Category Archives: White Trash Repairs

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

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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

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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

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Pack Goats for the Elderly and a Youngish Hermit

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | 6 comments

I didn’t know I was joking when I composed this post a couple of days ago.  But even though Jeanne’s visited me here and knows me better than anyone else, when she read it she thought it was so outrageous I must be joking.  After I explained I was serious and consider it a viable alternative she thought about it a day and just told me again she likes the blog entry as a joke.  But she’s really uncomfortable about the concept as a serious possibility I might try living this way.

So I suppose I must be joking unless I decide it’s the right way to go.  But I’m concerned about the bearings on bicycle wheels.  I’m thinking maybe light motorcycle wheels might hold up better:

The financial constraints involved in trying to get the old F350 capable of pulling a travel trailer and the unknowns involved in why it was left on this place when Gale and Kay bought the property are seeming a bit overwhelming at the moment.  That, combined with the uncertainties of whether I can find an old travel trailer I can fix adequately got me thinking about this.

A couple of years ago when I thought my life might proceed differently than it has, there was a middling possibility I might have an extended trip into the high mountains left in me.  My thought at the time was to spend a month or two in the Gila Wilderness in the immediate vicinity of the Continental Divide.

But at that altitude and the years creeping up on me, combined with the length of the stay that would be required, caused me to think I didn’t want to do it carrying a backpack the way I’ve always done in the past.  My initial thought was a burro, but the fact is hauling a burro’s a bit of a problem.

A few times in the mountains, decades ago, I encountered packers with llamas and talked with them about it, but those animals are as difficult in the size department as donkeys.

However, I ran into someone once in the Gila with a string of goats doing the packing.  Goats, to my way of thinking, have a lot of advantages over the larger animals insofar as transport.  Considering it led me to join some Yahoo Goat Packing groups:

packgoat · All Things Packgoat
 
I began doing some shopping around looking for a couple of young goats I might train, but intervening events led me to see that another long trip into the mountains isn’t in the cards for me in the immediate future.  And further consideration about that particular use for them in that area also mightn’t be the best.  They’d be a magnet for large predators, risky to leave unattended, and they’d need a lot of attention.
 
But thinking about pack goats during the years since has caused me to think there might be a role for them to play in a more urban setting.  Namely, for older folks who could hike to the store for groceries, but have difficulties carrying them home without a vehicle.  Maybe a goat cart, for that matter.
Feeding them would be no problem because goats will eat just about anything and thrive on it.
 
But a pack goat would provide a lot more mobility than a shopping cart for people living on the streets and under bridges, as well.  A goat can go almost anywhere a person can, climb into places where a person would have a lof of problems climbing into.   The ability to easily move residency out of the clusters of street people living under bridges would keep the owner out of police sweeps, out of reach predatory humans preying on the people living under those conditions.
 
In fact, I’ve been acquainted over the years with several people living in small house-wagons traveling around pulled by burro-power as a lifestyle and talked with them about it at some length.  It strikes me a person with a willingness to walk alongside the contraption instead of riding in it might actually be able to construct a small, light house on an aluminum frame with bicycle wheels sturdy enough to carry everything it took to live, move without buying gasoline, big enough for four cats.
Maybe something along these lines only larger
 Something large enough to haul some luxuries such as a camp stove, some groceries, a place out of the weather, but small enough to get out-of-sight come nightfall.
 Nothing as big, or elaborate at this, but something a lot lighter a couple, or four goats, maximum, could pull.
 Maybe about that size, but constructed with bicycle wheels, ball bearing axles, built on an aluminum frame from salvage aluminum rails and door frames.  Actually aluminum mightn’t be durable enough as the frame.  Maybe steel bed frame angle iron frame as a base for everything above aluminum.
 
Equipped with photovoltaic charged LED lawn lights to allow night reading, cooking, etc, a chuck box and a small gas fridge.  Maybe a guy would have to move up to a pair of donkeys to pull it.  But maybe not.
 
I’m thinking maybe two bicycles welded outside a steel bed frame with a tie-rod between the handle-bars behind a yoke might serve, and a swiveling tail-wheel [bicycle wheel] to stabilize the weight and balance on the overhang behind the two rear bicycle wheels might be a good starting place visualizing the possibility.
 
I’m going to have to puzzle about this more as a potential way to keep living without going under a bridge if circumstances demand I have an escape route.
But here are a few other concept pics from the Practical Action website, Cabelas, and elsewhere, just to remind myself of the directions my mind’s going on all this:
 
 
Old Jules
Frankie Laine, Mule Train

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs, Wildlife

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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

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

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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

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

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Fire Ants, Dishwashing and Drought

Posted on September 22, 2011 by | 10 comments

Having to haul water offers up a rare challenge insofar as cooking and cleaning up afterward.   Before the drought became so severe I’d mitigated the problem by putting my dirty dishes into potato or grapefruit bags and placing them on imported fireant beds.  A day later, voila!  Clean clean clean!

All I had to do is pull them out of the bags and wipe them down with a moist towel or cloth and they were ready to use.

But as the summer progressed and the soil dried the fire ant beds became more difficult to locate.  Without moisture in it the soil here has no structure.  The beds became invisible, and concurrently the ants seemed just to go underground.   Imported fire ants,  common name: red imported fire ant
scientific name: Solenopsis invicta Buren (Insecta: Hymenoptera: Formicidae: Myrmicinae) are eating machines.  They’ll eat anything.

http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/creatures/urban/ants/fire_ant16.htm

“Mounds are built of soil and are seldom larger than 46 cm (18 in) in diameter. When a mound is disturbed, ants emerge aggressively to bite and sting the intruder. A white pustule usually appears the next day at the site of the sting (Cohen 1992). ”

I looked for other alternatives with other ant species, no joy.  What I discovered is that good American fire ants just don’t want to do that kind of work.  I tried it with every kind of ant bed I could find, dishes stacking up in the sink, me gradually being forced to use hauled water and scouring pads to clean up dishes and utensils.

If I couldn’t find some good American fireants willing to work or some way to locate illegal imported fireants for the job I was going to be reduced to hauling water a lot more, or get a dog to lick that stuff off the eatingware.

Luckily that 24/7 September 13, moonbows and canned thunder outdoor canned thunder brought in the first measurable rainfall in 100+ days here, just as you thought it would.  There’s enough moisture in the soil now to let the fire ant mounds get some altitude so’s I’ll be able to locate them for my dishwashing.

On the other hand, the rain proved my chimney-fix didn’t entirely accomplish what was intended.

Water was hitting the chimney outside, intruding and running down the stovepipe as far as the elbow, then dripping in.

Hard to think of a good quote to sum up all this.  “It’s an ill wind that blows no good?”

But it’s all good.  I just have to cut that oversized chimney-pipe and put it on there as a sleeve over the old chimney soon.  Better knowing it now than discovering it when Mr. Bullgoose Daddy-Longlegs storm comes in.

Old Jules

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Roof and Chimney Leaks — White Trash Repairs

Posted on September 16, 2011 by | 27 comments

Edited in Preface:  Someone’s told me this post is a bit grim, which floored me.  That is NOT what this is all about.  I might well be the happiest man on the planet, the most joyful and grateful for the roof over his head, for the animalcules, for every moment of this life I’m blessed with.  I am sure as hell not complaining about the way I live in this post, not poking around looking for sympathy from anyone.  There’s not one of you I’d trade lives with.

Please allow your mind to read what follows with a smile.  I love this crap.  This post is me laughing at myself, laughing at whatever life might throw at me, telling life, “Do your damnedest!  I’ll keep coming.”

“Science,”  Hydrox the jellicle cat insists, “You observe, you formulate a premise, you test the premise and revise it, then you test again.  Just make damned certain it’s right this time.”  Hydrox is one of the two felines indoors during cool, and especially during inclement weather.   “If science isn’t cutting it try some engineering.”

He takes a jaundiced view of hiding under something to get away from thunder only to get drenched by a lousy roof repair experiment.   Hydrox is attuned Level 3 Reiki.

“Reiki Masters,” he assures me, ” At least cat Reiki Masters, don’t appreciate being interrupted from doing high-minded things by getting sloshed because of criminal negligence on the part of a human being.”

Back when I was attuning him several people thought this mightn’t be a good thing.  It’s been a mixed blessing.

That chimney pipe was leaking badly back when it still rained.  But this repair job hasn’t had the test of a good rainfall yet.

Edit:  This larger diameter stovepipe came from Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store [toward the bottom here:   Curiouser and curiouser ] for a couple of bucks.  If the current fix doesn’t work I’ll cut the down-end with the angle cutter to match the slope of the roof, cut the top shorter than the chimney vent and sleeve the chimney with it.  I thinks it will block of a lot, if not all the pesky intrusion of rain into the chimney pipe.

As you can see, I’ve smeared tar all over the the joints in the sheet metal roof, in addition to the customized chimney.  That didn’t work too well, I’ll confess.  Got some other things to try though.  The light brown or tan you see is the foam you get at the hardware store that is touted as being able to plug large leaks by expanding into them to fill in the space.  No joy on that.

The chimney problem’s crucial.  Water hitting the side of it goes inside, runs down to the elbow in the bedroom but doesn’t slow down much:

[The gray hat’s a XXXXXX John B Stetson I picked up at a silent auction a few years ago for $10.  Man who owned but never wore it died and left it to me, though we never met.]

Naturally there’s a backup plan to keep water from coming down on the bed in the unlikely event it rains:

This has worked pretty well in the light rain arena.  Hasn’t been tested in a bull goose honest-to-goodness wind blowing rain sideways daddy-long-legs storm.

But we didn’t reach a consensus, the felines etc. on the matter of roof repairs and leaks.  Shiva the cow-cat argues, “What the hell!  Here’s a perfect spot for both those indoor cats in a thunderstorm.  What’s the big deal?  If they don’t like it throw them outdoors with Tabby and me.

“I’m sick and tired of all the age discrimination around here in favor of geriatric cats.”

Meanwhile:

Old Jules

Bob Dylan– Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

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

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Curiouser and curiouser

Posted on September 15, 2011 by | 12 comments

Notice that hash marking of diagonal sunspots.

spaceweather.com

Then have a look at the positions of the three weirdest spin axis / magnetic fields in the solar system.  Saturn, Uranus and Neptune:

SimSolar v2.0 Planetary position simulation

Old Jules

8:30 AM – Just for those who think a blog entry ought to have something for everyone.

Tired of buying compressed air to blow the dirt out of your computer, watching the prices on it rise to simulate gold?

60# of pressure that doesn’t run out.  Cost was $2 in a thrift store.

Computer gurus will tell you it might cause moisture to condense on the important components of your comp.  Physics says they ought to be maybe right because of the venturi created when the air expands leaving the pressurized tube.

I’ve been using this one inside and outside my comps for about two years.  Haven’t seen any signs of condensation, haven’t experienced any damage to the comps, haven’t spent a penny on compressed air, don’t have a bunch of empty cans lying around wondering what to do with themselves.

But that’s just me.   I’m a risk taker.

It also serves as a great, compact bellows for starting fires in a wood stove.

INTERIM UPDATE to September 13, moonbows and canned thunder

Mama Nature after two days of brainwashing with canned thunder:

Old Jules

5:00 PM – Decided I needed to go to Kerrville for necessaries.  Ended up getting a couple of watermelons from an old guy brings them up from the valley.  He says it’s his last watermelon trip for the year, says they’ve gotten too high in cost down there to allow him any profit after hauling costs.  I told him he needs to buy another truck and make up the difference in volume.  Some jokes have been dead long enough for reincarnating them.  This one fell on deaf ears.  Only drew a puzzled look, as though he was considering the entrepreneural aspects.

This was hard to resist.  All those foam ice chests could have kept my chickens pooping foam plastic until spring.

Those shower doors are still coming in for them I reckons, with nobody buying them.  I got 20 free for building my chicken house out of, but I’m betting you’d have to pay $5 for all these until they’re ready to put them in the dumpster.

Those have collected dust, been around a while.  I’m guessing a person could have them all at a righteous price as low as your conscience would allow you to offer.

Next stop:

Not much going on here.

Next stop:

A guy surely needs one of those, eh?

Didn’t buy nuffin there though.  Eventually did pick off a $3 electric 6 cup rice steamer never been out of the box at Salvation Army Thrift Store.

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs

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The Sawmill: Joys and Frustrations

Posted on September 4, 2011 by | 8 comments

One of the ways Gale makes money for himself is saw-milling mesquite.  There’s a guy with heavy equipment bulldozes cedar and mesquite off ranch land, and he pushes big mesquite off to the side instead of burning it.  We go pick it up in a trailer, haul it back here and stockpile it for cleaning up to be saw-milled.

These are mesquite boles waiting to be sold to a woodworker or for Gale to work them down into something tasteful and useful:

Here are a few larger ones stockpiled by the sawmill waiting for sawmilling.

But when Gale bought the sawmill he din’t actually have an enviable shelter to put it in.

We plotted, planned, watched and horse-traded when they were putting in new power poles to acquire enough for a new sawmill barn:

Even laid out the footprint for the new pole barn and got the holes drilled:

We’ve got the design put together by us two geniuses.  Those poles need to be measured and cut to length, then dragged over to be slid into the holes, set vertical, tamped into place, first off.  Then everything that doesn’t look like a pole barn needs to be removed from that airspace sitting there empty.

But the fact is, Gale’s an old guy.  Claims to be older than me even, by an imaginary year.  He’s got a bad hip and too many other things troubling him to have any business out there trying to do work ought to be reserved for a younger guy, namely me.  I can’t afford to be losing an old friend and the man who owns this place because of some silly notion he might have about getting out there doing any heavy lifting and sweating.

So that barn of the future’s been sitting there waiting to happen for a year now.

If I had my new truck running I’d be up there now, while they’re gone and can’t do anything about it, measuring and cutting those poles, dragging them somewhere they can become something better than what they are now.  I’d be getting those poles up pointing at the sky the way the Coincidence Coordinators intended when they delivered them.

All while they’re off in New Mexico at the Hatch Chili Festival doing what’s best they do and they do best.

It ain’t going to happen this time, because I don’t have anything to pull them with.  But that new truck’s going to be running next time they leave.

On the other hand, I think he might be edgy about me doing it.  They’ve both seen the things I’ve built, or am building down here:

White Trash Repairs: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Thumbing Rides on Throwaways

News from the Middle of Nowhere

Disclaimer and apologies – I posted this accidentally when I went to save the draft.    But there’s been too much deleting of accidental posts here lately, so I’m leaving it up.

Old Jules

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White Trash Repairs – The Dumpster Telescope

Posted on September 2, 2011 by | 15 comments

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.
 But all that can hopefully be managed.  Meanwhile, back in the Salvation Army Thrift store this summer I was down at the end of the glass counters and noticed a dusty baggie with eyepieces in it.  When the lady who sold me the telescope in 2009 finished ringing up a customer I got her attention.
“That bag full of lenses in that end counter,” I pointed.  “How much are you asking for them?”
She came for a look.  “Oh, I can’t sell those.  They told me to hold them in case the guy who bought the telescope comes back for them.” 
Then she looked at me, down at the lenses and back at me her face dawning realization.  “YOU’RE the one who bought the telescope!”
“Yeah, I am.”
 It’s still got some work ahead.  I have to do some figuring how to get a cove that fits the tube attached to the drive, if the drive can be made to work.  But something will turn up one way or another.  The Coincidence Coordinators will make certain of that.

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

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

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