I’m much thrilled about this. That outer shell is going to help haul a lot of water, but that ain’t the half of it.
That fiberglass tube feels as though it has walls half-inch thick. It’s evidently intended to take a lot of pressure. Don’t know yet what I’ll use it for.
This says it had an 8 gallon per minute capacity. Which probably means there’s an 8 gpm pump somewhere here.
Sheeze the Universe was kind to this old guy yesterday.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading
Tagged country life, environment, Events, home, homesteading, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, senior citizens, technology, thoughts
I finished off most of this bottle of Jack Daniels on December 31, 1999, while I was sitting around listening on the short wave radio to Y2K not happening, first in New Zealand, then Australia, then places further west until it got to me, where it happened well enough to make up for those other places it didn’t.
But as you can see, there was some left in the bottle when Y2K got to me. I resolved to hold it back until something else happened. I’ve had it sitting over there on the microwave collecting dust for several years, threatening to celebrate various New Year and Thanksgivings and I-don’t-know-whatalls. I’d had it in the back of my mind lately I’d do my 70th birthday with it, then slid the clock backward and thought maybe my 69th here in a few days.
But it’s colder than a bear’s butt in this cabin this morning. I’ve got water heating in the microwave half-gallon at a time to pour over my head for a warm shower before I have to walk up to Gale’s to see if Little Red’s available for a necessaries run to Kerrville. Got to thinking a hot toddie might just warm things up enough to stop some of this shivering I’m doing before I pour that water over my head.
That Y2K whiskey just mightn’t survive another hour.
On the other hand, it might be nice to have it for when I turn 75.
Old Jules
Tagged country life, culture, Events, homesteading, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, psychology, random, Reflections, senior citizens, society, sociology, thoughts
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
Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Trucks
Tagged country life, Events, home, homesteading, Human Behavior, humor, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, music, musings, other, personal, psychology, random, Reflections, senior citizens, technology, thoughts
I’m going to get away from the brave new world of the 21st Century and the animal kingdom for this segment and go back a few million years to my childhood. I explained a little about that farm on the other side of the railroad tracks here: Could you choose to live on the street?, but to pursue the bullying issue I’ll elaborate a bit.
The kids who lived on the other side of those tracks were overwhelmingly tough, poor, and ‘bad’. The families were farm laborers or otherwise unskilled, lots of kids, and Hispanic or considered ‘white trash’. The kids living there went to Lindsey Grammar School, and the RR tracks defined the boundary between Lindsey and the other two grammar schools.
In 1949, when I was starting school my mother went to war with the superintendent of schools and the school board to make certain I went to East Ward, not Lindsey. She succeeded.
Meanwhile, on this side of the tracks and the highway there were a few neighborhoods of kids who belonged in Lindsey, but were doomed by geography to go to school with the regular population at East Ward. One of those was a boy named Floren Villianueva and his siblings. A tough, bad, mean as hell youngster with older brothers meaner than him. He and I entered the first grade in the same class.
Floren and I somehow got crosswise with one another almost the first day of classes during recess. He gave me a blow to the stomach that knocked the wind out of me, doubled me over and might well have been responsible for the hernia of the goozle that’s caused me trouble to this day.
After school each afternoon Floren and his brothers walked home the same route I did, and for a few days they went the extra distance to chase me home, throwing rocks at me when they couldn’t catch me, beating hell out of me when they could. Me finding safety only when I went through the door to the house.
That naturally came to the attention of my mom after a few days. One afternoon she was standing on the porch shaking a rug and saw me running across the tracks chased by Floren and his brothers. They came right into the yard, and she grabbed a broom and chased them off, yelling insults.
When they were gone she turned on me in a fit of rage, grabbed me by the ear and dragged me into the house where she kept her switch. While she was beating hell out of me she was yelling, “If I ever see or hear of you running from a fight again this is nothing compared to what you’ll get.”
When my step-dad got home she told him about it and he just shook his head. “Running from a bunch of God-damned Mexicans!”
I went about in disgrace a few days, the story circulating among the adults with me in hearing distance, all of them dumbfounded by my cowardice.
But I never ran from a fight again. I started carrying a heavy stick with me walking home and only had to whack one of those other kids upside the head with it one time. Afterward Floren and I fought a lot of times during recess and I never whipped him, but I took the beatings rather than the alternatives.
This is too lengthy for me to continue where I’m going with it, but it’s necessary background to get in place before going forward in this segment.
Old Jules
Posted in 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, History, NM, Portales, Relationships, Senior Citizens
Tagged country life, culture, Education, environment, Events, great mandela, History, home, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, music, New Mexico, other, personal, peter paul and mary, Portales, psychology, random, Reflections, senior citizens, society, sociology, thoughts, wisdom
Bullying’s getting all out of hand here since the weather’s cooled. I’ve written about this hen before, probably under the heading, News From the Middle of Nowhere. She’s always been a Communist from earliest chickhood. But most recently she’s begun spending her nights locked up with the two younger roosters, one a Black Silky, the other a Silky/Australorp cross. Then, after everyone’s out ranging, I let her out of the young rooster pen to range with the rest of the flock and do her laying in the same nests as the other hens.
The chickens are allowed to bully the cats here because it’s the lesser of two evils – the cats all know and respect the fact chickens aren’t to be bullied, whatever their feline instincts argue otherwise. So naturally, the chickens are well aware of this and bully the hell out of every cat that gets in the way of whatever catches their eye.
Sooooo. I re-established the cat houses for the cold weather and the felines explored and tested each for personal priorities and preferences, not taking into account the Commie hen. The cats know those are THEIR shelters. The one this Communist is sitting in is the preferred sleeping place of Shiva the Cow Cat. Not a nesting box for Communist Party meetings between chicken and egg.
Unfortunately, Shiva also knows she’s not allowed to swat the bejesus out of the hen when it becomes a contest over who gets to take over the Shiva-house. So Shiva snoozes until the Commie arrives, then the chicken comes in and gives her a couple of pecks, Shiva exits out the other side, and Ms. Commie settles down to drop a bluegreen egg.
But that’s only a piece of the bullying going on here. I was going to tell a bit about an 8-9 year old kittenish cat named Tabby who’s begun testing my patience by bullying the hell out of the older felines.
But I’ll save that so’s I won’t be tempted to use language strong enough to cause the lady-readers to blush.
This place is looking every day more like a bunch of human beings trying to get along.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Chickens, Country Life, Current Issues, Free-ranging-chickens, Poultry
Tagged animals, bullying, cats, Chickens, community, country life, culture, environment, Events, home, homesteading, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, photos, Poultry, psychology, random, Reflections, sociology, thoughts, wisdom
I'd guess Phil probably resembled this young marine when he arrived
I hadn’t thought about my old running buddy, Phil, for a while. That last blog entry got me chewing on thoughts of him. I’ll tell you a bit more about him.
Phil went to the Marine Corps as the result of being a 17 year old driving from Temple, Texas, to Austin with a case of beer in the car. A Williamson County Sheriff Deputy stopped him on a tail light violation, asked for his drivers license and saw the case of beer. Old Phil, being a clever youth, gave the officer a Texas Drivers License with an altered date of birth, so’s to keep from being arrested as a minor in possession of alcoholic beverages.
The deputy wasn’t fooled. He hauled Phil off to the slammer to reflect on his sins. He was offered the alternatives of going to prison for presenting a phony ID, or going into the US Marine Corps.
In Vietnam, at least, Phil was old enough to drink. He became Marine Recon and a sniper. Phil was in the jungle with a squad of other snipers surrounded by a NVA rocket launching unit when the first rockets were fired into Da Nang AFB. The squad wisely stayed hidden and didn’t take any shots, they radioed in the location of the rocket unit and brought an airstrike down on top of themselves.
They’d be dropped into an area where the NVA was expected to set up a battalion or division headquarters, sit there a couple of weeks waiting quietly, and try for a head shot at a senior officer. Once the shots were fired they’d try to sink back into the bushes until things went quiet, then slink out to some place where they could be lifted out.
Phil did two tours over there. When he came back he had such a chest full of medals they snatched him up for Nixon’s Honor Guard. Which Phil believed would be easy duty.
Instead, it was riot control. Wherever Nixon went there were anti-war riots, and Phil and his unit busting heads, which he thoroughly hated, since he agreed with the demonstrators.
Phil hated politicians, hated war, hated the men responsible for sending him over there and making him the troubled, rage filled human being he was during the decade and a half I knew him.
But the Vietnamese body counts were a lot higher because of Phil.
When I last saw him half his face was eaten away by Lupus, contracted as a result of Agent Orange in those jungles. The Veterans Administration was fighting and squirming denying all those guys were ill from Agent Orange, that the problems were Service Connected, so they’d have to offer disability and whatnot.
Phil used to observe that he might have been a lot better off if he’d just let them send him to prison for the beer and phony ID. Then they couldn’t have even drafted him for that place.
I wonder if that old Agent Orange has killed him yet. Another victim of friendly fire with a delayed action fuse.
Old Jules
Posted in 1960's, Adventure, Politics, Senior Citizens, Texas, Youth
Tagged culture, Events, History, Human Behavior, Life, misc, miscellaneous, politics, psychology, random, Reflections, senior citizens, thoughts, wisdom
But not these:
I don’t expect anyone to like this post.
Veteran’s Day is one of those days to indulge the self-elevating act of patting ourselves on the back by public expressions of thanks to military veterans for protecting our freedoms. A day we mutually endorse a falsehood: that the endless series of military adventures US presidents have indulged in since the end of WWII contributed to freedoms we enjoy today.
Any sincere effort to thank those who actually sacrificed serving this country would involve visits to VA Hospitals where those doing the sacrificing are found. But nobody will see you and praise you for doing it because nobody else will be there, either. Aside from a few politicians looking for news bites the place will be as empty of thankers as any other day.
We veterans who served in the US services from the end of WWII until now did so for a lot of reasons. Conscription was one of those reasons until the end of the Vietnam War. Many of us volunteered, but to suggest we’d have done so if we hadn’t been threatened by conscription is ludicrous. The Vietnam War would have ended by 1967 or sooner if they’d had to rely on volunteers.
To go further and pretend the vast majority of men and women who’ve served in the all-volunteer military following Vietnam did so for patriotic reasons is equally ludicrous. Many, many did so because it provided a high paying career, excellent benefits, early retirement on a scale they could never have achieved outside the military.
True, some tiny percentage risked their lives in the pursuit of the careers they chose which involved being sent into harms way to further political interests of US presidents without Constitutional declarations of war by the US Congress.
I pondered all this in an earlier post, Abdicating Personal Responsibility to Politicians.
So today, this old vet says to you, “Thanks, but no thanks for your thanks.”
Instead, I’m offering thanks to a group of people who have actually done something positive, but who’ve not been thanked in living memory.
You won’t see any parades for these heroes today. Nobody will be patting them on the back, giving them hugs with self-aggrandizing acknowledgement of the sacrifices they make daily for this country.
You won’t catch them waving flags and posturing, strutting over their health risks constantly encountered for the service they’ve chosen. It’s their jobs. They volunteered for it, same as military volunteers chose the jobs they do. Even though on average their jobs are a lot greater threat to their health and the duration of their lives than those of cops and military servicemen.
The difference is, they can’t retire after 20 years with generous pensions. They don’t get free health care for life. And fawning patriots don’t ask them to pretend they’re John Wayne, gulp staring into the distance to voice-moving news bites. Nobody asks them for orations to give the gathered admirers something to pat themselves on the back about.
They can’t even get anyone to listen when they do say anything that might make their lives easier.
“We literally have tens of thousands of these beach whistles lying in the rip-rap around the lagoons. And tens of thousands more get screened out of the composted biosolids when we dredge the lagoons. Ladies, these aren’t biodegradable and belong in the trashcan, not the toilet. The basics of what should get flushed distills down to this: if you haven’t eaten it, or used it to wipe off something you’ve eaten, it goes in the trash. That also applies to the device that these applicators are designed to insert. Wrap ’em with a wad of Charmin if you are embarrassed by them, but please, please, please don’t flush ’em.”
http://www.poopreport.com/Consumer/poop_plant.html
But what I respect most about them is they don’t posture or swagger to call attention to themselves, they don’t whine, they don’t beg for acknowledgement or thanks. And they don’t believe they should be showered with benefits and high salaries for the service they voluntarily perform daily without complaint or thanks.
They’ve done more for this country every day of my life than any military service member I’ve ever heard of.
This old military vet’s hat goes off in salute to the men and women who work in the sewage treatment plants and pump the septic systems of this great nation this Veteran’s Day.
Thank you for your service.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Human Behavior, Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged culture, economics, economy, environment, Events, government, home, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, patriots, personal, random, Reflections, society, technology, veterans, wisdom
Old Sol’s still muttering and grumbling. The earlier theory entertained by astrophysicists that the widespread sunspot activity was being caused by the Occupy Wall Street movement’s lost a lot of following. The cold weather has evidently caused the movement to adopt a wait-and-see posture, while the solar activity continues despite the inclement weather.
But you might notice there’s growing activity south of the equator.
Meanwhile, the moon was playing footsey with Jupiter last night.
“BRIGHT CONJUNCTION: Last night, sky watchers around the world witnessed a conjunction between Jupiter and the Moon. “It was very nice sight seeing the two bright heavenly bodies so close together,” says P-M Hedén of Vallentuna, Sweden, who photographed his daughter and a friend admiring the view. The show’s not over. The Moon and Jupiter are drifting apart but still less than 10o apart tonight. Look east after sunset for a conjunction so bright it shines through thin clouds and city lights.”
Astrophysicists continue to believe this affair between the moon and Jupiter is a product positions of the two within the orbits of the two celestial bodies as they relate to the position observers on the earth surface, which might be true. Certain Mayan scientists and Renaissance theologians believe otherwise.
The affair is evidently being conducted outside the sanctity of marriage, which brought shouts of indignation from certain quarters in Washington, DC. White House spokesmen have asserted they have no interest in what the moon and Jupiter choose to do with their genitals so long as both consent.
Not much else going on here, though the cats all occupied cat houses last night and the sounds coming from the chicken fortresses lead me to believe they all survived the night.
Old Jules
Posted in Astronomy, Current Issues, Politics
Tagged environment, Events, History, humor, Life, misc, miscellaneous, moon, musings, Nature, other, personal, psychology, random, science, Sun, thoughts
Korean War vintage – The From Here to Eternity Version’s missing the first and last stanza, but worth the watch:
The complete version
Around 1956-’57 when Elvis was drafted
Sailor around 1957
A million men or more left their hearts in San Francisco to be reminded by this song. When we returned and the troop ships passed under the Golden Gate a million uniform hats went into the air:
The Berlin Crisis of 1961 brought this one to the top. I listened to it in basic training along with everyone else they could drag out of the sticks to wear a uniform:
The constant ‘brink of war’ cold war military also serving as armies of occupation:
Then along came Vietnam
And those who decided Canada made more sense
than the Okie from Muskogie
and politicians singing For God Country and My Baby to the tune of 1000 bottles of beer on the wall in 10 part harmony for another half-century.
Posted in 1950's, 1960's, Music
Tagged billy joel, bobby helms, culture, Education, elvis, Ernest Tubb, Events, hank lochlin, History, Human Behavior, humor, jesse winchester, johnny burnett, Life, lifestyle, merle haggard, merle travis, misc, miscellaneous, music, musings, other, personal, random, Reflections, rickey nelson, senior citizens, the animals, thoughts, tobin matthews, Tony Bennett, vince martin, wisdom
The following is a transcript of a recorded conversation I had with a woman several years ago. I don’t know whether I still agree with myself about what I said here, but I suppose I must have at the time.
She: You were talking about these dependency relationships, where the man, if he wants certain things from a woman, is willing to put up with a certain amount of bullshit to get it, and the woman usually ends up with more bullshit to tolerate. And you made a point of saying that, whether or not he says “I love you,” makes a big difference in how she’s handling it. What does that mean, does he feel like he has to say it, even if he doesn’t really love her? Why is it so important for women to hear that, but it doesn’t seem to be important for men to say it? Or is that just some circumstances, and some relationships?
He: It’s just some circumstances and some relationships, but it’s pretty pervasive. Fact is, it doesn’t matter what the guy feels. He can truly love her. He can sort of love her. He can not know whether he loves her. Or he can not love her. But he knows the rules say that he’s got to say that he loves her.
From the perspective of the woman, she can’t know which one of those situations he’s in. She doesn’t acknowledge that such things exist. But the female sex has forced the issue. Thanks to 10,000 years of females demanding that men say they love them whether they do or not, you have all the men saying I love you, easily.
Now some don’t, I don’t, some other old guy friends of mine don’t, but it’s a subject of some discussion between us, it pisses us off. Fact is, that’s what women try hard to make a guy do, they are willing to go through all kinds of games and machinations to try to force a man to say it, no matter what the man feels.
My friends encounter it all the time with women. I’ve encountered it with most of the women I’ve ever gotten involved with. It’s pretty much a hundred percent. It’s as though they don’t give a rat what you’re really feeling.
What women are saying is, “Okay, what I want you to do is say I love you, whether you feel it or not, and I’m gonna behave as though I believe it’s true, for whatever reasons. Then I can use it as a bludgeon against you.”
(“Ooh, you said you loved me, and now you’ve done this or that, or haven’t done this or that, to prove you were lying. What you’ve done or haven’t done is prima facie evidence of your liarhood! And down underneath that is proof that you are lowlife scum because you said it to get something out of me. And besides that, the fact you actually don’t love me is proof you are cold and unfeeling, because I love you sooooo much.”).
“So,” the female sex is saying, “First and foremost I want to hear you say it. I want you to hear yourself say it. And I’m going to take all kinds of coercive and manipulative steps to make you do that.”
Well, the fact is, most of the male population out there says, (“Screw it.” *sigh* ) “Okay, I love you.”
She: You don’t think most women really want to know?
He: Well, they want to know if the answer is Yes. None of them want to know if the answer is No. “I want you to tell me you love me, and I want it to be true.” But if it isn’t true, say it anyway. The object isn’t getting a better hold on reality, or a better understanding about how he actually feels. The object is to hear him say those words, and to make him hear himself saying them.
She: So it doesn’t really matter whether he loves her or not, if he’s going to play that game and say it?
He: Well, he’s going to play it. But fact is, men know this about women. And for the most part, men have a really cynical view of it. It’s something that gets talked about. She’s on the warpath? “ Oh, send her some roses. Tell her you love her, man. Snuggle up a little bit. She’ll get over it.”
Guys will, for the most part, go ahead and do it. They’ll do whatever they have to do to make their lives easier. And so the upshot is that women have created a situation where a guy out there who won’t lie is all of a sudden called cold and unfeeling, when in fact all he is, might be just honest.
One of the problems is in the difference in the way men and women view sex. Men, as a rule, have no problem with the concept of uncomplicated sex. Even if they don’t happen to indulge in it. Women, on the other hand, have 10,000 generations of training to use it as a weapon or an instrument of coercion and extortion. The monopoly women have is one they’ve guarded so consistently, so long that for most women the concepts of sex and power are inseparable.
Selling sex for any commodity is prostitution. Trading sex for power instead of money isn’t exempt. But those who do it are ‘unadmitted whores’, as opposed to straight, upfront whores.
Many years ago a whore named Frenchie in a bar on the waterfront in Texas was bantering with me. I was trying to seduce her in the non-commercial sense. “Sex is no fun if there’s no money involved!” was her final answer.
Frenchie just about said it all, one way or another, and if you think of money as a synonym for power.
One of the reasons women who don’t admit they are whores dislike women who do admit it so much involves the concept of inflation. From the perspective of a non-admitted whore, the whore is selling a commodity for mere money that’s worth so much more than money. In doing so, she (the admitted whore) is making that commodity available for a price that’s easily met, thereby robbing all non-admitted whores of some measure of power. Several generations of Texas men had their first encounters with uncomplicated sex at a cathouse in LaGrange called the Chicken Ranch (now famous). For most of those men visits to the Chicken Ranch ended up as the ONLY encounters with uncomplicated sex in their entire lives.
The only commodity rarer and more precious than uncomplicated sex is honesty.
Old Jules a long time ago
Posted in Adventure, Relationships
Tagged culture, Events, Human Behavior, humor, miscellaneous, music, musings, Nature, other, personal, psychology, random, Reflections, Relationships, sociology, thoughts, wisdom
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/
So Far From Heaven 