Tag Archives: personal

Certainties, Self-Examination and BS

Posted on July 10, 2012 by | 11 comments

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

If I hadn’t carefully avoided ever typing the words, “I’m dismantling Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle here,”  I’d find it easier to understand how a casual acquaintance could call this blog BS.  Anyone who’s certain Heisenberg’s correct usually has a conviction at a religious-level and genuflects muttering Hail Marys and Amens to the concept enough times per day to keep it fresh.  If I’d ever come right out and flatly stated it’s a fig-newton of the imagination I’d expect to be damned from hell to breakfast.

But I haven’t.

So I’m forced to conclude there must be something else I’ve posted here during the past year that a person considering himself prudent, reasonable, intelligent, could disagree with.  If I had time I’d scroll back over the entries and try to figure out what it could be.  Seems to me everything I’ve ever posted here is so patently obvious as to be absolutely outside the scope of rational argument.

For instance, I’ve frequently implied, but probably never come out and actually said I consider cops to be lowlife scum no better than the people they’re sworn to chase and catch.  Motivated by greed, lust for power, and cowardly, weak-kneed, vacuous need to find something inside themselves to rhyme with an ambiguous concept of self-worth.  Admittedly, it’s probably an over-generalization.  No doubt there are exceptions. 

Exceptions that prove the rule.

Same with politicians, rabid rabbit-frightened patriots, flag wavers, lawyers, CEOs of multi-national corporations, Texans, people with “WHOOPTEEDOO!  I’M A VETERAN” bumper stickers and mostly the rest of us.  Whomever we might be.

What’s not to like, what’s to disagree with in any of that?

But, of course, I’m a man with a weakness for brutal, honest self-examination, so I’m going to have to think more on all this.  Possibly scan over some past posts in an effort to find some slip I’ve made in my posts someone might be able to construe as BS.

Old Jules

11 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Astronomy, Communication, Current Issues, Human Behavior, Police, Politics, Relationships, Science, Senior Citizens

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Unplanned Protrusions

Posted on June 23, 2012 by | 15 comments

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

A person with his ear to the ground listening for possibilities and interference from the Coincidence Coordinators can find himself in unexpected places, which I did.  Yesterday.

Had to go into town for groceries and animal necessities, but I’d been watching that bus for about six weeks.  Thought it might be time to begin feeling around in the head of the man who owns it. 

We were sitting in the car lot office circling the issue, nobody putting a toe in the water when a Lincoln pulled up in front and a guy got out, shouting, “I put serious stuff up my nose!”  He was shouting it non-verbally, but body language communicates sufficiently sometimes.

He jitterbugged into the office – it was clear he and the owner knew one another – and pointed across the lot to an older model American somewhat small car. 

Tweaker talking a mile a minute:  I’ve got checks out I need to beat to the bank with cash.  Would you buy that car from me for $1400 cash right now?

Owner:  No.

Tweaker:  $1300?

Owner:  No.

This progress worked its way down $100 at a time to $400, the owner nodding negative.  The tweaker paused.  “No?”

Owner:  NO.  I’ve got a cash flow problem here.  When I sold you that car I’d taken it on a trade in.

Tweaker turns to me:  Would you buy it?:

Me:  No.  That ain’t my kind of car.

Tweaker:  Huh.  I guess I’d better try to sell it to someone else then.  I’ll get my stuff out of it.

Tweaker goes out to the Chevi, takes a lot of stuff out of the back seat and carries it over to the Lincoln.  Meanwhile, I’m thinking.

Me to owner:  Would it be any problem for you if I bought that car from him?

Owner:  He bought it from me.  I don’t have anything to do with it now.

So, I got to the car about the same time as the tweaker returned to it, asked him about it.  Keep in mind, he’d talked to me in the office a few minutes earlier, asked if I’d buy it for $400.

Tweaker:  Would you buy it for $1400.

Me, scowling:  No

Tweaker:  $1300?

Me:  No.  Do you remember me?  I was in there with you and him a few minutes ago.

Tweaker:  Sure.  Would you give me $1200?

Me:  No.

We worked our way back down, me assuring him I honestly wasn’t certain I was interested at any price.  So we went over it, looking at everything, listening to the engine, driving it around the parking lot.

Tweaker:  Are you going to buy it?

Me:  You only got down to $600.  We aren’t down to talking about it yet.

Tweaker:  But you haven’t made any offer.

Me:  I’ll give you $400 lock stock and barrel.  No sales tax, no nothing else.

Tweaker:  That’s just the amount I was hoping for.

Turned out the papers from him buying it hadn’t come back from DVM yet, so I sent him off to get whatever was needed to sign it over to me and he left, saying he’d be back there at 2:00 pm.  I went off to a couple of thrift shops and returned at 2:00.  He was nowhere to be seen, so I hung around chewing the fat with the car lot owner until he arrived back and we did the motions of transferring things him jittering and jotting, talking incoherently.  We had a blank form and he signed it, wrote out a bill of sale on a piece of notebook paper.  Barely readable.

The story should have ended there, me coming back here to get Gale to haul me to town to pick it up.  But the tweaker had a lot of dances and fast peter-piper-picked-a-pail-of-pickle-peppers left in him he needed to get out.  Asked me if he should give me $100 back on the car.  No idea why.

Me:  No.  We’re okay. 

Eventually I nudged him friendly out to the Lincoln so he could go take care of the bank.  Went back inside the office shaking my head, made arrangements to leave it in the lot a few hours, or until this morning so’s I could come pick it up.  We all shook our heads at one another, shrugged, shook our heads some more and I was on the road home.

Gale was ecstatic, knowing he won’t be loaning me Little Red anymore for my necessaries.

Me, I’m just tickled the Coincidence Coordinators are so much smarter than me.  When the time comes I’ve figured out I don’t need it I’m comfortable I won’t lose money on it, provided it still runs.  But even as junk I won’t lose much if it comes to that.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2012, Texas, Transportation

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Art Work Update from Jeanne

Posted on June 13, 2012 by | 16 comments

Last week when I finally cleared the decks and got out all the pens again, I realized how critical it seemed for me to start drawing every day. In the meantime I came across this little book while I was shelving at the library:

It describes Resistance and how to combat it. Those of you who are doing creative work already know what I’m talking about. But knowing the characteristics of Resistance and having a plan to fight it helps. I’m going to have to own this book just in case I ever see myself getting away from drawing again.

So here are a few photos for you showing what I’ve been working on.These aren’t scans, so the photo angles will be a bit off.

Although I find the asymmetrical ones very fun to work on, I also demand that I retain my ability to do the symmetrical ones free-hand. All those curlicues in the middle area compensate somewhat for where it got off track. I hope.

I rarely get out a ruler, but on this one I did for the next stage. I just used it to mark dots where I wanted to start those outside edge designs. Once I had one that I thought was round, and when I got a circular mat cut for it, it turned out it wasn’t round at all. So now I’m more careful about that, either making sure it’s round or not getting round mats!

Here’s one more from the end of last night:
I don’t think it’s finished, but at this point it’s definitely time to walk away and not look at it for a few days.

However, I couldn’t help bringing it over to Paint Shop Pro to see what I could come up with:
Love it!

Here’s a close-up of an old one that I had already matted about 6 years ago. I had pens that weren’t as good as the ones I use now, so I’m brightening it up with better colors:
I guess that center motif has always been a favorite of mine. I need to break away from that.

Just for fun, here’s a photo of the above taken under a black light:

A photo of the work table. My son took a card table and cut off the legs so it’s only about a foot high.  I sit on a cushion on the floor. I have a clamp-on light and a clamp-on magnifier. It works great since I can move it around easily and can use it for anything up to a couple of feet square.
Oh, I also worked on that long strip one lying across the pens. But I’ll show you that one again when it’s finished.
I hope everyone has a good creative day!
Jeanne

 

16 Comments

Posted in 2012, Admin., Art, Books, Mandala Dreams, Mandalas

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The Smoke We Called Living

Posted on June 10, 2012 by | 12 comments

A few days ago Wayne, the guy everyone’s looking at in this pic sent it to me.  Brought back memories of a time when I had a dozen suits in the closet and more ties than would fit on a rack across the closet door.  That photo must be from 1975, 1976.  Leading edge watch I was wearing must have cost a bundle.

I’m the one with the chin.  The meataxe is the one without one.  Ken was his name.  If my memory serves me rightly he died sometime in the late 1980s, early ’90s and left a lot more people glad he did than wished he didn’t.  By that time he’d been far enough out of my life long enough so’s I didn’t give much of a damn one way or another.  Ken never amounted to much this lifetime, but he narrowly missed a few good bets, geography and time being a key factor.  He’d have fit right in a number of places when goose-stepping was more popular as a pastime.

Old Wayne’s stuck with that career all these decades, fought his way up the ladder to success, winding down now.  When we re-established contact a few months ago I’d thought for a long time he was probably dead, too.  But he’s a couple of months away from hanging up his gun, instead.  Retiring.  Cleaning out his desk, I reckons.

I’m hoping before I head off into the sunset, but after he finishes getting all that behind him, we’ll get out on a river bank somewhere and watch the bobbers on a trotline, scramble up some catfish and eggs for breakfast.   Him winding down, me just listening and watching.

For a human being, getting success behind ain’t always easy.  Tough drug  to kick most times, but a man has to do it.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2012, Adventure, America, Communication, Country Life, Human Behavior, Senior Citizens

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Mandala Dreams update from Jeanne

Posted on June 7, 2012 by | 7 comments

Hi everyone, I thought I’d sneak a  post in here when Old Jules isn’t looking.

Since I got back from New Mexico last weekend, I’ve been clearing space to draw again so I thought I’d tell you a little more about what I do with these gel pens.

When a drawing is finished, it’s never really finished because I can take original drawings and make hundreds of variations on the computer using Paint Shop Pro 7. The first picture is a really old drawing I did when I was just starting to get serious about it. Soon after it was finished, I was unhappy with it for several reasons. I  hadn’t developed the ability to plan for margins and also lacked the skill for keeping it symmetrical.  (Although it did sell, I never got a good scan of it because of the size. I’ve since learned that Kinko’s has a huge scanner so now I use their services for large drawings. This one is about 12×12 inches.)

But the second version is a favorite that I always enjoy looking at, and I frequently use it for greeting cards. It’s also in the running as a possible variation for fabric.  Same drawing, just tweaked with PS Pro 7.

The originals are always the best for viewing in person because I use a lot of metallic and fluorescent inks which don’t show in a reproduction, but playing with changing colors and shapes  gives me more variety for printed copies and fabric.  I’ve even used the manipulations as starting places for entirely new drawings.

Here’s a mandala that really is special just because of the capability of the particular gel pen I was using. There is a line of Sakura gel pens that actually makes an outline on the edge of the color as it’s drawn across the surface. If you enlarge this piece, you’ll see how much more intricate this becomes.  Although I’m pretty good at fine line drawings, these pens add even more detail. The finished size of this drawing (not the paper)  is about 4 1/2 x 4 1/2 inches.
This is  also an old one, but it shows off this added line feature really well.

Since I’m only working one part-time job right now, I have time to draw again, and I’m working on several half-finished pieces. I also have an order for some greeting cards that just need to be assembled since I already have the photo reproductions.  I also intend to get back to those soldered glass pendants since I have a stack of those that I set aside when the soldering started to drive me nuts. I listed three on Etsy last night and will probably put up several more soon: http://www.etsy.co/shop/Mandaladreamer).

Here’s what I was working on this evening:
This one will be fun when it’s finished because all those fluorescent inks glow under a black light.

I also sorted through my entire collection of pens and threw out at least a couple of dozen that didn’t survive not being used frequently last winter, as gel pens  to dry out easily. Here’s what’s left:

Old Jules suggested that I write a post about my recent trip to New Mexico, but since the main thing I came back with was a determination to keep  drawing and work harder at sharing it, I figured I’d post this instead.

~Jeanne (Mandala56)

7 Comments

Posted in 2012, Admin., Adventure, Art, Mandalas

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Real Smart Cookies, Hermits and Shadow Cats

Posted on May 30, 2012 by | 3 comments

I’m having a rough time gearing up to do any outside work and my brain’s too fuzzy to try sorting out the maze of computations and comparisons on the offline comp.  I’ll be able to clear my conscience in a little while by waving the bloody flag at some other shadows, but for the moment I’m at loose ends.

A couple of days ago I was sitting in the swing bench hanging out of a dead tree when I heard a vehicle approaching down the hill.  Almost never happens, this is maybe the second time in several years, except Gale, who honks at the top of the hill as he approaches.  Simple country courtesy to a guy who’s made no secret of the fact he often runs around buckassed naked except for a pair of shoes during hot weather.

Me, since summer’s not hardened into anything desparate yet, sitting on that swing in a pair of jockey short skivvies and tennis shoes.  Naturally the sound of an approaching vehicle made me want to dress up a bit for who the hell ever it might be.

If this were December, no problem.  I’d have been spiffy as hell, ready with a joyful tapdance.  Or if they came by air later in the summer, maybe an orange jump suit.

So, I ran indoors, threw on my cleanest pair of work-dirty britches, hoisted up my galluses and re-emerged on the porch in time to see the new neighbor pull up in front of the cabin.  Likely just bored and felt like talking to someone a while.  He’s not used to living in a place where people don’t necessarily seek out company with any frequency, don’t yearn to fill the gaps of self-conversation with answers to the question, “What is this thing?” referring to a maze of wires, coils, magnets connected to a solar collector, a parabolic dish and radioesque antenna stretched across the meadow.

And not knowing what to make of the answer, “I ain’t saying!”

But we sat a couple of hours, anyway, pleasant hours, talking about this and that.  Heavy equipment.  Land.  Animals.  How many different big machines he’s got up there and how well they do the jobs.  How it was in Korea when he was there in 1959 compared to how it was when I was there in 1963.

During which time his dog slinked in, hair standing on end, bristling.  The dog got loose up at his place and  followed him down here, turned out.  He got up, scolded it gently and put it in the cab of the truck.  I didn’t learn until later during the head count when I put the chickens in the fortress that one was missing.  The Communist Americauna hen.

He’d come down here once before, you might recall, immediately after he bought the place, and we talked briefly.

Fact is, he and I are both so hard of hearing it’s fairly obvious each of us is mostly only hearing our own half of the conversation.  Which is probably why he came to visit, I reckons.  More personable than talking to a television set or radio.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in 2012, America, Animals, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior

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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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Morning Gratitude Affirmations

Posted on May 17, 2012 by | 4 comments

A previous blog post from April 10, 2005

Hokay.  I try to think of five particularly communistic things going on in my life every morning, every evening, during the day, to find reasons for being grateful for.  It’s a ritual I try to practice constantly, but if I begin the day with it, it’s a lot easier to remember for the rest of the day.

Soooooo.

I’m going to let the numbers on the lottery draw last night be my first, even though it’s really easy.  Those numbers did good and I have a lot of good feeling about what hit last night.  It’s cheating, but I’m going to be grateful for that anyway.

Hokay.  Number two.  It snowed last night.  It’s April, everything was budded out, and it damned well snowed.  Maybe you think I’m not grateful, but I am.  If the frost gets those buds for a third time there ain’t going to be any apples, apricots, grapes, pecans, but there’s always another year, and we need the moisture, probably more than we need the fruit this year.  It’s been a long drought and the moisture deficit isn’t entirely made up, even with all the rain and snow this winter.  Yeah.  I’m grateful.  Yes, I am.  I can feel it, reluctant, squirming, fighting every inch of the way, but grateful is emerging.

Number 3.  Tres.  I’m grateful for these affirmations.  That’s an easy one too, cheating, but they’ve had an enormous influence on my life for the past decade, and sometimes I forget to be grateful for knowing how good they are for me.  And besides, it fills a slot, allowing me not to have to confide to you what some of the ‘really communist’ troubles I’m going to have to be grateful for before I get past these affirmations in my private mind, this morning.  But those are none of your business, so I’m going to try to keep this clean and well lighted.

Number 4.  Quatro.  Lessee.  A cat just took a dump on the rug over there across the room.  Knows better than that, but did it anyway.  It means, hopefully, that the cat was communicating to me the litter box is getting too full.  I’m grateful that cat reminded me of my neglect.  I haven’t cleaned it up, but when I do I will examine the stool and make certain the cat wasn’t telling me something else, something more important.  I’m grateful a cat will tell a person willing to listen what’s going on with it, what sort of health problems might be hidden there in that pea brain, wanting to come out but not knowing how.

Number 5:  Half an hour after daybreak and the wind’s coming back up outside.  I’m grateful for that wind, that howling and clattering of things loose on the porch, the rabid windchimes, the cold air whistling in around the old wooden frames of the windows.

Maybe you think I’m not grateful for that wind, but I am.  Here’s why.

Hmmmmm.  Hmmmmmm.  I am.  Just give me a minute here.

Ahhhh..  I’m grateful for that wind because it’s going to melt the snow quickly.  Maybe even soon enough to save the blossoms and buds.  Maybe that old wind will just evaporate enough of the snow, good old wind, temperature 37 degrees F, maybe it will have all that snow gone in no time at all and the new grapevines won’t lose their buds, the apples will be okay.

A lot of people mightn’t be grateful for that wind howling to blue blazes out there, me sipping my coffee here, typing, feeling the cold air on my bare ankles, but I am.  Yes, I am.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2000's, Adventure, Animals, Country Life, Human Behavior, Lottery, New Mexico, NM, Placitas, Spirituality

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Nocturnal Target Practice? Poachers? Or Just Shooting a Prowler?

Posted on May 16, 2012 by | 3 comments

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

1:55 am I must have been on the verge of awakening anyway.  Someone fired off six rounds from what might have been a .22 magnum rimfire pistol, rapid, but somewhat spaced.  Then a pause, maybe to reload, then a single shot.  Close enough and loud enough to get one of the roosters crowing and me considering the matter.

Then, 2:15 am, ten, maybe 13 rapid fire shots from a large-bore autoloading pistol.  Afterward, silence.

It’s none of my affair, but I’ll confess to lying there awake pondering it all.  Doesn’t make any sense at all.  That first six shots sounded aimed, maybe someone shooting a coon, hitting, but not getting a killing shot.  Reloading, issuing a coup d’grace. 

Okay.  But what about the second set of shots, thinks I.  Something didn’t die, or run away?  Someone crawling around amongst the ticks and rattlers looking for a target to shoot back at?

What the hell?

I don’t mean to be nit-picky and overly critical, but I’m thinking it might have been poachers who didn’t have a clue. 

Dammit, that isn’t the way you road-hunt deer.  You use a .22, spot it between the fences, drop it with one shot, get it into the trunk or back of the truck and get out of Dodge.  And you don’t road-hunt on a road where there’s only one way out [back the way you came], such as this one.

That’s all assuming it’s outsiders.  Anyone living around here hungry for deer meat would just knock one on the head with a hammer daytimes when they’re trying to run them out of the front yard.

Okay, poachers road-hunting seem unlikely.

On the other hand, those cops from Beaumont who rent the lease half-mile southeast of here were up there a few days ago.  Maybe they just got noisy-drunk again and had a firefight over one of their lady friends who sometimes squeal and go shrill after midnight.  That might make sense.

Or maybe the new neighbor was just trying out his night-vision on something moved in the bushes and the dog barked.

Hell, I don’t know.  Ain’t my affair.  I’ll keep an eye open for the vultures circling, anyway.

Old Jules

3 Comments

Posted in Adventure, America, Country Life, Human Behavior, Police, Texas

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