Category Archives: Home Life

Stuff going on in my personal life.

Neighbors

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My son and a neighbor kid got into some trouble last Spring.  A minor property crime against the local grange– a stupid, boyish stunt.  That’s the first big mistake in this series.


John Law got involved and came down HARD on the two kids.  Really serious shit, as if they were career, hard-core gang leaders or something.  Second big mistake.  No one’s really responsible either– things go largely according to a pre-ordained plan in a largely manditory system.  I would have thought this could be settled better, more efficiently and with more focus on restitution and correction, by neighbors talking to neighbors, but John Law has to get his piece of the action or he feels all left out and stuff.  Instead, my first news of this came after the kids had been arrested.  Watching the excitement on Hawaii 5-O and hardly ever even getting to slap the cuffs on some kids in a small town can be a bitch I guess.  Maybe we’re all bitches now.  Some people seem to think so, or wish it were so.


Fast-forward several months.  My son’s “partner in crime” from last Spring was found dead this Saturday morning.  Someone spotted his body near a bridge a few blocks away and made an anonymous call (who does that?) to 911.  I still don’t know the cause of death and it would be irresponsible to speculate.  All we know right now is; it has been reported that foul play is not suspected.


While making a huge pot of soup from our garden vegetables, duck eggs and yearling elk heart (which is tender and wonderful– thank you, Chris) this weekend, I thought back to 1977 which is when my sister and niece were killed.  Some of our neighbors brought over prepared food for us, and it was very well received.  It’s so simple, yet it makes a lot of sense.  When you’re tragedy-struck, you probably have less, or no, appetite and you sure don’t want to fix meals or go shopping when you have all the aftermath to deal with, and the grief.  But you have to eat, so I thought of bringing the parents and surviving son some of the soup and some other things this last Sunday.


Then the doubt kicked in.  Third big mistake.  “I don’t even really know these people, and for all I know they might hate the very idea of elk heart (Granny on the Beverly Hillbillies offering ‘possum-n-grits, chicken fried skunk, or some such, comes to mind), they might be offended, or maybe they’d blame my son for what happened or something.  Maybe they don’t eat meat or these other things.”  All this stupid, inane garbage prevented me from going down there straight away.  The wife was out of town at a rehearsal, the kids need to stay on their homework—all the regular stuff adds up too.


An offer of help can always be refused, but at least you’re giving them the option and asking nothing, which is the whole point.  Isn’t it?  I’ve gone stupid and wobbly in my old age.  Yakkity yacking more and doing less, maybe.


A few days later I finally got around to going over there with some home-made sweet cider and some fresh duck eggs.  The grandmother answered the door, and I spoke to her and the mother.  They were extremely gracious, appreciative and talkative, almost fawning, but that’s not the point.  I’d decided in advance that if they slammed the door in my face I’d be OK with that.  They informed me that the kids’ father is now in the hospital in intensive care for, among other things, not eating. (sigh)


If you think someone might need a little gesture of help, and even if you think your offer is dumb, maybe you should just offer the damn help.  Git ‘er done.  But I’m not finished here;


A community social network of some kind can be a precious thing, and whether you’re an atheist, agnostic, or haven’t thought much about it, your local church organizations can and do offer that sort of network.  So long as they don’t go all hell-fire and brimstone on people, they are potentially a great value to society.  I’ve harshly questioned organized religion, and I think with good reason.  Some of them are downright evil, some have fallen in with the Tides Foundation or other global leftist organizations, but the argument isn’t all one-sided.


Time was when churches, the Rotary Club, Elks, Moose Lodge, Eagles, Granges and so on were THE centers of local community action.  Now it’s a coercive, increasingly centralized government in concert with what can only be described as communist agitators and punks (such that now even the very term “community action” connotes leftist agitation).  Which would you rather?

I am a direct descendent of God

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Sometimes when Barbara disagrees with me over something I remind her that I am a direct descendent of God and she should not be questioning my wisdom. Yeah. That goes over about as well as you think it would.

So what is the justification for my claim?

My Great Great Grandfather (on my mothers, mothers side) was William W. Davies. Read the article.

What isn’t in the article is that his two sons (reincarnated Jesus Christ and God the Father) were very, very bright and could quote large portions of the Bible verbatim. Also W. W. believed himself to be “The Holy Spirit”. Together they were The Trinity.

Hence my claim of being a direct descendent of God isn’t totally baseless and often serves as a tension breaker.

I bring this up because of a discussion in the comments here. Also of possible interest is that a portion of W. W.’s cabin is on display in a museum in Walla Walla Washington.

Barbara Ann Scott

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[This post is primarily for my amusement and for my children who will be far less confused that my average reader. Please note portions of this post are very carefully worded.]


If you read my blog frequently enough you will figure out that I married Barbara Scott and that she kept her maiden name.


What you might not know is that her full name is Barbara Ann Scott and that Barbara Ann Scott used to be very famous. Here are some videos of her when she won the gold medal in ice skating:








And when she was on the TV show, “What’s My Line”:





Yes. Wife Barbara is a little bit older than I am but she doesn’t show it. Dr. Joe’s Cure for Everything does help you live longer you know. Here is a picture from earlier this month:


Warehouse fire near Royal City

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As I was driving across central Washington on my way back to Idaho tonight I stopped to take pictures of a warehouse fire just east of Royal City on the south side of Highway 26. I’m pretty sure this is the warehouse.


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Click on the pictures to enlarge.


I’m nearly certain the warehouse contained some sort of agricultural products. It smelled like burning grass or grain.

Extremes

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Barb and I independently came to the conclusion that we should get married and didn’t really have a discussion about it until the details of the execution of said event became important. To the best of our recollection, even 35+ years ago (we were married 34 years ago) we couldn’t say that one person or the other made the suggestion to the other. “Proposal”? What’s that?

This morning son James proposed marriage to his girlfriend Kelsey. While in Paris. While at the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral.

She said yes.

I suspect someone will remember.

More fun with statistics

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From xkcd, of course. The title is “Conditional Risk” which is a morphing of “Conditional Probability” into the current situation.

I love watching lightening storms. But the most adventuresome I get while doing that is setting on my front step.

I think I have some work to do

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It is claimed that women who marry young become more in touch with their needs as they get older. Typically this awareness occurs by about age 30. Those needs are:

  1. Feel special and appreciated
  2. Feel a deep emotional connection
  3. Feel feminine, beautiful, and sexy
  4. Get hot passionate sex

If they don’t get all of their needs met with their husband they will get those particular needs met with someone else.

Barb and I were married fairly young. Perhaps I should work harder on some of those items before she reaches 30.

Back when I was a boy growing up on the farm

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Via an email from Ry I just watched a video made up of clips from a farm on the Palouse (this particular farm was near Colton Washington) in the late 1940s.

I grew up about 40 miles directly east of there. Many of the pieces of equipment were very similar to what we had on the farm about 10 years later. We still have the old pull type combine parked behind the barn. Ours was a John-Deere model 35 instead of the one with the red paint on it. I still remember riding on it. And the D-4 Caterpillar tractor we used to pull it is still in use today. It was nearly identical to the one shown in the video at the time of the pull combine days. It the mid 1960s Dad put on a bigger fuel tank, a wider seat, and the dozer blade. We still use it several times a year even though it is coming up on 70 years old. I use it to move dirt for the Boomershoot site and my brothers use it for other things as well such as clearing snow out of the driveway during the winter. During harvest the tracks would become so clean and polished by the grain stubble that you could barely look at them if the sun was shining.

We even had an old Willy’s Jeep similar to the one in the video.

Mom and Dad have some old video of some of their farming too. We used to watch the videos once or twice a year when we were growing up. I should get that digitized before it falls apart.

Our weekend

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On Saturday morning Barb and I had breakfast with our kids and their SOs. James doesn’t like his picture being taken but we managed to get a few without his his outstretched middle finger being too obvious.

IMG_1979Web2010Clockwise from the left, Joe, Barb, Xenia, John, Caleb, Kim, Kelsey, James.

And yes, we finished up the bacon before leaving.

The kids all went to PAX but Barb and I continued on to our slasher flick cabin and then we went for a hike in the woods. In the pictures below the bridge and large tree (a Douglas Fir) were here.

IMG_2001Web2010Barb wore her Boomershoot shirt and I wore a Blackwater shirt and hat. No comments or stares from anyone we saw.

IMG_2022Web2010IMG_2024Web2010Notice that I’m packing in the park? No hippies ran away in terror and no trail rage incidents broke out into gunfire.

IMG_2034Web2010It was peaceful and nice.

I’m your huckleberry

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Barb and I went “out into the wilderness” this weekend. We stayed in a cabin along Highway 20 and then made excursions into the mountains. On Sunday we went here. After driving 10 miles or so off the paved road we were surprised to see so many cars at the trailhead:


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Of course this meant we saw far more people than we expected on the trail too.


And after a mile or so in there were wooden stairs on the trail:


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Stairs? Out in the woods? They must have been put there for the people with the California license plates we saw in the parking lot.


Side note: Boomershoot coat, Blackwater hat, Blackhawk gloves, STI patch on the shoulder, STI Eagle in .40 S&W behind the right hip, spare magazine of 18 rounds and a SureFire 6P on the left hip. None of it seemed to scare the hippies.


It was sprinkling a little bit but not enough that we needed rain gear. And despite having more people than we care to see when we are out in the woods we had a nice hike and ate a few huckleberries:


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Quote of the day—James Huffman-Scott

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So you are going on vacation to a slasher flick.

James Huffman-Scott
September 4, 2010
[This was after verifying we were going to a secluded cabin in the woods for the weekend. After I acknowledged it could be expressed that way Kelsey chimed in with “I know what you did last summer.”

The place we went to was here.

Here is a picture of our cabin:IMG_2127Web2010

We heard a few gunshots on our first night which probably was the end of the slasher’s reign of terror. I brought 237 rounds of .40 S&W but didn’t get a chance to use any of it.—Joe]

Al Gore, you’ve doomed us all!

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Over the last few months on my twice monthly visits to Idaho there has been a bunch of wind turbines being erected near the Rye Grass rest area on I-90. When Barb came west on Tuesday of this week to visit me in my bunker she told me she stopped and took pictures of the turbines. “They look like something out of a science fiction movie”, she said.

Wow! It just so happens that on my return trip last Sunday I also took some pictures:

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Of course all this reminded me of something else:

Times up

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Last week Kevin posted My New Favorite Flag. I went over to have dinner and watch a DVD with son James recently. The Gadsden Flag on his living room wall reminded me of Kevin’s post so I told him, “There is a variation of that flag now. I saw it on a blog yesterday.”


“Oh?”, James said. James has a strong tendency toward cynicism and I could hear it in his voice this time.


I figured I would be able to put a little bit of a crack that cynical wall he puts up sometimes and so I described the flag to him, “Instead of the snake just being coiled it’s in the middle of a strike with the fangs bared. And instead of ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ it says, ‘Times Up'”. I’m sure I had a smirk on my face. That should break through I thought.


He didn’t even look at me. He just sighed and asked, “And where is there any evidence of anyone doing something about it being ‘times up’?”


“Let’s watch our show now”, I told him.

Our mission is to defend the homeland

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Chet came by my office today and started talking about “When we were kids.” We are about double the age of most of our co-workers and have a little more in common with each other than we do some of the other people. We both grew up on farms. He in Kansas. And, of course, me in Idaho. It gives us a perspective that “some of the younger folk” don’t really appreciate. We remember when most of the homes had outhouses instead of indoor toilets. And our parents lived through the “Great Depression”. We remember what our parents told us about what they and others had to do to make it through. I keep wondering if that will someday be referred to as “GD I” and this go around “GD II” but that is another story.

We talk about economics quite a bit. “What is it going to be like this time?”, we ask each other. Back then it was a world-wide thing too. That was what enabled Hitler to gain power.

This time it wasn’t economics that Chet wanted to talk about.

“Remember those old movies about WW II when the Germans would stop someone on the train and demand their papers?”, he asked.

My officemate had stepped out for bit and I knew we were going to have “a session”. I leaned my chair back and put my feet up on my desk and said, “Yeah. I remember.”

He continued, “We used to think how scary that was. How terrible it was they would do something like that. Right?”

“Absolutely!”, I agreed.

“There is an article in the New York Times today about how our government is doing that today on trains that run between New York City and Detroit”, he said.

I told him I had just read a blog post about that same sort of thing this morning. We chatted a while about it. Neither of us knowing what we could really do about it. “But it sure ain’t right.” we agreed. We always used to believe it couldn’t happen here. We were “special”. We were a free country and that sort of thing just didn’t happen here. It couldn’t happen here.

But it is. It is happening here, right now. And as Roberta X said this morning, Getting Used To It Doesn’t Make It Right.

My officemate returned and Chet left with us both shaking our heads in sadness.

I found the New York Times article and after I read it I went over the Chet’s office. “The government is claiming that if they are within 100 miles of an international border or the three mile limit off the coast they don’t need warrant or anything. They can just grab people they think are ‘of interest’ and demand they prove they are citizens”, I told him. “Right here in this office we are within 100 miles of the Canadian border.” I let it sink in for a couple seconds then continued, “Think of what 100 miles inland from both coasts, the Gulf, and both the north and south borders cover. I’ll bet 50% of the U.S. population is covered by that.”

Chet and I didn’t have much to say after that you wouldn’t have already concluded. We could be headed for some scary times. We talked about it for a couple minutes and went back to work. I think we just got used to it.

If it makes you feel any better about the whole thing–the agent in charge of the Rochester station told the New York Times, “Our mission is to defend the homeland.”

Yeah, I’m sure it is. I think I heard that line in a movie when I was a kid.

Live blogging from the Boomershoot site

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The nearest houses are at least 500 yards away and I hear just the crackle of the high voltage power line, some birds and a distant combine. I have WiFi and my Windows Phone 7 to blog with. I like it here.


I dropped some stuff off and am straightening some things up. Then I have to drive back to my underground bunker near Seattle. I wish I could stay longer.

Overheard at the buffet

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Woman at cashier of dinner buffet to her companion: Oh! I forgot my money. You will have to pay for my dinner.

Companion: Okay. No problem.

Woman to cashier: He has to pay before he can f**k me.

Cashier (shocked): That isn’t the way it is supposed to work here.

Woman: Oh!

[pause]

Woman (with perplexed look on her face) to her companion: Does this mean I’m supposed to pay you?

Cashier: [closes eyes and shakes her head]

I heard enough more to verify the woman wasn’t some bimbo. She was playing a mind game for sport with the cashier and the people listening in.

Quote of the day–Barbara Scott

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Can we drive anyplace we want to go after this?


We can drive to the Bahamas, right?


Barbara Scott
August 9, 2010
After going through TSA at the St. Louis International Airport.
[Her experience was rather ordinary compared to mine. But I have mine on video for mocking later when I’m a little more removed from the situation.


In other news we have treated all the chigger bites, removed all the ticks, and are waiting for our plane to board and take us back to the Seattle area. Once we get home we will remove our sweat soaked clothes and take a shower.


It will be good to be back home in our underground bunker.–Joe]

Real Men…

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…and women should have available, and know how to use, either a micrometer or a good caliper that reads in thousandths of an inch and/or hundredths of a millimeter.  I don’t see how a person could get through life without one.  They’re cheap and they last a long time.  A set of hole gauges and snap gauges is good also, but the calipers are essential.


That’s in my book.


Jeff Cooper wrote about some other things;



Before the young man leaves home, there are certain things he should know and certain skills he should acquire, apart from any state-sponsored activity. Certainly the youngster should be taught to swim, strongly and safely, at distance. And young people of either sex should be taught to drive a motor vehicle, and if at all possible, how to fly a light airplane. I believe a youngster should be taught the rudiments of hand-to-hand combat, unarmed, together with basic survival skills. The list is long, but it is a parent’s duty to make sure that the child does not go forth into the world helpless in the face of its perils. Shooting, of course, is our business, and shooting should not be left up to the state.


Or something like that.  I recall he had learning to handle a motorcycle in there too.


My son took it upon himself to row a boat across Hood Canal a few weeks ago without telling anyone.  We saw him heading over, until he disappeared from sight.


I was miffed.  That is, until I remembered some of the crazy things I did at that age (16) like piloting a canoe (two canoes, four people) up one side of Priest Lake in Idaho, by moonlight, and then navigating up the channel to Upper Priest Lake by starlight (after moondown) then landing and setting up camp on a low cliff.  We figured flashlights were for sissies, back then.  Nowadays I carry one.  Must be getting soft.


But I digress.  Being able to measure the difference between .678″ and .710″ can be pretty important, and it’s not complicated.  This sort of thing comes up often while talking to customers.  Most of them have the tools and the skill, but a disappointing minority do not.

I sucked all the bits out of this town

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I’m in a small town in central Missouri. I’ve been accessing the Internet via Internet Sharing with my cell phone and that worked well for a while. Then the data transfer rate gradually went to zero. Rebooting the phone and computer didn’t help. I started “borrowing” wireless bandwidth from someone with a SSID of “Linksys” (it is my understanding they are the largest free Internet provider in the country). That went away about two hours ago and I’m back on the cell phone which gives me a few bits every once in a while before drying up.


It’s like I am pumping water from a well and I pulled the water table down below all the intake pipes in the town. I’m mostly sucking air now with just an occasional few spurts of water.


Another indication of the low bit table is that my new phone with the weak cell signal (known issue, we are working on it) runs its battery dead, even while plugged into USB power, trying to sync my email from work.


Until I leave town blogging and email responses will be marginal at best.

Floating down the river

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Today we took a little trip down the Middle Fork of the Clearwater River. We put into the river a little bit east of Kooskia and got out a little bit east of Kamiah. Here are some pictures:



Barbara, Joe, Ellie, Dow, Kim, Bryan, Nancy, Willie, Mike.



Kim in the water. Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.



Ellie and Dow. Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.



Bryan. Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.



Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.



Bryan, Nancy, Willie, Mike. Taken with a Windows Phone 7 by Asus.





Video from my video glasses.