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
The Making of the Roman Army From Republic to Empire, Lawrence Keppie
I don’t recall ever reading the Keppie version.
Myles Keogh Biography by Charles L Convis
The Art of War, Sun Tzu, forward by Liddell Hart. My version’s paperback and doesn’t have the Hart forward, so I’m tickled pea green with this.
Frontier State at War – Kansas 1861-1865, Albert Castel
I’ve already got this, but it’s an old copy and doesn’t have the dust jacket.
Brown Water Black Berets – Lt. Commander Thomas J. Cutler
Never read this one.
I’d have been back sooner if it hadn’t been for this billy goat on the Ranch Road. Spent considerable while trying to find an unlocked gate to one or another ranch nearby. He was tame, really tame, and I could have lifted him over one of the fences, but didn’t know which side of the road to choose. Gale and Kay are calling around to try to find who owns him.
Lots of roadkill deer and exotics in the ditches between here and Kerrville. I’d hate to see this guy join them.
But the biggest, most exciting haul of the day: Someone dumped an intact Kenmore Water Softener in the grader ditch. The outer shell is rigid nylon, looks to hold 20 gallons, and inside’s a fiberglass cylinder might hold another 7, 8 gallons if I can think of something to use it for. And the pump appears to be undamaged, also. Something really heavy in there somewhere. The whole shebang must have weighed over 100 pounds.
The HEB grocery store parking lot was jam-packed and I REALLY didn’t want to go in there. But I said to myself, “If you’ll go in there and promise not to be forever whining and complaining about it I’ll give you a special treat.”
“Hmmm,” says I. “What do you have in mind?”
“How about a pie? Or some Elgin sausage?”
“If you don’t want me whining and complaining you ought to fork over Elgin sausage AND a pie. All or nothing.”
“Cripes! You’re driving a hard bargain, but time’s wasting. You got it.”
Old Jules
Posted in Books, Texas, Thrift Stores
Tagged Books, country life, culture, History, home, homesteading, Human Behavior, humor, lifestyle, literature, misc, miscellaneous, other, personal, psychology, random, Reflections, senior citizens, society, thoughts
Several ladies in Africa who used to have hubbies and fathers who were powerful men in Africa with fortunes stuck away in places the ladies can’t get to them want my help. And lawyers in the UK are trying hard to send me a lot of money if I help them prove somebody with my surname is a distant relative of mine and me being the only qualified person to claim his humongous fortune. And I won some lottery somewhere I didn’t even buy a ticket for and never heard of.
A lot of people might think these emails are con-games intended to prey on us old people who are too stupid to spot them as not being legitimate, but not me. I figure once I’ve sent my bank account number and whatnot off to each of them they’ll almost certainly dump enough riches on me to pay some guy in town to fix the Toyota and the New Truck both. And some left over to get a water heater and the roof fixed.
If I hadn’t been so busy I’d have done it already. I’ve had a string of those African ladies trying to get me to help them and UK lawyers chasing me with money from my dead relatives and lotteries I’ve won for a considerable while. The African ladies want me to help them so badly they even call me darling sometimes.
All these naysayers and skeptics are just jealous. Us elderly folks are plenty smart enough to know a scam when we see one, and these aren’t.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Country Life, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Solitude
Tagged country life, culture, economy, home, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, psychology, random, Reflections, senior citizens, thoughts, wisdom
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’ve written about some of my laundry issues here:
And here: Clean Underwear and Hard Times
But some new issues have come up.
A lot of sudden wear and tear showing up on my clothing. I attribute a lot of it to this:
I picked it up at the tail-end of a garage sale in Kerrville, still in the box, evidently never used, for $7.00 US. I thought it would make a great addition to the old Kenmore by offering a means of rinsing one load while another was being washed. Neither of the two uses a lot of water, but this one uses a bit less than the Kenmore. I was hugging myself with joy.
But I believe this thing wears out clothes instead of washing them. At this rate I’ll be running around naked under my outer clothing before another change of underwear’s required.
My current thinking is I’m going to have to figure out something to do with this thing that doesn’t involve washing clothes.
Meanwhile maybe it’s time to test a theory I’ve been chewing on for some while that nobody would notice or care if they saw a 68 year old man in town doing business, buying groceries and chicken feed, bare-assed naked.
Maybe they’d like it better than one who has plenty of cotton and chinese poly-whatchallit covering his privates, but stinks to high heaven.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading, Kerrville, Senior Citizens, Thrift Stores
Tagged country life, culture, environment, home, humor, irish washerwoman, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, music, musings, other, personal, random, Reflections, senior citizens, thoughts, wisdom
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
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
He called it honesty;
Was sincerely fond
In spite of all she wasn’t
And so many things she was
He found repelling.
She called it cruelty;
He wasn’t fond enough
To call it love
Old Jules
Posted in Poetry, Relationships
Tagged culture, home, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, other, personal, poems, poetry, psychology, random, Reflections, Relationships, sociology, thoughts, wisdom
I’d planned for some while to write up the early-post-Y2K incident with the helicopters described below. But Jeanne looked it up in her Y2K journal, read it to me over the phone, and convinced me in the interest of accuracy her version was the most appropriate. The human mind twists and turns events and mine had worked on those helicopters enough to make the story I’d have written somewhat different from the one she recorded that day.
I’d have sworn I’d been teaching her sons how to use a survival mirror as described in the Survival Book https://sofarfromheaven.com/survival-book-2/, and that the instruction was the reason I had the mirror readily at hand to do what I did.
I do recall vividly my increased heartbeat when they turned to fly 150 above the cabin. I’ll defer to her record as to whether I then slunk into the trees.
From Jeanne’s y2k journal:
Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2000
A nice day all around. Jules came over fairly early, seemed at loose ends, and stayed til nearly 4 PM. While the kids were finishing homework, he started messing around with some tools we had lying around and found a rock that reminded him of a dream sheep mother like the ones he’d bought before from the Zunis.
He spent all morning carving a dream sheep out of that rock and then decided we needed a cairn to put it on. He and Michael and Andrew worked on that most of the day, adding flagstones for a bench to go all the way around it. The dream sheep sits on top like a shrine- I love it. It took all day, he must have moved a ton of rock. Then he build me another bench to sit on for a view of the sunset. Glad he didn’t ask me to help. Michael helped willingly, Andrew less willingly, but he still helped.
After he declared it finished, Michael took off for a hike up the hill and Andrew and Julia were playing around behind the cabin.
We heard some helicopters before we saw them, it turned out to be two black military copters that were slowly flying right along the road that goes by our property. Jules didn’t say anything but he got out his pocket mirror from his survival kit and started sort of surreptitiously flashing it at the helicopters. I got real nervous and decided I should probably walk off in the other direction, so I headed towards the cabin.
I wasn’t sure if they could see who was doing it since he was by some trees, but I wanted to be sure it was obviously NOT me. Damned if those helicopters didn’t turn a 90 degree angle and fly straight over the cabin to get a closer look at us! But nothing happened, thank goodness. By then Jules had faded into the trees. A few minutes Michael came down the hill and said “Did you see THAT?”
After that Jules and the boys had a long conversation about building a catapult using a sucker rod from a windmill and some other stuff. Said they ought to be able to build one big enough to lob rocks the size of cantaloupes across the road. They all seemed pretty excited about it.
Anyhow, the cairn is a great place to sit and drink hot chocolate and watch the sunrise. I think it’ll last forever, it’s really solid.
Picked up 25 eggs later when we went down to help him collect them.
Saturday, Feb. 13, 2000
This morning we were eating a late breakfast inside the cabin and talking about going to gather eggs and suddenly there was this horrifying roar over the cabin which scared us all half to death- we rushed to the door and saw a pair of fighter jets that had just buzzed our cabin! I think they were getting back at us for the mirror stuff a few days ago…too bad Jules wasn’t around to have heart failure with the rest of us, seeing that it was all because of him. Of course we had to drive down to his cabin right away to tell him all about it.
Picked up 30 eggs while we were there.
Jeanne K.
Tagged country life, culture, Education, History, home, homesteading, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, New Mexico, other, personal, random, Reflections, senior citizens, thoughts
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 
