Tag Archives: lifestyle

Cornering the Umbrella Market in a Drought

Posted on September 12, 2011 by | 6 comments

Compulsive personality.  That’s the only possible explanation I can think of for this recurring pattern in my life.

Today I had to go into Harper to pay a bill due tomorrow.  I hate to make a trip in without getting full value for the gasoline expended getting there, so after I’d taken care of business I drove around the several back streets.  I was craning my neck, straining my eyes, looking into the back yards of abandoned houses for a cab-over camper or camper trailer I might be able to pick up cheap as a potential way to give myself an escape route if something goes sour here.

I’ll be posting about some of that Harper thing another time.  But after I finished nosing the back streets I went to the Harper Library Resale Store just because it was there.  Picked up $6.00 worth of used books at 25 cents each, moseyed around and eyeballed a wireless weather station with rain gauge, anemometer, all manner of goodies for $20.  But the box was open and there was dust on it.

My computer-like mind registered this and concluded it had been sitting there a while, nobody willing to pay $20 for it.  So I carried my books to the register and while she counted them, “That weather station back there looks as though it’s been here a while.”

She stopped counting and looked at me grinning.  They know me there.  “You want to bargain about it?”

“Wulll. Actually, I’m not sure I want it.  I couldn’t pay more than $10.”

She grinned and pointed to the room where it was located, started walking back there.  “You’re going to TAKE $10?  You ought not take $10.”  Sheeze.  We don’t get any weather here and who cares how fast the wind is blowing?  When we got there she picked it up out of the box, frowning.

“The wind direction doesn’t work is the only thing.”

“Bobby Dylan and I decided a long time ago we didn’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

So back to the register.  $16.00.  She holds up an orange card.  “Do you have one of these yet?”  No, I nods.  “Every time you buy $10 worth of anything we stamp it.  When you’ve got $10 stamped 10 times you get $10 off your next purchase.”

“Whoah!  You’re telling me if I spent $4 more I’d have gotten two stamps on there?”

Smile.  “Yes.”

“Okay.  Let me wander around in here a little longer.”

I found four copies of the Texas Historical Review from the 1990s for 50 cents each.  Then I found a pair of good sneakers that fit marked $3.  I carried them back to the register.  “Okay.  $2 for the Historical Reviews and $3 for the shoes.  Give me another stamp on that card.”

She starts adding, mutters, “Men shoes are half price today.  You’re 50 cents short.  26 cents even if we count the sales tax.”

Deep breath.  “I want to donate 26 cents to the library.  Stamp the card.”

Speedometer cable was making noise on the Toyota when it went Communist.  Maybe if the cable breaks I can attach that anemometer to the top of the truck and use the wind speed for a speedometer if I ever get the 4Runner running on pavement again.

Old Jules

Steve Goodman– Vegematic
http://youtu.be/HnqtGjHJjs8

6 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Country Life, Emergency Preparedness, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Senior Citizens, Texas, Thrift Stores

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Desert Emergency Survival Basics

Posted on September 11, 2011 by | 8 comments

You survival and preparedness-oriented readers might find something you didn’t already know in here to be useful.  The Introduction section to the book Desert Emergency Survival Basics explains my purposes for writing it better than I can today:

The potential range of human experience includes finding ourselves in unanticipated dangerous situations. Most of those situations have been examined minutely and described in print in the form of survival manuals. Desert survival is not an exception. Excellent books are available to explain primitive survival in the desert southwest duplicating lifestyles of Native Americans a thousand years ago. That is not the intent of this book.

A few decades ago I had an acquaintance with a man named Walter Yates. Walter had the distinction of surviving a helicopter crash in the far north woods by jumping into a snowdrift before the impact. He managed to survive winter months with almost nothing except the clothes on his back when he jumped.

Walter’s experience was a worthy test of human potential for emergency survival in extreme conditions. The margin for error was microscopic. The reason he survived rested on his ability to quickly detach his mind from how things had been in the past, how he wished they were, and accept completely the situation he was in. He wouldn’t have made it out of those woods if he couldn’t rapidly assess his new needs and examine every possibility of fulfilling them. “It’s all in the mind,” he once told me.

The margin for error in the desert is also narrow. That margin is dehydration. Extremes of temperature are also a factor, but they are more easily managed than the needs of the human body for water. Anyone who survives an unanticipated week in desert country did so by either having water, by carrying it in, or finding it.

Over the years I’ve followed a number of search and rescue accounts and discussed the issue with searchers. The general thinking among those workers is that a person missing in the desert southwest should be found or walk out within three to five days. After three days the chances for live return spiral downward. Returns after five days are lottery winners. When a missing person isn’t found within a week, it’s usually because he’s been dead for five days.

This book is to assist in avoiding situations that lead to the need to survive those crucial three days, and to provide the basics of how to walk out and how to find water in the desert southwest. If you need the emergency information here it will be because you became lost, stranded by mechanical failure, or physically incapacitated. I won’t address the bugs and plants you might find to eat. If you have water you’ll survive without eating until rescue.

When this book was written I had a close association with New Mexico State Search and Rescue (SAR). I was also writing a book about a lost gold mine at the time. The State Search and Rescue Coordinator (SARC) knew about the book. I had a special arrangement with him because I was spending a lot of time in remote canyons searching. If something delayed me there I didn’t want them to send out the SAR guys to look for me.

One day in the coffee-room SARC asked me about my progress in the search and the gold mine book. I explained the lost gold mine search to him and how the information available in the past was sketchy.

“So you’re writing a book that’s likely to cause flatlanders to go out into the desert searching for this thing?”

I thought about it a moment before I answered. “It might. A lot of people would have tried anyway, but this book might bring in some who wouldn’t have come otherwise.”

SARC glared at me. His whole world revolved around  flat-landers getting lost in the mountains or desert. Several times every month they’d scramble the forces to try to locate someone misplaced. Sometimes it’s a brain surgeon from Houston who got himself mis-located mountain climbing on the east face of Sandia Mountain within sight of Albuquerque . Other times a physicist from California gets off the pavement in the desert and loses his bearings. Sometimes SAR arrived in time to save their lives. New Mexico back country can be unforgiving.

“If you’re going to publish a book that will take a lot of idiots out where they can get into trouble you’d damned well better include some warnings on desert survival and how they can stay out of trouble! I don’t want to spend the next five years dragging the bodies of your readers out of the arroyos in body bags.”

That conversation ultimately resulted in this tome.

Over time it’s been expanded and rewritten numerous times to eventually become what’s posted here. Here’s the link, but there’s a new page for it on the navigation bar at the top of the page.
Desert Emergency Survival Basics

Old Jules


Sons Of The Pioneers – Cool Water

8 Comments

Posted in 1980's, 1990's, Adventure, Books, Communication, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors, Solitude, Survival, Writing

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Intelligent Common Sense vs. Knee-jerk Common Sense

Posted on September 9, 2011 by | 18 comments

I agree.

The question is what brand of common sense we choose to adopt.  One trait we humans all share is the unquestionable fact that we have common sense.  We’re able to spot the lack of it in others whenever it’s out of sync with our own, which frequently happens.

Among other things, it seems to me common sense ought to be manifested in personal and public choices about what’s worth getting excited about, being afraid of, and what is not.

For instance, I read somewhere recently that in the entire history of terrorism, beginning in Russia in the 19th Century, fewer than 10,000 people have died.

Common sense would seem to argue terrorism’s not a large enough issue in the world to lend much weight to private and public decision-making.

The war on drugs has been waged since the Reagan Administration.  Countless millions of dollars have been expended in the effort.  Today, forbidden drugs are as available on the streets of America, perhaps more available, than they were when Reagan declared war.

Common sense would seem to argue it was time to look at other alternatives about five years after it all began, rather than spending more on it, building more prisons, hiring more cops, judges, prosecutors.

We’ve known since the early 1970s that foreign energy dependence was a threat to the well-being of this nation.  Petroleum and other hydrocarbons were going away.  From Nixon onward, US presidents pledged and waved the bloody flag pretending an effort to free the US from foreign energy dependence by development of alternative energy sources.

Common sense would seem to argue we’re more dependent on foreign energy today, 40 years later, than we were when our elected chiefs first made public acknowledgement of the threat to national security and well-being.  Which is another way of saying they lied, made meaningless gestures to an actual threat to national security and well-being, while devoting their attention to waging bloody wars on top of soil where the old-fashioned energy sources lay hidden.

Whatever common sense is, you and I certainly have a lot of it.

If we could ever discover how to inject it into the gray matter of the men we elect to office, we’d have to change the definition to something less common.  Which is the reason I stay the hell away from knowing the current news events and don’t pay any mind to politics.

Common sense tells me history testifies to the futility of common sense and the futility of worrying about political matters.   Common sense tells me life’s too short to fire up my ammunition at targets I can’t hit.

Old Jules

John Prine– Illegal Smile
http://youtu.be/Li-HVSdjQFg

18 Comments

Posted in 2011, America, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Liars, Politics

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Thursday morning meanderings

Posted on September 8, 2011 by | 7 comments

SOLAR RADIO BURSTS: This week’s sharp increase in solar activity has turned the sun into a radio transmitter. Bursts of shortwave static are coming from the unstable magnetic canopy of sunspot 1283. Tuesday in New Mexico, amateur radio astronomer Thomas Ashcraft recorded some samples at 21 MHz: listen. Radio listeners should remain alert for this kind of solar activity as sunspot 1283 continues to seethe.  http://spaceweather.com/

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Got a call last night from Gale saying they were in Van Horn, headed home. They should have arrived around midnight, so they can take care of their own animalcules this morning.

He said the Hatch Chili Festival probably won’t be among their future plans for having a booth. Sales were flat on most of his crafts, though the Siberian Wolf fang jewelry sold a bit, and his old stand-by steak turners with elk-antler shaped handles might have brought him to the break-even point.  He sounded a bit down-hearted and beat to a small frazzle.  But those craft shows are a big piece of the glue holding this place and their lifestyle together.

I’ve wondered for some while how long financial ventures depending on consumers buying non-essentials could hold up in a lousy economy.

———————————

Came across an interesting blog: dumpster find of the week: boot haul, boat haul – Seems to be a kindred spirit.

————————————

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking over the past while about various news items I wouldn’t be aware of if it weren’t for the Internet and blogs I read.  It’s guided my thinking into directions I probably wouldn’t otherwise drift, such as actually having conscious priorities in my life for a while.  At least sort-of priorities.

Not to suggest anyone’s a good economic prognosticator, but with all that guessing going on out there, and with what appears to be a lot of contributory factors, I probably owe it to the cats, at least, to have a backup plan.  A way to get the hell out of Dodge intact if things go sour, that has room in it for four cats.  If something happens to Gale or their finances, or SS is eroded by inflation, or both, hedging against the sleep-under-a-bridge alternative probably makes sense.

My obvious first priority is to get my new truck running and street legal.

But after that’s done, I’m either going to need to build a house to live in on the bed of it, find an old overcab camper to fit in it, or find a camper-trailer sitting out somewhere I can pick up for nearly nothing for fixing up to pull behind it.

I see these sitting around with weeds growing up around them a lot.  I think once I have transportation I’ll have to get serious about trying to acquire one or something rhyming with it as a future place for me and the felines if the Coincidence Coordinators decide to play dirty.

I’m thinking if things get too rough I might be able to slick out further west and establish a moving circuit of campsite homes on US Bureau of Land Management and US Forestry Service lands, changing locations every couple of weeks to stay legal.  The cats don’t care for the idea, but they tell me they’d agree to it if I won’t get any chickens.

I’ll probably talk more about various facets of all this in future posts.  Progress reports, learnings, that sort of thing.

————————————————-

Meanwhile, happy posthumorous birthday to Jimmie Rodgers

http://youtu.be/qEIBmGZxAhg

He’d have known exactly how a person ought to go about becoming an honest-to-goodness hobo with a house.

Old Jules

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7 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Emergency Preparedness, Senior Citizens, Social Security, Solitude, Trucks

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Don’t Call an Angry Jersey Bull a Sick Cow

Posted on September 7, 2011 by | 16 comments

He won’t like it.


  Every spring and fall the lady friend I mentioned in So Long, and Thanks for all The Valentines entry and I used to go adventuring down the Rio Grande to the wildlife refuges.  We’d watch the antics of the full quota of migrating birds at Bosque del Apache  Wildlife Refuge near San Antonio, NM  [ http://friendsofthebosque.org/aboutrefuge.html ] and other sites near the river.  We carried our cameras and binoculars along, same as everyone else, and let where the birds were tell us where it was okay to go.

One year we were scouting the roads and farms on the east side of the river when we spotted a huge flock of cranes grazing among a dairy herd.  No signs forbidding trespassing, so I followed the irrigation ditch bank to get us as near them as possible.  Then we got out of the truck and began threading our way through the cows as we tried to get close enough for good pictures while the birds tried to foil the effort by moving further away.

The cattle were contained by an electric fence positioned about 18 inches off the ground.  The lady and I got separate by about 40 yards, me trying to be sneaky and circle around the cranes, her a few feet away from the cattle but on the side of the fence opposite them.

“Jules! There’s something wrong with that cow.”  I was focused on the cranes and didn’t pay her any mind.  I didn’t care if there was something wrong with one of the cows.  “Jules! That cow is SICK.”

This happened several times, me still ignoring it, her becoming increasingly shrill.  Finally, frustrated, I glanced toward her.  SHEEZE!

A huge Jersey bull was snorting and pawing up a dust cloud fifteen feet across that single strand of electric wire from her, telling her to “QUIT CALLING ME A COW!”

I yanked off my mackinaw.  “THAT IS NOT A COW.  STAND STILL!  DON’T SAY ANYTHING ELSE!  DON’T MOVE!”  I waved the mackinaw in the air.  “HYAAAAH!  HAYAAAH LOOKEE HERE YOU BASTARD!”

Snort.  Stomp.  Paw.  Dust.  Now he’s turning my way and I ain’t even across the fence from him.  “Hyahhhh!”  Less enthusiasm.

To her:  “Back away slowly.  REALLY slow.  Hyahhhh!”  Me backing away too, still waving the mackinaw, stepping across the fence, him taking a few paces toward me.  “HEAD TO THE TRUCK!  Slowwwww and easy.  Don’t attract his attention again.”  SOB’s thinking he’ll charge me, moving my way stomping and snorting, pawing up dirt.

I got up on the ditch road thinking how I can jump into seven, eight feet of water if I need to without ruining the camera and binocs.  He’s maybe 40 feet away, still coming.  She’s beside the truck.  “OKAY!  START YELLING AND WAVING YOUR ARMS AROUND, THEN IF HE TURNS GET IN THE TRUCK!”

She did, he did, and I did.  He never came past the fence.

When I was a kid a Jersey bull was universally known to be a dangerous beastie.  We had to sit through films at school telling us to watch out for them.  I read somewhere once that more kids on farms were killed by Jersey bulls than died any other way.  She sat through the same films.

I suppose she forgot.

Or maybe I was just more tuned in because of a Jersey milk cow who used to chase me all over the barnyard, me trying to get her into the stall for milking.  My step-dad always sneered at me about that, “All you have to do is grab that ring in her nose!  She won’t do anything after that.”

I don’t recall I ever got close enough to grab that ring and test it out.  I preferred batting her across the nose with a broken hoe handle.

When It’s Mushroom Picking Time in Minnesota http://teresaevangeline.blogspot.com/2011/09/when-its-mushroom-picking-time-in.html reminded me of this.  Rather than bog down her comments with my yarns I figured I’d best post it here if I wanted to tell it.

Old Jules

Johnny Cash -the Bull Rider
http://youtu.be/TViGS1ePGp8

6:15 AM Newsflash:

Last night I heard a ruckus outside the back window along with the sound of destruction.  I shined a flashlight through the screen and found a feral sow and 5-6 piglets about the size of Cocker Spaniels had broken into the rooster pen and were tearing everything up, one trying to get up the chute to the night rooster fortress.

I got the .22 and picked a target, the one tearing up my chute, fired through the screen, resulting in more destruction of the pen, a squealing, flopping-all-over-the-place pig, herd stampede by the others, and one ANGRY feral sow.

She’s been out there all night snorting and grunting.  My guess is that piglet’s still alive out there, injured, and she’s waiting until I come out to express her displeasure.

I’m not going outdoors until it’s light enough to see what I’m doing and she’s doing so’s we can come to some sort of permanent understanding about the issues involved.

Old Jules

7:30 AM aftermath

Judging from appearances she and the pigs ate the one I shot during the night.  Stinks something awful all over back there.  They did a lot of damage to the rooster pen, which I’ll have to shore up today while the two roosters run loose and hopefully leave The Great Speckled Bird: Respecting our Betters alone.

The Liar: The Great Speckled Bird, Part 2 might have to hang off in the background today, leaving the hens alone.

Damage from the hogs wasn’t restricted to the chicken pen.  They tore off some of the siding to the storage building trying to get to the chicken feed, also, broke pieces off.  More repairing and shoring up necessary there.

When I went out the sow was in a cedar thicket near the main henhouse where I could hear, but couldn’t see her.  Couldn’t tell whether the pigs were in there, too, or not.  I agreed not to go in after and she agreed to not come out after me.

Old Jules

16 Comments

Posted in 1990's, Adventure, Country Life, Education, Human Behavior, NM, Wildlife

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Helicopters and Orange Jump Suits

Posted on September 5, 2011 by | 99 comments

A couple of years ago I came across a profoundly orange jumpsuit in a thrift-store clearance sale, which I picked off at a righteous price.  It’s the sort worn by students of jailhouse academies in a lot of places, so the potential was great, both as work clothing and other possibilities that came to mind and brought a smile to my face as I paid for it.

Some times of the year I get considerable low-flying air traffic over the cabin, frequently helicopters.  Scares the chickens and often has me out there craning my neck wondering what they’re up to.  Sometimes they zigzag over the area, circle, generally just burn up fuel without it being obvious whether they’re taking pictures of my workings, satisfying curiosity, or something more sinister.

But that orange jump suit’s added a whole new side to things.  Nowadays when the helicopters start flying over I stay inside until they go out of sight, slipping on the jump suit.  Then, when I hear them coming back in this direction I head over to the other side of the meadow, staying just out of the trees until they’ve had a glimpse of me.

I fake panic, run into the trees and hide, peeking out at them, pretending to try to conceal myself better while they waste more fuel trying to see what I’m doing.

It’s quite a hoot, all in all, but I count myself lucky they don’t fly around doing that much mid-summer.  I appreciate the exercise it gives me, 68 year old guy running around hiding from a helicopter, but I’m not sure my ticker would stand up to the wear and tear when it’s 100 degrees F outside.

I’ve always wondered whether the local law enforcement have gotten any calls asking whether there’s an escaped convict running around loose in the area.

Anyway, I figure it gives them a thrill, puts some adventure in their otherwise uneventful lives.  Something to talk about over the radio besides all that ‘Roger that!’ stuff.

An elderly man without a lot of means has to do whatever he can to try to help other people along this lifetime, or he’s likely to be thought a waste and freeloader if he’s drawing a SS retirement pension.

Old Jules

The Kingston Trio – Everglades
http://youtu.be/w0TtIRpG-jE

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Tuesday, September 6 edit:

If you need a few more laughs I suggest the enlightened, well-thought-out viewpoint from the helicopter:

It’s All Fun and Games Until Somebody Gets Shot

Ah, the fun to be had with an orange jumpsuit.
 Evidently they aren’t telling pilots nowadays they’re required to maintain an altitude of 500 feet above ground level, that they’re not allowed to shoot anything on private land out of an aircraft on a whim,  suspicion, or gut feel, and that killing people because they’re wearing  a particular color jump suit is homicide even if it’s done from an aircraft.
They used to tell us that kind of stuff.  Must be the education system’s slipped another notch into the shallow end of the gene pool.  Old Jules

99 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Country Life, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens, Texas, Thrift Stores

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The Sawmill: Joys and Frustrations

Posted on September 4, 2011 by | 8 comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

White Trash Repairs: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Thumbing Rides on Throwaways

News from the Middle of Nowhere

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

Old Jules

8 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Texas, Trucks, White Trash Repairs

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Something Rhyming with Joy in the Pre-dawn

Posted on September 4, 2011 by | 6 comments

The temperature dropped enough last night so’s I turned off  the fans.  When I walked outdoors the cats were doing those little rear-on-hindlegs-pivot happiness acts they’ve taught one another, all gathered for a some grub, a refill on the water bowl,  having their tails tugged and a few words of greeting.

They all explained they’re grateful to me for turning down the heat, and I didn’t tell them any different.  Anytime a person can get a cat feeling beholden he’d best take advantage of it.  I took my coffee out to the porch swing hangs under the oak and let them take turns snagging a few scratches behind the ears, held Tabby upside down and explained how she was one of the best cats around here and just listened to the night trailing away.

I stay fairly joyful around here always, but somehow it managed to get itself trumped this morning.

If I was shorter and had me a mirror and a sink to stand on I’d do what Jessica’s doing in the video below.

Jessica’s “Daily Affirmation”

http://youtu.be/qR3rK0kZFkg

Instead, I reckons I’ll have another cup of java and wait for the roosters to begin their concert.

——————–

8:00 AM

Without taking anything away from Jessica, here are a few of my own gratitude affirmations this morning:

I’m grateful Gale’s got water up there I can haul, grateful for all these jugs to haul it in, and grateful he’ll loan me Little Red for packing it down here.

I’m grateful Gale gave me this new truck:

“GOT ME A NEW TRUCK” https://sofarfromheaven.com/category/trucks/

The wiring's too Communist and beyond my ken to fix myself, turns out. I'm grateful there's a real mechanic in town and we can tow it in when he gets back.

Won’t be long now before I have transportation again and whoooeee will I ever be grateful.

I'm grateful we don't have to depend entirely on rain.

If I had a sink I’d dance on it, same as Jessica.
Old Jules

6 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Country Life, Free, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, Trucks

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White Trash Repairs – The Dumpster Telescope

Posted on September 2, 2011 by | 15 comments

The Salvation Army Thrift Store, July 2009

Tube, flange and swivel – Salvation Army Thrift store – July 2009. No eyepieces, broken tripod.  Looked too much like junk to find a willing buyer.

It’s been a longish while since I owned a good telescope, an 8″ tube with a tracker drive to allow watching deep space objects or the moon without having to constantly chase the targets.  Since that time I’ve confined my star gazing to a pair of binoculars on a camera tripod unless some acquaintance owned a good one and invited me in for an evening.

But in July, 2009, I found an Orbitor 8500 Chinese tube in the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Kerrville with a sad, badly-used look to it and an unrealistic price tag.  I examined it carefully, then wandered around the store pretending to look at other merchandise while watching other customers when they got near it.  My thought was that if I saw someone getting too interested and likely to snag it I’d beat them to the counter and plunk down the unrealistic money with a pre-emptive strike.

After a while I moseyed back and talked to a couple of guys who were scowling at it.  I shook my head about it, talking about it not having a drive, speculating how much it would cost getting eyepieces, what a shame it was the tripod was junk.  We agreed a person would be a fool to take it home at any price.  Likely that mirror, I pointed out, was as much a piece of junk as the rest of it.

We all wandered away, and I picked up a couple of books off the 25 cent shelf.  After those two guys left I went back and made a show of frowning at it a while longer before I went over to the counter to talk it over with the lady I’d done a goodly amount of haggling with in the past who knew what to expect from me.

“Somebody’s going to be back arguing with you if you sell them that telescope and they take it home and try to use it.”  I fiddled around in my pocket for change to pay for the books.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“If they don’t know what they’re paying for they’ll get it home and end up with something they can’t use.  It’s a cheap Chinese-made thing to start out with, but the tripod’s broken, for starters.  Someone didn’t take care of it.  Probably a kid got it for Christmas and lost interest by New Year, pushed it into the corner until he broke it.” 

I plunked down my money for the books.  “Do you suppose the guys in back let the eyepieces get separated from it?  Nobody can use it without eyepieces and they’re expensive.  Might not even be able to get the right diameter ones easily.  If you could find the eyepieces someone might buy it at some price.”

Eventually I agreed to haul it off for five bucks if she’d promise to try to find the eyepieces and hold them for me if they turned up.  She doubted seriously they’d be found, but I had in mind to buy salvage lenses off the web and turn down something to put them into out of wood on Gale’s lathe.

But there was still the problem of the drive and the tripod.  I spent the next couple of years picking up junk telescopes and parts at garage sales and other thrift stores.

Collecting parts from other stores:

Primarily I was after a tracker drive and eyepieces but I ended up with a lot else.

Then, this summer I found this for $5:

Batteries are dead, telescope is trash, wrong size cove for tube. Tripod’s great. One good eyepiece. Great price. Humane Society Thrift Store July 2011.  In a thrift store environment dead batteries most equal disfunctional. They might be right. These are still dead.
 But all that can hopefully be managed.  Meanwhile, back in the Salvation Army Thrift store this summer I was down at the end of the glass counters and noticed a dusty baggie with eyepieces in it.  When the lady who sold me the telescope in 2009 finished ringing up a customer I got her attention.
“That bag full of lenses in that end counter,” I pointed.  “How much are you asking for them?”
She came for a look.  “Oh, I can’t sell those.  They told me to hold them in case the guy who bought the telescope comes back for them.” 
Then she looked at me, down at the lenses and back at me her face dawning realization.  “YOU’RE the one who bought the telescope!”
“Yeah, I am.”
 It’s still got some work ahead.  I have to do some figuring how to get a cove that fits the tube attached to the drive, if the drive can be made to work.  But something will turn up one way or another.  The Coincidence Coordinators will make certain of that.

I have a permanent position selected out in the meadow for the observatory once I’ve got something with a tracking drive put together and have hauled enough rocks and tin for walls and dome.

If I’m around long enough and if this place remains available for me to live here, I’m going to have an observatory.

Meanwhile I use StarCalc 5.73 [free download] to keep track of what’s going on in the sky, along with the Multi-Year Interactive Computer Almanac software from the US Naval Observatory for fine tuning calculations.

Old Jules

Pendulum Star

Pendulum star
Swings to and fro
While maggot-earth
Digests his legions
Tick tock
Tick tock

Minute-hand moon
Sucks tick tock tides
Through Paleozoic hours
Quaternary days
Pleistocene weeks
Tick tock
Tick tock

Sub-microscopic
Parasites
Scurry flourish
Scratch peel
Posture
And rot
Tick tock
Tick tock

Pendulum star
Swings to and fro.
Minute-hand moon
Sucks tick tock tides
Maggot-earth digests
Tick tock
Tick tock

Copyright 2003, NineLives  Press

Choose Something Like a Star– Randall Thompson
words by Robert Frost
http://youtu.be/8dg2iE2ixeE

15 Comments

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

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News from the Middle of Nowhere

Posted on September 1, 2011 by | 4 comments

Old Sol’s going through some unusual upheavals today.  I don’t recall ever seeing such an array of sunspots reported:

“GIANT SINE WAVE: Imagine a sine wave 400,000 km long. Today, NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring just such a structure. It’s an enormous filament of magnetism slithering over the sun’s northeastern limb:”

http://spaceweather.com/

Meanwhile it’s a red morning out there, so all you salesmen probably need to take warning.

Last night I was planning to haul water but I was interrupted by a wild hog meandering out from behind the truck as I came around the corner of Gale’s house.  We stood and looked at one another from about 20 feet, him undecided about whether he wanted some of me, while though I’d decided I couldn’t think of anything to do about it if he did.  When he wandered off behind a hedge I ducked inside to seal an agreement with him that we’d postpone any drama until we could each feel better about invading the personal spaces of the other.

Gale had told me he was having a lot of hogs troubling him but he didn’t mention I needed to pack a .45 walking around the place.

Maybe more later.  I’ve got to go let his chickens out.

07:45 AM – Snagged enough water to hold things together a couple of days down here without seeing any porkers.  Kay’s duck, which was missing last night when I locked down the chickens and caused me concern, flew in while I was filling the water jugs.  Eased my conscience considerable.  I hate having one of their critters come up KIA or MIA while I’m the one taking care of things.

While I was driving back down here I got to thinking about that tusker last night and the fact something’s been tearing up the pen where I keep the roosters every night.  Went out looking for hints of what might be doing it and found pig scat all around out there.  If it was there before I hadn’t noticed it and it appeared fresh.

I’m guessing whatever water source the wild hogs were using somewhere else must have dried up and motivated them with ambition to do some exploring.  It’s been a year since pigs were a problem here except for brief spatterings, a herd passing through.   I’m hoping these will follow the pattern, what’s left of them.

Tidbits you’ll be glad to know:

On this day in 1948 the Chinese formed the Peoples Republic of China, intended to create a nation of manufacturers to create all the stuff Western Europeans and US workers were having to make for themselves previously, getting their hands dirty.

On this day in 1926 Turkey began allowing civil marriage, the results of which subsequently became obvious.

On this day in 1918 the first US troops landed in Vladivostok, Russia, to help settle things down and restore the aristocrats overthrown by wossname, revolutionaries.  For those guys WWI didn’t end until 1920.

On this day in 1866, Navajo Chief Manuelito turned himself in at Fort Wingate, New Mexico, thus putting the final touches on getting all those Navajo over into the temporary [15 years] rez at Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumner bunched up with the Mescalero so’s to get the numbers down to something more tidy and manageable, which they did. [The Long Walk of the Navajo http://www.logoi.com/notes/long_walk.html ]

Old Jules

“The Java Jive” (Ink Spots, 1940)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iP6IUqrFHjw&feature=related

4 Comments

Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Animals, Astronomy, Chickens, Country Life, History, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors, Wildlife

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