Tag Archives: Human Behavior

The Great Divide Separating the Two Political Parties

Posted on May 30, 2012 by | 7 comments

Party #1

Party #2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old Jules

7 Comments

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

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Black Eye for Conventional Wisdom

Posted on May 29, 2012 by | 5 comments

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

Back when  I was a real smart cookie I knew all manner of things needed doing to straighten out this country and this world.  I used to sit around with others whom I allowed to be real smart cookies, too, telling one another how stupid everyone who disagreed with us.  They thought they were real smart cookies, too, which proved how stupid they were.

During that general time period Their Majesties, Gerald Ford, then Jimmy Carter, were telling us we needed to turn down the thermostats, drive slower, become energy independent as a nation.  Find alternatives to the conventional energy sources.  I think my group of real smart cookies agreed with this, though I don’t recall anyone liking it much.

But one thing we did agree on.  Nuclear energy needed to be developed and used a lot more than was happening at the time.  Seemed the only thing that might fill the bill until something else was developed.  Gradually we got so hardened in our opinions about it we made excuses and apologized anytime anything happened suggesting we might re-examine our opinions and debate points.

Along came Three Mile Island, and naturally we didn’t need to know much about it to agree among ourselves it was just a shrill scare thing.  Hanoi Jane Fonda came out with a movie named “The China Syndrome” and a lot of monkey wrenches got thrown into the mix, people opposed to more nuclear plants. 

Then that plant in the Ukraine went sour.  Spewed all manner of radioactive crap into the sky for a longish while.  We real smart cookies saw that as an indictment, not of nuclear power, but rather of Soviet technical, engineering and construction skills.  Another indictment of Communism.

Somewhere back there I quit thinking about all that, didn’t bother knowing so much about it as I became less smart with the years.  I sort of lost track of the whole issue, had no idea whether they were still building, not building, using, not using nuclear power plants.

About a year ago my friend, Rich, started telling me about a tsunami hit Japan, did all manner of damage.  Some included nukes on the Japanese coast.  I suppose I didn’t think a lot about it.  Just another disaster somewhere for people to tell one another about while they waited for the coffee to perk.

But Rich kept updating me and the Japan nuclear part of the tsunami and earthquake began swelling into something trying to rattle how smart I used to be.  Japan was letting a lot of ugly into the Pacific and into the sky.  “Man, they need to do something about that crap!” I declared to Rich.  “I feed my cats a lot of fish that might be coming out of the north Pacific.”

“Would you rather feed them fish out of the Gulf of Mexico?  Fish coming out of there are loaded with carcino-whatchallits from the emulsifiers they used from the BP oil spill.”

I thought about that a while and decided I didn’t need to track down an instrument to measure the gamma radiation in the cat food.  Trade a headache for an upset stomach, more-or-less.

But at least I don’t have to have all the answers anymore, don’t have to know what anyone ought to do about anything.  Takes a lot of weight off, me not having to do anything but concern myself about what to feed the cats and chickens.

Old Jules

 

5 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Country Life, Current Issues, Emergency Preparedness, Government, Politics, Science, Survival

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The 21st Century Through Mirror Sunglasses

Posted on May 28, 2012 by | 3 comments

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

For six days this Australorp hen’s been sitting on a golf ball and two chalk eggs.  Every day I go out and rob the real eggs from under her, stroke her, talk to her, listen to her grumbles, whines, complaints, leaving that golf ball and the chalk eggs to give her something to hope for.

Highly-bred hens such as this one are somewhat similar to 21st Century human beings in some ways.  They’ve had almost all the instincts bred out of them in favor of, either producing a lot of chicken-meat in the least possible while, or producing as many eggs as their bodies allow.  Australorps hold the world record for the most eggs produced by a single hen during the span of a year.

The cost, from the perspective of the hen, is they’ve mostly lost the instincts required to cause them to go broody.  The instincts required to survive as a  species.  Same’s true of my Americauna hens.  Great layers, lousy instincts.

So I’m prone to have a warm place in my heart for a hen when she goes broody, even though I don’t need any more chickens, don’t want any chicks.  It’s the mawkish sentimentality in me, I reckons.  I feel a lot of sympathy and tenderness for a hen trying her best to hatch clutch of eggs, even if the eggs are chalk and golf balls.

I try to simulate a pair of mirror sunglasses when I go out to lift her off the latest eggs, hers and those the other hens try to sneak in under her to give the species another microscopic shot at survival.

Those imaginary mirror sunglasses mightn’t be necessary to me to get through these final decades of my life, but they certainly make it easier to watch what’s going on around me.  Human beings sitting on golf balls and chalk eggs, allowing instincts to creep briefly into their behaviors occasionally, probably won’t hatch.  But it appeals to my mawkish sentimentality side and there’s no harm in it.

At least no harm that would be neutralized by me not indulging. 

A creature pays his money and takes his chances this lifetime.  Even if the creature’s a hen and the eggs aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. 

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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Gamblers, Gambling and Risk-taking

Posted on May 28, 2012 by | 5 comments

Previously blogged May 17, 2005

Saturday a recently acquired friend and I revisited one of the sites I spent a lot of time puzzling over during the search for the lost gold  mine.  The place was the focus of the ’98 search  and a good many years prior to that.  Sometimes it amazes me how many times I climbed and unclimbed the west face of that mountain, always finding something new and puzzling.  I spent most of a month camped at the top, friends coming in for a week or so, then heading back to their lives elsewhere without finding what we were looking for, but finding enough adventure, fellowship and mountain air for a while and remember as one of the good times.This was Jim’s first time up there.  We went in mainly to look at a rock pillar that’s peeling away from a cliff face.

It’s a formation that fascinated a man I’ve come to know awfully well by his work; a man I never met, but whom I followed around that mountain puzzling over what he did, how he did it and why he did it.  A man who lived and died 150 years ago, roughly.  A man who knew a gamble when he saw one, went into a canyon spang in the middle of Apache country at a time when the best he could hope for if he was a quick death, or if his luck was bad, hanging upside down over a slow fire.

I’ve been wearing the arrowhead that almost certainly killed him hanging from a leather thong around my neck for a decade or more.  The ruin a few charred logs high, a long-tom sluice he carved with an axe out of a three-foot diameter log, a 400 pound rock he chiseled down to use as an arrastra and a hundred or so signs and symbols he made on rocks, along with his various diggings are all that’s left to tell what kind of man he was.

A gambler, he was, gambling on being caught by Apaches, gambling a broken leg in a place where such a thing was sure death.  A man who believed in himself so thoroughly that in that setting that he pecked away at the base of a 50 ton pillar of rock trying to get at what was underneath until it gives a man the fantods even today to walk beneath it.

One of the things I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating as I watched Orion chasing the Pleiades across the night sky to the background music of wind in the treetops is the thought of how a man of that sort would feel about a world where low-level risk-taking is a criminal offense.

A time when edging the nose of  a vehicle onto the pavement without fastening the seat belt probably won’t get you hurt, but it will almost certainly get you a conversation with an armed pair of mirror sunglasses.  A time when risk is defined in how many years it might take you to get cancer from whatever you’re eating or smoking.  When excessive gambling is betting the grocery money at the blackjack table.

I wonder if he’d have played a wheel, or just picked a few numbers that suited him and bought a hundred tickets with the same six numbers on them, going for broke on something he believed in, the way he did in life.

One of the ways we define who and what we are includes what we’re willing to give up to travel around the sun a few more times.  That guy on the mountain wasn’t inclined to give up much.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Adventure, Gambling, History, Human Behavior, Lottery, Native Americans, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Prospecting

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A Military Man

Posted on May 27, 2012 by | 13 comments

Previously posted August 21, 2005:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Support our troops.

Old Jules

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

13 Comments

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

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The Legal Money Raffle Consortia

Posted on May 24, 2012 by | 4 comments

Previously posted in 2005:

I used to know a guy named Mike, down in Socorro.  A man with a lot of ideas.

During the mid-‘90s, about the time the Internet was cranking up big-time, Mike had the idea it would be cool to start an online raffle.

Mike had some money lying around.  Just about enough to buy a full-sized Harley, and a large RV.  But he thought he could increase the amount of money he had by taking a risk.  He’d sell raffle tickets online for a Harley and a large RV without buying them until someone won the raffle.  If he didn’t sell enough tickets, he’d make up the difference with his savings.  But if he did sell enough tickets, he’d give away the Harley and RV, and pocket whatever extra came in.

It turns out raffles are illegal at almost any level, though the cops and prosecutors look the other way if they feel the cause is a good one, or if it’s just small potatoes.  But item one for Mike turned out to be that if he went online he’d be almost certain to be prosecuted.

Item 2, was the fact he was, in effect, proposing to raffle a motorcycle and an RV that didn’t exist.  The fact he didn’t own them yet compounded the felony he would be committing.

Now what Mike was proposing to do was precisely what lotteries do.  Raffling off something that doesn’t exist…. Money that they plan on earning as interest.

But, of course, when a government-sanctioned, or government-owned administrative entity commits an act that rhymes with something that would be a felony if an individual behaved identically, all’s well with the world.

Unless they happen to have a lot of attention focused on their behavior, which sometimes happens.

Similarly, I used to know a guy named Dan, who had a lot of cash lying around doing nothing.  He dreamed up an online something he called a ‘money club’, or ‘money pool’.  Members, Dan dreamed, would pay $5 per month into the pool.  Every month the total proceeds, minus 10 percent (to Dan as operational and administrative fees) would be handed out to some lucky member by a process known as Random Number Generator…. Something nearly identical to what’s being done by lotteries.  Except it would be private enterprise….. private sector.

Dan figured the payout percentages would be so much better, the odds so much better than any lottery that it would cause players to flock to him.  He might have been right.

But there was naturally a catch.  What he was proposing was and is a herd of felonies at almost every level of jurisdiction.  Even though what he proposed was a lot better for the players involved, than the competition (the government and the various legally recognized mob) could (read ‘would’) offer.

So neither of these ideas ever came to fruition, though each represented the cleaned up versions of corrupted first-cousins we all accept as normal in the lottery systems.

It’s surprising sometimes to see people who claim to believe in free enterprise so blindly support any government monopoly.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Adventure, America, Current Issues, Gambling, Government, Human Behavior, Internet, Lottery, New Mexico

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Quid Pro Quo Chainsaw-wise

Posted on May 21, 2012 by | 8 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“No.  I’ll call you when it’s ready.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tell ’em I said hello.

But I’ve digressed.

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

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

I’m obliged knowing about it.

Old Jules

8 Comments

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

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Cunning, Intelligence and Free Ranging Chickens

Posted on May 21, 2012 by | 15 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old Jules

15 Comments

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

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A Matter of Aesthetic Perspectives

Posted on May 19, 2012 by | 5 comments

In town the other day I stopped into the Autozone store for a roll of electrical tape, nosed around a bit and found some titanium drill bits I think might be an improvement over the simulated drill bits I have around here.

Paid my money and went out the front door into the heat.  Sitting beside Little Red was a shiny 20 year old sedan with tinted windows rolled up, engine running, making the damnedest racket I’ve ever heard an automobile make.  The noise could have been heard across the street and the car almost seemed to be shaking with each new sound.  I stared at it a moment trying to figure out what could be wrong with it, what was happening to it.

“That car’s got a MAJOR problem,” thinks I.  “I’ll bet the owner’s going to love coming back out here and finding a pile of auto parts instead of what he rode in on.”

I perused the distance between it and Little Red to consider whether I dared go back inside to warn someone, or needed to get further from it.  Decided to take the chance and stepped back inside.

A line of people were at the cash register waiting to pay and the clerk was ringing someone up.  I interrupted him and he looked up.  “That car out there sounds like it’s about to explode!”  I gestured behind me, still looking at him.

Three people backward in line a guy who looked as though he just got out of prison, muscle shirt with a lot of muscles to go with it scowled at me and took half-a-step out of line.  “No.  That’s my music.”  Questioning, tentative look, brink-of-threatening, deciding, considering.

“Oh.  Okay.”

I did an about face and moved outside sharply.  Stared and listened to the car again, trying to squeeze the concept of music into the equation.  I couldn’t pull it off.  Shook my head and got in Little Red feeling slightly foolish.

It’s what I get for poking my nose into someone else’s business, I reckons.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2012, Survival

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They Ought to Add ‘Barbara Allen’ to the Controlled Substance List

Posted on May 18, 2012 by | 5 comments

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

I’m really glad I don’t have free will.  If I’d had free will I’d almost certainly have screwed things up something awful.  I can’t see any way a person making a lifetime of deliberate, conscious choices could have made the necessary ones to allow me to eventually become me.  If I’d had to find my way through that maze all by myself there’s no guessing what I’d have become, what would have become of me.

I’m a firm believer the Universe gave us scorpions, black widow spiders, brown recluse spiders and similar poisonous orthropods to train a man to shake out his trousers and boots before he puts them on.  But he no sooner learns it than he begins to forget slowly, and eventually he’s pulling on his britches or boots same as if the Universe hadn’t blessed us with Brother Scorpion.

But if the timing is good, if the Universe is feeling generous, and if the asteroid Pallas is 85 days since a conjunction with Old Sol and 293 days since an opposition, sometimes the Universe will cut us a break.  A man can slip on his britches, pull up his galluses, feel something crawling up his leg under the cloth, dance around slapping his pants, and shake out a regular big bug carcass instead of the various alternatives.

But I’ve digressed. 

Yesterday I borrowed Little Red and headed to town feeling good, but worn down to a small frazzle from cutting big cedars with my expensively repaired chainsaw, dragging them over piece-by-piece to construct a tasteful aspiring beaver dam.  Made all the feedstore, thrift store, grocery store and dollar store stops grinning like a possum, joking with the store clerks.  Bought a can of Chinese boot wax and asked the clerk whether he could tell it from Shinola, which brought a blank look.

Even bought two packages of this for a buck each at Dollar Tree.  I’ve never seen the stuff before, but my thigh was itching something fierce from that non-black widow earlier.  I was feeling a strong urge to find a restroom and drop my pants for a looksee.

As a backup, in case whatever was going on down there was as full of drama as it felt, I picked up a tube of this, too, at a buck.

But I’ve digressed again.

On the way out of Dodge I swung by the Boys Ranch Thrift Store, second to the last stop.  Not much of interest there except a shopping cart full of hardback books with a sign, “Free Books”.  I nosed around, popped open an anthology, A Treasure of the Familiar.  It opened to “Barbara Allen“, which I haven’t thought of in half-a-century.  Walked out singing to myself, trying to remember the words to “Barbara Allen“, putting the first few stanza together.  Sang it a mile down the road to the dog-catcher thrift store, debating with myself whether to go inside, or just head home.

In the parking lot a joyful sight grabbed me.

The finest off-road vehicle I’ve ever owned was a 1986 Montero.  Thousands of giddy miles up and down mountains, desert and canyons in my old Montero.  That truck would squeeze between any two trees the Universe could invent, climb anything, go through hip-deep water.  But when you got it stuck, it was for-sure, lead-pipe cinch, STUCK.

So I left that place singing “Barbara Allen” at the top of my lungs, pretending Little Red was my old Montero, remembering and flying low to the ground.

Stopped in to drop off a few bags of feed at Gale’s, needing to lift something to bring myself down, but even after unloading a few hundred pounds of sacks, still singing, still flying.

Middling good day, it was.

Old Jules

5 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Country Life, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Thrift Stores, Trucks

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