  The wildlife management plan he promised the county he’d do includes thinning the cedar, erosion control mitigation, etc., and there’s heavy lifting with me being the only one here able to do it.

I’m fairly determined to get his first year promises done before I leave here, provided he’s alive to need them done.  If the bus works out, once I sense something complete in it, I’ll feel free to box up me and the cats and head for the sunset.

I’ve got a lot of stirrings in me churning around, telling me I need to be somewhere with more interesting rocks than a person can dig up here, the trees aren’t dying like flies, and the rivers empty into the Pacific Ocean..

The guy from up the hill told me when he was here that they’re crying for backhoe operators in the country between Uvalde and the Mexico border.  Oil field work.  So a stop out there a while to garner my resources on the way west might fit into the plan if the Coincidence Coordinators think it’s a good idea and the cats will agree to it.

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Current Issues, New Mexico, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas

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The Great Divide Separating the Two Political Parties

Posted on May 30, 2012 by | 7 comments

Party #1

Party #2

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.  Some of you might have noticed the lady who administers this blog hasn’t been around for several days.  Fact is, she’s taken off from her two jobs in Olathe, KS, gone on a road trip. 

I asked her on the phone before she left to watch for bumper stickers during her travels.  This dearth of bumper stickers in Texas during a major election year has me puzzled and I’m wondering if it’s happening everywhere.

Last I heard from her about it, she’d gone from Olathe, KS, to Tucumcari, New Mexico without seeing a single bumper sticker.  Something unprecedented in my experience and observation.

Maybe people have just lost track of the abyss separating the two major parties in the US.  Maybe they’ve noticed, no matter which party they vote for, it always turns out the same no matter which one’s elected.

This has to be a big blow to the bumper sticker industry, which might be the only industry left on US soil.  Something needs to be done quickly to save the situation, and I’m going to do my patriotic duty to try to help.

Since there’s not a nickle’s worth of spit other than rhetoric separating the two parties, it’s time to get what difference there is out where people can see and understand it.

So here I am, doing my tiny part to help it along.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2012, Communication, Current Issues, Ethnic Supremacy, Government, Human Behavior, Texas

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A Military Man

Posted on May 27, 2012 by | 13 comments

Previously posted August 21, 2005:

The man in this picture is my old friend Richard Sturm.

[Note:  I’m going to edit this a bit before I post it to the So Far From Heaven blog, add and subtract a few hindsights and afterthoughts.  Jules]

Richard died in December, 2004, in Port Lavaca, Texas.

Richard was a 100% disabled veteran of the United States Army. From 1964, until his death he spent his entire adult life in and out of Veterans hospitals. When he wasn’t in a hospital he was usually in a café somewhere drinking coffee and being friendly with anyone who’d give him the time of day.

Or he was with me, camping, fishing, seeing the sights, singing, passing the time. That happened less than he’d have liked, probably more than I’d have preferred in a lot of instances. Richard wasn’t an easy man to be around.   

A while back [2011] his brother and I were discussing Richard, and Vic remarked, “You never really saw Richard when he was at his worst.”  I didn’t say so at the time, but I think I spent a lot more time with Richard over the years than Vic did, or than Vic was ever aware I did. 

Aside from Richard, all those Sturms were super-achievers, and although I spent a lot of years from 1965 onward considering Vic among my best friends, he was a busy man.  People sought him out.  If I wanted to talk to him, I called him.  Over all those decades I could count on one hand the times he initiated a contact between the two of us.  “People call me.  I don’t call them,” he explained to me once when I mentioned it to him.   I’d guess that applied to Richard, same as it did to me.

But that’s digression, edited in this May, 2012, with a lot of hindsight.

Before Richard volunteered for the Army he was a patriotic youth, intelligent, dynamic, from a family of super-achievers. He graduated from high school with honors, well liked and respected by his teachers and classmates. A young man with a future. Then he joined the US Army.

In 1964, he was stationed in Massachusetts with the Army Security Agency. Without his knowledge or consent, he was selected for an experiment by the career military men who were his superiors. He was given a massive dose of LSD. He sustained permanent brain damage as a result.

Richard spent several months in a mental ward of an Army hospital, presumably under observation by the powers-that-be, to see what they’d wrought. Then they gave him is medical discharge, released him from service and from the hospital, and sent him home without confiding to anyone what the problem was and why it happened.

Several years later after he’d been examined, had his thyroid removed, given electric shock treatments, everything the puzzled medicos could think of to try and improve this mysterious condition, his brother, an attorney, came to suspect something of what had happened. The stories of events of this sort had begun to creep out of hiding and into the press.

A formal demand was made for release of his records, and finally the story came out.

Richard wasn’t injured defending his country. He didn’t get his skull fractured on some battlefield by enemies. He was betrayed by the career military men of his own country, officers and enlisted men, whom he’d given an oath to obey and defend. He served in good faith, and he was betrayed by his country.

Some have noted on the threads that I don’t have an automatic high regard for career military men. They’re correct. Richard’s just an extreme example of thousands of men who’ve been killed, injured, disabled by irresponsible, insane, and idiotic decisions by men who make a career of blindly following orders without thinking, weighing consequences, not feeling any remorse so long as they were ordered to do it.

Like good little NAZIs, Japanese, Soviets, Israelies, Americans, Cambodians, British, Africans, Chinese, Cubans, Argentinans and military men everywhere.  Just following orders. 

Support our troops.

Old Jules

2012 note:  During a conversation with Vic in 2011, I mentioned the LSD experiment and Vic replied, “It’s a shame I could never prove it.  Richards records were all destroyed in a fire at the Army Records Holding Center in the late 1960s.”  Live and learn.  Somewhere back there, I must have heard it from Richard, I came to think the records had been uncovered and it was established, official fact.

13 Comments

Posted in 1960's, Adventure, Government, Human Behavior, Liars, Military, New Mexico, NM, Politics, Texas, US Army

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Quid Pro Quo Chainsaw-wise

Posted on May 21, 2012 by | 8 comments

The old Poulan chainsaw’s always done me a good job of work until the priming bubble burst:  For Want of a Nail – Something Worth Knowing Chainsaw-wise.  I eventually found a replacement at a place a few miles out Highway 27, midway to Center Point.  Double M Equipment Service.

I installed the primer bulb, but no joy.  It wasn’t sucking gas.  I pulled things apart enough to see the fuel line had become brittle and a piece of it was broken off inside the gas tank.   The whole thing appeared to be iffy, and I honestly didn’t want to spend any of my frustrations messing with it.  I need those frustrations for other things.

So I decided to put that saw into a place where they did that sort of thing, let them do it.  Never put a chainsaw in a shop before, but it’s the experience I’m after this lifetime.  I ain’t in this for the money.

So I went back to Double M Equipment Service, midway to Center Point on Highway 27, spang walked in and whistled to myself until the lady looked up from something important she was doing.  [Fans, Compromises and Drowning in Over-My-Head Math].

I could tell right away I was imposing on her, but I explained about my saw and she handed me a piece of paper for me to write it down, which I considered prudent.  She handed me a tag with a number on it.  “Be sure you put your phone number on there.  I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

I couldn’t remember my phone number, so I wrote down what might, but probably wasn’t Gale’s number.

“How long you reckon it’s going to be?  I only get into town every couple of weeks.  I’ll just swing by and check.”

“No.  It’s running two-and-a-half weeks, average.  I’ll call you as soon as it’s ready.”

“I’m a hard man to get on the phone.  I’ll just call or stop by next time I’m in town.”

“No.  I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

This friendly lady was Lisa, according to the business card.  Mark and Lisa, it said.  Double M Equipment Service.  Lisa.

Three weeks later I stopped in, asked about it and Lisa advised me it wasn’t ready yet, but she’d call when it was.  “Eh?”  My hand behind my ear.  “I’m sort of hard of hearing.  Can’t hear the phone ring.”

Two weeks later I stopped by again.  This time it wasn’t ready, but it was next on the list, friendly Lisa explained.  Next week it wasn’t ready again, she didn’t know why. 

Heck, maybe I’m getting the time passage mixed up.  It went in around April 17.  At least that’s when I mentioned it on the blog post.

Anyway, after X number of trips by there and X number of weeks without a chainsaw, I stopped in and friendly Lisa said it was ready.  $65 US.  Called Mark from the back and he brought it up.  “I replaced that gas cap for you so you don’t have to take it off with a wrench anymore.”

The cap’s slotted so’s a screwdriver can be fitted in perpendicular for taking it off.  Never had a problem with it.  Guess Mark never noticed that feature.

Anyway, I got the saw home, found it still doesn’t prime, but if a person pulls the recoil starter long enough mostly it will eventually start.  Runs a few minutes, long enough to cut down a cedar as thick as your bicep before it runs dry of gas.  At which time a person does the whole process again.

$65 US.  Double M Equipment Service, Highway 27 E & Laurel Way, Kerrville, Texas.  Mark and Lisa.

Tell ’em I said hello.

But I’ve digressed.

What I wanted to tell you about in this post is that when I was picking up that chainsaw I asked Lisa whether there was a good cafe anywhere nearby.  She told me about a good hamburger joint just beyond the crossroads in Center Point.

Good place, decent price.  Middling better than average hamburger.

I’m obliged knowing about it.

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2012, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Relationships, Texas, White Trash Repairs

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Cunning, Intelligence and Free Ranging Chickens

Posted on May 21, 2012 by | 15 comments

I don’t think this applies to caged chickens, but my experience with caged birds is limited.  All I can actually tell you is that free ranging chickens are some of the most cunning, cagy, calculating, communist creatures on the planet.

A free ranging hen can calculate to the second how long it takes my eyes to narrow, my jaw to clamp, pause listening, and spring out of my chair when I’m trying to do something on the comp and I hear a chicken on the porch.

A free ranging hen can judge almost to the inch how far and hard a person can throw a rock with any accuracy.  A free ranging hen can predict almost exactly how far and how fast a 70 year old man can run swinging a stick before he gives out.

A free ranging hen is able to predict within a few seconds how long and how loud it can cackle and raise hell just outside the window before it needs to start dodging rocks or running into the bushes.

A free ranging chicken recognizes a slingshot and knows the difference between a slingshot stretched as an empty threat, and a slingshot with just about a bellyfull of chicken games.

A free ranging chicken usually won’t eat ants unless it thinks a person would rather it didn’t, in which case it will.  The whole flock will stand on a red ant bed pecking, so long as the ants aren’t carrying off their feed to the ant bed.

A free ranging chicken will ignore hard cat food scattered around on the ground away from the porch, but it will sneak around trying to find some on the porch everytime it thinks a person’s in the middle of something needs concentration.

I subscribe to the philosophy the reason the chicken crossed the road was for practice.  Training dodging cars.  And motivated by some human being not wanting it to cross the road.  Try to get a chicken to cross the road and it’s going to stay home cackling under the window or crapping on the porch.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2012, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Poultry, Solitude, Texas

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Current Brush Dam Project

Posted on May 18, 2012 by | 2 comments

When I began this a person couldn’t tell there was an oak tree without standing off at a distance because it was so choked with cedars.

A gully was being cut down to bedrock in the swale.  I’ve got a lot more cedar in the immediate area I’ll be clearing, but I’m figuring before I put anymore on the dam I’ll stand atop what’s there and cross cut as deep as the chainsaw bar will reach to compact it as much as possible before adding more material.

Incidently, once I got most of the cedar cleared from around that oak I found this great, long, straight one.  It’s a keeper, though I don’t know what for.  Assuming I can get it loose and untangled from the upper parts of the oak without having to cut it.

There’s a watershed of maybe fifteen acres with a lot of slope draining into this spot.  My thought is I’ll bring the dam roughly six feet high after compacting, then thicken it with whatever cedar’s left in the immediate area.  Afterward I’ll move upgrade and create a series of brush berms across the grade to slow down concentration times.

Lots of work left to do on it, but watching that dam grow’s a smiler for me.  Someday I’m going to try to figure out what makes me tick.  This whole sudden new joy of doing all this came out of nowhere.  Gale’s up there laid up, doesn’t have a clue I’m doing most of it on his property, though I describe most of it to him.  He shrugs and tries to seem encouraging, but I doubt he can picture what’s going on here.

Meanwhile, me just down here working my arse off for the hell of doing it, not a clue why.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, Country Life, Outdoors, Science, Texas

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