I’m much thrilled about this. That outer shell is going to help haul a lot of water, but that ain’t the half of it.
That fiberglass tube feels as though it has walls half-inch thick. It’s evidently intended to take a lot of pressure. Don’t know yet what I’ll use it for.
This says it had an 8 gallon per minute capacity. Which probably means there’s an 8 gpm pump somewhere here.
Sheeze the Universe was kind to this old guy yesterday.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading
Tagged country life, environment, Events, home, homesteading, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, senior citizens, technology, thoughts
The Got me a new truck! project doesn’t appear to be going anywhere fast enough to offer any near-future prospects for getting wheels under me. Thursday morning meanderings,
I was out studying this problem again yesterday and this morning.
I’ve got a starter, but I hadn’t dared start the job because of a Catch 22. At the time the 4Runner was my only transportation and even starting it by rolling it downhill was better than no transportation. But once I got it blocked and it rolled forward a bit the blocks would be wedged in front of the wheels and I’d have no way to get them out. My mind locked into this problem, so when the battery went dead and it rolled to the other side of the meadow without starting I didn’t back up in my thinking and realize it didn’t apply anymore. I already didn’t have any transportation.
Believe it or not, that took me several months to figure out. But I finally did, and studying the situation I decided if the new starter doesn’t repair the problem I can hook a cable to the back bumper and that telephone pole behind and use the 2-ton come-along to pull it back up with the battery fully charged. The downhill roll from the telephone pole should turn it over enough to get it started. Afterward I can try Plan B to decide what to do next, but with a truck that will work if I park it on a downhill grade.
As nearly as I could figure that wheel well is the only access to the starter.
I stuck the camera in there for a better look at how much of a Commie it planned to be.
Bigger than Dallas, a man can get to the heads of both bolts holding it on. The Universe is kind to a man like me.
But first I needed to jack it up from a bumper so’s the brake disc wouldn’t be pushed up squeezing what little room I’d have to work.
And I had to get that wheel off. I’d forgotten why I always carry that wheel-puller in the truck. The hubs are from an old Isuzu Trooper I used to own and they don’t make an exact fit. When I torque down the lug nuts the wheel jams against the threads and it won’t come off without a lot of persuasion.
But there it is. Hot diggedy damn!
Easy! Easy money!
Man, people pay good money to get to do a job as easy as this one’s going to be.
And there it sits after I ran spang out of altitude, airspeed and fancy ideas. My tools are up at Gale’s under the hood of my New Truck.
Sheeze. I’ll have to bring them down next time I borrow Little Red.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Texas, Trucks
Tagged country life, Events, home, homesteading, Human Behavior, humor, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, music, musings, other, personal, psychology, random, Reflections, senior citizens, technology, thoughts
But not these:
I don’t expect anyone to like this post.
Veteran’s Day is one of those days to indulge the self-elevating act of patting ourselves on the back by public expressions of thanks to military veterans for protecting our freedoms. A day we mutually endorse a falsehood: that the endless series of military adventures US presidents have indulged in since the end of WWII contributed to freedoms we enjoy today.
Any sincere effort to thank those who actually sacrificed serving this country would involve visits to VA Hospitals where those doing the sacrificing are found. But nobody will see you and praise you for doing it because nobody else will be there, either. Aside from a few politicians looking for news bites the place will be as empty of thankers as any other day.
We veterans who served in the US services from the end of WWII until now did so for a lot of reasons. Conscription was one of those reasons until the end of the Vietnam War. Many of us volunteered, but to suggest we’d have done so if we hadn’t been threatened by conscription is ludicrous. The Vietnam War would have ended by 1967 or sooner if they’d had to rely on volunteers.
To go further and pretend the vast majority of men and women who’ve served in the all-volunteer military following Vietnam did so for patriotic reasons is equally ludicrous. Many, many did so because it provided a high paying career, excellent benefits, early retirement on a scale they could never have achieved outside the military.
True, some tiny percentage risked their lives in the pursuit of the careers they chose which involved being sent into harms way to further political interests of US presidents without Constitutional declarations of war by the US Congress.
I pondered all this in an earlier post, Abdicating Personal Responsibility to Politicians.
So today, this old vet says to you, “Thanks, but no thanks for your thanks.”
Instead, I’m offering thanks to a group of people who have actually done something positive, but who’ve not been thanked in living memory.
You won’t see any parades for these heroes today. Nobody will be patting them on the back, giving them hugs with self-aggrandizing acknowledgement of the sacrifices they make daily for this country.
You won’t catch them waving flags and posturing, strutting over their health risks constantly encountered for the service they’ve chosen. It’s their jobs. They volunteered for it, same as military volunteers chose the jobs they do. Even though on average their jobs are a lot greater threat to their health and the duration of their lives than those of cops and military servicemen.
The difference is, they can’t retire after 20 years with generous pensions. They don’t get free health care for life. And fawning patriots don’t ask them to pretend they’re John Wayne, gulp staring into the distance to voice-moving news bites. Nobody asks them for orations to give the gathered admirers something to pat themselves on the back about.
They can’t even get anyone to listen when they do say anything that might make their lives easier.
“We literally have tens of thousands of these beach whistles lying in the rip-rap around the lagoons. And tens of thousands more get screened out of the composted biosolids when we dredge the lagoons. Ladies, these aren’t biodegradable and belong in the trashcan, not the toilet. The basics of what should get flushed distills down to this: if you haven’t eaten it, or used it to wipe off something you’ve eaten, it goes in the trash. That also applies to the device that these applicators are designed to insert. Wrap ’em with a wad of Charmin if you are embarrassed by them, but please, please, please don’t flush ’em.”
http://www.poopreport.com/Consumer/poop_plant.html
But what I respect most about them is they don’t posture or swagger to call attention to themselves, they don’t whine, they don’t beg for acknowledgement or thanks. And they don’t believe they should be showered with benefits and high salaries for the service they voluntarily perform daily without complaint or thanks.
They’ve done more for this country every day of my life than any military service member I’ve ever heard of.
This old military vet’s hat goes off in salute to the men and women who work in the sewage treatment plants and pump the septic systems of this great nation this Veteran’s Day.
Thank you for your service.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Human Behavior, Politics, Uncategorized
Tagged culture, economics, economy, environment, Events, government, home, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, patriots, personal, random, Reflections, society, technology, veterans, wisdom
If you own a chainsaw and it has a primer plunger or bulb similar to the one above you might give some thought to keeping a spare around.
I’d barely started cutting when this one developed a crack and allowed air into the fuel line. I shrugged, puzzled over possible ways to plug the air leak and decided it probably couldn’t be done because of the oil and gasoline. So I asked Gale to pick one up for me in Kerrville the next day.
The place he went had a bag of these things of 87 different sizes. It wasn’t enough to know the saw model and make. No way of matching anything without the actual item to compare it to. So a $5-or-less has now taken several days out of getting firewood cut and those dead oaks threatening buildings and roofs onto the ground. Oak Wilt, Firewood and Sawmilling
There’s no wind today and I think if it weren’t for that piece of plastic I’d have both of those down and cut to firewood lengths by mid afternoon. I’m going to pick up a spare when I get a replacement. That saw’s got a lot of miles on it and it’s been a good one, but maybe it will figure it can’t die final-like until it wears out that extra primer plunger bulb. Cheap insurance.
And if the saw goes kerplunk and leaves me with one of those little hollow plastic bulbs on my hands I can probably rig a way to use it for something else if I live long enough.
One more bug on the windshield of life.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Country Life, Emergency Preparedness, Homesteading, Senior Citizens, Solitude
Tagged country life, DIY, do it yourself, emergency preparedness, home, homesteading, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, survival, technology
As you can easily see, something’s going on across the surface of Old Sol. Astrophysicists are not agreed on the issue of whether this represents further expansion of Chinese manufactured goods, or the spread of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
MAGNIFICENT SUNSPOT: One of the largest sunspots in years is rotating over the sun’s northeastern limb. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture of AR1339 during the early hours of Nov. 3rd:
Measuring some 40,000 km wide and at least twice that in length, the sprawling sunspot group is an easy target for backyard solar telescopes. Two or three of the sunspot’s dark cores are wider than Earth itself.
Naturally, such a large sunspot has potential for strong flares. NOAA forecasters estimate a 50% chance of M-class solar flares during the next 24 hours. One such eruption has already occured: An M4-flare at 2200 UT on Nov. 2nd produced a bright flash of extreme UV radiation (SDO movie) and hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) into space. The CME is not heading our way. Future CMEs could have greater effect as AR1339 turns toward Earth in the days ahead. http://spaceweather.com/
The Chinese are split on the issue, one side claiming it’s another accomplishment of their space program, the other inscrutably denying its lousy steel products manufactured to help Sol hold himself together, but the steel-quality insufficient to do that job any better than it does any other.
Meanwhile, the Occupy movements in Europe and the US have announced the entire phenomenon is the result of an awakening awareness of the injustices inherent in the ways Old Sol maintains those bands of magnetic fields.
I’m personally leaning in the direction it’s something to do with something else I haven’t figured out yet.
——————————————–
Meanwhile, nearer home, glaciologists are puzzled over the huge crack discovered in one of Antarctica’s glaciers.
Although the glacier is rumored to have been reinforced by Chinese steel there’s no unanimity as to whether the usual inferiority of the product is responsible. Some believe the rift is being caused by the growing economic disparity within the Antarctic ice fields and infiltration by Communists undermining the traditional values required to hold Antarctica together. Wall Street hired hands have rushed to assert the crack will destroy Antarctica if the one percent who caused the crack are held accountable.
I personally haven’t yet arrived at an opinion.
Old Jules
Posted in Politics
Tagged country life, culture, economy, Education, Events, home, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, musings, Nature, occupy, occupy wall street, other, personal, random, Reflections, technology, thoughts
I had a friend for a few years who lived everything the American Dream used to think it was. He was working for a steel fabrication company in Silver City, New Mexico during the 1970s doing grunt labor, but thinking. He saw around him some flaws in the ways the process sequences were performed, believed he could advance in the company by suggesting improvements.
Marsh, I’ll call him, went home nights and worked in his garage inventing a tubing bender far more efficient than the one used where he worked. After it was complete, he took it to the company, expecting praise and rewards. They shrugged, brushed him off and kept him busier at work.
So Marsh applied for a patent, began manufacturing his bender in his garage. He couldn’t keep up with the orders, so he quit his job and expanded, meanwhile inventing other improvements on what he’d seen, manufacturing and selling those, also, becoming a surprisingly wealthy man within a decade or so.
His business flourished, his children matured, and one of his sons started another business, inventing, patenting, marketing. His son became wealthier than Marsh, far more rapidly. The son, carefully examining his conscience and human needs, his business thriving, spent a million dollars and several months in Afghanistan during the early 2000s building housing, providing shelter for those left homeless by the wars there.
But during those same years Marsh began seeing his patented designs showing up in Harbor Freight and other Chinese import outlets priced lower than he could manufacture them. His patents were being violated and the US government was allowing those violations to be imported with impunity. During a Republican administration. His own inventions competing with him in stores all over the US.
Marsh was outraged and gradually the business he’d built was being destroyed by theft with the complicity of the US government.
Marsh listened to daytime talk radio a lot during those years. He got daily doses of opinion telling him the source of his problems, and those problems were caused, he allowed himself to be persuaded, by liberals in politics. When the Tea Party emerged, he attended meetings and demonstrations hoping to bring about political change, hoping somehow to save his business, his livelihood. Furious, frantic, determined, certain now, this president, this administration was out to destroy him.
Last I heard, it was doing so. His business was declining to such an extent he was being forced to lay off longtime employees vital to continued operation.
All the years I knew him Marsh was an honorable, honest, solid, hard-working man, dedicated to the betterment of himself, his employees, his country and humanity.
But somehow he missed the point, maybe because he was standing too close to the problem. Maybe because he was holding to a dream of how things are that no longer was.
Marsh, to this outsider looking in, was destroyed by a government comprised of the illusion of two parties. Both were bought-and-paid-for by people bigger than Marsh. Neither of those parties cared what happened to Marsh, to his family and employees, to the dream, the innovation, the drive, the ideal he represented.
Marsh was betrayed by the people who own the talk-radio host he listens to, who own the Tea-Party, who own every facet of this country where the decisions are made as to whether US citizens work, prosper and are rewarded for their labors rather than being merely consumers of foreign products.
Marsh didn’t belong in the Tea Party. He belonged in Occupy Wall Street.
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Current Issues, Education, Politics
Tagged business, culture, democrats, economics, economy, Education, Events, government, History, home, Human Behavior, liberals, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, occupy, occupy wall street, other, OWS, personal, politics, random, Reflections, republicans, society, tea party, technology, thoughts, wisdom
Before
Could have been firewood.
The process:
Find a dead tree
Cut it to length
Mark approximate centers for lathe
Make certain your last will and testiment is up-to-date, don your face protection and body armor, adjust the lathe to the slowest possible RPMs and mount the future beer glass in the lathe.
Finding that lowest speed is important.
Change tools and readjust as the cylinder size is reduced. Gradually the RPMs can be increased.
Trim off everything that isn’t a beer mug
When it approaches the shape you want prepare the end for the talon chuck.
The talon chuck holds it by the end so you can begin hollowing out the vessel.
Note the protrusion at the base to serve as a grip for the talon.
If your material is mesquite some filling might be needed at this point.
Gale’s been using chrysocolla for that job lately
Now you’re ready to begin hollowing it out.
A closer view:
Gale prefers to use a drill press to take out part of that center plug because it’s awkward and the speeds of the material vary and directions reverse at the center.
Then back to finishing the rough mug.
The rough part of the job done, cheated death and any more of these one more time:
Other finished, or near finished vessels:
There’s not much money in it for him, though he sells a lot of them. But you have to admit there’s something magic about turning a dead tree into a wine glass or beer mug.
Sometime soon I’ll show you some of his silversmith work.
Old Jules
Brother Coon and I couldn’t come to an agreement about the availability of indoors as acceptable behavior for a coon with a long life expectancy. Whatever I did to keep him out, half an hour later he’d be poking around trying to find a way in, eventually leading to success.
Last night I’d had a bellyfull of it. I brought the live trap in and put it down next to the sack of cat food, then went to bed. Around 3:00 am I heard the trap slam shut and a lot of ruckus. Transported trap, coon and angry all outdoors to await arraignment, trial, conviction and final disposition.
Original story here: Wake-up Call – Coon in the Living Room
Cathouse Success
For once I predicted something and it came to pass. That ice chest I salvaged out of the grader ditch actually has proved itself the popular cat-hotel I hoped it would.
Cathouse urgencies – 6:30 pm Grader Ditch Hauls
Another exciting day forming up in the Middle of Nowhere
Old Jules
Posted in 2011, Adventure, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Redneck Repairs, RedneckRepairs, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs, Wildlife
Tagged animals, cat, cats, country life, culture, Dumpster Diving, economy, emergency preparedness, environment, Events, home, homesteading, Human Behavior, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, random, Reflections, technology, thoughts, Wildlife, wisdom
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
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
Tagged animals, chicken house, Chickens, country life, culture, DIY, do it yurself, Dumpster Diving, economy, Education, environment, Events, home, homesteading, Human Behavior, humor, Life, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, other, personal, Poultry, poultry house, projects, random, Reflections, senior citizens, survival, technology
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:
Posted in 2011, Adventure, America, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Survival, Texas, Uncategorized, White Trash Repairs, Wildlife
Tagged animals, country life, culture, Dumpster Diving, environment, home, homesteading, journal, lifestyle, misc, miscellaneous, musings, Nature, personal, Reflections, senior citizens, survival, technology, thoughts, travel, wisdom
74 years old, a resident of Leavenworth, KS, in an apartment located on the VA campus. Partnered with a black shorthaired cat named Mister Midnight. (1943-2020)
Since April, 2020, this blog is maintained by Jeanne Kasten (See "About" page for further information).
https://sofarfromheaven.com/2020/04/21/au-revoir-old-jules-jack-purcell/
So Far From Heaven 
