Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this fine day.
I know a lot of you are submerged in issues of who wants to be king and whatnot, and I appreciate you tearing yourself away from reading all that to come over here to read this, which isn’t.
But I’ll ask a favor of you insofar as what you contribute here commenting. The blog’s a fortress against the intrusion of party politics. I prefer not to delete any comment by readers here, but it is not and will not be a place for inserting cheers for people who want to be king. It also won’t be used to assassinate the characters of politicos, except in bipartisan, general terms.
Meanwhile. We’ve been blessed here with three days in a row of cold and wet. I was premature a few days ago telling you it was time to switch from felt to straw. Likely you’ll want to chalk that up to me being no better at predicting the future and the weather than you are.
Switch back to felt and count yourself lucky you didn’t put them in mothballs yet if you didn’t. If you’re like me you were probably folding up your Pendleton blankets and everything else the moths might feast on, wondering where you put those moth balls last year, when this last gasp of winter hit.
I’ve been spending the time when there were no embedded thunderstorms stalking the sky trying to narrow down what’s not happening. I finally just decided to use TYC 6835 143 for the galactic center. And Eltanin, in the constellation Draco, for the solar system vector. Those, combined with what I’ve mentioned in recent, previous posts appear to take care of a lot of what’s needed to get a firm fix on what isn’t happening.
A legendary man in the Quemado/Reserve area nicknamed ‘Squirrelly’ Armijo had a good working claim down near Queen’s Head in the Gallos near Apache Creek in the 1940s through the 1960s. Maybe that’s where he came across a skeleton, and probably just figured he might as well take it home, so he put it in his truck.
Driving up those winding mountain roads he lost control of the truck and rolled it. Squirrelly was thrown clear and the truck caught fire. He must have been out of his head, maybe with a concussion, because he evidently wandered into the mountains in a daze.
The police arrived and found the burned out truck with a skeleton inside and assumed because the truck belonged to him the remains were Squirrelly’s. He was pronounced dead, an expensive funeral held, and he was buried.
Twelve days later Squirrelly wandered out of the woods several miles away, which was a source of, first joy and awe, then suspicion. Initially it was thought he’d killed the person the skeleton belonged to. Then the lawsuits began, the Armijo family and the Funeral home arguing heatedly about who owed money to whom for burying some anonymous skeleton.
The story is so well-known it was used in a book about forensic pathology in New Mexico during the 1990s, the forensic pathologist explaining such a thing could never happen these more enlightened times. Journey in Forensic Anthropology, Stanley Rhine, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1998. Author Rhine elected to change Squirrelly’s surname to Aramando to avoid any sort of civil action. The Armijo family’s been herding sheep in that country since the time there was nobody out there but them and Mimbres Apaches. A lot of them are still there.
“A Premature Funeral
“Bones and Fire “On June 4, 1959, Forest Service lookouts reported smoke rising from what was assumed to be a small forest fire just east of the Arizona state line, among the 8,000-feet peaks of the San Francisco Mountains of southwestern New Mexico. A firefighting crew dispatched to the scene discovered no forest fire, but an automobile burning furiously on the side of a gravel forest road. Dousing the flames, they found a mass of burned flesh, a skull, some other bones, and some teeth resting inside the burned-out hulk.
“The car was found to belong to a Mr. Armando, well known in the lightly populated region. His fiery demise prompted the organization of a six-person coroner’s inquest in Catron County. According to former Catron County Sheriff and now Washoe County ( Nevada) Coroner Vernon McCarty, the “six responsible citizens” required by 1950s New Mexico law were most easily found by the justices of the peace at a local bar.
“McCarty observed that an insufficiency of able-bodied citizens could be remedied either by visiting several such spots or by prolonging the official quest at one of them for as long as it took to empanel the necessary six people.
“The resulting coroner’s jury in this case was made up of ranchers, Forest Service firefighters, two bartenders, and a service station attendant. It concluded that the remains were “badly burned and charred beyond positive identification,” according to the Albuquerque Journal for June 17, 1960. Nonetheless, an identification was made by Armando’s two brothers-in-law and the district attorney, apparently functioning in his multiple roles of death investigator and skeletal “expert.” That it was Armando was attested to the by the fact that the human skull was accompanied by some impressively large upper incisors. These prominent choppers had . . .”
Probably Squirrelly never paused to wonder about any moral or ethical issues when he put that skeleton into his truck. He just did it absent-mindedly the way any of us might. Probably somewhat as Mel did on Gobblers Knob:
I suppose the Squirrelly story came to mind because it’s a synopsis of the possibilities carried to the ultimate extreme, accompanied by the fact I recently had an email from his great-nephew wanting to ask some questions about my mention of his Queenshead claim in my lost gold mine book.
Old Jules, if someone had a mirror from 40+ years ago, could something be gathered from its backing?
Old Jules replies: The pastametric pressure of all that stored history would almost certainly explode backward opening a hole into a parallel universe carrying with it the identities and souls of everyone who ever looked into the mirror. Read more …..
“Hey! Congratulations man! You picked a hill worth dying for and just got your leg shot off instead of dying. Cool!”
“I didn’t pick it man. I don’t know who picked it. Maybe the General. Maybe the Colonel. Maybe the other side. I din’t do any picking. Nobody asked me anything.”
“Wow. You got your leg shot off and didn’t even make your own choice about whether it was worth the effort?”
“Higher than my paygrade. Not my job to figure out whether hopping around on a stump of a leg the rest of my life or spilling my guts across the landscape is worth why they think I should do it. It’s up to the big brains to decide that. The Generals, and Colonels and Lieutenants. The people who see the bigger picture. I’m not into long-term thinking.”
“Sheeze man. Tough gig.”
Bloody Valverde. Measured in percentage of casualties among those participating, the second bloodiest battle of the Civil War.
Texas Mounted Volunteers were on that mesa, coming down to cross the Rio Grande just below the left end.
Federals and New Mexico Volunteers were below and across the river trying to keep them from doing it.
You can’t get over there anymore without breaking some laws. The railroad police will arrest you for trespass if they catch you trying to cross the RR bridge. Last I heard, Ted Turner owns the ranch the mesa is on. He has riders out there who’ll haul you off for trespass if the RR police don’t get you.
A few cows graze up there and Ted Turner can’t have people up there bothering them by poking around among the pockmarked hideyholes and artillery placements. A lot of men on both sides died so Ted Turner could keep the right to keep you off his holdings and bothering his cows.
If you sighted across the top of that monument across the end of the mesa and drew a tight bead you’d be looking at a mushroom cloud about 50 miles away when they fired off the first atomic bomb in 1945.
But by 1945 the government and scientists all finally realized the place wasn’t worth anyone getting excited about, getting legs shot off or dying for. By that time they knew it wasn’t worth anything except for blowing up with an atomic bomb. You can’t go over there, either, for what that’s worth.
Pretty big hunk of granite for such a little event. But nobody much winds around those desert roads to look at it.
I used to have a pretty nice cannon ball that came off that battlefield. Wonder what ever became of it. Hope I didn’t scare any of Ted’s cows or stir up any future atomic bomb attacks on the place by the US Government.
If I believed in representative democracy I think I might be tempted by this, even though I don’t smoke dope.
There’s something refreshing about seeing someone injecting some humor into all the scowling. This modern religion of self-important in-your-face sneering between opposing political illusions and conflicting certainties about ‘What this country needs‘ and who’s most worthy of hatred and purple scorn ought to get boring for those doing it. For the good of their souls, maybe. Or, failing that, just as a means of demonstrating a human brain resides inside the human skull.
ABOUT WILLIE NELSON’S TEAPOT PARTY
Willie Nelson was busted in Texas for possessing marijuana on Nov. 26, 2010. Following the arrest, Willie founded the Teapot Party, declaring: “Tax it, regulate it and legalize it! Stop the border wars over drugs. Why should the drug lords make all the money? Thousands of lives will be saved.” Since then, Willie clarified the focus of the party. “The purpose of the Teapot Party is to vote in people who believe the way we do,” he stated, “and vote out the ones who don’t.” With that in mind, we’ve embarked on a campaign to find candidates to support in upcoming elections. So far we’ve made four endorsement and there will be many more to come. We encourage Teapot Party supporters to use this site to their advantage. Learn who we’re supporting, read the latest blogs, find out what’s happening in the marijuana-reform community, order free stickers, buy Teapot Party merchandise, keep up with our Facebook and Twitter feeds and upcoming events, such as rallies and meetups. With your support, we can make a difference by ending cannabis prohibition in our lifetimes. Please send donations to the candidates of your choice. Then go out and “vote in people who believe the way we do and vote out the ones who don’t,” just like Willie says.
I suppose old Willie still believes in representative democracy. I’ll try to forgive him being stupid by believing something I don’t. I’ll reciprocate by being stupid enough not to start smoking dope again. Too damned much trouble.
I’m trying to remember when it was I figured that out. Sometime a long time ago, but before too much later, I think it was. I had the High Roller already, but I don’t think I had the gray John B. Stetson yet.
I must have been four, or maybe five When grandfather said, with a snicker, “Where a man wouldn’t go with a Colt .45 That boy will follow his pecker.”
Half a century now mocks: I’d surely be elated If Papa’s eye had turned to stocks Or land speculated.
I’ve frequently suspected my granddad was speaking from his own experience.
One of the rewards the Universe gave me for getting to be this old was the raging hormones fading into oblivion. There’s still plenty of passion in my life, but it’s of a different nature, and it listens to the voice of reason.
I’d never have believed back when passion was a misery to be endured that the Universe had other passions in mind if a person could just make room for them between the preoccupations.
And yet, today I listen to any one of the songs below and it brings back vivid, pleasant memories of [usually] one woman. The shadow of the past agonies is still there if I choose to examine it, but if I don’t the songs and the passage of time allows it all to be a bit nostalgic. And the songs don’t last long enough to insist on thorough remembering.
Old Jules
(Arirang) Korean Folk Song [She never had an orchestra background that I recall]
Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, We’ll Sweep Out the Ashes said things too well. It was one of several I put as a single song on a 90 minute tape and wore out. Live version, no embed: http://youtu.be/GQJAsEZ-S3I
Hank Snow 90 Miles an Hours Down a Deadend Street was another ‘said things too well’.
When my mom left her second husband near Apache Junction, Arizona to move near my granddad’s place at Causey, New Mexico, I was considerable upset about it all. I’d become overfond of the Arizona guy, liked him a lot despite his human flaws that bothered my mom.
Time proved my level of upset couldn’t be handled by beating it out of me, nor by any of the other usual ways people tried back then to nudge a kid back into being seen and not heard. The Runaways, 1947
My first step-dad [Arizona] was fond of reading the Alley Oop comic strip to me and I was a huge fan. Alley was a cave man skipping forward and backward in time thanks to a 20th Century scientist. Alley even had a 20th Century lady friend named Oola.
About the only thing I’d brought with me from Arizona was my stack of Alley Oop comic strips. We’d travelled light across the desert. And when we arrived in Causey one of the jobs my sisters had was reading those Alley Oops to me, trying to bring up my spirits. Which I suppose it did until they’d finished reading them to me.
Something more permanent had to be done, and my granddad decided to have a shot at it. He promised to take me to visit Alley’s home. Mesa Verde, Colorado.
What a trip that must have been, me pestering him whether we were there yet, how much further before we’d see Alley’s home. I don’t know how long we stayed, but I never forgot old Alley and his home. I still had one picture of the cave dwelling he took back then until Y2K.
And of the hundreds of ancient ruins, documented and undocumented, I’ve poked around in during my life, I’ve never visited one, found one, without thinking to myself with a smile that Alley Oop might have lived there, visited there ahead of me.
When Mel King and I were exploring the ruin on Gobbler’s Knob and were driving back to Socorro when he reached into his daypack for something, came out with a human skull it was the first thing I said to him. “What the hell is that? You packed off Oola’s skull. Get it the hell out of this truck!”
I screeched onto the shoulder and he hid it behind a cedar until we’d be headed back to Gobber’s Knob so he could put it back where it belongs.
Nowadays I think I have more in common with Alley Oop than with any modern human being. If there was ever a right time for me to pop out of the gene pool it would probably have been more appropriate temporally in some other Universe where Alley Oop lived and breathed. It made more sense than this one.
In the old days it was about taxes and heaping the payoff of the national debt on farmers who made whiskey out of their corn. In 1790, it was considered an abomination and the farmers rebelled. Abraham Washington or George Lincoln, I think it was, sent troops and eventually the Whiskey Rebellion became a footnote in history.
The song was ended but the melody lingered on.
Miss Marcy doesn’t quite fit the theme, but it involves whiskey stills, illicit sex, murder, dancing, adultery and other dirty stuff, and it’s a good song. I’d be remiss leaving it out.
The Night Chicago Died isn’t precisely historically accurate, but it’s the only song comes to mind encapsulating what Prohibition led to: Gangsters, cops and bystanders being gunned down, speakeasy whiskey nights, corruption, and a lot of richer cops, politicans and gangsters with nobody else better or worse for it except prison guards, more lawyers, judges and cops. Sound familiar?
Even into the 1960s illegal whiskey still brought a smile and tacit approval from a population unaffected by the tiny wars still going on between back-woods whiskey-makers and ‘reveneurs’. Not to be mistaken for Jack Daniels or Johnny Walker. Nobody was getting killed over in the Jack Daniels plant.
Roger Miller’s classic’s just another example the general public attitude as opposed to the governmental enforcement apparatus tactics.
The US Government isn’t a fast learner. They were already controlling and taxing whiskey. They’d have saved more treasure than anyone can imagine it they’d taken that approach to dealing with cocaine. The substance abuse happened, the machinery of justice cranked up to deal with it, the prisons filled, and the taxpayers paid, paid, paid without taking it off the streets. Nor even out of the prisons.
Much the same song, different stanza for the poppy derivative family.
But whiskey and illicit drugs weren’t enough. The only obvious place the government was successful collecting taxes across the board was on tobacco.
But even a lot of whiskey drinkers and cocaine snorters didn’t like smokers. Gradually smokers were eased over there with prostitutes when it came to hammering them out of existence.
I’ve included a lot of different versions of this next song because we’ve needed a lot of jails for the people who get crosswise with moral superiority, barrels full of money, cops, politicians, judges and people who just like to know people they don’t agree with are in jail.
I’ve had to leave prostitutes and prisons for women full of them out of this because nobody cares enough about them to write a song.
Someone spang found this blog searching for “lowlifes on welfare“.
I’m thinking it must have been Google analyzing this pic I posted describing how a person could get spiffed up to go to town by shaving with sheep shears instead of a razor: Shaving with sheep shears.
Well, heck! I hate to see someone come here and find only half of what he was looking for. I’m just hoping the emphasis was on finding a lowlife instead of finding someone on welfare.
On the other hand, I have a suspicion a person who’d do a search using that particular phrase probably would define the Social Security I paid into five decades and some change and draw now qualifies as welfare. So maybe he went away having gotten his moneys worth. Riding the Bread Line
Brought to mind one of my favorite quotes from the bard. Hamlet’s immortal summing up just about said it all, but when they set it music for the musical ‘Hair’ I’ve always thought it might be considered an improvement in some contexts. Enough irony there so’s a magnet would pick it up.
The fog’s gotten so thick outdoors I can barely see across the front porch.
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:
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.
North by Northwest – Climbing the American ladder of success
The Alamo – “When I was a boy any girl would turn up a bunch of trees like that, cut a bunch down and one for a ridge pole and build herself a cabin alongside the other. Seems like all anyone would ever need.”
The Outlaw Josie Wales parleys with 10 Bears – “Dying ain’t so hard for people like you and me. It’s living that’s hard. Governments don’t live here. It’s people who live here. I’m saying people can live here together without butchering one another.”
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
I’m sharing it with you because there’s almost no likelihood you’ll believe it. This lunatic asylum I call my life has so many unexpected twists and turns I won’t even try to guess where it’s going. I’d suggest you try to find some laughs here. You won’t find wisdom. Good luck.
So Far From Heaven 