Hotdogs Roasting On An Open Fire

~My friend Mark Stamps Sunday evening on Beaver Lake (these were marshmallows, but you get the idea)

I wonder if the gal who wrote the line "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire..." ever roasted an Oscar Meyer. If she would have, I'm betting the line might have gone, "Hotdogs roasting on an open fire...". I'd be willing to bet a large package of Ballpark Franks on that. In any event, I'll keep you posted...

Cold Log Cabin Night

This would be a pretty good place to be on a cold rainy night like tonight. Fire up the cast iron dutch oven filled with your favorite winter gruel or porridge fixin's and a Sam Adams Winter Ale or 2 and the next thing you know you'll be ready for a John Wayne movie, providing the old microwave works well enough to pop up a couple bags of Orville Redenbacher's. With any luck, you might have a little egg nog left over from Christmas Eve for sipping while you wait for Ol' John to get in his first gun fight of the evening. Of course, now that I think about it, you could do all this just about anywhere, except for maybe the southern 2/3's of California. I'm sure at least some of the things mentioned here are known to cause cancer in The Golden State.

Oh, and as always, if you or any of your I.M. force should be caught or killed, the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. And, if anything further develops, I'll keep you posted....

It's Not Unusual....

Word on the street is tens of thousands of goomers received a GoPro camera for Christmas: I was one of them. This picture was taken with the wide-angle lens setting. So far it looks like the GoPro takes great outdoor video and pretty good indoor, providing the lighting's good. The jury's still out on the still picture quality, but I'm guessing it's not going to be close to the Nikon D5000. When the lighting's right, however, daytime outdoor video is cinema quality, and you're not likely to go better than that. In fairness to the GoPro folks, these darn things were developed for outdoor video, not indoor still pictures. Since I don't sky dive, mountain climb or ski the Rocky Mountain triple blacks, I'll have to come up with some other uses for this bad boy. Maybe I'll get a chance to video the Duster Man catching the world record flathead below Bagnell Dam (which I'm confident he's going to do) or Klietus as he single handedly sets the controlled burn record in Barry County Missouri (I'm referring to the intentional burn, not unintentional: apparently Tom Jones holds the Missouri State record in the uncontrolled burn category). That gives me an idea: a time delayed brush pile burn. Everyone would of course want to see that. YouTube is chocked full of skydiving video montages, but I've yet to come across a time delayed brush pile burn. I think that might be worthy of a go. I'll keep you posted....

PS. I guess the cat's out of the bag. Tom Jones is "Almost Uncle Tom" and yes, that's the Tom Jones of Engineering fame...not the guy who sang...

It's not unusual to be loved by anyone,
It's not unusual to have fun with anyone,
But when I see you hanging about with anyone,
It's not unusual, it happens every day...and so on

More Bacon

DRY-RUB UNCURED HABANERO BACON

If you found this site while doing a bacon search (and I'm betting you did), we're not in the bacon business. But as a public service, I can point you to some fine folks who are. You can find them at huckberry.com It's where I found the bacon picture. 

The huckberry folks call this particular slab "dry-rub uncured habanero bacon". I'm betting it's pretty darn good. If you try it, Give Marsha a call with your assesment-I'm betting she'll want some if it's any good. But don't expect her to pay full price and if there's not at least one coupon involved....forget it. Again, I'm betting this bacon passes the taste test. I'll keep you posted.... 

PS. I have no professional affiliation with huckberry.com, but since I've recently used a few pictures from their site, I felt it only fair to give them a plug. I'm betting they won't mind.

Missing Elf

 Looks like Santa's missing an elf!

Red Christmas Barn Lights

It's time to replace the red Christmas lights on the barn. Maybe next year I'll put lights all the way around the roof line. Now that I think about it, that's a good idea. Maybe Aunt Dee Dee can find some good quality red LCD Christmas lights at a post Christmas yard sale for a few cents on the dollar, as soon as the 2015 yard sale season kicks off. I'm guessing that's not until March or so. I may have to settle for light strings in assorted colors, which would be OK. But red seems to work well and it's not often you see a Missouri barn tricked out with red Christmas lights. I wonder if "Almost Uncle Tom" has plans to install Christmas lights on his barn? I'll have to head up that way soon to check things out first hand. Then I'll report back with a Cole County Barn Report. And for the record, those are hard to come by. I'll keep you posted....

Christmas Morning Bacon

I wonder if anyone woke up this morning to discover a nice big slab of country cured bacon under their tree? If they did, I bet they were pleasantly surprised. I don't know anyone who doesn't like bacon, except for maybe the Waterman or Epstein family. There's nothing wrong with not eating bacon, but it's hard to imagine breakfast at Cracker Barrel without it.
I've decided to put bacon on my  list of all-time highly recommended items. I'll keep you posted of further developments in that area. In the meantime, Merry Christmas!

Lost Art At Christmas

I remember learning how to write a letter and address an envelope in grade school. I believe it was in Miss McCutheon's 4th grade class but it could have been the 3rd grade with Mrs. Shackleford. I think we learned how to write in cursive in the 3rd grade as well. We didn't start that program until right after Christmas and our Christmas present from our teacher that year was a 4 pack of ball point ink pens; 1 each of blue, black, green and red. Anyway, by the time we were in the 4th grade, we knew how to write a letter in cursive, address an envelope and send it through the US postal service to whomever it was intended. Emails were about 30 years in the future and for most of us, cell phones, tweets, instagram and the like were even further away from 1969. Aside from the telephone, the mail was about the only viable method in that era of communicating with a distant friend or family member.

I don't know for sure, but my guess is they no longer teach letter writing in school. Consequently, about the only way you'll receive a hand written letter in the mail these days is from a "substantially senior" citizen who doesn't have access to a computer and doesn't know your cell number.
My great grandma (my Mom's grandmother) received this letter in February of 1917,  just a few weeks before the United States entered World War 1 by declaring war on Germany. I'm assuming the two friends hadn't communicated in a while as the letter begins "Well I suppose you will be surprised to get this letter...". The letter goes on to ask how my great-grandma and her family have been doing and other pleasantries. At the time of the "post" my great-grandma would have been 21 years old. I wonder what she would have gotten for Christmas that year. I wonder if anyone knows what she might have received for her second Christmas in December of 1896 when she was less than 2 years old. I suppose we'll never know the answer, but for some reason I thought about that tonight after watching her great-great-great granddaughter open presents on the eve of her second Christmas.

Christmas eve for two little girls separated by 118 years. Now that's something to think about!

Marketing Mirrors And Lights

The primary key to successfully marketing to men, is to make us think that if we buy your product, say for instance a backpack, we'll end up HERE doing THIS. Remember, for marketing to be successful, it only has to appear to be believable.

Chrysler is one of  the great examples of how to market to men. Their marketing success is the primary reason why there are at least 3 used late model jeeps on every big and small car lot from the east coast to the west and in every city and small town in-between, including McGirk, Missouri (assuming McGirk has at least one used car lot). The bigger lots will usually have closer to nine used Jeeps and sometimes more than that. Why you ask? I'll share it with you:
The fine folks at Chrysler would have you believe that if you purchase one of their Jeeps (especially a Jeep Rubicon), you'll immediately become the modern day equivalent of Paul Bunyon, Rudyard Kipling and Jeremiah Johnson all rolled into one. Then, the first Monday after you've financed your brand new $49,000 jeep over a 7 year period, you wake up to discover you're still Fred Smith working for Spacely Sprockets and living in an old rental trailer "down by the river". But durn, that commercial on Monday Night Football made the guy driving that darn jeep look so doggone cool. Dang-it!

As it relates to marketing to men and other related matters, I'll keep you posted....

Plenty Of Rocks

I wonder if the Volkart boys ever built a rock fort when they were kids growing up in Moniteau County? I don't think the Rolla Boys ever thought of building one in Phelps County, but we should have. If there was one thing we had a lot of in our neck of the woods, it was rocks. We had enough rocks to build a new high school if we could have thought of a way to trick a few kids from the other neighborhood into hauling them up from the creek that ran from behind our house all the way back to Bray's Lake. Now that I think about it, it's probably a good thing we didn't. A rock wall caving in on a bunch of 12 year old boys would have probably not turned out well. I never tried it, but I suspect hiding a broken leg from your mom would have been more difficult than it sounds, even back in 1972.

I copied the above picture off the Huckberry.com web site. I don't know where this picture was taken, but I'm guessing the roofless structure was once someone's home, or possibly a shed or a barn. Wait a minute, wait a minute...I'm having de-ja vu here. I think maybe I've used this picture before. Time to get some new pictures: I'll keep you posted....

Log Cabin Accommodations

As a kid, my friends and I spent a lot of our time building "forts". The crown jewel of our fort portfolio was "the cabin", which has been mentioned before and will likely be mentioned again in the future.
The cabin had 3 beds; one bunk bed that Steve and Mike slept on and a single for myself since I was a little bigger at the time than my two friends. Each of the beds were made out of 2x4's and plywood and were completely sufficient to meet our needs at the time.

Today, our Southwest Missouri fort has more favorable accommodations than the old one did, but interestingly performs pretty much the same function. I don't think I could have envisioned that some 30 years later I'd end up building an adult version of our ultimate boyhood fort. Who would have known.

I thought about Steve and Mike when I took this picture the other day and wondered how they recall our overall log cabin operation of 1972-75. One of these days I need to contact them to see if they have a picture of our old cabin anywhere in their family picture archives. If they come up with one, I'll share it on a future post.
On this and other matters, I'll of course keep you posted.

Budder and Doug

On a recent visit from St. Louis, Douglas (the bulldog) offered up a close inspection of "The Budderman". Budder seemed unfazed by Doug's in your face demeanor and showed no signs of concern about getting slimed by his 4 legged buddy. Doug is used to babies and Budder is used to K9's, so they seemed to tolerate each other just fine. I'll keep you posted....

Cast Iron Cooking

You're just not going to "Go no better" than kidney beans and weinies in a cast iron skillet simmering on a cast iron wood stove. I threw in a slice of cheese and some steak seasoning to liven things up a bit, and dang it was good eating! The fire was powered by a previously standing dead white oak that gave up the tree ghost on our place a couple of years ago, which is a rarity for white oaks unless they're really old. Anyway, Bear Claw Chris Lapp would have been proud. I'll keep you posted as cast iron skillet meals develop...

Lighting

Lighting plays a big part in picture taking, so I'm told. I thought the picture of this light turned out quite nicely. Regarding noteworthy lighting developments, I'll keep you posted....

Life Of Solitude

~Every picture has a story behind it...or in it

 I once met the old fella who lived on the boat you see to the left side of this picture. I don't recall his name, so I'll just refer to him as John. The guy who introduced us told me John's story the next day after John had headed off to wherever it was he was headed next. He'd stopped off to visit the folks we were staying with at Gull Cove and that's how I ran into him. He was a nice guy, and quite as I recall: at least he was quite in my direction.

The story was, John's wife had died a couple of years earlier. After some time had passed, John decided he was going to leave the prototypical world behind and spend the rest of his time on the water, motoring up and down the west coast of North America. I recall thinking it was too bad he couldn't have done this while his wife was alive, but then it may not have been something he would have otherwise had the desire to do. I can't imagine that it didn't get old, spending most of your time alone on the water day and night, but apparently it worked for John. It also worked for Dick Proenneke, only Dick moved to the Alaskan wilderness and lived by himself for 30 years in a little log cabin he'd built from scratch: no power, no running water, and a long bush plane ride to the nearest human beings (not to mention the nearest McDonald's).

To me, these are the kinds of things that sound cool from a distance, but in reality, it'd be a rare bird who could pull it off for more than a handful of days, in my estimation.
Anyway, hats off to John and I hope this finds him doing well if it finds him. If I hear of any updates on Ol' John, I'll of course keep you posted...

Fuller-Mart

The other day I came home and noticed these leaves on the door mat that sits in front of our front door (an appropriate place for a door mat). The leaves had been arranged by the wind exactly as you see them here. It looked like someone had placed them there, but they hadn't. After I took the picture with the D5500, the thought struck me that Pottery Barn would get somewhere between $68 and $100 for a mat like this. I then thought about putting it on Craigs List for $50, but the wind kicked up and blew the darn leaves all over the place before I could get it in the house....Dangit! As a result, I won't be going into the doormat business anytime soon. If that changes, I'll keep you posted...

PS. Had Alfred Fuller gone door to door selling door mats instead of brushes in 1906, he might have become Fuller-Mart instead of the Fuller Brush Company, and Sam Walton would have had to find some other line of work. It looks like Alfred did OK anyway, as his company is still in business after well over 100 years of selling stuff. They haven't expanded much, however, as their main product line appears to still be brushes and brooms. Now that's something to think about.

Originals

When most of us were kids we probably didn't give much thought to how we or our friends were going to turn out once everyone was "all grown up". I don't recall ever thinking about that while running around in the seemingly endless woods behind my boyhood home. But as I looked through the photos I'd taken a few weeks ago at our annual get-together, it struck me that I had grown up with a pretty good group of friends.
Aside from the fact that the old cats in this picture are all contributing members of society, each of these men is still married to his 1st wife. And as my Granddad might have said, "That's somethin' to think about."
Should there be further developments, I'll keep you posted....  

Old Tools

Everything old has a story to tell. The story doesn't have to be book worthy to be meaningful or interesting. Old tools are an example of that. Yesterday Dad gave me a bucket full of old hand tools that used to belong to his Dad, who passed away when Dad was just 11. One of the items in it was a bone saw, which looks a lot like a hacksaw. If Dad hadn't told me what it was I probably wouldn't have known. I asked if his Dad had worked in a meat processing plant at some point in his life and he said no; the saw was just for their personal use. Interesting when you consider that 75 years ago regular folks had a use for a bone saw. Not too many folks around these parts butcher their own cows and pigs these days. Most of us leave that up to the guys that handle the meat way before it arrives at Sam's Club or the neighborhood Piggly Wiggly.

There's a chance that after having sat dormant for nearly 70 years, my Grandad's old saw might get put to use next year on a deer or maybe even an elk if one wonders by (according to Bear Claw Chris Lapp of Jeremiah Johnson fame, "An elk don't know how many feet a horse have, stupid!"). We don't have any elk in these parts but maybe our good friend "Cole County Tom Jones" will import one onto his Missouri river-bottom property. If he does, one of Tom's friends will likely shoot it or run over it with a truck: enter the bone saw.

On the subject of handing down old tools, my Gransfors Bruks splitting mall might end up in a story some day after I'm long gone. I've split quite a bit of wood with it so far and hope to split a lot more before I'm too worn out to swing it. Maybe some day one of my grandkids will be writing a short story about it, telling how their old Papa used to use it to split firewood, way back when regular folks used to split their own firewood.
On that thought, I'll keep you posted....

Christmas Stories

~Ace, Mick and me with our dog "Dusty" Christmas Morning 1969

Once again the holiday season is upon us. Each year when I drag the decorations down from the attic, it seems like I just finished putting them back up there. As they say, where does the time go?

As a kid, Christmas seemed to last a long time, probably due to fact we were off school for two glorious weeks and didn't have to go back until after New Years. I think we started thinking about Christmas as soon as Mom brought home the current year's "Sears Wish Book". We were the envy of the neighborhood kids in the Christmas catalogue department. Mom worked for Sears, so she'd bring home our copy before the ink was dry. As a back up, Dad worked for the post office, so it was safe to assume our home had one of the very first copies of that full color retail book of dreams, filled with all the latest toys and assorted Christmas trinkets that all kids highly coveted in the 1960's and 70's. What a wonderful time to be a kid!

As I look at this photo taken in our rural Rolla home on Christmas morning 1969, I recall vividly our gifts that year. Ace with his Sears and Roebuck acoustic guitar, Mick with a doctor's kit, and as you can see, a new football helmet for myself. I believe that was also the year of the Feely Meely game, Creeple People, an erector set, the farm addition of See and Say, and of course Mick's famous red cowboy hat. There were other assorted toys and trinkets to be sure, most of which were ordered by Mom from the Sears Wish Book. I still vividly recall going through that catalogue day after day and wearing out the pages between late summer and the cut off order date for most items contained inside. My brothers and I went over and over each page of that catalogue with a fine tooth comb, making sure we hadn't missed anything and fantasizing about what we might actually get for Christmas. Well, not every page: we spent most of our time in the section that contained "boys toys". That's right: there was a section for boys and a section for girls. The concept of gender neutral had yet to be invented. I'd like to see Walmart or Toy's 'R' Us try to pull that off today. 

Anyway, we'd circle the items we hoped to get and write our names next to the corresponding pictures. We knew we wouldn't get all of the stuff we asked for, but figured the more we circled the better the chance we'd have of maximizing our individual hauls. 

Mick would have still been fully on board the Santa Claus program that year, and was under the impression the Wish Book was just for generating ideas that Mom and Dad would then pass along to Santa. It must have worked, because I seem to recall little bother usually made the biggest haul between the 3 of us. Dang-it Ace: why did you have to go and spoil it for me when I was still in the first grade! You always did like to be the first to pass along shocking information (glad I don't harbor any ill feelings about that).

Where was I: oh yeah...as it relates to Christmas in the 60's, I'll keep you posted.... 

~Putting up Christmas Lights 2014

Monthly Fees

I'm no Suzie Orman (thank goodness or our kids would have two moms and zero dads) but here's some advice from a guy most of you don't know from Jeremiah Johnson: if at all possible avoid services that charge an ongoing monthly fee.
As an example, I just read an add in this morning's paper for a GPS service that STARTS at ONLY $14.99 a month. Let's just call that $15 a month and multiply it by 12. That's a service you may or may not be able to live without that STARTS at $180 per year. If your annual income is $30,000, you've just committed .6% of it for a service who claims they can locate you in the unlikely event you fall down a well or get lost inside Mega-Low Mart shopping for widgets. Maybe you need their service and maybe you don't, but one thing's for sure: they want you to THINK you need it and their goal is lock your hind-end into a potential life long monthly income stream (for them) if they can.

This is just an example and although I'm only using it as one, the point is, consider trying to avoid as many of the myriad services that you possibly can who want to lock you into a monthly fee that STARTS at ONLY blah blah blah blah blah. I'm thinking if we cancelled only half the monthly service fees we currently pay, I bet we could afford at least one more dog. That is, until the first time we took it to All-Vets and gave them a chance to perform all the services on our brand new dog that they "recommend" we run. Dang it, now that I think about it, they're going to get our money one way or the other!
On this and other money matters, I'll keep you posted....

PS. Currently, there is no monthly service fee for participating in "Old and Ridiculous". In the interest of full disclosure, however, a rumor has recently surfaced that Tim Cook and the fine folks at APPLE are interested in purchasing the rights for an undisclosed 3 figure amount. I'll keep you posted as things develop...

Campfire Tales

When I was a kid we loved camping out "back in the woods" behind our rural Missouri neighborhood home. Prior to reaching the age of majority (13), parental instructions were "no camp fires", so of course the first thing we did once we settled on a campsite was establish a nice campfire. I'm sure we came home smelling like smoke and I don't recall how we got by with it. I'm guessing maybe we washed our smoke filled clothes before our moms had a chance to smell them. Then again, maybe as long as we made it home alive our moms turned a blind eye. We were after-all country kids who for the most part came from relatively hardy stock.

After all these years I've never tired of sitting around a campfire and listening to friends tell stories about mostly ridiculous things. Like the first time my friend Tony (pictured above) went goose hunting as a kid and shot his first goose. His excitement quickly abated, however, when the game warden (who just happened to be standing near by) informed Tony and his Dad that his trophy goose was in reality, a seagull. According to the game warden, seagulls were not on the list of game birds that can be legally harvested and this of course resulted in Tony's dad getting fined the appropriate amount for seagull whacking. If memory serves, this was the last time Tony or either of his two brothers shot a seagull. I believe this was also when Tony's Dad bought the book "All About Animals" and required Tony and his brothers to learn it by heart-especially the parts with pictures.

It all turned out good in the end, however, as Tony learned a valuable lesson about hunting that would serve him well later in life: know what the thing you're hunting for actually looks like BEFORE you go hunting for it, which seems to make quite a bit of sense.

Regarding sitting around the campfire, I'll keep you posted....

A Word From Olivia

vvvvggggggggggg g nugugggggrrgrrg.g....glll nlAHSammmmhhh  üu üufujjfjfjjjfnnnnfnnnnuu hhnbbbbbb c  bgbhnhbjjjjhhjchijhchghcbcb bbhnhbnhhchn xb vvbx vb xvhsbachsahshsh

This is what Olivia had to say the first time she sat down at a keypad. I'm not sure what this says, but maybe someday she'll tell us. It looks like she may have some writing potential. I'll keep you posted....

Resource Utilization

The next time it snows, consider doing this. It won't necessarily make your wine taste better, but it will give you a sense of satisfaction knowing that even though you may feel you're too old to sled down the front yard, your not to old to enjoy the snow.

Doug The Baseball Fan

In an effort to keep you abreast of goings on in Doug's world, this is Doug watching game 1 of the most recent World Series between Kansas City and (I don't recall who they were playing). Ridiculous? You be the judge. I'll keep you posted...

PS. Douglas currently has a cone on his head as he continues recovering from miner foot surgery. Apparently it's not easy being a TV watching Bull Dog.

More Wine Barrels

For those of you who stumbled on this site by doing a key word search "wine barrels", you probably weren't expecting this much excitement all at one web address. This picture was taken by a professional iphotographer, and may absolutely be used by anyone anywhere for just about any reason, as long as it doesn't involve excessive amounts of "ridicularity": we should just continue leaving that up to Joe Biden (I'm guessing I just lost some of you). I'll keep you posted....

Wine Barrels

This iPhoto would look nice as a picture on someone's wall, either in a home, restaurant, or bar(n). If it shows up someplace, you'll know where it came from. As the photographer/artist, I'm willing to wave the rights I may have to any financial gain associated with the shot, so feel free to use it as you wish. If it ends up achieving National acclaim (which I suspect it will), so be it: there's more where that came from. I'll keep you posted...

Lowered Expectations

To all of the vast number of loyal readers from all corners of the earth, thank you for your support! I thought I'd give you a heads up this morning as it relates to Christmas: This year I'm registered at Sonic. Last year I registered at Neaman Marcus and got squat!

~Sincerely,
Old and Ridiculous

Smoke House Plans

I don't want to put the cart before the horse, but I think I'm ready to add another project to the long list of projects: a smoke house. After some light research it looks like the key to building a good smoke house is designing your smoker so the smoke pipe runs uphill in order to efficiently carry the smoke to your smoke house. Water runs downhill and smoke goes up, so it makes sense to me.
I'm also thinking you can make your smoke house in about any configuration you choose. I found this picture on the first website that came up when I keyed in "smoke house". Once the barn is finished and I can finally get it fully organized, I shouldn't have to spend half my day looking for my darn hammer. Then I should be ready to actually take up some of these projects instead of just talking about them. Maybe I'll see if I can get the cousins to come down sometime when they're not busy chasing girls (not Dustin, as he already caught a good one; a little gal named Val, and yes I'm talking about the world famous Val of who's also of substantial Monitau County fame), and I bet we could get a good start on that smoke house while hearing stories about the Volkart boys growing up in south central Missouri and getting kicked out of recess for throwing rocks: which incidentally has only happened one other time that I know of in the entire history of Missouri).
Anyway, I'll keep you posted on these and other developments.....

Venison Steak Results...In

 The verdict is in: these darn venison steaks are outstanding! After a successful test pattern Thursday night on one small steak, we grilled up 6 more of these babies last night and everyone loved them-even Britt, who is a yogi and rarely even eats red meat. That tells the story. And Mom, who likes beef but didn't think she liked venison based on previous experience, thought they were excellent. Dad was expecting them to taste like hammered cow snot and was very surprised at the level of tastiness and even my bride was surprised at how good they were. 

After consulting this morning with cousin "Duster Man" Volkart, a long time outdoorsman and deer enthusiast, we've laid plans for doing some serious venison smoking, roasting, grilling and of course consuming (Dustin currently has a 200 pound doe carcass aging nicely in his shop). I may even head to the deer woods Monday morning in search of a nice fat doe, since the temperatures the first of the week are expected to drop back in the potential venison hanging/aging range. If so, I may be back in the deer hunting business baby! 
Oh, and according to "The Duster Man" (aka Dustin), Almost Uncle Tom (Tom Jones of world wide engineering fame) has a killer recipe for smoking and slow roasting venison hams, that as cousin Damon might say, "Will knock your shorts in the dirt and make a tadpole slap a whale!" All we need now is to enlist the support of cousin Darin (formerly of Damon, Damon and Damon) to weld us up a heavy duty smoker/grill/spit to handle all these darn deer these young guys keep whacking. In the meantime, I'll of course keep you posted...

~Hard to find steaks that look this good even at the Bentonville Meat Market

~Difficult to tell from this picture, but these darn things tasted real good

Jersey Boy Venison

Last night Stinger started to work on the process of butchering his first deer harvest. By the time we got set up he was only able to get through one front quarter, but he established plans to finish up the rest tonight-Saturday morning at the latest. After seeing how good these steaks looked lying on the work bench (handcrafted 3 years ago by my Dad), we decided to run a test pattern on one to see if the overall effort was going to be worth it, or might we be better off to just grind everything other than the most choice cuts into sausage and hamburger (something I'd personally planned to do after eating less than stellar venison steaks on more than one previous occasion). Turns out it was in fact worth the effort.

After seasoning the steak with salt and pepper and rubbing it over with olive oil, I put it over indirect heat for about 20 minutes at around 200-250 degrees inside the covered gas grill. I did this in an effort to heat the steak all the way through before slapping it directly over the hottest flames our old gas grill could muster. My friend "Scottic" recently told me about this technique and I thought it'd be a good time to give it a try. Apparently this is how good restaurants are able to serve a steak that's done on the outside, medium to medium rare on the inside, but still hot all the way through while maintaining all the steaks natural juiciness-it works. I was very pleasantly surprised as this venison steak tasted as close to beef as you can get without having come directly from a bovine. My taste buds were able to detect absolutely no wild or so-called gamey taste...at all, and Stinger was of the same opinion. It was a very pleasant culinary experience to say the least and I for one will be going back for more at the earliest opportunity. Based on this experience, I might even start dear hunting again myself after having given it up for sleeping about 17 years ago. Now that's something to think about!

As a note, after grilling the steak to about medium, we covered it lightly with aluminum foil and allowed it to set for about 5 minutes prior to diving in. Also, bacon was NOT used to disguise the taste of the meat: a common old trick of the trade used by a lot of hunting goomers to make otherwise average tasting wild fare more palatable. Apparently it's not necessary with venison, if you do things right. Oh, and I have to believe that letting the skinned carcass hang for 3 1/2 days below 40 degrees with an additional 48 hours in a cooler, made a difference as well. And all that stuff we've read about soaking the meat in salt water to get the gamey taste out, might not be necessary after-all, based on this one experience.

~Seasoned and ready for the grill

~Fresh from the grill and ready for testing

~Test pattern being ran by the butcher, the baker and candle stick maker himself-Stinger

 As good as this shoulder steak was, we can hardly wait to taste the tenderloin and rib-eyes. I can only imagine how good those bad boys are going to taste after spending a little time under the lid of an actual real life, well seasoned charcoal grill: you cain't go no better! I'll keep you posted....

Christmas and the Holiday Season

Unless you just don't have an appreciation for the good things in life, you're probably looking forward to this years fast approaching holiday season, aka Thanksgiving, Christmas, Hanukah and New Years. I've never thought New Years was necessarily anything to celebrate, and from my view point it seems to be primarily a good excuse to have a party-not that there's anything wrong with that. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Hanukah, however, are another story in my opinion.

You hear a lot of talk every year about "the true meaning of Christmas". There's no doubt that Christmas was originally intended as a celebration of Christ's birth. From a Christian stand point, of which I am one, it still is. That said, however, I see nothing wrong with a non-Christian or say someone who's on the fence, celebrating Christmas as a fun family holiday, even though they may not actually be celebrating Christ anytime during the season (I'm not advocating that). Personally, it doesn't take anything away from my Christmas if someone else chooses to partake in it primarily from a secular celebratory view point e.g.: buying and exchanging gifts, drinking egg nog, making cookies, eating pumpkin pie, drinking themselves silly on Christmas lattes at Star Bucks (at approximately $5 a pop!), attending parities, going for a new neighborhood exterior illumination record and so on. I also don't think that doing these things necessarily takes away from the actual true meaning of Christmas: after all, it is a celebration.

Bottom line: I suppose the primary issue on this subject is, the danger of Christians getting themselves so wrapped up in Christmas festivities that they end up doing nothing to honor Christ's birth on the day their Christian "fore-brothers and sisters" agreed long ago they would. That specific point seems to be the overriding concern of many folks.
As an aside, the vast majority of biblical experts agree, Christ was likely born in October-not December, and nearly for sure not on December 25th. When you take that into consideration, it seems to make the entire subject somewhat over-blown as I see it. Since we don't know for sure when Jesus was born, it seems we might be able to celebrate His birth just about anytime and any way we choose, without much danger of going straight to hell for doing it wrong or picking the wrong day on which to do it.

NOTE: It's not my intent to make light of the actual issue pertaining to "the true meaning of Christmas": I just think sometimes we Christians think it's our job to judge the world, when Someone stepped up a long ago and made it clear that that was His job.

As it relates to this year's holiday season in Arkansas and Missouri...I'll keep you posted.  

Aging Venison....Continued

~Stinger with quartered venison, packed in a heavy duty cooler for 24 additional hours of aging

Last night Stinger and I made the 45 minute trip out to the cabin to pull his deer down from it's hanging spot in the barn. We essentially quartered it, wrapped the individual slabs in cheese cloth and put them in a very large and heavily insulated cooler for transportation back to the house. After thinking things over, we decided to leave the aging venison outside overnight in the cooler, but inside the screened-in deck. Since the temperature between now and morning is expected to stay between the current 36 and down into the mid 20's, I left the lid open to allow the meat to get even colder and closed it early this morning. I put some bagged ice inside the cooler then covered it up with several large towels for good measure. I placed it so it won't be in the sun during the day. All this combined should keep the inside temp in the desired range. I'm guessing that this morning the meat was likely about the same temperature as the air around it. Keeping it inside the closed cooler all day, will likely keep the temperature of the meat below 40 and maybe well below. 

We're not experts on this stuff, but then keeping meat cold doesn't seem like rocket science to Stinger and me. It's my estimation that from the time we field dressed the deer Saturday morning, skinned it out and hung it in the barn, the temperature of the meat has stayed in the range of the low 30's to no more than about 40 degrees or so. All the seemingly credible information we've read on the subject suggest that keeping the meat below the range of the low 40's should allow it to cure with no issue of spoiling, and that makes sense to us Goomers. Since this is our first effort with processing our own deer, we're not nearly as concerned this go-around with achieving the absolute best tasting venison possible, as we are with not dying. As a result, our primary attention has been on handling the deer in as sanitary a fashion as feasible while keeping the meat at a low temperature for as long as possible before final processing and packing. We think we're on the right path so far and feel pretty good about our efforts and the operation overall. 

With that, we plan to continue on with the deer "home-processing project" and of course...I'll keep you posted.

Aging Venison

For the first time in it's history the barn is being used for hanging venison. It turned unseasonably cold this week or we wouldn't have risked letting it hang for any longer than we had to before processing it. But with the local high temperatures only in the mid to upper 30's for the past few days, I think it will be alright. Considering tomorrow is expected to be in the upper 40's and even warmer after that, we'll pull it down tonight and process it before letting it age a little longer in a more temperature controlled environment, aka a refrigerator. 

By the way, this particular deer was taken by our son-in-law "Stinger" before it became what you see hanging in the barn. I'm not going to post a picture of this nice whitetail, as I know some folks don't really want to see pictures of deceased animals and I understand that. It's my hope, however, that all the beef eating readers won't have any trouble viewing a picture of the hanging carcass, as this is pretty much what a side of beef looks like shortly before it becomes hamburger, flank steak or fat juicy ribeye steaks. We probably don't give it much thought before cutting into a nice piece of beef, but this is what your T-bone looked like a few days before it was on your plate. Also, I'm betting most folks don't have a problem eating a hamburger now and then, not to mention a pepperoni pizza or beef fajitas at Las Badangos. 

Anyway, there you go. I'll keep you posted.... 

  PS. Oh what the snot...here's Stinger (one of the modern day "Jersey Boys") with his very first deer:

Cabin Time For Dad and Daughters

A long time friend of mine recently spent the night at our cabin with 2 of his daughters, Clare and Rosie. His wife Chandi and son Sam were not able to make it out this time due to other commitments.

Johnny tells me he and the girls had a good time making s'mores around the camp fire, swinging on the hammock and watching DVD movies in the evening (the girls up in the loft above and their Pop on the couch below).

As a show of his appreciation for providing a little respite for himself and the girls, he bestowed upon me this nice bottle of Basil Hayden's small batch bourbon, made all the more special after being signed by Clare and Rosie. Immediately, I thought the bottle picture worthy and took the opportunity to provide some no-charge-marketing for the fine folks at Beam Industries. It's just part of the many free services provided by the team at "Old and Ridiculous".

I'm glad Johnny and the girls were able to enjoy an evening of relaxing father-daugher time at the cabin this fall. I think it's safe to conclude, time well spent!

Regarding Basil Hayden's, I'll keep you posted.....

Log Home Builder

If you're thinking about building a hand crafted log home, think long and hard about the person you choose to build it. Although it sounds like common sense, you should interview several people your GC candidate has built for and if possible, review some of their physical work in person. Anything less than this is kind if like taking a shot in the dark. Here's a short list of critical attributes your GC should have:

1) Integrity that's been proven over a long period of time
2) Previous experience in contracting (it sounds silly, but anyone can call them-self a general contractor, just like anyone can call them-self a writer, a singer or an investment professional)
2) Good communication skills e.g. listening, verbal and written
4) Overall qualities of a person you feel you can work with effectively over a long period of time

There's more, but in my experience these are critical considerations for anyone thinking of building a home, log or otherwise.
As it relates to living the American dream, I'll keep you posted....

The Birds And The Bats

I received some feedback today from a good friend who told me he hated seeing the dead dear in the "Deer George" post. I understand: I've felt remorse each of the few times over the course of my deer hunting career when I've personally shot a deer. They're magnificent animals and fun to observe, but....

I'm thinking it's the birds who have it made out there. Even without the help of their human friends, there are more places for birds to live and more food for them to eat than you could possibly shake a stick at. I suppose the winters can be a little challenging for our feathered friends who have chosen to live in a locality that's prone to snow fall, but then if that's a problem, like us, they have the option of flying south for the winter.
Speaking of flying south, this particular birdhouse is located in Florida very close to a white sandy beach. It's not an ocean front property, but you can see the water from the front door of this house. I don't know if it's a year-round residence or more of a summer home for some wealthy New York birds, but either way, it looks like a pretty good set-up.

I wonder how birds feel about bats. Does the average bird fly out of it's way to avoid a confrontation with a bat when it sees one flying down the street? I'm guessing such encounters take place either very early in the morning or early evening as the sun is rising and setting. Maybe bats are the reason birds are "dayternal". I'll suggest to Klietus that he considers doing some light research on that subject. After all, there's two things Kliet is always up for, and one of them is light research. I'll keep you posted....

Deer George

~Madeline, Tatum and George with George's latest victim

This past Friday evening after a day of barn work, I took several pictures of fresh deer sign from around the cabin and texted them to my buddy George as teasers leading up to his deer hunting weekend at the cabin. George is eaten up with chasing whitetails and had been planning for several weeks to drive down from St. Louis with his sister Madeline to partake in some early November bow hunting. The two transplanted Bentonville natives were taking a weekend off from college and post grad work to enjoy a couple of days in the woods and so Madeline could hang out with her good friend Tatum (of local volley ball fame) for a weekend at our Barry County "B and B". George of course planned to spend his time trying to whack a deer.

As a former whitetail chaser, I know the call of the deer woods can weigh heavy on a man (or gal if she's so inclined) who finds himself strapped daily to a desk, a backhoe, or in the case with George, a Wash U dorm room. By the sounds of things he could barely wait to get up early this past Saturday morning and head to the woods with his trusted bow and arrow.
As the picture indicates, he ended up being at the right place at the right time and after a long 2 or 3 minute wait, his persistence paid off.

At the rate George is whacking those doggone deer, I may have to import some deer from Canada. On second thought, the Arkansas department of fish and game might take issue with that. Maybe I should just let nature take it's course. I'll keep you posted....

Maple Mystery

The Southwest Missouri Ozark hills are still sporting some nice late fall colors, and can be enjoyed by anyone who takes time to look around. These pictures were taken Thursday evening November 6, 2014 on my "iCamera. One of these days I'll have to look into why one maple tree produces red leaves in autumn, while one right next to it has yellow leaves and the maple tree just down the hill is orange. But for now, I'm staying focussed on the barn: the maple mystery will just have to wait. I'll keep you posted...

November Barn Update

I said I'd keep you posted on the barn project so BOOM...consider yourn'self updated!

With completion of one side wall yesterday afternoon, I'm at the halfway point if you don't take the ceiling into consideration. The ceiling is going to be the most labor intensive part of the project (up and down and up and down the scaffolding etc), but should really make the place look nice. I may have to stop calling it a barn at some point, but for now, barn will do.

By the way, that old muzzle loading shotgun hanging on the wall sat up in my Uncle Pat and Aunt Katherine's attic for at least 25 or 30 years--maybe longer-before being discovered a few years ago. My Dad made the fireplace mantel in 1984 for my bride and my first house in Houston, Texas (needless to say the fireplace in that house didn't get used too much). The boot and horse shoe thing-a-ma-jig hung in my Mom and Dad's house in Rolla (my former home) for a number of years before they retired and moved to Florida to go yard sailing and Manatee watching. My brother Ace gave me the bar as a 50th birthday present. He procured it about 30 years ago while living in Denver and working for the CIA (without their knowledge I'm guessing). And the old axes sitting in the corner were acquired from my "Almost Uncle Tom" 4 or 5 years ago as part of the offerings at my Mom's last fully sanctioned yard sale. Fully sanctioned as in, "Lorraine, for Pete's sake; this is the last time we're gonna have a yard sale at our house, as long as I'm alive!" I'm guessing the time Dad came inside from one of Mom's yard sales and found some Ol' boy rifling through his underwear drawer might have had something to do with that. As if that weren't bad enough in and of itself, when Dad told the guy the yard-sale was actually outside in the yard and not inside the house, the guy responded, "I'll give ya 75 cents for the whole drawer and that's as high as I'll go."

Danged yard salers...you just got-ta, got-ta, got-ta keep one eye on them ALL THE TIME!
I'll keep you posted....
PS. I might have embellished the yard sale story a little bit---maybe.

Seriously?

Some half-wit BR-549 posted a comment on this site yesterday, which I've since removed. I changed the comment settings which should keep that from happening again. My guess is the lurch who did it found a way to randomly post comments to numerous blog sites at one time. Or perhaps, they just really like my stuff. If so, thanks for your support! I'll keep you posted....

Rolla Boy Reunion #12 At The Cabin

 A few "Goomers" relaxing and enjoying a bucket of Ranch Chile last week at Rolla Boy Reunion #12. The first of such get-togethers was held in October 2003 when the cabin was still under construction. I won't go into detail about how it all started: I think I did that 2 or 3 years ago. I don't want you to get bored with the same Ol' same Ol'. Life provides enough opportunity for that without my assistance. I'll keep you posted....

Photo Wiz....NOT

The top two pictures were taken back to back this past Saturday morning with two different camera settings. Both pictures are untouched. The camera did all the work and all I had to do was point and pull the trigger.

I continue to be amazed at how much better photography is since the invention of the digital camera. Hard to believe what you had to go through just a few years ago to get even one good picture out of a roll of 12, 24 or even 36. I can recall numerous times taking a roll of 36 pictures, sending them off to be developed and then being disappointed when they came back a few days later with maybe a handful of decent pictures out of the entire batch. Now you can take as many shots as you want of the same thing and instantly see the results. Take 10 or 20  if you want and keep the best one while culling out all the shots that are less than standard. It's just too doggone easy. Makes me wonder why we hire professionals to take pictures for us at weddings and events like that. I guess I actually know the answer to that now that I think about it, but dang it! 

All that said, anyone who can push a button down while holding the camera steady can take good pictures. I do suppose there's skill involved in knowing what might make a good picture to begin with and when is the right time to push down on the shudder release. Also, understanding the affect of lighting is something not everyone takes time to consider I suppose.

Ok, I guess we still need professional photographers from time to time. But now more than anytime in the history of the camera, the difference between a professional photographer and all the rest of us, is not really all that much in my opinion. I think patience is a big key along with being at the right place at the right time. Also, it helps if you're able to visualize as a picture, what you see through the camera lens before you push the button. If not, you may just end up with a picture of the sky and the ground with a few trees in between-not that there's anything wrong with that.

I may hear back from a highly skilled photographer or two who might disagree with my assessment of taking pictures...and that's alright. I'll keep you posted.....