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Post by joebill on Dec 3, 2016 3:24:33 GMT
I have people that come and knock on the door to tell me that my chickens are out, and walking around the yard. They don't understand the dynamics of hens and roosters either, and I think it is a good example of why marriages don't work anymore. We used to live up North on the two-lane that ran past Philmont, the National Boy Scout ranch, and tourists would be driving through and see an old farm dog sitting by the road near somebody's farm or ranch, not tied up or supervised. They'd load it up in the car and bring it to our store, insist it had to be "lost", drive away convinced that they had "saved somethng from certain death".
We'd let it loose and tell it gruffly to "GO HOME" and it would comply.
Unless somebody dumped them, there were NO truly stray dogs out there. If they didn't stick close to home and behave themselves, they got shot inside of a week by somebody who didn't want them chasing cattle or stealing eggs or other canine felonius behavior....Joe
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Post by Ozarks Tom on Dec 3, 2016 21:09:41 GMT
joebill, I was in construction prior to OSHA too, and some of the goings on on construction sites was to say the least, insane. I remember going to an 11 story that was just a steel skeleton one morning to coordinate stocking the building with sheetrock the next day. As I walked up to the hoist operator's cage he motioned to stop and look in the direction of the porta-potty. They'd rigged cables to it that were laying on the ground behind it, waiting for the job superintendent to to make his daily trip. Sure enough, at his usual time the superintendent had made himself comfortable inside, and the hoist man pulled it about 40' in the air. The super opened the door screaming and yelling to let him down, all the while the porta-potty was swinging and sloshing. After about 2 minutes he was back on the ground, and the hoist operator was high tailing it for his truck. Nearly everyone on the job knew in advance and was laughing the whole time. The super went home to shower and change clothes, they called the union hall for another operator, and the super had a new nickname - Stinky. I'm guessing that stunt today would qualify for a fine.
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Post by joebill on Dec 5, 2016 0:01:29 GMT
I roped one of those porta potties with my catch rope at a trade show one time. It had my friend inside, and he is completly blind. I started rocking it and he started hollering, I rocked it harder, he hollered louder over the sloshing. I had another friend back my truck up and was going to dally up on the hitch ball and slide him around the parking lot, but the guy who owned the show came and put a stop to it. Lot of maturity at those trade shows....Joe
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Post by bretf on Apr 20, 2018 22:20:10 GMT
The part of the wagon and the team of horses in the Drifting Smoke tale reminded me of something. I started writing some of this and thought, “Haven’t I already written this somewhere?” I had to go and find just what I wrote, and found it in “The Long Darkness”. If any of you read it, I used a little of this in there, but not near as much detail. Now I might have to go back and read that story, I’ve forgotten too much of it.
Anyway, Dad had a couple of mules and he decided he wanted them to work. We’d ridden them (some) not a lot, so they were used to a bridle, saddle, and britchen, but not harness and trace chains. Nor were they used to something (other than another mule) following right behind them, especially something big.
We took them in the barn and harnessed them, the first time taking quite a while getting everything adjusted right and Dad teaching my brother and I how to do everything. Then it was out to the corral to get them side by side and hook the lines (reins) to each bridle. I asked him which side to put the mule I led. “Little mule on the left,” he said. I don’t know if other people do it like that, but that was Dad’s way. He’d grown up on poor, hard-scrabble share-cropping farms, his dad never owning a tractor. Grandpa did all of his farming with a team of mules.
We got the mules hooked together, even though neither one cared for it too much. Dad practiced driving them around the corral, making them turn this way, then that way. It was two mules, but I sure wouldn’t call them a team. Each shied away from their partner and fought the bits in their mouths. Dad walked behind them with the lines in hand. Neither particularly cared for any of it, especially not the lines nor Dad behind them. Eventually they settled down and did what Dad wanted, so he thought it was time for step two.
We opened the gate and Dad took them through the pasture for some time, and they behaved pretty well. Then it was on to the next step, where things got a little more exciting.
At Dad’s direction, I hooked the flat-bed trailer onto the tractor and backed the trailer up just short of the hay-wagon tongue. Dad drove the mules up, having one step across the tongue. I held one bridle and my brother took the other. Dad raised the tongue and showed us how the neck yoke hooked into the harness. Then he hooked the chains to the single trees and we were ready to go.
Dad got on the wagon and held the lines tight and had me get on the tractor. I got on it and started it, ready. My brother released the bridle he’d been holding and got on the wagon. Despite the pressure on their bridles, one mule and then the other moved forward, nearly a lunge, but were stopped by the trailer. It took a while, but they settled down and Dad said to start driving. “Really? Are you sure?” I asked, but not out loud.
I put the tractor in gear, let out the clutch and we were off. The mules “followed”. Step, lunge, ram the trailer, back off, repeat. While they were doing that, they did their best to move apart. With their chests secure to the neck yoke, they could only gain space in their back ends and the straps attaching the chains to the single trees tightened against their hocks so they’d lunge forward again. I’m not sure, but I might have had smoother rides on the tractor driving it across corrugated fields. Our block is just over a mile around, so we went all the way around it and Dad thought the mules were behaving well enough we could do it without tractor and trailer. “Are you sure?” I hope I asked either out loud or in my head. I’m not sure about that. It has been several years, rather a few decades ago.
Anyway, I parked the tractor and climbed onto the wagon. Dad spoke to the mules, starting them. It wasn’t smooth, but we were moving. The mules were moving kind of in tandem when something convinced them they needed to get away. I don’t know if it was the hay wagon right behind them or what, but they wanted out of there. They sped up, moving left, right, left right, faster all the time. Dad sawed the lines back and forth trying to get them under control. At last he did get them stopped; when we took out the neighbor’s mailbox. Guess who got to fix it?
Time passed and we worked with them quite a bit and eventually, they were pretty good at pulling the hay wagon. And then Dad wanted to use them to mow hay. “Oh my goodness, Oh my soul!”
We hitched them up to the mowing machine, and Dad got on the seat, lines in hand.
I don’t know how many of you have been around a sickle mower, but they are noisy, actually quite noisy. Although the team (Yes I could actually use the term by that time) had been great with the wagon, the mower was a whole other beast. (Sorry but again, I don’t know if you’ve been around mules and horses. Someone could ride a horse past something with no problem and one of our mules would jump away from it, nearly unseating me many times. We called them “mule eaters”. Out of their normal zone, they could be very skittish.) So they were hooked to the mower and pulled it out to the field with no problems at all. No sweat, right? Dad hollered “Whoa” and they stopped just like they were supposed to. My brother and I lowered the sickle bar and stepped back. “Step up,” Dad told the mules and they started moving. Well, the new thing behind them was noisy, so they wanted to get away from it. They went faster, and funny thing about it, the faster it went, the more it clacked and banged. They increased their speed until they were flat out running and the load contraption was still right on their heels.
It wasn’t a good situation at all. The field was small with barbed wire fences around it and irrigation ditches on two sides. It looked like a disaster in the making. There was nothing my brother and I could do to slow them, just stand there and be ready to pick up the pieces when it was over. Dad pulled on the lines, trying to move them this way and that with little result. And of course he was yelling and cussing them the whole time, adding to the noise. They were terrified and not slowing for anything. Later, Dad said we should have taken them to another field he rented that was quite long. He thought he might have been able to get them to run themselves out. But it wasn’t possible in the field where they were.
Finally, the best thing possible happened. Turning them tight to avoid a fence, the mower banged louder than before and something, I can’t remember what broke loose on one end and dug into the ground. It was a pretty effective anchor, and the mules slowed, straining into their collars, until they couldn’t pull it any farther. Then my brother and I rushed in, each of us taking a quivering mule and getting them unhooked and led away from the mower.
After that, we used the mules quite a bit pulling the wagon. Dad used them in a parade or two. We used them to haul hay from the field Dad rented, about a mile away on a major road. Cars would slow, people would stop and shoot photos. Dad used them to harrow the fields. He used them to skid logs out of the woods for firewood. But we never ever hooked them to the mower again.
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Post by bretf on Apr 20, 2018 22:45:07 GMT
I have people that come and knock on the door to tell me that my chickens are out, and walking around the yard. They don't understand the dynamics of hens and roosters either, and I think it is a good example of why marriages don't work anymore. We used to live up North on the two-lane that ran past Philmont, the National Boy Scout ranch, and tourists would be driving through and see an old farm dog sitting by the road near somebody's farm or ranch, not tied up or supervised. They'd load it up in the car and bring it to our store, insist it had to be "lost", drive away convinced that they had "saved somethng from certain death".
We'd let it loose and tell it gruffly to "GO HOME" and it would comply.
Unless somebody dumped them, there were NO truly stray dogs out there. If they didn't stick close to home and behave themselves, they got shot inside of a week by somebody who didn't want them chasing cattle or stealing eggs or other canine felonius behavior....Joe
Hey Joe, It's funny that I came on here now and read your post with new eyes, since Philmont is the setting for the start of my story. It was a vague reference for me when you posted, but I can picture it a lot better now.
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Post by Ozarks Tom on Apr 21, 2018 2:28:40 GMT
bretf, Your dad was a heckuva man, I'd like to hear more about him.
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Post by joebill on Apr 21, 2018 3:07:57 GMT
bretf, the thing I miss most about that country is the rich ( and I do NOT mean wealthy) characters that were part of everyday life. In polite society many of them would be called "outrageous". We did not leave because we hated any part of the land or the people. We simply froze out.
If the Smokes need something to exchange on the way home, lots of gold in them thar hills...and in present times the Elisibethtown digs are off limits, status maintained by bouncing 30-30 rounds off of the rocks beside the trails.....but post apocalyptic would likely be different.
When you wrote about the jumper cables, I recalled that they are not like they used to be. We used to buy cheap ones that went away fast, but in 1968, my Dad was doing a lot of mechanic work for a fertilizer company and I was working for a parts outfit. At Christmas I bought him a set on my employee discount from Associated....GOOD ones that prob'ly cost $15 or so. When he had to quit driving about 2005 or so he gave me his car with the cables rolled up on the back seat and they are currently in the back of my flatbed and used at least once a week. The springs are starting to weaken, but the cables are good as new.
Try buying a pair of jumper cables today at ANY price that will last 50 years....Joe
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Post by joebill on Apr 21, 2018 3:26:33 GMT
Maybe 20 years ago, I used to prowl around old mining country, and if you go to explore, you are at least a day away from home, so you better be prepared to spend a night or two.
Somebody down 3R canyon near Patagonia had placed a privy on top of a mine shaft, supported by a couple of mine timbers. Only opportunity to take a dump not leaning against a tree or truck bumper. Anything dropped down the hole seemed to take forever to reach bottom, including the obvious.
The timbers were pretty springy, so it was a real job to get the muscles to relax and get it done. Won $20 by accomplishing the job in under 5 minutes, but only because of the urgent nature of the chore at hand. Less stress I might not have ever got it done.....Joe
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