Tag Archives: survival

Mobs, Violent Protests, and Riots

Posted on October 19, 2011 by | 8 comments

I find my views about rioting to be possibly artificially drawn away from magnetic north by several personal experiences with them, as well as having been an adult during the giant city burning episodes around the time of the MLK killing. 

From personal observation and experience I feel a high level of certainty that every riot since the 1960s was and is heavily infiltrated by police or other government provocateurs, pushing, inflaming and instigating to direct events toward violence.  I’m not suggesting the riots wouldn’t have happened without them.  The riots would almost certainly have happened anyway.   I honestly don’t have a clue why they’re doing it.

But my first experience with it was Halloween, 1960, in Borger, Texas. During the days before Halloween the kids in high school were all gearing up for it, but I was a newbie in town, had no reason to anticipate what they saw as the normal way to celebrate Halloween. Wild and wooly oil-field worker traditions combined with a boys-will-be-boys tolerance on the part of adults left the options wide open.

The newspaper the next day described it as a quieter than usual Halloween with the main damage being someone starting a bulldozer at a construction site and driving it through a house, nobody hurt.

A few hundred teenagers drunk on main street armed with eggs, veggies, rocks, jars of gasoline, cornering police paddy wagon with barrage after barrage, following them back to the station house and setting fire to the lawn was just a beginning.  I never saw anything like it, even during the riots at the University of Texas I was a part of a decade later.

My point is, rioting is fun, it’s joyful, it’s seductive if the anonymity of a mob can be maintained and when there are no consequences. It doesn’t take much to get people rioting under those circumstances.

On the other hand, the day after Kent State and afterward throughout the remainder of the Vietnam War the temptation to riot was always there so long as it was someone else stepping off the curb into the street. The police and a lot of the rest of the country made it plain by word and attitude they felt tolerance for what happened at Kent State and wouldn’t mind seeing it again.

I recall what a letdown it was when I realized I wasn’t the gutsy hotshot I had people thinking I was, that I was just a loudmouth coward when it came to offering myself up for what I claimed I believed in by making myself a target for all those cops to practice on.

I don’t think things are much different now. My near-certainty about riots in the US is that the government response will determine whether there are riots, or won’t be.  I don’t give advice, but if I did I’d suggest anyone involved in a peaceful demonstration immediately remove himself/herself from the area as rapidly as possible at the first sign of violence.

I’d suggest carefully exploring the route and area of the demonstration on maps and on the ground beforehand.  Pre-arranged escape routes memorized to allow getting the hell out of dodge.  Cell phones set with standby text messages to friends and cohorts to get the message out immediately that things are going sour.  But I won’t suggest it.

But I don’t have a lot of reason to think having a riot going on and being in the center of it is a place I’d want to spend a lot of time.

Old Jules

 

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Posted in 1960's, 1970's, 2011, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Politics, Survival, Uncategorized

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Building A Salvage Chicken-Hilton – One Man Band

Posted on October 18, 2011 by | 10 comments

Follow-up construction details:

I’ve mentioned and shown pics of the chicken-house built from discarded shower doors, etc., several times here.

“A chicken-house fabricated entirely from salvage, discarded shower doors, camper shell roof, refrigerator shelves, whatever came to hand free”

White Trash Repairs: Throwing Down the Gauntlet

From the ground:

I said when I made the post I’d be talking more about it, but way led onto way and I never got around to doing it. 

This was a one-man-band project.  The footprint of that structure has about an inch-or-less of topsoil over hardpan caliche or limestone.  Digging holes for the uprights wasn’t something I wanted to contemplate.

I knew I wanted the pickup camper as a roof, the shower-doors as part of the walls, wanted uprights with lateral stability without digging into limestone.  But otherwise it was plan-as-you go, driven partly by material availability.

Those lower walls are two sides of a huge packing crate I picked up for $5 from a guy in Kerrville.  Bought 30# of large lag-screws [$1.00 per pound] from Habitat for Humanity Recycling Store for the project because I anticipated difficulties in the lateral stability department.  The shower doors were free.  The 4x4s were from the same guy who sold me the packing crate.

I used the crate-sides to get three of the uprights generally in place by bolting them together.  Trust me when I tell you this ought to be a 2-man job.  I fudged on a lot of things by not paying a lot of attention to right-angles because I couldn’t be two places at once and knew I wasn’t going to live forever.

I took about a week building it, but probably it could have been done in a day with two people working.

As you can see I trenched below the lower walls and dug to bedrock, only an inch or two, to level the lower walls and provide a base for the corner posts.

Before putting the camper shell on top I built an interior frame and stabilized it with a steel bed frame salvaged from a junk pile:

Once that was in place I ran the front bumper of the truck up against it from whatever angles I could get to it, hooked a chain to the uprights from other angles pushing and pulling it with the truck to test the lateral strength.  We get some high winds and I didn’t want it coming down, even if the additional strength the camper shell structure would add became fractured.

I constructed a lean-to ramp using 4 2x12s and positioned the camper shell diagonally on it, skidded it up with a come-along until I had it in place, then bolted it to the top frame.  As I was finishing, Gale dropped down to see how I was doing and helped a lot during the final positioning of the shell.

The camper shell was missing the door, so for ventilation I used salvaged refrigerator shelving.  It keeps the predators out but allows a good breeze.  But to keep out the water I added the additional planks at an angle sloping away from the roof runoff.

Other than that there wasn’t much to it.

Old Jules

Three Dog Night– One Man Band

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Poultry, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Texas, Thrift Stores, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs

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Wake-up Call – Coon in the Living Room

Posted on October 17, 2011 by | 7 comments

Sheeze.  I was lying in there meditating, preparing my spirit for the coming day when I heard a rustling in the other room.  I ignored it at first, figuring it was just one of the cats took advantage of the window screen that doesn’t latch convincingly.  But gradually I focused because somebody was having a party in there.

As I considered the awakening possibilities an opinion formed that it was probably Tabby as the most likely candidate, her being the youngest and most imaginative.  Now, completely focused I listened for more hints until the sound of something falling nudged my curiosity enough to pull me out from under the blanket.

When I came through the door I couldn’t see any cat, but the window screen was pulled open far enough to admit a large cat.  No sign of the offender still, though as I walked over for a closer look.

Then out from under the layers of books and other belongings a large coon face glared at me, hissed and threatened.  I didn’t like this a bit.  There was an escape route through the window, but I was near enough the way out Brother Coon mightn’t consider it the best option.  I didn’t want him coming further into this maze of hiding places.  This cabin isn’t big enough for me and a coon.

I stepped slightly away from the route through the window, eyes locked to his, baring my teeth, growling and snarling, him baring his, then stood stock still.  Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef in the final scene of the Good Bad Ugly.  It seemed to last forever.

But while the tension never eased, like Tuco, I saw his eyes working toward that route outdoors.   My arms were spread to increase my threatening appearance and my hand was near an open bag of pinto beans.  I allowed my hand to creep toward it, then drew and fired a handful of pintos at the coon.

He didn’t have the strength of his convictions.  No Lee Van Cleef, old Brother Coon.  He was out that window faster than I can type it.  I probably should add, I’m having a bit of difficulty typing.  My hands are still shaking a bit.  Clint Eastwood, I ain’t. 

————————————–

Ms Cholla, I feel obliged to update you, wasn’t there for headcount again last night.  This time I was more canny, looked right away over at the rooster compound and there she was, searching and poking around for a way in.  No problem for me.  If she wants to live with the damned roosters it suits me just fine.

————————————————

Spent most of the day yesterday trying to get the Documents and Settings saved from this going-kerplunk comp into some sort of form to allow it all to be transferred to the Thrift Store comp, but no joy.   Kept getting error messages after a few hours at a time of the old machine considering the matter.

Just saying.

Old Jules

5:30 am – That coon’s been back on the porch three times since the post.  He’s standing on his hind legs trying to look in the window or playing with the edge of the door trying to get back in.  But thus far, he’s just a smidgen too canny to give me a shot at him through the window screen. 

He needs to figure out something else to do with his time if he wants to live until daybreak.

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, Chickens, Country Life, Free-ranging-chickens, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Poultry, Solitude, Survival, Uncategorized

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Best Quick and Dirty Movie Scenes Ever – Baggage Check

Posted on October 14, 2011 by | 5 comments

There’s a strange logic here:

Life’s full of choices of this sort but we rarely recognize them.

 

There are several of these, difficult to pick one over another:

We’ve probably all experienced this thing with a pesky fly.

 

This one’s in a class all its own

 

I still have a vivid recollection of seeing this for the first time 60 years ago and wanting to get under my seat at the theater.

 

These two scenes almost belong in the same movie.  Chilling.

 Cabaret – Tomorrow Belongs to Me – “Do you think you can control them?”

http://youtu.be/3EE_BoCw9zk

 Panzerlied (Battle of the Bulge with english intro)  “Too young!  They’re too young!”

http://youtu.be/8JDkdc246QQ

Zulu – The final attack – A brief history of the European conquest of everywhere else.  “They don’t have any tenors among them.  That’s for sure.”

It all sort of runs together:  “Tell your sweetheart not to pine, to be glad her boy’s in line.”

Yankee Doodle Dandy http://youtu.be/2R1jiVcIGcg

Patton – “At least you’ll be able to tell them you didn’t spend it shovelling shit in Louisiana.”

 

Followed by this:

Network – Mad as Hell Scene  – “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!”

 

Cool Hand Luke – “I don’t care if it rains or freezes.”

 

Treasure of Sierra Madre – “Badges?  We don’t nee no stinkin badges”

http://wwyoutubehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGcVhoHdRFow.youtube.com/embed/MsVi2RqE7ek

North by Northwest – Climbing the American ladder of success

 

The Alamo – “When I was a boy any girl would turn up a bunch of trees like that, cut a bunch down and one for a ridge pole and build herself a cabin alongside the other.  Seems like all anyone would ever need.”

 

The Outlaw Josie Wales parleys with 10 Bears – “Dying ain’t so hard for people like you and me.  It’s living that’s hard.  Governments don’t live here.  It’s people who live here.  I’m saying people can live here together without butchering one another.”

 

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Posted in 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, 1970's, Adventure, Human Behavior, Movies, Music, Native Americans, Uncategorized, YouTube

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Occupy Utopia

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | 43 comments

Chaos just isn't all that rare

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs about the ‘Occupy [fill in blank] phenomenon.  The hints of panic from the powerful, the ambiguous hopes of the demonstrators, the near-certainty what’s happening is both the beginnings of a time of public expression about dissatisfaction, and a manifestion of unsatisfied expectations.

Seeing all that brings insistently to mind how intrusive the illusions of a utopian ideal penetrate and embed themselves in the tiny fragment of humanity where chaos took a break long enough for non-chaos to become the expectation.  Mainly in Europe, Japan, the US, Australia and Canada post-WWII.

For the remainder of the world chaos never went to sleep and never expected it to slumber.  Africa, the Middle East, much of South America, Cambodia, Vietnam, the former USSR and other Eastern Block countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan have all experienced so much chaos within living memory there’s probably no danger of them occupying Wall Street.

It might be worth noting it’s an illusion being protested.  Copshops and politicians have never ceased being corrupt in the US, Europe, Japan, anywhere.  The super-wealthy were never not-greedy, never unwilling to sell their countries and their souls to become wealthier.  Religious zealots have never ceased being willing to slaughter disbelievers, rob them, enslave them, though they’ve briefly been restrained somewhat inside defined boundaries since WWII. 

The protests are against the entire history of human behavior.

It might also be worth shaking the head in horror and awe that this comes as a surprise to anyone.  Where have these people been for the past half-century while populations were slaughtering themselves and one another all over the planet except where  they lived?  How could they have come to live inside some bubble of belief that the venal aren’t venal, the greedy aren’t greedy and the corrupt aren’t corrupt?

The bubble is probably an artifact of improved communications, television, public education turning a blind eye to anything outside the sphere being brainwashed into the malleable brain tissue of those vulnerable to it.

Suddenly the bubble bursts.  Chaos yawns, stretches and begins to reawaken.

Old Jules

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Posted in Adventure, America, Communication, Current Issues, History, Human Behavior, Relationships, Solitude, Survival

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Pack Goats for the Elderly and a Youngish Hermit

Posted on October 12, 2011 by | 6 comments

I didn’t know I was joking when I composed this post a couple of days ago.  But even though Jeanne’s visited me here and knows me better than anyone else, when she read it she thought it was so outrageous I must be joking.  After I explained I was serious and consider it a viable alternative she thought about it a day and just told me again she likes the blog entry as a joke.  But she’s really uncomfortable about the concept as a serious possibility I might try living this way.

So I suppose I must be joking unless I decide it’s the right way to go.  But I’m concerned about the bearings on bicycle wheels.  I’m thinking maybe light motorcycle wheels might hold up better:

The financial constraints involved in trying to get the old F350 capable of pulling a travel trailer and the unknowns involved in why it was left on this place when Gale and Kay bought the property are seeming a bit overwhelming at the moment.  That, combined with the uncertainties of whether I can find an old travel trailer I can fix adequately got me thinking about this.

A couple of years ago when I thought my life might proceed differently than it has, there was a middling possibility I might have an extended trip into the high mountains left in me.  My thought at the time was to spend a month or two in the Gila Wilderness in the immediate vicinity of the Continental Divide.

But at that altitude and the years creeping up on me, combined with the length of the stay that would be required, caused me to think I didn’t want to do it carrying a backpack the way I’ve always done in the past.  My initial thought was a burro, but the fact is hauling a burro’s a bit of a problem.

A few times in the mountains, decades ago, I encountered packers with llamas and talked with them about it, but those animals are as difficult in the size department as donkeys.

However, I ran into someone once in the Gila with a string of goats doing the packing.  Goats, to my way of thinking, have a lot of advantages over the larger animals insofar as transport.  Considering it led me to join some Yahoo Goat Packing groups:

packgoat · All Things Packgoat
 
I began doing some shopping around looking for a couple of young goats I might train, but intervening events led me to see that another long trip into the mountains isn’t in the cards for me in the immediate future.  And further consideration about that particular use for them in that area also mightn’t be the best.  They’d be a magnet for large predators, risky to leave unattended, and they’d need a lot of attention.
 
But thinking about pack goats during the years since has caused me to think there might be a role for them to play in a more urban setting.  Namely, for older folks who could hike to the store for groceries, but have difficulties carrying them home without a vehicle.  Maybe a goat cart, for that matter.
Feeding them would be no problem because goats will eat just about anything and thrive on it.
 
But a pack goat would provide a lot more mobility than a shopping cart for people living on the streets and under bridges, as well.  A goat can go almost anywhere a person can, climb into places where a person would have a lof of problems climbing into.   The ability to easily move residency out of the clusters of street people living under bridges would keep the owner out of police sweeps, out of reach predatory humans preying on the people living under those conditions.
 
In fact, I’ve been acquainted over the years with several people living in small house-wagons traveling around pulled by burro-power as a lifestyle and talked with them about it at some length.  It strikes me a person with a willingness to walk alongside the contraption instead of riding in it might actually be able to construct a small, light house on an aluminum frame with bicycle wheels sturdy enough to carry everything it took to live, move without buying gasoline, big enough for four cats.
Maybe something along these lines only larger
 Something large enough to haul some luxuries such as a camp stove, some groceries, a place out of the weather, but small enough to get out-of-sight come nightfall.
 Nothing as big, or elaborate at this, but something a lot lighter a couple, or four goats, maximum, could pull.
 Maybe about that size, but constructed with bicycle wheels, ball bearing axles, built on an aluminum frame from salvage aluminum rails and door frames.  Actually aluminum mightn’t be durable enough as the frame.  Maybe steel bed frame angle iron frame as a base for everything above aluminum.
 
Equipped with photovoltaic charged LED lawn lights to allow night reading, cooking, etc, a chuck box and a small gas fridge.  Maybe a guy would have to move up to a pair of donkeys to pull it.  But maybe not.
 
I’m thinking maybe two bicycles welded outside a steel bed frame with a tie-rod between the handle-bars behind a yoke might serve, and a swiveling tail-wheel [bicycle wheel] to stabilize the weight and balance on the overhang behind the two rear bicycle wheels might be a good starting place visualizing the possibility.
 
I’m going to have to puzzle about this more as a potential way to keep living without going under a bridge if circumstances demand I have an escape route.
But here are a few other concept pics from the Practical Action website, Cabelas, and elsewhere, just to remind myself of the directions my mind’s going on all this:
 
 
Old Jules
Frankie Laine, Mule Train

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs, Wildlife

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Cathouse urgencies

Posted on October 9, 2011 by | 7 comments
 

Salvaged wheelbarrow, salvaged nightstand and salvaged material stapled over door opening

Salvaged microwave stripped of components with the back cut off makes a great means of keeping the cat food dry

Heavy rain and the cool snap last got me scrambling to give the cats a way to get out of the weather and keep the food dry.  Looks as though it will serve, but I’ve got to work on several more shelters.  They’re there, but need upgrading a bit. 

Cat houses and such

I’ll confess I’m behind the curve on a lot of things.  I should have re-wrapped that electrical tape around the busted phone line before the rain hit.  Internet’s back in tin-can telephone speeds this morning.

Artful Communications – White Trash Repairs 3

Old Jules

Gordon Lightfoot – Early Morning Rain (Live in Chicago – 1979)

 

6:30 PM:  GRADER DITCH HAULS!

Gale and Kay were working the Mesquite Show in Fredericksburg this weekend, so I borrowed Little Red today and went into town for necessaries.  But when I’m on the road I always shop the grader ditches and investigate any potentially useful items thrown or blown out of vehicles.  Today was great insofar as upgrading cathouses:

The top was missing on this, but otherwise it's in good shape

The cats will be fighting over which gets to sleep inside this

I find a lot of these lids in the ditches and this one almost fits.

 

Also found these rubber bungie cords near another bunch of trash in the ditch

Old Jules

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Posted in 2011, Country Life, Emergency Preparedness, Free, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs

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The Home-Built Bedini Monopole Energizer

Posted on October 6, 2011 by | 2 comments
A number of you readers are experimenting with alternative energy sources.  I don’t have one of these assembled yet, though I’m gradually accumulating the pieces. 

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Bedini_Monopole3/

The group is composed of a lot of back-yard experimenters who are putting them together and testing, altering, testing, etc.  The group site has hundreds of helpful pictures of the work members are doing and how they’re doing it, what results they’re getting.

I’m not saying it will work, but the people working on them are continuing with it and expending a lot of energy communicating what they’re doing.  Evidently they’re devoted because what they’re seeing is sufficient to convince them it’s worth the effort.

I’m thinking a couple of you I’m aware of who read here might be interested in going over there for a looksee.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Bedini_Monopole3/

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Posted in 2011, Communication, Emergency Preparedness, Survival

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More Future Me: Bass-ackwards Letter to the Past

Posted on September 30, 2011 by | 9 comments

I was discussing  the Future Me post with Hydrox and his littermate, Naiad, a few days ago and they suggested some other letters to the guy I was would probably be in order.  Those two were there through those years wondering with me where the next bag of Purina cat food would be coming from after I gave us a Y2K [ https://sofarfromheaven.com/category/y2k/].

To be delivered January 1, 2002.

“Hi Guy,

“This is me, Hydrox and Niaid, talking to you from 2011.
You are in for a lot of strange experiences over the next few years, and some profoundly difficult times.  You’re going to do a lot of things you’ve never dreamed of doing, just to get by month-to-month.  You deliberately chose to give yourself a Y2K, whether anyone else had one or not.  Trust me, it’s the best decision you ever made.
 I can tell you now:
“Don’t waste your time trying to get teaching jobs, any job where you can take advantage of your education and job history.  Save yourself a lot of energy and discouragement.  [Hydrox suggests I mention it also won’t buy any cat food.]
“That part of you is gone.  They don’t want any white male in his late 50s, no matter what he might have done in the past.  You are going to have to become really good at some unconventional approaches to survival to just squeeze by without going to live under a bridge somewhere. [Naiad says to tell Niaid to stay the hell away from that pool of water running out of the pipe behind the motel next door and quit worrying about Mehitabel bullying.  She’s about to get hers.]

“All that Y2K credit history and the mistooken belief the IRS would collapse is catching up with you.

“You’ve always succeeded in everything you did.  Now you’re basing your decisions on that history, but you’re failing to comprehend that everything’s changed.  Don’t waste your life in all those months of self-doubt and guilt, judging yourself against a set of standards and assumptions you learned from Grand-dad and you’ve always tried to live by.   Those are dead.

“You are still you.  You’re still strong, and you still have a million things to be grateful for.  What those human resources departments believe is meaningless, doesn’t say a thing about whom and what you are because they reject you.

[Hydrox says to tell Hydrox he can save himself a lot of grief by staying out of that bucket of waste grease behind the Chinese restaurant in front of the apartment.  And if he gets it on him, tell him to just belly up to the bar and get it shampooed off in the bathtub.  Licking it will provide a lingering case of the Egyptian Ducksquirts.]

“You’ve always relied on yourself and you now have to start doing it again in ways you never thought possible.  You are about to have to become a person living in the shadows, off the government paperwork, inside the underground economy.  The sooner you understand there’s no place for you in the ordinary job market the better off you’ll be.

“Old Deano,  [A Strange Way of Thinking] over in Belen’s going to try to talk you into learning blackjack.  You’ll want to shrug and resist.  My advice to you, is ponder it.  Don’t resist so hard, but don’t believe anything he, nor anyone else tells you about the nuts and bolts of playing it until you study it all and think it through.  What’s said by the experts is largely BS.

[Hydrox and Naiad both want you to urgently inform their counterparts NOT to stay indoors when you go off working 11pm to 7am at that damned motel every night and to keep a sharp eye out for those damned cat-killing dogs.]

“Don’t let anything surprise you except by hindsight, as it surprises me, all these years later in 2011.

“These are just short-term morsels.  Deano’s been dead so long I barely remember him.

“You, my friend, are entering a brave new world.  Savor every minute of it.  Maybe I’ll send you an email occasionally to hint you along.

“Hang in there amigo.  You can do it.”

[Hydrox and Niaid in two-part harmony to Mehitabel:  “YOU ain’t here, BITCH!]

Yourself, 10,000 blackjack hands in the future, and after it’s a dim memory.

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Posted in Communication, Creative Writing, Human Behavior, Internet, Y2K

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Roof and Chimney Leaks — White Trash Repairs

Posted on September 16, 2011 by | 27 comments

Edited in Preface:  Someone’s told me this post is a bit grim, which floored me.  That is NOT what this is all about.  I might well be the happiest man on the planet, the most joyful and grateful for the roof over his head, for the animalcules, for every moment of this life I’m blessed with.  I am sure as hell not complaining about the way I live in this post, not poking around looking for sympathy from anyone.  There’s not one of you I’d trade lives with.

Please allow your mind to read what follows with a smile.  I love this crap.  This post is me laughing at myself, laughing at whatever life might throw at me, telling life, “Do your damnedest!  I’ll keep coming.”

“Science,”  Hydrox the jellicle cat insists, “You observe, you formulate a premise, you test the premise and revise it, then you test again.  Just make damned certain it’s right this time.”  Hydrox is one of the two felines indoors during cool, and especially during inclement weather.   “If science isn’t cutting it try some engineering.”

He takes a jaundiced view of hiding under something to get away from thunder only to get drenched by a lousy roof repair experiment.   Hydrox is attuned Level 3 Reiki.

“Reiki Masters,” he assures me, ” At least cat Reiki Masters, don’t appreciate being interrupted from doing high-minded things by getting sloshed because of criminal negligence on the part of a human being.”

Back when I was attuning him several people thought this mightn’t be a good thing.  It’s been a mixed blessing.

That chimney pipe was leaking badly back when it still rained.  But this repair job hasn’t had the test of a good rainfall yet.

Edit:  This larger diameter stovepipe came from Habitat for Humanity Thrift Store [toward the bottom here:   Curiouser and curiouser ] for a couple of bucks.  If the current fix doesn’t work I’ll cut the down-end with the angle cutter to match the slope of the roof, cut the top shorter than the chimney vent and sleeve the chimney with it.  I thinks it will block of a lot, if not all the pesky intrusion of rain into the chimney pipe.

As you can see, I’ve smeared tar all over the the joints in the sheet metal roof, in addition to the customized chimney.  That didn’t work too well, I’ll confess.  Got some other things to try though.  The light brown or tan you see is the foam you get at the hardware store that is touted as being able to plug large leaks by expanding into them to fill in the space.  No joy on that.

The chimney problem’s crucial.  Water hitting the side of it goes inside, runs down to the elbow in the bedroom but doesn’t slow down much:

[The gray hat’s a XXXXXX John B Stetson I picked up at a silent auction a few years ago for $10.  Man who owned but never wore it died and left it to me, though we never met.]

Naturally there’s a backup plan to keep water from coming down on the bed in the unlikely event it rains:

This has worked pretty well in the light rain arena.  Hasn’t been tested in a bull goose honest-to-goodness wind blowing rain sideways daddy-long-legs storm.

But we didn’t reach a consensus, the felines etc. on the matter of roof repairs and leaks.  Shiva the cow-cat argues, “What the hell!  Here’s a perfect spot for both those indoor cats in a thunderstorm.  What’s the big deal?  If they don’t like it throw them outdoors with Tabby and me.

“I’m sick and tired of all the age discrimination around here in favor of geriatric cats.”

Meanwhile:

Old Jules

Bob Dylan– Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall

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Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Homesteading, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Thrift Stores, White Trash Repairs

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