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