It is nothing strange that we as individuals have a hard time coming to grips with the “reality” of growing old. Naturally, “old” is one of those relative terms, depending where you are on the ‘long road a-winding‘. There was a time when I thought someone of 50 years was “old”. Not anymore! Now “old” is more like 80 in my mind.
I fully realize that my experience is nothing new in the human experience, but it is new for me. But there is still one hurdle that I can’t seem to get over in accepting that I am not 25 years old. That is the hurdle of my own mind. For, you see, even though I see other people are aging and realize they cannot be expected to do the things of a much younger person, I can’t seem to apply the reality to myself.
Another thing that interferes with my thinking is looking around me & finding all these older people that can, and do, put an average 30 year old under the table when it comes to physical work or activity. I know a man right now who has 5 years on me & does work that I have see 25 year old guys walk away from with plain old exhaustion. If he can do that, why can’t I?
We have been raised in the USA to believe that we can do anything we set our mind too. I have always believed that, foolish me! I am living proof that just pure will power, without other necessary ‘assets’, will not get something “impossible” done.
A person needs to know their limitations & be willing to admit they actually have them. That is the hard part for many of us. We truly hate to acknowledge the someone else has something that we can’t. As if we really do believe that God created all men equal, without qualification. Though it is noble to believe that all men are created equal in regard to “rights” and in general terms, basic human privileges of a free society. The cold, hard fact of life is that we were not all born equal when it comes to ability, opportunity, health and other individual characterizes the go to make up the whole of who and what we are, individually.
Example, take professional athletes. For a fact, these people have to work very hard in building their bodies to be able to perform in the top small percentage of their generation. Then they must train, train, train to develop the necessary skills that go along with their particular sport. However, it would be a denial of plain fact to think that these people are not “born with gifted bodies” that can be trained to accomplish uncommon acts of strength, speed or other physical feats. The toss of the genetic coin is highly in favor of some people as opposed to most. It matters not how much a hog might want to outrun a racehorse, it ain’t going to happen. He does not have the body to do it, period.
So it is with individuals and the aging process. I know people in their 60’s or 70’s who are as healthy and active as most of us would be pleased with in our 50’s. But it does not necessarily that most people experience such good health into our, so called “golden years”. Now that is a fable if I ever heard one. I don’t think I know of anyone who really will describe their “old age” experience as “golden”! Most that I talk to call is a lot of other names, none of them complimentary.
All that to simply say: “Ernie’s world is trying to face the grim reality that we are aging.” But not “old”, just yet.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Friday, September 7, 2012
Book Review- "No Easy Day"
It was my pleasure this week to read the book “No Easy Day”, written by one of the Navy Seal’s who was on the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. There is some flap about this book in the media & government because, evidently, the author did not have the book vetted by the Department of Defense. They claim he was bound by contract to do this, others state that he was not. I don’t know, nor do I care about the government’s technicalities.
For fans of military affairs this was a good read and since it was written by a soldier who was there, I would trust that his story is more reliable than a lot of the reports we got at the time from the media. As far as revealing any “secrets”, as some of the media claim, I find that accusation rather lame. Any of the details about how the Seals operate are in line with any other public stories I have read. Anyone who has read any recently published novel on the war against terrorist will have already read about the basic tactics used by Special Forces in this decade long war.
I do find it somewhat disturbing that some “suits” in the government want to take legal action against the author, who spent 10 years laying his life on the line in very dangerous operations against our nations enemies. All the while the “suits” sit safely behind their desk and never do anything more risky than drive their car to work.
As for my opinion, our soldiers are doing the public a great favor by telling their personal stories in this long war, which is far from over. Never mind that the U.S. is suppose to be out of Afghanistan within 2 years, that will not be the end of this war with terrorists in the Moslem community. It is extremely naïve to believe that the forces behind the Moslem terrorists will just go away once we leave Iraq and Afghanistan. The clerics who are preaching jihad against the west are not going to just sit down and be quiet once we withdraw. The war will go on until a generation of Moslem leaders emerge who give up terrorism as a weapon. That will not be happening anytime soon.
Contrary to some of the critics, there is not much about politics in this book. I won’t spoil the story by revealing what small mention the author makes concerning the use some politicians attempt to make concerning the killing of Osama bin Laden, but the point of the book is to tell the story of this event from the viewpoint of a “boot” on the ground.
You won’t be disappointed if you read the book, that is if you are one who is interested in this war from a soldiers shoes.
For fans of military affairs this was a good read and since it was written by a soldier who was there, I would trust that his story is more reliable than a lot of the reports we got at the time from the media. As far as revealing any “secrets”, as some of the media claim, I find that accusation rather lame. Any of the details about how the Seals operate are in line with any other public stories I have read. Anyone who has read any recently published novel on the war against terrorist will have already read about the basic tactics used by Special Forces in this decade long war.
I do find it somewhat disturbing that some “suits” in the government want to take legal action against the author, who spent 10 years laying his life on the line in very dangerous operations against our nations enemies. All the while the “suits” sit safely behind their desk and never do anything more risky than drive their car to work.
As for my opinion, our soldiers are doing the public a great favor by telling their personal stories in this long war, which is far from over. Never mind that the U.S. is suppose to be out of Afghanistan within 2 years, that will not be the end of this war with terrorists in the Moslem community. It is extremely naïve to believe that the forces behind the Moslem terrorists will just go away once we leave Iraq and Afghanistan. The clerics who are preaching jihad against the west are not going to just sit down and be quiet once we withdraw. The war will go on until a generation of Moslem leaders emerge who give up terrorism as a weapon. That will not be happening anytime soon.
Contrary to some of the critics, there is not much about politics in this book. I won’t spoil the story by revealing what small mention the author makes concerning the use some politicians attempt to make concerning the killing of Osama bin Laden, but the point of the book is to tell the story of this event from the viewpoint of a “boot” on the ground.
You won’t be disappointed if you read the book, that is if you are one who is interested in this war from a soldiers shoes.
Monday, September 3, 2012
Labor Day Mushings
Ok, it has been many months since I have made a post to this blog. I could give a whole lot of ‘excuses’, but what is the point. Yes, I have been extremely busy, but I also find that people make time for something they really want to do. I just have not had much I have cared to say.
It has not been an uneventful few months. There have been big changes in “Ernie’s World”, that is a fact. The biggest change has been in my employment situation. Since 1988 I have been self-employed as an independent Hardwood Lumber Inspector, plus, for the past 10 years I have operated a lumber drying business & some furniture building on the side.
In the process of most of my inspection jobs have been either dropped or just fell by the wayside. Which was fine by me, as long as dry lumber was moving fair. But all go things go to pot in a bad housing market economy. At least all things lumber related. Thus, in May I agreed to work mostly full time at the one lumber inspection job I had.
After 24 years of mostly setting my own schedule, this has been a “shock” to my system. Not that I really mind all that much. I realize that most people in the working class, live this way their whole lives. So 24 years of relative freedom, during the prime of life, is something that I feel fortunate to have had.
Change is about the only thing we can count on in this world. Many of us hate it, especially when it affects our habits in serious ways. The reality is that “time waits on no one”, if you want to do something, you best make your plans to start right away. Whether it is a lifelong goal, or just a small thing, you best take action to get it done, for at some point you will run out of time.
Our summer in central MN has been good. We have had more rain than many parts of the country, however we are “bone dry” at this point. The crops in our neighborhood look better than in many places across the country. Our garden did fair. Plenty of beans, tomatoes & such. Our failures were with the sweet corn and potatoes. The corn went to the masked bandits (raccoons). In one single night those varmints cleaned the crop out totally, and before it was even ready for the table. They usually come right as it is ready to eat, but this time they were a week early & despite the hot sauce that my wife put on the silk of each ear, which worked for the past couple years. I told her that these raccoons must have really like the sauce with their corn.
The potatoes was a bit of a surprise. It is the first time we have every had a potato crop to fail. Our theory is that our saved over seed must have been bad, so next year we will have to buy seed potatoes.
I promise some posts more regularly as fall come on. In a couple weeks the bow season comes in for deer & I make a habit of spending my evenings sitting in my little hunting shack. While there I enjoy writing on my small laptop, so you should hear more from me soon.
It has not been an uneventful few months. There have been big changes in “Ernie’s World”, that is a fact. The biggest change has been in my employment situation. Since 1988 I have been self-employed as an independent Hardwood Lumber Inspector, plus, for the past 10 years I have operated a lumber drying business & some furniture building on the side.
In the process of most of my inspection jobs have been either dropped or just fell by the wayside. Which was fine by me, as long as dry lumber was moving fair. But all go things go to pot in a bad housing market economy. At least all things lumber related. Thus, in May I agreed to work mostly full time at the one lumber inspection job I had.
After 24 years of mostly setting my own schedule, this has been a “shock” to my system. Not that I really mind all that much. I realize that most people in the working class, live this way their whole lives. So 24 years of relative freedom, during the prime of life, is something that I feel fortunate to have had.
Change is about the only thing we can count on in this world. Many of us hate it, especially when it affects our habits in serious ways. The reality is that “time waits on no one”, if you want to do something, you best make your plans to start right away. Whether it is a lifelong goal, or just a small thing, you best take action to get it done, for at some point you will run out of time.
Our summer in central MN has been good. We have had more rain than many parts of the country, however we are “bone dry” at this point. The crops in our neighborhood look better than in many places across the country. Our garden did fair. Plenty of beans, tomatoes & such. Our failures were with the sweet corn and potatoes. The corn went to the masked bandits (raccoons). In one single night those varmints cleaned the crop out totally, and before it was even ready for the table. They usually come right as it is ready to eat, but this time they were a week early & despite the hot sauce that my wife put on the silk of each ear, which worked for the past couple years. I told her that these raccoons must have really like the sauce with their corn.
The potatoes was a bit of a surprise. It is the first time we have every had a potato crop to fail. Our theory is that our saved over seed must have been bad, so next year we will have to buy seed potatoes.
I promise some posts more regularly as fall come on. In a couple weeks the bow season comes in for deer & I make a habit of spending my evenings sitting in my little hunting shack. While there I enjoy writing on my small laptop, so you should hear more from me soon.
Thursday, March 15, 2012
Springtime & Skunks
I guess if I am not going to abandon this blog permanently I should make a post.
Our MN weather has been so nice that one does not want to take up much time indoors. After being here for 24 winters and never seeing a winter as mild as this one, we are mostly in ‘shock’ and awe. In the past week we have had right near 70° at one point and in the 60’s most days. For mid-March this is unbelievable for our part of the country.
It is also very welcome. Although most of us do not believe winter is over and expect any day to wake up to ‘reality’. We have had some major snow storms in April and generally do not look forward to the garden being workable until the end of April on the first of May. But this year, unless we have a sudden change, we might be able to put out cold weather crops by mid-April.
Whatever the weather does at this point we consider ourselves very blessed in having such a short mild winter. Naturally there are a few hardy souls who bemoan the situation. In younger days I would have been one of them, but as ‘father time’ catches up with me, I am thankful for some early relief to winter.
Otherwise my world has been busy, which is normal. It is one assured fact that when you are self-employed with a woodshop right out your backdoor, there is never going to be any lack of work. There might be a lack of “profitable work”, but that is secondary to the fact that work is a necessity for a happy life. Work we have, “profitable work” is an illusive critter.
Speaking of critters. We have recently had a skunk that was hanging around near the house and buildings. In fact, I think one of our cats made friends with it and they were hanging out together. We have not seen it for a week or so, thus we are in hopes that it has moved on. However, I do have a live trap set for the stinky little bugger. It has given both me and my wife some serious grief on a couple occasions. My excitement was when I opened the back door in the dark one evening to go out and nearly stepped on it! Lucky for me it did not care anymore for my company than I did his and ran off before I got get my hands on a shotgun.
Then my wife had a bit of excitement. We have what we refer to as a mud porch, where we store firewood and such. One night a few days ago my wife went out late in the evening to get some firewood. To her disappointment the mud porch door was standing open, meaning any animal could be inside the mud room. Of course it was dark with only some light from the kitchen shining into the mud room. She looked and listened (I don’t know why she did not retrieve a flashlight), when she decided that there was no ‘visitors’ in the room, she shut the outside door and went to the wood box. Then she heard ‘something’ rustling in some paper bags that we keep on the porch. That was my first notification that she was in ‘distress’! What a howling and crashing on the steps leading to the kitchen! Door slamming and near panic! Reminded me of the time she found a snake laying underneath the pair of jeans she was about to put on during a camping trip, but that is another story.
I went to see what the ruckus was about and she explained in very excited terms that “something” was on the mud porch, probably the skunk, because “someone” had left the back door open. Looking through the window I could see that the back door of the mud porch was now closed. So I asked her why she shut the thing up, so it could not get out. Her very short answer was, because she had decided there was nothing on the porch, that was until she heard it in the paper bags behind her while she was getting some firewood.
I need not point out who had to go investigate. But I took a flashlight and carefully made my way to the outside door and opened it, so whatever creature was on the porch could make its escape without being alarmed. I have always thought it was poor judgment to “alarm” a skunk. After I opened the door wide, I commenced to find the creature. By then I had doubts that it was the skunk because I could not smell him. I was right too, for when I found the culprit it turned out to be one of the cats! All the ruckus over a pet cat. But that is how the human mind works. We jumped to conclusions before we have all the evidence. In this case, my wife nearly ripped the kitchen door off and fell up the stairway, all on an “assumed threat” that she was about to be smelling very “ripe”.
Sure glad she was the one getting firewood that evening and not me. J
Our MN weather has been so nice that one does not want to take up much time indoors. After being here for 24 winters and never seeing a winter as mild as this one, we are mostly in ‘shock’ and awe. In the past week we have had right near 70° at one point and in the 60’s most days. For mid-March this is unbelievable for our part of the country.
It is also very welcome. Although most of us do not believe winter is over and expect any day to wake up to ‘reality’. We have had some major snow storms in April and generally do not look forward to the garden being workable until the end of April on the first of May. But this year, unless we have a sudden change, we might be able to put out cold weather crops by mid-April.
Whatever the weather does at this point we consider ourselves very blessed in having such a short mild winter. Naturally there are a few hardy souls who bemoan the situation. In younger days I would have been one of them, but as ‘father time’ catches up with me, I am thankful for some early relief to winter.
Otherwise my world has been busy, which is normal. It is one assured fact that when you are self-employed with a woodshop right out your backdoor, there is never going to be any lack of work. There might be a lack of “profitable work”, but that is secondary to the fact that work is a necessity for a happy life. Work we have, “profitable work” is an illusive critter.
Speaking of critters. We have recently had a skunk that was hanging around near the house and buildings. In fact, I think one of our cats made friends with it and they were hanging out together. We have not seen it for a week or so, thus we are in hopes that it has moved on. However, I do have a live trap set for the stinky little bugger. It has given both me and my wife some serious grief on a couple occasions. My excitement was when I opened the back door in the dark one evening to go out and nearly stepped on it! Lucky for me it did not care anymore for my company than I did his and ran off before I got get my hands on a shotgun.
Then my wife had a bit of excitement. We have what we refer to as a mud porch, where we store firewood and such. One night a few days ago my wife went out late in the evening to get some firewood. To her disappointment the mud porch door was standing open, meaning any animal could be inside the mud room. Of course it was dark with only some light from the kitchen shining into the mud room. She looked and listened (I don’t know why she did not retrieve a flashlight), when she decided that there was no ‘visitors’ in the room, she shut the outside door and went to the wood box. Then she heard ‘something’ rustling in some paper bags that we keep on the porch. That was my first notification that she was in ‘distress’! What a howling and crashing on the steps leading to the kitchen! Door slamming and near panic! Reminded me of the time she found a snake laying underneath the pair of jeans she was about to put on during a camping trip, but that is another story.
I went to see what the ruckus was about and she explained in very excited terms that “something” was on the mud porch, probably the skunk, because “someone” had left the back door open. Looking through the window I could see that the back door of the mud porch was now closed. So I asked her why she shut the thing up, so it could not get out. Her very short answer was, because she had decided there was nothing on the porch, that was until she heard it in the paper bags behind her while she was getting some firewood.
I need not point out who had to go investigate. But I took a flashlight and carefully made my way to the outside door and opened it, so whatever creature was on the porch could make its escape without being alarmed. I have always thought it was poor judgment to “alarm” a skunk. After I opened the door wide, I commenced to find the creature. By then I had doubts that it was the skunk because I could not smell him. I was right too, for when I found the culprit it turned out to be one of the cats! All the ruckus over a pet cat. But that is how the human mind works. We jumped to conclusions before we have all the evidence. In this case, my wife nearly ripped the kitchen door off and fell up the stairway, all on an “assumed threat” that she was about to be smelling very “ripe”.
Sure glad she was the one getting firewood that evening and not me. J
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Government & Weather are Both Threatening
As the month of February draws to a close it sounds like our winter drought is also coming to a close. Last week we got 3 or 4 inches of snowfall, the first I needed to plow for the season. Last night a band of snow just missed us to the north by about 40 miles where they got several inches of the “white plague”.
Now the National Weather Service (NOA) is saying we have another storm coming from Tuesday into Wednesday. This one they have upgraded from a “Winter Storm” to a “Blizzard” warning. I am not certain where they get the “blizzard” business from, I assume it takes into account strong winds verses simply heavy snow. According to what they predict now, we sit right in the middle of the road on this one, but I see the possibility (being the weather expert I am J ) that this storm could pass just to the south of us and we “might” be spared the worst of it. Then again, we might get “hammered”!
MN is known for winter weather, but the truth is we rarely get over a foot of snowfall in one storm. That “pleasure” is reserved for those who live along the great lakes where they can get several feet of snow in one storm, or those out west in the mountains who get a similar burial when the conditions are right. From what I heard tonight they are talking a total of around 15 inches for our area between Tuesday and Wednesday. I have a hard time believing that, I don’t know why, other than we have had it so easy this winter we are “off guard” and don’t really expect it.
Traditionally March is the snowiest month of the year in our state. While the “old country” where I grew up (Ohio) is thinking of spring and beginning to have spring rains, in MN we don’t dare hope for spring until after mid-April. In fact, the worst snowstorm in my recent memory was in April a couple or three years ago. I remember it so well because it came with a double hit. That is when we get 8 or 10 inches of snow one day and two days later repeat the process. While trying to dig out of the first wave, the clutch went out of my tractor, so I was ‘up the creek’ when the 2nd storm hit two days later. That time I managed to get our old snow-blower running enough to get a path to the road open, but had to wait until the tractor was repaired to get the place properly cleaned up.
What makes our situation more difficult for snow removal is that we need more than just a open trail to the road. Having my lumber business here requires that I keep a lot of area open and cleaned up in order to operate properly. Such are the consequences of having a small one man business in the great state of MN.
Speaking of our great state. Last week I got a visit from our county “Conservation and Land Management” people. I used to think that the USA was a “free country” and “personal property rights” was a foundation of a free society. Property rights might still be the foundation of a free people, but we are only deceiving ourselves if we think this applies to the state of MN and I am assuming other states are not a lot different.
The strange part about this visit was that the two gentlemen that got out of the county car and came to my door, one with a camera in his hands, were not in the least bit interested in me or my property when they found out that I was not Amish. This farm used to belong to an Amish family before we bought it, so they assumed it still did. Never mind that they parked right beside my electric pole, something you won’t find at an Amish house, and I met them outside the back door dressed like anything but an Amish. They still ask me if I belonged to the local Amish community. I told them no, then they wanted to know if I ran a sawmill “too”, as if everyone that had some lumber setting around must run a sawmill. I did not bother to explain to them that I did have a small sawmill in one of my sheds, but since my business is not running a sawmill, I figured this was none of their business.
I explained to them that I kiln dry lumber, which would explain my piles of lumber they could plainly see. I did not want to pry into their business with the Amish anymore than I wanted them to pry into my business, but I could not help wondering why they would approach what they thought to be an Amish residence with a camera in their hands. By way of explanation, Amish do not want their picture taken, by anyone. It is one of those things that is hard for the rest of us to understand, like a lot of their ways. I do understand some of their thinking since I deal with a lot of them on a regular basis, but when people press me to explain why Amish think they way they do I am hard pressed to get a coherent explanation, that is because their ‘thinking’ is so foreign to the average person. My general statement is that “you would have to be Amish to understand the way they think”, at least to make any common sense of it.
The Amish and their ways is not the point of this blog post. My point is about the way “government”, all the way from the Feds to the local level has turned American foundational values on its head. There was a time when an American who owned a piece of property could consider that land and its use “sacred” in that the ‘owner’ had the full right to use and live on his land ever how he wanted to. But, as it commonly the ‘excuse’, in the name of “protecting the public” the government now takes the liberty to not only confiscate your property if they want to, for the greater good of course, but they now consider it their “lawful responsibility” to tell me what I can do with my property, where, or if, I can build an outbuilding, how big that building can be and they consider it their ‘sacred right’ to know everything I do with or on my small chunk of the “American Dream”.
Finally, these county fellows happen to mention what they were looking for, at least what they “said” they were doing. They were looking for any place that had more than one residence. Many of the Amish, (all the ones I know of) do not take social security from the government, when they get too old to earn enough money to live on, some of their family will build them a house next door so they can assist them in their old age. Our “dictators” evidently don’t like that some parts of our society choose to care for their older family members in this manner. So they have passed ‘zoning laws’ and one of those limit how many residential houses can be on a piece of property.
What bothers me is this. Many ‘normal people’ don’t understand the Amish ways and can’t figure out how the Amish think because they chose to live in a way that was “normal” a couple hundred years ago, without electricity etc. But the part that I can’t figure out is: “Who gave the government the ‘right’ to dictate to me or anyone else, that one cannot have more than one dwelling on their own piece of property? Our government is bankrupt, are they wanting mom & pop to move to town where the bankrupt government can care for them? Or is it that they just simply are desperate for money and want to ‘extort’ some from the Amish because they know most Amish would rather pay for whatever “permits” they are forced to purchase than be at odds with the local government?
I am hard pressed to know the answer. I only know what I have observed over the last year or two. Last summer the Amish had a co-op set up in our nearest village. Here they sold farm produce like eggs, jams etc. Right around harvest time our county “officials” walked it and shut the co-op down, saying they did not have the proper “permits” to sale produce. The same produce that I can buy off the back of a pick-up truck parked along side the road. I don’t always understand how Amish ‘think’, but for the life of me, I can’t understand how our government thinks either. It seems they are doggedly determined to undermine every traditional way for people to earn money from their small farms or land. While at the same time, this government is bankrupt! One would think that local, state and federal leaders would try to help people earn what little money they could by whatever honest means they could, but no, we have reached the point when for whatever convoluted reasoning the ‘dictators’ use, they are taking away all commonly understood rights of normal American people. But if you happen to have ‘slipped’ across the border into Texas under the wire, our beloved government will give you free medical care and a college education! Something is upside down folks.
Such are the thoughts of Ernie’s World.
Now the National Weather Service (NOA) is saying we have another storm coming from Tuesday into Wednesday. This one they have upgraded from a “Winter Storm” to a “Blizzard” warning. I am not certain where they get the “blizzard” business from, I assume it takes into account strong winds verses simply heavy snow. According to what they predict now, we sit right in the middle of the road on this one, but I see the possibility (being the weather expert I am J ) that this storm could pass just to the south of us and we “might” be spared the worst of it. Then again, we might get “hammered”!
MN is known for winter weather, but the truth is we rarely get over a foot of snowfall in one storm. That “pleasure” is reserved for those who live along the great lakes where they can get several feet of snow in one storm, or those out west in the mountains who get a similar burial when the conditions are right. From what I heard tonight they are talking a total of around 15 inches for our area between Tuesday and Wednesday. I have a hard time believing that, I don’t know why, other than we have had it so easy this winter we are “off guard” and don’t really expect it.
Traditionally March is the snowiest month of the year in our state. While the “old country” where I grew up (Ohio) is thinking of spring and beginning to have spring rains, in MN we don’t dare hope for spring until after mid-April. In fact, the worst snowstorm in my recent memory was in April a couple or three years ago. I remember it so well because it came with a double hit. That is when we get 8 or 10 inches of snow one day and two days later repeat the process. While trying to dig out of the first wave, the clutch went out of my tractor, so I was ‘up the creek’ when the 2nd storm hit two days later. That time I managed to get our old snow-blower running enough to get a path to the road open, but had to wait until the tractor was repaired to get the place properly cleaned up.
What makes our situation more difficult for snow removal is that we need more than just a open trail to the road. Having my lumber business here requires that I keep a lot of area open and cleaned up in order to operate properly. Such are the consequences of having a small one man business in the great state of MN.
Speaking of our great state. Last week I got a visit from our county “Conservation and Land Management” people. I used to think that the USA was a “free country” and “personal property rights” was a foundation of a free society. Property rights might still be the foundation of a free people, but we are only deceiving ourselves if we think this applies to the state of MN and I am assuming other states are not a lot different.
The strange part about this visit was that the two gentlemen that got out of the county car and came to my door, one with a camera in his hands, were not in the least bit interested in me or my property when they found out that I was not Amish. This farm used to belong to an Amish family before we bought it, so they assumed it still did. Never mind that they parked right beside my electric pole, something you won’t find at an Amish house, and I met them outside the back door dressed like anything but an Amish. They still ask me if I belonged to the local Amish community. I told them no, then they wanted to know if I ran a sawmill “too”, as if everyone that had some lumber setting around must run a sawmill. I did not bother to explain to them that I did have a small sawmill in one of my sheds, but since my business is not running a sawmill, I figured this was none of their business.
I explained to them that I kiln dry lumber, which would explain my piles of lumber they could plainly see. I did not want to pry into their business with the Amish anymore than I wanted them to pry into my business, but I could not help wondering why they would approach what they thought to be an Amish residence with a camera in their hands. By way of explanation, Amish do not want their picture taken, by anyone. It is one of those things that is hard for the rest of us to understand, like a lot of their ways. I do understand some of their thinking since I deal with a lot of them on a regular basis, but when people press me to explain why Amish think they way they do I am hard pressed to get a coherent explanation, that is because their ‘thinking’ is so foreign to the average person. My general statement is that “you would have to be Amish to understand the way they think”, at least to make any common sense of it.
The Amish and their ways is not the point of this blog post. My point is about the way “government”, all the way from the Feds to the local level has turned American foundational values on its head. There was a time when an American who owned a piece of property could consider that land and its use “sacred” in that the ‘owner’ had the full right to use and live on his land ever how he wanted to. But, as it commonly the ‘excuse’, in the name of “protecting the public” the government now takes the liberty to not only confiscate your property if they want to, for the greater good of course, but they now consider it their “lawful responsibility” to tell me what I can do with my property, where, or if, I can build an outbuilding, how big that building can be and they consider it their ‘sacred right’ to know everything I do with or on my small chunk of the “American Dream”.
Finally, these county fellows happen to mention what they were looking for, at least what they “said” they were doing. They were looking for any place that had more than one residence. Many of the Amish, (all the ones I know of) do not take social security from the government, when they get too old to earn enough money to live on, some of their family will build them a house next door so they can assist them in their old age. Our “dictators” evidently don’t like that some parts of our society choose to care for their older family members in this manner. So they have passed ‘zoning laws’ and one of those limit how many residential houses can be on a piece of property.
What bothers me is this. Many ‘normal people’ don’t understand the Amish ways and can’t figure out how the Amish think because they chose to live in a way that was “normal” a couple hundred years ago, without electricity etc. But the part that I can’t figure out is: “Who gave the government the ‘right’ to dictate to me or anyone else, that one cannot have more than one dwelling on their own piece of property? Our government is bankrupt, are they wanting mom & pop to move to town where the bankrupt government can care for them? Or is it that they just simply are desperate for money and want to ‘extort’ some from the Amish because they know most Amish would rather pay for whatever “permits” they are forced to purchase than be at odds with the local government?
I am hard pressed to know the answer. I only know what I have observed over the last year or two. Last summer the Amish had a co-op set up in our nearest village. Here they sold farm produce like eggs, jams etc. Right around harvest time our county “officials” walked it and shut the co-op down, saying they did not have the proper “permits” to sale produce. The same produce that I can buy off the back of a pick-up truck parked along side the road. I don’t always understand how Amish ‘think’, but for the life of me, I can’t understand how our government thinks either. It seems they are doggedly determined to undermine every traditional way for people to earn money from their small farms or land. While at the same time, this government is bankrupt! One would think that local, state and federal leaders would try to help people earn what little money they could by whatever honest means they could, but no, we have reached the point when for whatever convoluted reasoning the ‘dictators’ use, they are taking away all commonly understood rights of normal American people. But if you happen to have ‘slipped’ across the border into Texas under the wire, our beloved government will give you free medical care and a college education! Something is upside down folks.
Such are the thoughts of Ernie’s World.
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Grandchildren
Ernie’s World has been quiet for awhile. That is because I have been very busy or just don’t have much to say. That was until I just got done spending 3 days with my grandson! What a joy that was. He is about 15 months old and I had not seen him since around late October. They sure grow fast at this stage in their young lives! His parents dropped him off and went on a fishing trip.
Back in October he was quite clumsy as he was learning to walk, now he is a fast little fellow. Since most of the “work” falls on grandma, that leaves the ‘fun’ up to me. Only those who have grandchildren can understand how much joy it is too look into those eyes and realize that this person is your 2nd generation offspring. Then see the pure excitement about life and learning there is in the young ones, something that we older folks have forgotten about.
I am sure all grandparents feel the same about their grandchildren. But this is the first for us and the first “boy” descendent that I have. In my mind that makes it even more special. We have two daughters who have brought great joy and excitement to our lives. A boy is a different critter altogether. Grandma said that while I was plowing snow, the young fellow watched the tractor with awe and did not want to leave the window as long as I was in sight. He likes machines, tools and anything that looks like it is mechanical. Girls have their own charm, but to watch a young boy study everything in sight, to see how it is put together is something I never noticed either of my girls doing.
We had a small plastic sliding board set up in the house for him to play on. On one side there was a plastic cap that was lose from a bolt, he worked time and again at trying to get that thing to go over the bolt head where he was certain it was suppose to be, but being broke it would not stay, but I don’t know at the times I saw him working at that thing, as if he was determined to fix it.
Yea, there is nothing like a grandchild to perk up ones interest in small children. Every small child has a grandparent somewhere who thinks the world of them, at least I hope they do. I know where there is one little fellow who does.
One more thing. How should I explain this so as not to overstate the case? We all know toddlers can be “notional”, even when it makes no sense. But the little fellow sure made grandpa feel “special” when we went to meet his parents to take him back home. I got him out of his car seat and took him to his mother. The little bugger pulled away from his ma and clung to my neck! After not seeing her for 3 days! How funny is that? Even knowing it was just the ‘notion’ of the moment made grandpa feel good. J
Back in October he was quite clumsy as he was learning to walk, now he is a fast little fellow. Since most of the “work” falls on grandma, that leaves the ‘fun’ up to me. Only those who have grandchildren can understand how much joy it is too look into those eyes and realize that this person is your 2nd generation offspring. Then see the pure excitement about life and learning there is in the young ones, something that we older folks have forgotten about.
I am sure all grandparents feel the same about their grandchildren. But this is the first for us and the first “boy” descendent that I have. In my mind that makes it even more special. We have two daughters who have brought great joy and excitement to our lives. A boy is a different critter altogether. Grandma said that while I was plowing snow, the young fellow watched the tractor with awe and did not want to leave the window as long as I was in sight. He likes machines, tools and anything that looks like it is mechanical. Girls have their own charm, but to watch a young boy study everything in sight, to see how it is put together is something I never noticed either of my girls doing.
We had a small plastic sliding board set up in the house for him to play on. On one side there was a plastic cap that was lose from a bolt, he worked time and again at trying to get that thing to go over the bolt head where he was certain it was suppose to be, but being broke it would not stay, but I don’t know at the times I saw him working at that thing, as if he was determined to fix it.
Yea, there is nothing like a grandchild to perk up ones interest in small children. Every small child has a grandparent somewhere who thinks the world of them, at least I hope they do. I know where there is one little fellow who does.
One more thing. How should I explain this so as not to overstate the case? We all know toddlers can be “notional”, even when it makes no sense. But the little fellow sure made grandpa feel “special” when we went to meet his parents to take him back home. I got him out of his car seat and took him to his mother. The little bugger pulled away from his ma and clung to my neck! After not seeing her for 3 days! How funny is that? Even knowing it was just the ‘notion’ of the moment made grandpa feel good. J
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Slippery Rocks, Tipsy Canoes & Ice Cold Water Don't Mix
Our great MN weather has taken a turn toward the cool side. At least for this mild winter it seems cold at around -10° the last couple mornings, with a nasty wind, as icing on the cake. Still nothing to what most winters are, but some of us are happy for the break. The lack of snow makes me even happier than the warm temperatures. So far we have only had a few inches, I plowed a little bit one time and now the ground is mostly bare. But we have March coming up, which is historically the snowiest month of the winter for us, so we might get a pile yet.
Today as I was going about some work in the shop, I was having some ‘flashbacks’ to days of my childhood and the small farm in southern OH that I grew up on, at least for the most part that is where we lived in my young years. It is a fact, that our young years have a decided affect upon our lives. I am not sure how other people look at these things, but for me, I loved living on a dirt road with very few neighbors and lots of room for a young fellow to roam, without getting into too much trouble. I took to country life like a young duck takes to water. It just came natural, as if instinct told me that my place was outside of cities and villages and near the woods, fields and streams.
Since becoming an adult, I have lived in some fairly large cities for short periods of times, but I was never ‘at home’ in a city or even living in apartments or houses in small towns. I wanted a place as far from neighbors as I could get. Not that I have an un-neighborly attitude toward people, a lot of my desire to live apart comes with some of my ‘hobbies’. Things that make a lot of noise and is bound to disturb some neighbors. Mainly that is with the boom of some of my black-powder rifles or modern deer rifles. I have been a fan of target shooting ever since I was old enough to shoot a BB-gun. I like living in a place that I can shoot when I want to without disturbing a lot of people.
On the little farm where I grew up we were very lucky to have plenty of woods where I went as often as I could escape my mother and just loitered with a single shot .22 or a shotgun. Not that I was always really hunting for game, but that was as good an excuse as any to hang out in the woods. We had a small stream that ran through our farm. On the maps it was called Little Raccoon Creek. A few miles down stream they dammed the stream up and build a reservoir that formed a fair sized lake, for that region. I was in my early teens when they made this lake and remember when they stocked it with fish. They did not allow fishing for 2 years after it was stocked, I tell you that was a long 2 years for a want-to-be fisherman. When you are young, two years is ‘forever’! But it was not against the law to fish in the stream. Most of the year there were not many fish in the stream, but in the spring the suckers would run up the creek to spawn. We made “hay” then!
We had an uncle who like to “gig” for suckers. In MN we would call it “spearing”, but there they used a frog gig to spear the suckers at night. I remember we would take old carbide miner lights as lamps. Then we would wade in shallow water where it would be rippling and there is where we could see the fish as they swam upstream in the shallow water. We carried burlap feed sacks to put our catch in, at times we would get 2 or three sacks of those suckers in a night. I have no ideal if it was ‘legal’ or not, I think it was, but am not certain.
One night I especially remember. We had worked our way upstream and got a few fish, but not very many. It was a cold night in April and I recall that night very well because I got desperate enough to get some fish that I took the chance of standing of a slippery rock over about 3 feet of water. Stream water in April is cold! I found out when my feet slipped out from under me and I went into the water body first. Of course it did me no harm other than a cold dunking and a pleasant memory.
From that night we flash-forward about 20 years. By then we were living in MN at the junction of the Shell and Crow Wing rivers near the village of Huntersville, MN. It was another April and I was in a canoe doing some spring fishing up the Crow Wing river maybe a half mile from our house. The ice was still on the lakes, but the river had been open for a few weeks and I just could not resist ‘casting a line’ with some crappie minnows and a bobber. I had tied my canoe off on a tree that had fallen into the river. The worst part is that I had been having some back problems and did one of those “dumb” things we sometimes do to avoid pain. I had an old lawn chair that I set up in the canoe to sit in while I fished. If you are familiar with canoes you can guess how that was going to turn out. But I had spent a lot of time in a canoe and had never tipped one in all my travels, so I was over-confident you might say.
I had just got comfortable and was ready to bait my hook, so I reached down to pull my minnow bucket up out of the water to get a minnow. I never got it out of the water. As I leaned over in that old style lawn chair it slipped on the bottom of the canoe and before I even knew what happened I had a ‘rude awakening’ in ice cold water.
There was a strong current in the spot I was at and as soon as my head came up out of the river I saw my lawn chair floating downstream. I wonder now why I bothered with it, but I swam out and retrieved the chair before I attempted to get out of that ice water. I suppose I did not want to have to chase the chair down with the canoe and then have to paddle against a very strong current to get back upstream to the house. Not that the chair was of any value, I hate too see “junk” cluttering up a wilderness river and that is what would happen if I just let the thing go.
The funny part to me was that I had a hat on and sun glasses when I went under the water, when I came up from the dunking my hate and sunglasses were still perfectly in place, albeit very wet. I am glad there was no one around with a video camera to film the fool in a lawn chair, in a canoe soon after the ice had left the river. Being fairly young and healthy at the time, and used to the cold, it did not bother me as far as the cold was concerned. The only thing that would have bothered me would have been if there was an eye witness to the event, there was no one around.
There is no moral to these stories, unless you don’t like taking a dip in ice cold water, then I would advise you to stay off slippery rocks and don’t even think of sitting in a canoe with a lawn chair!
What makes one think of such crazy things on a cold winter day?
Today as I was going about some work in the shop, I was having some ‘flashbacks’ to days of my childhood and the small farm in southern OH that I grew up on, at least for the most part that is where we lived in my young years. It is a fact, that our young years have a decided affect upon our lives. I am not sure how other people look at these things, but for me, I loved living on a dirt road with very few neighbors and lots of room for a young fellow to roam, without getting into too much trouble. I took to country life like a young duck takes to water. It just came natural, as if instinct told me that my place was outside of cities and villages and near the woods, fields and streams.
Since becoming an adult, I have lived in some fairly large cities for short periods of times, but I was never ‘at home’ in a city or even living in apartments or houses in small towns. I wanted a place as far from neighbors as I could get. Not that I have an un-neighborly attitude toward people, a lot of my desire to live apart comes with some of my ‘hobbies’. Things that make a lot of noise and is bound to disturb some neighbors. Mainly that is with the boom of some of my black-powder rifles or modern deer rifles. I have been a fan of target shooting ever since I was old enough to shoot a BB-gun. I like living in a place that I can shoot when I want to without disturbing a lot of people.
On the little farm where I grew up we were very lucky to have plenty of woods where I went as often as I could escape my mother and just loitered with a single shot .22 or a shotgun. Not that I was always really hunting for game, but that was as good an excuse as any to hang out in the woods. We had a small stream that ran through our farm. On the maps it was called Little Raccoon Creek. A few miles down stream they dammed the stream up and build a reservoir that formed a fair sized lake, for that region. I was in my early teens when they made this lake and remember when they stocked it with fish. They did not allow fishing for 2 years after it was stocked, I tell you that was a long 2 years for a want-to-be fisherman. When you are young, two years is ‘forever’! But it was not against the law to fish in the stream. Most of the year there were not many fish in the stream, but in the spring the suckers would run up the creek to spawn. We made “hay” then!
We had an uncle who like to “gig” for suckers. In MN we would call it “spearing”, but there they used a frog gig to spear the suckers at night. I remember we would take old carbide miner lights as lamps. Then we would wade in shallow water where it would be rippling and there is where we could see the fish as they swam upstream in the shallow water. We carried burlap feed sacks to put our catch in, at times we would get 2 or three sacks of those suckers in a night. I have no ideal if it was ‘legal’ or not, I think it was, but am not certain.
One night I especially remember. We had worked our way upstream and got a few fish, but not very many. It was a cold night in April and I recall that night very well because I got desperate enough to get some fish that I took the chance of standing of a slippery rock over about 3 feet of water. Stream water in April is cold! I found out when my feet slipped out from under me and I went into the water body first. Of course it did me no harm other than a cold dunking and a pleasant memory.
From that night we flash-forward about 20 years. By then we were living in MN at the junction of the Shell and Crow Wing rivers near the village of Huntersville, MN. It was another April and I was in a canoe doing some spring fishing up the Crow Wing river maybe a half mile from our house. The ice was still on the lakes, but the river had been open for a few weeks and I just could not resist ‘casting a line’ with some crappie minnows and a bobber. I had tied my canoe off on a tree that had fallen into the river. The worst part is that I had been having some back problems and did one of those “dumb” things we sometimes do to avoid pain. I had an old lawn chair that I set up in the canoe to sit in while I fished. If you are familiar with canoes you can guess how that was going to turn out. But I had spent a lot of time in a canoe and had never tipped one in all my travels, so I was over-confident you might say.
I had just got comfortable and was ready to bait my hook, so I reached down to pull my minnow bucket up out of the water to get a minnow. I never got it out of the water. As I leaned over in that old style lawn chair it slipped on the bottom of the canoe and before I even knew what happened I had a ‘rude awakening’ in ice cold water.
There was a strong current in the spot I was at and as soon as my head came up out of the river I saw my lawn chair floating downstream. I wonder now why I bothered with it, but I swam out and retrieved the chair before I attempted to get out of that ice water. I suppose I did not want to have to chase the chair down with the canoe and then have to paddle against a very strong current to get back upstream to the house. Not that the chair was of any value, I hate too see “junk” cluttering up a wilderness river and that is what would happen if I just let the thing go.
The funny part to me was that I had a hat on and sun glasses when I went under the water, when I came up from the dunking my hate and sunglasses were still perfectly in place, albeit very wet. I am glad there was no one around with a video camera to film the fool in a lawn chair, in a canoe soon after the ice had left the river. Being fairly young and healthy at the time, and used to the cold, it did not bother me as far as the cold was concerned. The only thing that would have bothered me would have been if there was an eye witness to the event, there was no one around.
There is no moral to these stories, unless you don’t like taking a dip in ice cold water, then I would advise you to stay off slippery rocks and don’t even think of sitting in a canoe with a lawn chair!
What makes one think of such crazy things on a cold winter day?
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Only Children & Their Pets
Before I forget again! I discovered why folks have had problems making comments on this blog. I don’t claim to be very good at these things, but somehow I had the settings wrong from what I intended and it did not allow everyone to make comments. Hopefully that is “fixed”, so feel free to comment on anything you read here. Just keep it honest and clean, please no foul language or particularly ‘hateful’ talk. Disagreeing opinions are welcome.
You might note, that I try to avoid using other peoples names as much as possible on this blog. Other than names of friends that have passed away, I do this for security and privacy concerns. Between the internet and government it seems that no one can keep any degree of privacy. I just don’t want to use peoples names in my writing, at least not their full name. Personally, I don’t care about my own name being ‘public’, otherwise I would have never started a blog. But I try to avoid using my families name or friends names. Too many criminals spend too much time on the internet trying to learn all they can about people, usually for identity theft purposes or who knows why, but to avoid helping any of these attempts out, I just stay away from using names.
MN weather took a fast turn overnight. At 10 PM last evening it was still almost 30° , but by daylight it was down to 10° . At least it firmed up the mud and was still sunny and clear, so it did not feel as cold as it would if it was cloudy or windy. Tonight, they say, we will dip below 0 again. That is to be expected as we grade lumber tomorrow in the “great outdoors”, someone on this grading crew is a ‘jinx’!
All of us have heard most of our lives that it is not a good thing to raise an ‘only child’, I can’t argue the point, since I don’t have a great deal of experience with more than one child, that is, more than one at a time anyway! Not everyone has the ‘charming’ experience of raising 2 “only children”. Technically, since we have two children they can’t be said to be an only child. But when those children are born, by no planning on our part I might add, 22 years apart, they are raised for all intents and purposes as ’only children’. So we have the ‘pleasure’ of raising two ‘only children’.
I bring this up because when our first daughter was a child, pre-teen years, I was not around home all that much. Being young seems to require an extreme amount of time spent “on the job”, not that I spend that much less time working now, it is just that most of my work is just outside the backdoor, so to speak. So I get the opportunity to watch this latest child on a daily basis and see how they manage things without a sibling.
I can’t speak from their perspective since when I grew up, there was no such thing as being “alone” very much. With one brother and 4 sisters, there was always plenty of siblings around to either do things with, or ’antagonize’, whatever the case may be. From what I observe, only children make playmates with their pets. We have always had pets around, whether it be a dog, or several, or cat, or a whole herd of them, a goat at one time, now a ’half-wild’ horse. The children seem to spend a lot of their free time either playing with their animals or ’antagonizing’ them, just like other children do with their siblings.
In the current state of affairs, our 11 year old daughter is ’obsessed’ with trying to ride her ’half-wild’ horse. This is not a full size horse, nor is it actually a pony. Some people call it a miniature horse, but I don’t think that is truly the case either. At any rate, this horse is a bit larger than most ponies, but much smaller than a full size horse.
We have had this ’thing’ over 2 years now, just over the last month or so she has been able to climb on its back without being thrown off. I think it must be ’stuffed’ with ’horse treats’ to the point that it can’t throw her! I know it takes a lot of treats to keep it distracted long enough for her to jump on its back without saddle, bridle or even rope to hold too. She latches onto its mane with a ‘death grip’ and hangs on. Most of the time Brownie (that is its name) just stands there chewing on her treat. Then the child starts working at getting her to move. More often than not, when she does move, it is at a good clip so our daughter gets a good workout trying to stay mounted on this animal.
As I am working in the shop I can look out my window and often watch the circus. It is a bit worrisome at times wondering when there will be a ‘broken bone’ from this affair, but so far nothing serious has happen.
Then there are the times an only child will gather up all their animals, a dog, several cats and attempt to play “school”, with them being her students. Now that is funny! I suspect it is not much different than many classrooms you hear about on the news. Just try to get a young Beagle dog to sit still when there are 3 cats close by, a good definition of ‘chaos’ could be illustrated right there. Just like a ‘bully’ child, the Beagle knows which cat he can mess, the old Tom won’t put up with anything, but one of the young cats is the ‘victim’ of much abuse, the cat is plenty big enough to draw blood from the Beagle’s nose, but mostly it appears to like the rough play. In the mean time the “teacher” is trying to bring order to her classroom, without much success as far as I have observed.
Last evening we had some friends stop in who have 4 children, all under about 7 years old I think. Once those little fellows got warmed up, I could not help but think; maybe an only child is not so bad after all. J
You might note, that I try to avoid using other peoples names as much as possible on this blog. Other than names of friends that have passed away, I do this for security and privacy concerns. Between the internet and government it seems that no one can keep any degree of privacy. I just don’t want to use peoples names in my writing, at least not their full name. Personally, I don’t care about my own name being ‘public’, otherwise I would have never started a blog. But I try to avoid using my families name or friends names. Too many criminals spend too much time on the internet trying to learn all they can about people, usually for identity theft purposes or who knows why, but to avoid helping any of these attempts out, I just stay away from using names.
MN weather took a fast turn overnight. At 10 PM last evening it was still almost 30° , but by daylight it was down to 10° . At least it firmed up the mud and was still sunny and clear, so it did not feel as cold as it would if it was cloudy or windy. Tonight, they say, we will dip below 0 again. That is to be expected as we grade lumber tomorrow in the “great outdoors”, someone on this grading crew is a ‘jinx’!
All of us have heard most of our lives that it is not a good thing to raise an ‘only child’, I can’t argue the point, since I don’t have a great deal of experience with more than one child, that is, more than one at a time anyway! Not everyone has the ‘charming’ experience of raising 2 “only children”. Technically, since we have two children they can’t be said to be an only child. But when those children are born, by no planning on our part I might add, 22 years apart, they are raised for all intents and purposes as ’only children’. So we have the ‘pleasure’ of raising two ‘only children’.
I bring this up because when our first daughter was a child, pre-teen years, I was not around home all that much. Being young seems to require an extreme amount of time spent “on the job”, not that I spend that much less time working now, it is just that most of my work is just outside the backdoor, so to speak. So I get the opportunity to watch this latest child on a daily basis and see how they manage things without a sibling.
I can’t speak from their perspective since when I grew up, there was no such thing as being “alone” very much. With one brother and 4 sisters, there was always plenty of siblings around to either do things with, or ’antagonize’, whatever the case may be. From what I observe, only children make playmates with their pets. We have always had pets around, whether it be a dog, or several, or cat, or a whole herd of them, a goat at one time, now a ’half-wild’ horse. The children seem to spend a lot of their free time either playing with their animals or ’antagonizing’ them, just like other children do with their siblings.
In the current state of affairs, our 11 year old daughter is ’obsessed’ with trying to ride her ’half-wild’ horse. This is not a full size horse, nor is it actually a pony. Some people call it a miniature horse, but I don’t think that is truly the case either. At any rate, this horse is a bit larger than most ponies, but much smaller than a full size horse.
We have had this ’thing’ over 2 years now, just over the last month or so she has been able to climb on its back without being thrown off. I think it must be ’stuffed’ with ’horse treats’ to the point that it can’t throw her! I know it takes a lot of treats to keep it distracted long enough for her to jump on its back without saddle, bridle or even rope to hold too. She latches onto its mane with a ‘death grip’ and hangs on. Most of the time Brownie (that is its name) just stands there chewing on her treat. Then the child starts working at getting her to move. More often than not, when she does move, it is at a good clip so our daughter gets a good workout trying to stay mounted on this animal.
As I am working in the shop I can look out my window and often watch the circus. It is a bit worrisome at times wondering when there will be a ‘broken bone’ from this affair, but so far nothing serious has happen.
Then there are the times an only child will gather up all their animals, a dog, several cats and attempt to play “school”, with them being her students. Now that is funny! I suspect it is not much different than many classrooms you hear about on the news. Just try to get a young Beagle dog to sit still when there are 3 cats close by, a good definition of ‘chaos’ could be illustrated right there. Just like a ‘bully’ child, the Beagle knows which cat he can mess, the old Tom won’t put up with anything, but one of the young cats is the ‘victim’ of much abuse, the cat is plenty big enough to draw blood from the Beagle’s nose, but mostly it appears to like the rough play. In the mean time the “teacher” is trying to bring order to her classroom, without much success as far as I have observed.
Last evening we had some friends stop in who have 4 children, all under about 7 years old I think. Once those little fellows got warmed up, I could not help but think; maybe an only child is not so bad after all. J
Monday, February 6, 2012
War With Iran?
MN weather just continues to amaze and stay in the ‘surreal zone’. Today it was sunny and 42° , really strange. We even got reminded of what “mud” was, that unpleasant part of spring. Of course, the forecast is calling for around zero by mid-week, but that is still nothing to be concerned about. We still have only gotten a few inches of snow all winter, which pleases me to no end, since I don’t get a thrill out of plowing snow. The only thing I have missed is snowshoeing, but I can live with it.
It would seem that another war is almost sure before much longer. I am speaking of the situation with Iran. This has been brewing for over 30 or 40 years now. Remember the hostages under Jimmy Carter’s term in the 70’s? When the Muslim extremist took over Iran. Now they have or on the verge of having nuclear weapons. That within itself is nothing new, a lot of countries have such weapons, but most nuclear countries are not threatening to destroy their neighbors with them. In fact, ’promising’ to destroy Israel at all costs!
Here is my take on the whole situation. If our own government would let American oil companies drill for oil in our own country, plus the Gulf of Mexico, where many other countries are working, but our President restricts us from doing so. Then get busy with the pipeline that our friendly neighbors Canada wants in order to supply us with crude oil, we would not need to worry about “OIL”. So how can it be that an American president and his political party is bound and determined to keep us ’dependent’ on middle east oil? It is beyond me to understand. What is also beyond my understanding is how anyone who has not been in a complete coma over the last 3 years, would vote for this president a second time? But my honest feeling is that it is very possible that he will be re-elected, the power of politics has a long arm and voters a short memory.
Now as far as Iran’s threat to Israel is concerned. It is my opinion, having studied the mindset and history of that small country surrounded by enemies, the Israelis could ’take out’ Iran’s nuke plants in short order. That is if our president did not threaten them if they do it! But again, we don’t have a “normal” president that seems to be interested in American and our friends interests, nearly as much as he is interested in his own grip on power. That is a sad thing to say and I hate saying it, but how else are we to interpret his actions? He is a great speech maker. In his speeches he says many things that sounds good and American, but then in his actions he does exactly the opposite. Some would call him a lair, others seem to think he really does want to take the USA down the drain, doing away with our constituted Republic and replacing it with some form of Americanized socialism. What are ‘common people’ supposed to think about our own country?
Today the president announced more ‘toothless’ sanctions on Iran. Claiming to freeze their assets under control of any U.S. bank in the world. The only problem is, according to reports, Iran already removed any important monies out of U.S. banks or currency. So the new sanction is nothing more than ‘grand-standing’ for the benefit of the American public. Iran is already selling their oil to other countries using either gold or foreign money as the medium of exchange, not U.S. dollars.
How can it be that a country such as the USA has given up all its historic principles of freedom, honor and private enterprise in such a short time? Fact is, the American people as a whole have not given up our principles, but we are ‘blind’ to the fact that forces in our own government are undermining our very foundation. The only recourse we have is at the voting booth and that gets to be questionable, in light of some of the tactics that have been used to distort the vote.
Ok, maybe this rant is nothing different than most of them. My advice is this; before you go vote, educate yourself as to the principles of the individuals you have to choice from. Then vote for the one “least likely” to follow the lead of those who stand against everything “you” believe. It is not likely to find a viable politician who you could really trust these days, so I will take the pragmatic approach and choice the best under the circumstances and hope that God will have mercy on us and somehow open our eyes to what is happening in our country, then give us time to return to a sane mind.
It would seem that another war is almost sure before much longer. I am speaking of the situation with Iran. This has been brewing for over 30 or 40 years now. Remember the hostages under Jimmy Carter’s term in the 70’s? When the Muslim extremist took over Iran. Now they have or on the verge of having nuclear weapons. That within itself is nothing new, a lot of countries have such weapons, but most nuclear countries are not threatening to destroy their neighbors with them. In fact, ’promising’ to destroy Israel at all costs!
Here is my take on the whole situation. If our own government would let American oil companies drill for oil in our own country, plus the Gulf of Mexico, where many other countries are working, but our President restricts us from doing so. Then get busy with the pipeline that our friendly neighbors Canada wants in order to supply us with crude oil, we would not need to worry about “OIL”. So how can it be that an American president and his political party is bound and determined to keep us ’dependent’ on middle east oil? It is beyond me to understand. What is also beyond my understanding is how anyone who has not been in a complete coma over the last 3 years, would vote for this president a second time? But my honest feeling is that it is very possible that he will be re-elected, the power of politics has a long arm and voters a short memory.
Now as far as Iran’s threat to Israel is concerned. It is my opinion, having studied the mindset and history of that small country surrounded by enemies, the Israelis could ’take out’ Iran’s nuke plants in short order. That is if our president did not threaten them if they do it! But again, we don’t have a “normal” president that seems to be interested in American and our friends interests, nearly as much as he is interested in his own grip on power. That is a sad thing to say and I hate saying it, but how else are we to interpret his actions? He is a great speech maker. In his speeches he says many things that sounds good and American, but then in his actions he does exactly the opposite. Some would call him a lair, others seem to think he really does want to take the USA down the drain, doing away with our constituted Republic and replacing it with some form of Americanized socialism. What are ‘common people’ supposed to think about our own country?
Today the president announced more ‘toothless’ sanctions on Iran. Claiming to freeze their assets under control of any U.S. bank in the world. The only problem is, according to reports, Iran already removed any important monies out of U.S. banks or currency. So the new sanction is nothing more than ‘grand-standing’ for the benefit of the American public. Iran is already selling their oil to other countries using either gold or foreign money as the medium of exchange, not U.S. dollars.
How can it be that a country such as the USA has given up all its historic principles of freedom, honor and private enterprise in such a short time? Fact is, the American people as a whole have not given up our principles, but we are ‘blind’ to the fact that forces in our own government are undermining our very foundation. The only recourse we have is at the voting booth and that gets to be questionable, in light of some of the tactics that have been used to distort the vote.
Ok, maybe this rant is nothing different than most of them. My advice is this; before you go vote, educate yourself as to the principles of the individuals you have to choice from. Then vote for the one “least likely” to follow the lead of those who stand against everything “you” believe. It is not likely to find a viable politician who you could really trust these days, so I will take the pragmatic approach and choice the best under the circumstances and hope that God will have mercy on us and somehow open our eyes to what is happening in our country, then give us time to return to a sane mind.
Friday, February 3, 2012
Never Run Out of Work
Things in my world have been busy this week, as I expect them to stay that way, I don’t suppose my posts will be very regular.
One sure thing about being self-employed, you don’t run out of work, there is always dozens of things that need to be done. The only drawback is that many of those things are not very profitable, if at all, yet I consider it better to have plenty to do than to sit around worrying about ‘what to do’. If I was a good business person, I would eliminate all the ‘unprofitable’ work and only concentrate on the work that earns its way, which is something I do “try” to do, but then the matter of reality always gets in the way.
The ancient Greeks had a saying; ‘That ones character dictated their fate’. I have considered that little word of wisdom and find that it is probably very much to the point. My natural inclinations get in the way of using good sense when it comes to using my time in a profitable manner. One thing being, I don’t view ‘money’ as being the most important part of my life or business. Consequently I am constantly getting myself into a lot of work that does not pay very much, just because I want to do a certain job, even when I know I can’t make much money for the time invested.
It was well over 20 years ago when I first began woodworking. I had vague dreams that it could provide a portion of my necessary income and it has, but the fact is any teenager flipping burgers at a fast food joint, makes more per hour than I do on a woodworking project. The only advantage I have is that I don’t have to punch someone else’s time clock, that might not be much of an advantage, but it agrees with my disposition or you might say ‘character’ and so I face my own self-made ‘fate’.
Aside from work, our world has be socked in with dense fog for 3 days now. It moved in sometime during the night on Tuesday and has only began to dissipate this afternoon. It was somewhat eerie with such thick fog day and night. We could barely see a quarter mile during the brightest part of the day, it made me think of what it must be like in England, a land known for its dense fog. But this afternoon as it began to clear, we were left with a beautiful thick frost on the trees and everywhere we looked. That is how our lives are. From the deepest dark hours we eventually emerge to a brighter day, as long as we keep putting one foot ahead of the other and never give up to despair or discouragement.
Speaking of discouragement, no, I guess I won’t go there today. I was going to mention the GOP trying to choice a candidate to run against the current ‘occupier’ of the White House, but everyone running seems like they would rather self-destruct than see an opponent get the nomination. If they keep this up, one thing seems to be sure, the White House will stay in the hands of the one who is there. Just my opinion, but we who live in a state with only 2 electoral votes don’t have much of a say-so in either election. So the GOP will eventually put up someone, Romney I assume from the looks of things. One who I can’t see winning a head to head election against Chicago politics on a national scale. I am not sure anyone could. I surely hope I am wrong, but since we are for all realistic purposes ’bankrupt’, I am also not sure it will matter who sits in the oval office.
It is probably best for a common person, who likes a simple live close to the land, to just vote when the time comes and let the ‘destroyers’, as Ayn Rand called the political elite, do what they are going to do. While I, do what I can do to keep body and soul together by staying busy with my own small world. But I will still keep an eye on them!
Yea, that groundhog. Phil, whatever the rest of his name is, which I never could pronounce, much less spell, says 6 more weeks of winter. As a friend observed, we really have not had the first 6 weeks yet, even here in MN! I still have not forgotten what the Wooly Worm told me last fall. His coloring said we would have very mild weather the first part of the winter, but the spring would be long and nasty. Humm, I don’t really believe in the legend, but I have not forgotten it either. We could certainly have some very nasty weather here anytime from now to late April, but no matter how it turns out now, our winter will be much shorter than normal.
One sure thing about being self-employed, you don’t run out of work, there is always dozens of things that need to be done. The only drawback is that many of those things are not very profitable, if at all, yet I consider it better to have plenty to do than to sit around worrying about ‘what to do’. If I was a good business person, I would eliminate all the ‘unprofitable’ work and only concentrate on the work that earns its way, which is something I do “try” to do, but then the matter of reality always gets in the way.
The ancient Greeks had a saying; ‘That ones character dictated their fate’. I have considered that little word of wisdom and find that it is probably very much to the point. My natural inclinations get in the way of using good sense when it comes to using my time in a profitable manner. One thing being, I don’t view ‘money’ as being the most important part of my life or business. Consequently I am constantly getting myself into a lot of work that does not pay very much, just because I want to do a certain job, even when I know I can’t make much money for the time invested.
It was well over 20 years ago when I first began woodworking. I had vague dreams that it could provide a portion of my necessary income and it has, but the fact is any teenager flipping burgers at a fast food joint, makes more per hour than I do on a woodworking project. The only advantage I have is that I don’t have to punch someone else’s time clock, that might not be much of an advantage, but it agrees with my disposition or you might say ‘character’ and so I face my own self-made ‘fate’.
Aside from work, our world has be socked in with dense fog for 3 days now. It moved in sometime during the night on Tuesday and has only began to dissipate this afternoon. It was somewhat eerie with such thick fog day and night. We could barely see a quarter mile during the brightest part of the day, it made me think of what it must be like in England, a land known for its dense fog. But this afternoon as it began to clear, we were left with a beautiful thick frost on the trees and everywhere we looked. That is how our lives are. From the deepest dark hours we eventually emerge to a brighter day, as long as we keep putting one foot ahead of the other and never give up to despair or discouragement.
Speaking of discouragement, no, I guess I won’t go there today. I was going to mention the GOP trying to choice a candidate to run against the current ‘occupier’ of the White House, but everyone running seems like they would rather self-destruct than see an opponent get the nomination. If they keep this up, one thing seems to be sure, the White House will stay in the hands of the one who is there. Just my opinion, but we who live in a state with only 2 electoral votes don’t have much of a say-so in either election. So the GOP will eventually put up someone, Romney I assume from the looks of things. One who I can’t see winning a head to head election against Chicago politics on a national scale. I am not sure anyone could. I surely hope I am wrong, but since we are for all realistic purposes ’bankrupt’, I am also not sure it will matter who sits in the oval office.
It is probably best for a common person, who likes a simple live close to the land, to just vote when the time comes and let the ‘destroyers’, as Ayn Rand called the political elite, do what they are going to do. While I, do what I can do to keep body and soul together by staying busy with my own small world. But I will still keep an eye on them!
Yea, that groundhog. Phil, whatever the rest of his name is, which I never could pronounce, much less spell, says 6 more weeks of winter. As a friend observed, we really have not had the first 6 weeks yet, even here in MN! I still have not forgotten what the Wooly Worm told me last fall. His coloring said we would have very mild weather the first part of the winter, but the spring would be long and nasty. Humm, I don’t really believe in the legend, but I have not forgotten it either. We could certainly have some very nasty weather here anytime from now to late April, but no matter how it turns out now, our winter will be much shorter than normal.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Trotline Fishing With Kenneth
Since I have spent a fair amount of time over the last 30 years or so pursuing one specie of fish or another, it is only expected that I would have an ‘adventure’ or two along the waterways.
In the early 80’s we lived in southwest KY. It was there that I came to be friends with the first “real fisherman” that I had the privilege of fishing with. What I mean by “real fisherman” is one of those individuals who not only loved to fish, but is very good at it and spent most of his time ‘on the job’. This fellow was a lot older than I was, but we hit it off perfectly. He has been dead now for a number of years, but I think of him often and cherish the fishing outings we shared.
There was one element to out trips that seemed to be a given. Every time me and Kenneth got into a boat on a body of water, we could count on a rainstorm. He blamed the phenomenon on me, saying that I was a “jinx” and could bring rain during a drought by simply going fishing. Of course, I would counter that it was ‘him’ since it always rained when I went fishing with him, never mind that I did not fish with anyone else.
On one such outing we had gone to the Barren River Reservoir in Kenneth’s johnboat. We had about a 5 horse motor on this little boat, which was just fine for the narrow channel up which we were traveling to the spot we wanted to lay out our trotlines. That was his favorite method of fishing for channel cats and it was legal at that time in KY, I suppose it still is, but in MN we have no such ‘freedom’, which is probably good or we would surely have a lot less fish, because a trotline does its job well if properly set and baited.
We went what must have been 3 or 4 miles up the Reservoir when, out of a clear sky, came a thunderstorm. Of course we got wet, but nothing to be concerned about. We went ahead and laid out a few trotlines and baited them. The plan was to go back to the landing and nap until around 10 PM and then run the lines taking any fish we had. Then we would re-bait our hooks and come back the next morning to check them again and pull them in.
Our plan did not work that way due to a mishap with the starter rope on the motor. After we had gotten all the lines out, Kenneth pulled on the starter rope and it came clean out in his hand! No way to start the motor, so we thought at the time. Now I plead ignorance because it was not my motor and I had never owned a boat motor, what we learned later was all to Kenneth’s embarrassment, not mine. At the time it was already nearing dark and we had to cover about 4 miles of water to get to the landing. No oars, only one little “mini” paddle about 3 feet long. We took turns sitting in the bow of the boat and pulling ourselves along the best we could. It was a long pull. Naturally it got dark very quick, but to our good fortune there was a security light at the landing, so we kept the boat pointed that direction and kept pulling ourselves with that little paddle.
We were not able to run the lines that night, so we made the trip back home. I did not have time to go back with Kenneth the next morning to run the lines after he got a new rope in the motor. Our lines however, did their job. There was a half dozen or so channel cats hooked and one of them was over 5 lbs.
After Kenneth got back, naturally he called me with the report on our success. Then he laughed and told me that we were surely a couple of fools for having pulled ourselves miles with that little stub of a paddle, all due to “ignorance”. Then he explained to me that all we would have had to do was pull the cover off the motor and we could have started it with any piece of rope. All boat motors have a knot catch so that you can wrap a rope around the starter shaft and start them even if the pull rope comes out. At least all small outboard motors have such a emergency shaft. I told him that my ignorance was ‘excusable’, but his was evidently from old age and senility!
Incidentally, for those who have never used a trotline, it is a most convenient manner for taking fish, especially in a situation where you don’t have time to fish or in a survival emergency. The makeup of a trotline is this. The mainline can be as long as you want, but ours were around 100’ in length. Most often we would tie one end off on shore to a tree root or some other solid anchor.
Then we would string it out to where we wanted the other end to be. Drop a cement block down to the bottom of the lake attached to another rope, with a gallon milk jug tied on at the surface to hold our rope and line up off the bottom. To this line we would go down to whatever depth we wanted, usually a couple feet below the water, to miss “most” boat motor props in case a boat passed over our trotline. At this point we would tie off our main trotline, whose other end was on shore and tighten up the slack, leaving just enough leeway that we could pull the line up to the side of the boat. Once the main line was in place, we had prepared ahead of time about 50 hooks on short lines. These we would have made up in advance and hang them on the top lip of a 5 gallon bucket so that they would not be in a big tangled mess.
Then we would simply tie, very securely, each of the hooks onto the main line about 2 feet apart and in such a manner to prevent them from slipping on the main line or the fish from being about to reach the next hook and make one “big mess”. As we tied on the hooks we would put a live minnow or a chunk of chicken liver, or gizzard, on the hooks for bait. As catfish will come close to the surface in calm water at night to feed, it was an almost perfect set up.
Now Kenneth was not a ’wealthy’ person. So we never even thought of purchasing all those minnows. He knew every small creek within 25 miles of his home and it was there he would go to collect his bait. With a one man seine net attached to two 4’ sticks and a pair of hip waders he would go out into a deeper hole in the creeks and corner a mess of bait in short order. It was remarkable to watch an ‘expert’ dip minnows from a creek. I have tried it, but with limited success, partly because MN does not have the kind of small cricks that baitfish can live in year around like KY. Here any small stream will generally ‘winter kill’, so bait must be taken from lakes or larger rivers. A different process entirely.
It was also Kenneth who taught me the “fine art” of how to properly deep fry fish. His method was simple but almost perfect. His fish batter he would make with a mixture of white corn meal and flour (50/50), adding only salt and pepper. Then he would drop his fillets into bread-bag and shake them up so that there was a good even coating of batter. Then he would wait until his deep fryer, which was filled with vegetable oil, was “smoking hot”, that is the real secret to frying fish. The ideal is that you want the hot oil to immediately seal the outside fish batter and thus prevent the fish from becoming “greasy” which it surely will with low heat, trust me. I realize most people reading this blog will know these details, but in case there are some who don’t I include them. I hate to see “good meat” wasted from poor cooking habits!
Not only did Kenneth use trot lines to catch fish, he also used them for snapping turtles. I don’t know which gave him a bigger thrill, a big fish on his line or a monster snapping turtle. He was also expert at butchering and cooking turtle meat, which, if made properly, is one of the best meats one can enjoy. Unfortunately I cannot remember in detail his method of frying turtle, but I do know, from experience, if not done right it will be like eating shoe leather, but his turtle was as tender as a young chicken, too bad I did not pay close attention to his cooking of turtle meat.
To close this blog, before it rambles on and on, I remember one piece of advice Kenneth always gave me. He would say, “Ernie, if ‘you’ are going fishing, you better have a raincoat and take an extra pull rope for your motor.” Yes Kenneth, I remember your advice.
In the early 80’s we lived in southwest KY. It was there that I came to be friends with the first “real fisherman” that I had the privilege of fishing with. What I mean by “real fisherman” is one of those individuals who not only loved to fish, but is very good at it and spent most of his time ‘on the job’. This fellow was a lot older than I was, but we hit it off perfectly. He has been dead now for a number of years, but I think of him often and cherish the fishing outings we shared.
There was one element to out trips that seemed to be a given. Every time me and Kenneth got into a boat on a body of water, we could count on a rainstorm. He blamed the phenomenon on me, saying that I was a “jinx” and could bring rain during a drought by simply going fishing. Of course, I would counter that it was ‘him’ since it always rained when I went fishing with him, never mind that I did not fish with anyone else.
On one such outing we had gone to the Barren River Reservoir in Kenneth’s johnboat. We had about a 5 horse motor on this little boat, which was just fine for the narrow channel up which we were traveling to the spot we wanted to lay out our trotlines. That was his favorite method of fishing for channel cats and it was legal at that time in KY, I suppose it still is, but in MN we have no such ‘freedom’, which is probably good or we would surely have a lot less fish, because a trotline does its job well if properly set and baited.
We went what must have been 3 or 4 miles up the Reservoir when, out of a clear sky, came a thunderstorm. Of course we got wet, but nothing to be concerned about. We went ahead and laid out a few trotlines and baited them. The plan was to go back to the landing and nap until around 10 PM and then run the lines taking any fish we had. Then we would re-bait our hooks and come back the next morning to check them again and pull them in.
Our plan did not work that way due to a mishap with the starter rope on the motor. After we had gotten all the lines out, Kenneth pulled on the starter rope and it came clean out in his hand! No way to start the motor, so we thought at the time. Now I plead ignorance because it was not my motor and I had never owned a boat motor, what we learned later was all to Kenneth’s embarrassment, not mine. At the time it was already nearing dark and we had to cover about 4 miles of water to get to the landing. No oars, only one little “mini” paddle about 3 feet long. We took turns sitting in the bow of the boat and pulling ourselves along the best we could. It was a long pull. Naturally it got dark very quick, but to our good fortune there was a security light at the landing, so we kept the boat pointed that direction and kept pulling ourselves with that little paddle.
We were not able to run the lines that night, so we made the trip back home. I did not have time to go back with Kenneth the next morning to run the lines after he got a new rope in the motor. Our lines however, did their job. There was a half dozen or so channel cats hooked and one of them was over 5 lbs.
After Kenneth got back, naturally he called me with the report on our success. Then he laughed and told me that we were surely a couple of fools for having pulled ourselves miles with that little stub of a paddle, all due to “ignorance”. Then he explained to me that all we would have had to do was pull the cover off the motor and we could have started it with any piece of rope. All boat motors have a knot catch so that you can wrap a rope around the starter shaft and start them even if the pull rope comes out. At least all small outboard motors have such a emergency shaft. I told him that my ignorance was ‘excusable’, but his was evidently from old age and senility!
Incidentally, for those who have never used a trotline, it is a most convenient manner for taking fish, especially in a situation where you don’t have time to fish or in a survival emergency. The makeup of a trotline is this. The mainline can be as long as you want, but ours were around 100’ in length. Most often we would tie one end off on shore to a tree root or some other solid anchor.
Then we would string it out to where we wanted the other end to be. Drop a cement block down to the bottom of the lake attached to another rope, with a gallon milk jug tied on at the surface to hold our rope and line up off the bottom. To this line we would go down to whatever depth we wanted, usually a couple feet below the water, to miss “most” boat motor props in case a boat passed over our trotline. At this point we would tie off our main trotline, whose other end was on shore and tighten up the slack, leaving just enough leeway that we could pull the line up to the side of the boat. Once the main line was in place, we had prepared ahead of time about 50 hooks on short lines. These we would have made up in advance and hang them on the top lip of a 5 gallon bucket so that they would not be in a big tangled mess.
Then we would simply tie, very securely, each of the hooks onto the main line about 2 feet apart and in such a manner to prevent them from slipping on the main line or the fish from being about to reach the next hook and make one “big mess”. As we tied on the hooks we would put a live minnow or a chunk of chicken liver, or gizzard, on the hooks for bait. As catfish will come close to the surface in calm water at night to feed, it was an almost perfect set up.
Now Kenneth was not a ’wealthy’ person. So we never even thought of purchasing all those minnows. He knew every small creek within 25 miles of his home and it was there he would go to collect his bait. With a one man seine net attached to two 4’ sticks and a pair of hip waders he would go out into a deeper hole in the creeks and corner a mess of bait in short order. It was remarkable to watch an ‘expert’ dip minnows from a creek. I have tried it, but with limited success, partly because MN does not have the kind of small cricks that baitfish can live in year around like KY. Here any small stream will generally ‘winter kill’, so bait must be taken from lakes or larger rivers. A different process entirely.
It was also Kenneth who taught me the “fine art” of how to properly deep fry fish. His method was simple but almost perfect. His fish batter he would make with a mixture of white corn meal and flour (50/50), adding only salt and pepper. Then he would drop his fillets into bread-bag and shake them up so that there was a good even coating of batter. Then he would wait until his deep fryer, which was filled with vegetable oil, was “smoking hot”, that is the real secret to frying fish. The ideal is that you want the hot oil to immediately seal the outside fish batter and thus prevent the fish from becoming “greasy” which it surely will with low heat, trust me. I realize most people reading this blog will know these details, but in case there are some who don’t I include them. I hate to see “good meat” wasted from poor cooking habits!
Not only did Kenneth use trot lines to catch fish, he also used them for snapping turtles. I don’t know which gave him a bigger thrill, a big fish on his line or a monster snapping turtle. He was also expert at butchering and cooking turtle meat, which, if made properly, is one of the best meats one can enjoy. Unfortunately I cannot remember in detail his method of frying turtle, but I do know, from experience, if not done right it will be like eating shoe leather, but his turtle was as tender as a young chicken, too bad I did not pay close attention to his cooking of turtle meat.
To close this blog, before it rambles on and on, I remember one piece of advice Kenneth always gave me. He would say, “Ernie, if ‘you’ are going fishing, you better have a raincoat and take an extra pull rope for your motor.” Yes Kenneth, I remember your advice.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
My Grandparents
Long ago and seemingly in a different world, I have a memory of my grandparents burned into my consciousness. This memory has risen up in my mind because I was reminded that yesterday (Jan. 27, 2012) would have been my grandfather Malcolm H. Fouts would have turned 104 years old. He died in 2000 at 92 years old. My grandmother Laura, was born in the same year and died in 1992 at 84.
I often think of them and the world they lived in. Both being born in 1908 in Pike Co., KY. Yea, so far back in the hills they had to pipe sunshine in. As odd as that sounds it is not far from the truth! The mountains were so steep and close together the sun must have been hidden behind mountains much more than flatlanders can imagine. They married in 1925 at the age of 17 just a few weeks before grandpa’s 18th birthday. Unlike what is said of early marriages in our society being such a ‘tragedy’ and unlikely to last, they were married 67 years before death separated them. It was really another world. Within a few years of their marriage, the Great Depression hit, gripping the country in “hard times” for at least 15 -20 years. It was World War II that finally created an industrial ‘boom’ for war materials that supposedly brought the country out of that depression. But at the cost of thousands of dead young Americans and millions of other peoples around the globe.
This was the world that shaped the lives of my grandparents. Most of their families were coal miners or subsistence farmers, or both. Grandpa, fortunately was born with an uncommon ability to build houses. I say he was born with it because from what I have learned he build his first house when he was 16 years old, for his parents. I never saw the house since it was gone before my memory, but from the descriptions it was a very good house. As far as a career was concerned, grandpa never looked back. He build houses for the rest of his life, mostly as an independent contractor. Often building the houses single handed without a helper. I ask him one time how he managed getting the rafters and walls up by himself. It was a short answer that he assumed I should be able to understand, all he said was, “ropes and pulley”.
At some point in the early 50’s, they uprooted from the mountains of Pike Co. and moved to southern Ohio to fulfill their “dream”. It was to own a farm that was not entirely on the side of a mountain. The purchased 100 acres, (maybe more I am not sure) of fairly good land near the village of Dundas, OH.
What always strikes me as remarkable is that they had the courage and determination to leave home and family, when they were nearly 50 years old and go to a new place. These days that would not seem very strange in that we are a very mobile nation of people. But understanding a little bit about their culture and the mindset of mountain people of eastern KY, moving off at that point in their lives was really a remarkable thing. But they had a “dream” and followed it with success.
One cannot really comprehend the ‘world’ in which they lived most of their lives. Eastern KY in the 1920’s was a good hundred years behind most of the country, as far as modernization was concerned. I believe it was around 1946, after the war before electricity even came to their “hollow”, if my memory is correct. That would mean they were almost 40 years old before they could have had electric.
Our nation stands on a thin edge this very moment of slipping into another great depression. This time though, it would be very different than in my grandparents youth. Most of the modern things that people now would have to “give up” (and many already have), the people in eastern KY in the 1920’s did not have to begin with. It is a true saying, that you don’t miss what you never had. But to have such a comfortable way of life as most Americans have today and then lose it, seems to me to be much harder than if you had never become so ‘comfortable’ to begin with.
We think back and feel sorrow for the hardships those folks had to suffer in their youth, it was a hard life and no doubt about it, but I can’t help but think it also gave them life lessons that they would never forget. In my grandparents case, I know they never forgot. Even in their “golden years” (that farce of a cruel joke that society advertises about growing old), after they had sold the farm, they continued to grow a very large garden, only giving it up when they were not able to get out the door to tend it. They understood very clear the value of having food grown and stored in case of “hard times”.
Another thing that always struck me about grandpa was that he always seemed to have a good sense of humor with a quick laugh and ready smile. About the only time I have ever seen his ‘blood pressure’ raise is when politics would come up. He too, had a very serious opinion about how things ought to be run.
We think of hardship these days and for some people there is serious hardship, I would not want to make light of that fact, but when you sit with older people and visit knowing some of their history, you grow to admire their ability to coup with serious hardship. My grandparents had 12 children, only 8 of which grew to near adulthood. Two of those, a daughter who died at 21 giving childbirth and a son who died at 19 in an automobile crash, did not live very long. They lost several children at young ages, one I know was 5 years old. That is “hardship”, no matter how you look at it. Most of those events happen at the same time the nation was in deep depression or serious wars. In addition they had two sons who served in combat, one in Korea, one in Vietnam. Thankfully, they both came home.
Most of us “common people” have some hardship in our lives, that is just the nature of living. But when we reflect on the fortitude of our ancestors we ought to learn some lessons that should help us. Don’t ever think things are so bad they won’t improve, sometimes we just have to ‘tough it out’ and wait until our circumstances change for the better. Yet, they did not sit back in defeat and give up, they kept on toward their dreams and to my knowledge we quite content to live simple lives on their farm. They always had several cows, hogs and various critters around the place; food on the hoof you might say. But when you have seen what can happen so quickly to an industrial society, my thinking is, they were not about to give up living close to the land from which they could and did, gain food, shelter and as much security as this world can provide.
I often think of them and the world they lived in. Both being born in 1908 in Pike Co., KY. Yea, so far back in the hills they had to pipe sunshine in. As odd as that sounds it is not far from the truth! The mountains were so steep and close together the sun must have been hidden behind mountains much more than flatlanders can imagine. They married in 1925 at the age of 17 just a few weeks before grandpa’s 18th birthday. Unlike what is said of early marriages in our society being such a ‘tragedy’ and unlikely to last, they were married 67 years before death separated them. It was really another world. Within a few years of their marriage, the Great Depression hit, gripping the country in “hard times” for at least 15 -20 years. It was World War II that finally created an industrial ‘boom’ for war materials that supposedly brought the country out of that depression. But at the cost of thousands of dead young Americans and millions of other peoples around the globe.
This was the world that shaped the lives of my grandparents. Most of their families were coal miners or subsistence farmers, or both. Grandpa, fortunately was born with an uncommon ability to build houses. I say he was born with it because from what I have learned he build his first house when he was 16 years old, for his parents. I never saw the house since it was gone before my memory, but from the descriptions it was a very good house. As far as a career was concerned, grandpa never looked back. He build houses for the rest of his life, mostly as an independent contractor. Often building the houses single handed without a helper. I ask him one time how he managed getting the rafters and walls up by himself. It was a short answer that he assumed I should be able to understand, all he said was, “ropes and pulley”.
At some point in the early 50’s, they uprooted from the mountains of Pike Co. and moved to southern Ohio to fulfill their “dream”. It was to own a farm that was not entirely on the side of a mountain. The purchased 100 acres, (maybe more I am not sure) of fairly good land near the village of Dundas, OH.
What always strikes me as remarkable is that they had the courage and determination to leave home and family, when they were nearly 50 years old and go to a new place. These days that would not seem very strange in that we are a very mobile nation of people. But understanding a little bit about their culture and the mindset of mountain people of eastern KY, moving off at that point in their lives was really a remarkable thing. But they had a “dream” and followed it with success.
One cannot really comprehend the ‘world’ in which they lived most of their lives. Eastern KY in the 1920’s was a good hundred years behind most of the country, as far as modernization was concerned. I believe it was around 1946, after the war before electricity even came to their “hollow”, if my memory is correct. That would mean they were almost 40 years old before they could have had electric.
Our nation stands on a thin edge this very moment of slipping into another great depression. This time though, it would be very different than in my grandparents youth. Most of the modern things that people now would have to “give up” (and many already have), the people in eastern KY in the 1920’s did not have to begin with. It is a true saying, that you don’t miss what you never had. But to have such a comfortable way of life as most Americans have today and then lose it, seems to me to be much harder than if you had never become so ‘comfortable’ to begin with.
We think back and feel sorrow for the hardships those folks had to suffer in their youth, it was a hard life and no doubt about it, but I can’t help but think it also gave them life lessons that they would never forget. In my grandparents case, I know they never forgot. Even in their “golden years” (that farce of a cruel joke that society advertises about growing old), after they had sold the farm, they continued to grow a very large garden, only giving it up when they were not able to get out the door to tend it. They understood very clear the value of having food grown and stored in case of “hard times”.
Another thing that always struck me about grandpa was that he always seemed to have a good sense of humor with a quick laugh and ready smile. About the only time I have ever seen his ‘blood pressure’ raise is when politics would come up. He too, had a very serious opinion about how things ought to be run.
We think of hardship these days and for some people there is serious hardship, I would not want to make light of that fact, but when you sit with older people and visit knowing some of their history, you grow to admire their ability to coup with serious hardship. My grandparents had 12 children, only 8 of which grew to near adulthood. Two of those, a daughter who died at 21 giving childbirth and a son who died at 19 in an automobile crash, did not live very long. They lost several children at young ages, one I know was 5 years old. That is “hardship”, no matter how you look at it. Most of those events happen at the same time the nation was in deep depression or serious wars. In addition they had two sons who served in combat, one in Korea, one in Vietnam. Thankfully, they both came home.
Most of us “common people” have some hardship in our lives, that is just the nature of living. But when we reflect on the fortitude of our ancestors we ought to learn some lessons that should help us. Don’t ever think things are so bad they won’t improve, sometimes we just have to ‘tough it out’ and wait until our circumstances change for the better. Yet, they did not sit back in defeat and give up, they kept on toward their dreams and to my knowledge we quite content to live simple lives on their farm. They always had several cows, hogs and various critters around the place; food on the hoof you might say. But when you have seen what can happen so quickly to an industrial society, my thinking is, they were not about to give up living close to the land from which they could and did, gain food, shelter and as much security as this world can provide.
Friday, January 27, 2012
Random Thoughts
I want to thank all of you who follow my blog. As you can see my posting is falling off in frequency. I could make ’excuses’, but the fact of the matter is that my ambition and time slip away very quickly. Due to the minor detail that I have lost almost a month of productive work in the woodshop, I am now way behind where I should be on projects. That however, is not really an excuse since I barely have the energy to work 5 hours or so each day and this only by forcing one foot in front of the other. For the most part I save my energy for the one day a week that I grade lumber, when I have no choice but to exert all my strength to get that job done.
I have also been spending some time thinking about the direction I want to take this blog in. One thing seems clear to me; if I don’t write about subjects that really interest me, then having a blog called “Ernie’s World” is rather misleading. It might seem that a common working person’s world would be rather dull, but the truth is, for every individual, their world is very important to “them”. In school they taught us, that when writing an essay or such, one should never use “I”, supposedly this was taboo to proper writing. But to borrow a thought from Henry Thoreau, he said, he would not use the personal pronoun “I” so often, except it was the only way he knew to express that it was “him” making the statement or opinion. (Or something to that effect, that is not a direct quote.)
There are many subjects and opinions that I am bound to touch upon while expressing myself on matters that are important to me. I find a couple of themes that constantly come to the forefront of my mind when I sit down to make a post. One, since we are in an election year, I can’t help but express my very strong feelings about how this should go. It is unavoidable that those opinions are going to offend “someone”, which is not my wish at all, however, how can it be avoided? Everyone has heard the old saying, that the two subjects that should be avoided to “remain polite” is religion and politics. I heard a “Dr. of Theology” one time that made the statement that people avoid religious discussions because the don’t care about it. In my experience, that is not the case. The only reason people avoid politics and religion is because they don’t want the “heated emotions” that come from the discussion. “Heated emotions” do not come from a passive subject, but rather from a subject that we take very seriously and hold dearly. This is why religion and politics are prone to get the “blood pressure” raising.
The fact of the matter is that religion and politics are going to affect everything we do, believe and practice. So it does not seem unreasonable to me that I express my opinions on either subject. There can be no mistake that the state of the U.S. economy and our foreign affairs will have something to do with the welfare of each and everyone of us. We might not acknowledge that in an attempt to ignore all the controversy and conflict, but don’t make the mistake in thinking that it has nothing to do with “you”.
It might be true that there is not much, if anything, we can do to influence the outcome of elections, but at least we can inform ourselves as best we can concerning the politicians involved and make some kind of decision and vote for who we think will be the best person for the job. Setting aside the fact that most of us will have little or no ’vote’, in who our particular political party puts on the ballot in November. My thinking is that I can vote for the lesser of “evils” and hope for the best, realizing the ultimately God is in control of nations and knows what he is doing, whether I understand it or like what I am seeing taking place.
The other subject that is constantly in my mind, as it has become a ‘way of life’ for my family, is the ideal of “Simple Living” and how best to live in a manner that attempts to avoid a lot of the “stress” associated with modern life. These two subjects, politics and simple living will be the things I find most interesting to write on. I could easily get started on religion and faith, but if I go there I think it will be necessary to start another blog just for that subject. I have mostly avoided doing that for several reasons, mainly I don’t get the time to faithfully post on this blog, how could I keep two blogs going with very limited writing time? In addition to that, there is a lot of blogs dedicated to Christianity and faith already and I am not sure that I could add a great deal of useful thoughts to the subject.
As I am writing this, the morning is slipping away and the shop is almost warm enough to begin work. By the time I finish up my day there I will not have the energy left to think straight, so I write this before getting my day started and will post it this evening.
I see it is also snowing outside my window, but I don’t think it will amount to anything that will require my snowplow, that is my hope anyway.
I have also been spending some time thinking about the direction I want to take this blog in. One thing seems clear to me; if I don’t write about subjects that really interest me, then having a blog called “Ernie’s World” is rather misleading. It might seem that a common working person’s world would be rather dull, but the truth is, for every individual, their world is very important to “them”. In school they taught us, that when writing an essay or such, one should never use “I”, supposedly this was taboo to proper writing. But to borrow a thought from Henry Thoreau, he said, he would not use the personal pronoun “I” so often, except it was the only way he knew to express that it was “him” making the statement or opinion. (Or something to that effect, that is not a direct quote.)
There are many subjects and opinions that I am bound to touch upon while expressing myself on matters that are important to me. I find a couple of themes that constantly come to the forefront of my mind when I sit down to make a post. One, since we are in an election year, I can’t help but express my very strong feelings about how this should go. It is unavoidable that those opinions are going to offend “someone”, which is not my wish at all, however, how can it be avoided? Everyone has heard the old saying, that the two subjects that should be avoided to “remain polite” is religion and politics. I heard a “Dr. of Theology” one time that made the statement that people avoid religious discussions because the don’t care about it. In my experience, that is not the case. The only reason people avoid politics and religion is because they don’t want the “heated emotions” that come from the discussion. “Heated emotions” do not come from a passive subject, but rather from a subject that we take very seriously and hold dearly. This is why religion and politics are prone to get the “blood pressure” raising.
The fact of the matter is that religion and politics are going to affect everything we do, believe and practice. So it does not seem unreasonable to me that I express my opinions on either subject. There can be no mistake that the state of the U.S. economy and our foreign affairs will have something to do with the welfare of each and everyone of us. We might not acknowledge that in an attempt to ignore all the controversy and conflict, but don’t make the mistake in thinking that it has nothing to do with “you”.
It might be true that there is not much, if anything, we can do to influence the outcome of elections, but at least we can inform ourselves as best we can concerning the politicians involved and make some kind of decision and vote for who we think will be the best person for the job. Setting aside the fact that most of us will have little or no ’vote’, in who our particular political party puts on the ballot in November. My thinking is that I can vote for the lesser of “evils” and hope for the best, realizing the ultimately God is in control of nations and knows what he is doing, whether I understand it or like what I am seeing taking place.
The other subject that is constantly in my mind, as it has become a ‘way of life’ for my family, is the ideal of “Simple Living” and how best to live in a manner that attempts to avoid a lot of the “stress” associated with modern life. These two subjects, politics and simple living will be the things I find most interesting to write on. I could easily get started on religion and faith, but if I go there I think it will be necessary to start another blog just for that subject. I have mostly avoided doing that for several reasons, mainly I don’t get the time to faithfully post on this blog, how could I keep two blogs going with very limited writing time? In addition to that, there is a lot of blogs dedicated to Christianity and faith already and I am not sure that I could add a great deal of useful thoughts to the subject.
As I am writing this, the morning is slipping away and the shop is almost warm enough to begin work. By the time I finish up my day there I will not have the energy left to think straight, so I write this before getting my day started and will post it this evening.
I see it is also snowing outside my window, but I don’t think it will amount to anything that will require my snowplow, that is my hope anyway.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Pliable As Water
Sometimes it seems strange what energy we expand working at, or planning for things that we question the value of to start with. I thought about this today when I finally decided I just had to get back to the woodshop and work on a project that I had started just before Christmas. Since my hospital visit and surgery I have picked up most of my work load, but I have been avoiding the woodshop, due to the fact that working with power tools that can very quickly remove body parts, particularly fingers and hands, that I would prefer to keep attached.
Today I decided was the ‘day’ to get back at it. The first thing I discovered was that “the dog had ate my homework”! Literally! The little ‘criminal Beagle” has been sleeping there at night, due to the winter cold and I never gave another thought to my project plans, that I had left laying on a low shelf, after having expended a lot of time and energy in drawing them up. Mr. Trigger must have gotten bored and decided my clipboard looked like a good ‘chew toy’, all I could recover was a few well chewed pieces of scrape paper. Since I had the framing for this project mostly done, it won’t take as much work to re-draw my plans as it did the first time. But it got me to thinking about the way we go about our lives.
It is my decided opinion that a person, young or older, should have some plans and direction they want to go in their life. It appears too many people simply ‘float’ with the stream, never having any solid ideal what who or what they want to become. The result is often poor. We find people who are never content, but from all known appearances, we can’t figure out why because they don’t seem to be working toward any tangible goals in their life. Often they jump from one meaningless job, that they despise, to another that is just as hateful. Complaining all the while that they are ‘mistreated’ by ‘society’, as if, society owed them some kind of debt by making them “happy”.
I consider that since I have reached the prime age of mid-50’s that some advice might be worthwhile. No one can make decisions about my life except me and the same goes for you or anyone else. The ultimate responsibility for our contentment must rest upon on our own shoulders. No matter what circumstances come our way that might interfere with our plans, we have to become like a stream of water. What I mean by that is this; water will find a way to flow downhill to it ‘goal’ no matter what is standing in its way. It might have to go around bends in the earth, cut its way down steep mountains or make a path around large boulders, but by and by water will reach the ocean for which it is headed, one way or another.
It is certain that all people cannot possibly reach some ’pie in the sky’, unrealistic goal. In our society, it appears that most people think only in terms of “wealth” as a measure of ones success. No wonder there are so many miserable people walking around. It is impossible for all of us to be multi-millionaires, that just can’t be under any known economic system. So using ‘wealth’ as a measuring device is a poor standard to judge a persons life, in fact, it is right down foolish or maybe a better term would be “insane”. Yet, all the communication media we see paints the picture of ‘contentment’ as, in one way or another, having to do with money or the things money can buy as the means to be ‘content’.
The “American Dream” that has been ‘sold’ to a couple generations now is something that has been modified and twisted into the “American Nightmare” for far too many people. Just look at any real estate advertisement. What you have is a nice house in the suburbs with a small yard and a two car garage that has many times been ‘thrown together’ with junk building materials and doctored up with cheaply made but nice looking furnishings. You can have it all if you will only take out a 30 year mortgage, that a two income family can barely manage to pay each month.
My advice to young folks is, don’t buy that “dream”. You will be far ahead in the long run to buy a smaller, older, better built, cheaper house. One that you could make the payments on even if you were reduced to a ‘one income family’. By exerting all your effort to pay this house off in less time than the mortgage calls for you will save a bundle of money and, if you are lucky, the value of that house will increase. At which time if you still what the more expensive house, you can sale your first one and use that money to greatly reduce a new mortgage.
This gets to a flaw in our current thinking, as a society. It has been said over and over, because it is true, that Americans no longer look to the ‘long term’, but want everything “now”! The bankers, finance companies and government have been very helpful in seeing that we don’t have to “wait”, they will find a way to “loan” us the “funny money” for whatever we want. At least that was true 5 years ago, now, as the saying goes, ‘our chickens have come home to roost’ and it is time to pay the bill.
I know that not everyone in our society has fallen for that ‘dream’ (nightmare), but enough have to put our whole economic welfare in danger of collapsing on our heads. I won’t go into a ‘rant’ on how the government and our politicians have helped to enable this mess, I would rather consider ways to “escape the trap”.
To start with we have to change our thinking if we find that our current mindset is flawed, in other words, “check your premise”. The ’premise’ of our current system is that a modern society like we have is “too big to fail”, or we are too advanced to collapse as a society. Sorry if I am the one to inform you of this fact; but it is not true. Many great societies and empires of past history were not much different than we are. The only difference between us and the Roman Empire is really just in our technology and that might be a questionable “advantage”.
By 400 A.D. Rome had lots of high level creature comforts that many people aren’t even aware of. For example most people know that they had aqueducts to deliver running water to many homes, but they also even had ’air conditioning’ that was provided by water pipes that would circulate cold water through some of the wealthier homes. Imagine air conditioning long before the invention of electricity!
Rome also had something that proved to be their “Achilles heel”, it was the “Just in Time” deliver system of food and other necessary products to a city of over a million people. It is not much different than most all of our cities, and even small towns, which are dependent on the steady flow of goods to the grocery stores on a daily basis. Just imagine what would happen if for some reason, any reason, the trucks were stopped in their tracks for even a week or two. This is what happen when Rome was surrounded by her enemies, the supplies to the city was shut off. Before that was over, people in Rome were reduced to little more than animals, even resorting to cannibalism, eating each other. As they say, the rest is history. The marvel of the Rome that was is no more than ruins that amaze tourists.
Let me advise you to think over your current state of affairs and ask yourself some questions. Then make some common sense plans on how you will deal with any crisis that might occur. Remember that water is pliable and will go around any obstacle, so I like to think that I will learn to be as pliable as water. I might have to change course and do a lot of turning and wandering, but as long as I have life I will keep moving, no matter what might stand in the way.
Got to get those chewed project plans redrawn and go back to work.
Today I decided was the ‘day’ to get back at it. The first thing I discovered was that “the dog had ate my homework”! Literally! The little ‘criminal Beagle” has been sleeping there at night, due to the winter cold and I never gave another thought to my project plans, that I had left laying on a low shelf, after having expended a lot of time and energy in drawing them up. Mr. Trigger must have gotten bored and decided my clipboard looked like a good ‘chew toy’, all I could recover was a few well chewed pieces of scrape paper. Since I had the framing for this project mostly done, it won’t take as much work to re-draw my plans as it did the first time. But it got me to thinking about the way we go about our lives.
It is my decided opinion that a person, young or older, should have some plans and direction they want to go in their life. It appears too many people simply ‘float’ with the stream, never having any solid ideal what who or what they want to become. The result is often poor. We find people who are never content, but from all known appearances, we can’t figure out why because they don’t seem to be working toward any tangible goals in their life. Often they jump from one meaningless job, that they despise, to another that is just as hateful. Complaining all the while that they are ‘mistreated’ by ‘society’, as if, society owed them some kind of debt by making them “happy”.
I consider that since I have reached the prime age of mid-50’s that some advice might be worthwhile. No one can make decisions about my life except me and the same goes for you or anyone else. The ultimate responsibility for our contentment must rest upon on our own shoulders. No matter what circumstances come our way that might interfere with our plans, we have to become like a stream of water. What I mean by that is this; water will find a way to flow downhill to it ‘goal’ no matter what is standing in its way. It might have to go around bends in the earth, cut its way down steep mountains or make a path around large boulders, but by and by water will reach the ocean for which it is headed, one way or another.
It is certain that all people cannot possibly reach some ’pie in the sky’, unrealistic goal. In our society, it appears that most people think only in terms of “wealth” as a measure of ones success. No wonder there are so many miserable people walking around. It is impossible for all of us to be multi-millionaires, that just can’t be under any known economic system. So using ‘wealth’ as a measuring device is a poor standard to judge a persons life, in fact, it is right down foolish or maybe a better term would be “insane”. Yet, all the communication media we see paints the picture of ‘contentment’ as, in one way or another, having to do with money or the things money can buy as the means to be ‘content’.
The “American Dream” that has been ‘sold’ to a couple generations now is something that has been modified and twisted into the “American Nightmare” for far too many people. Just look at any real estate advertisement. What you have is a nice house in the suburbs with a small yard and a two car garage that has many times been ‘thrown together’ with junk building materials and doctored up with cheaply made but nice looking furnishings. You can have it all if you will only take out a 30 year mortgage, that a two income family can barely manage to pay each month.
My advice to young folks is, don’t buy that “dream”. You will be far ahead in the long run to buy a smaller, older, better built, cheaper house. One that you could make the payments on even if you were reduced to a ‘one income family’. By exerting all your effort to pay this house off in less time than the mortgage calls for you will save a bundle of money and, if you are lucky, the value of that house will increase. At which time if you still what the more expensive house, you can sale your first one and use that money to greatly reduce a new mortgage.
This gets to a flaw in our current thinking, as a society. It has been said over and over, because it is true, that Americans no longer look to the ‘long term’, but want everything “now”! The bankers, finance companies and government have been very helpful in seeing that we don’t have to “wait”, they will find a way to “loan” us the “funny money” for whatever we want. At least that was true 5 years ago, now, as the saying goes, ‘our chickens have come home to roost’ and it is time to pay the bill.
I know that not everyone in our society has fallen for that ‘dream’ (nightmare), but enough have to put our whole economic welfare in danger of collapsing on our heads. I won’t go into a ‘rant’ on how the government and our politicians have helped to enable this mess, I would rather consider ways to “escape the trap”.
To start with we have to change our thinking if we find that our current mindset is flawed, in other words, “check your premise”. The ’premise’ of our current system is that a modern society like we have is “too big to fail”, or we are too advanced to collapse as a society. Sorry if I am the one to inform you of this fact; but it is not true. Many great societies and empires of past history were not much different than we are. The only difference between us and the Roman Empire is really just in our technology and that might be a questionable “advantage”.
By 400 A.D. Rome had lots of high level creature comforts that many people aren’t even aware of. For example most people know that they had aqueducts to deliver running water to many homes, but they also even had ’air conditioning’ that was provided by water pipes that would circulate cold water through some of the wealthier homes. Imagine air conditioning long before the invention of electricity!
Rome also had something that proved to be their “Achilles heel”, it was the “Just in Time” deliver system of food and other necessary products to a city of over a million people. It is not much different than most all of our cities, and even small towns, which are dependent on the steady flow of goods to the grocery stores on a daily basis. Just imagine what would happen if for some reason, any reason, the trucks were stopped in their tracks for even a week or two. This is what happen when Rome was surrounded by her enemies, the supplies to the city was shut off. Before that was over, people in Rome were reduced to little more than animals, even resorting to cannibalism, eating each other. As they say, the rest is history. The marvel of the Rome that was is no more than ruins that amaze tourists.
Let me advise you to think over your current state of affairs and ask yourself some questions. Then make some common sense plans on how you will deal with any crisis that might occur. Remember that water is pliable and will go around any obstacle, so I like to think that I will learn to be as pliable as water. I might have to change course and do a lot of turning and wandering, but as long as I have life I will keep moving, no matter what might stand in the way.
Got to get those chewed project plans redrawn and go back to work.
Monday, January 23, 2012
Fishing The Lake Of The Woods In Winter
Ernie is back to his ‘world’ after having spend a few days in another. I am referring to my winter fishing trip to Lake of the Woods. This rather huge lake lays on the border of Canada and the U.S. It is the next largest body of water, after the great lakes, that is part of this country. It is roughly 70 miles from north to south and just slightly less east to west. One remarkable thing about this big water is that it contains over 14,500 islands, most of those are on the Canadian side of the border.
We enter the lake near Baudette, MN right along the side of the Rainy River. Depending on the snow conditions our travel on the lake will either be on roads that are plowed and marked by the guide or if the snow is too much to keep a road open, we will be transported in a tracked vehicle. These are often a converted cargo van that has been fitted with huge tracks like a snow machine and can ride on top of the snow and go almost anywhere as long as they don’t hit a spot of slushy water on top of the ice. For safety they are also outfitted with an emergency floatation system that by pulling a lever the guide can inflate huge air bags that is suppose to float the vehicle. I have always wondered if they would work, but fortunately have never had the experience for finding out.
Depending on where the good fishing is located, we go out from 7 to as much as 15 miles from shore to what is called a “sleeper house”. This is where we spend the weekend fishing, sleeping and living.
This year was considered a good one for us. We did not keep track of the number of fish we caught, which were Sauger (a crossbreed fish much like walleye but never get very big), walleye and a couple whitefish. Sometimes we also catch large eel pouts, that look a bit like a cross between an eel and a catfish, only uglier than either, but fun to catch. We have eaten them, but I am not fond of their fatty soft meat, although if cooked properly it can be good grub, especially if you have nothing else!
We got started fishing around 11 AM on Friday morning and by evening had enough fish to feed 4 hunger fishermen all we could eat of the crisp fried fillets. Saturday night we even ate more, plus we froze some for bringing home.
There was no really large fish caught, the longest I think was a 22 inch walleye that was caught at 1:30 AM on Sunday morning. It seemed the sauger were biting during the daylight hours and the walleye after dark or late in the night, at least this year.
Being that the wind was on a ‘roar’ the whole time we were there with the thermometer around the 0 mark or below, we did not spend anymore time outside our fish house than necessary. The wind did bring warmer air by late Saturday night, but with it came snow on Sunday morning. That made the first 100 miles or so of out trip home Sunday a bit ‘dicey’ for the road conditions, but we made it safely back, having had a grand time on the ice.
For those unfamiliar with this type of fishing, there are a few things that are remarkable on a large lake like this one is. For one, the ice was good since they too had very little snow this winter. The ice on average was around 18” thick and even on a large lake that is enough to support almost any kind of vehicle. But the lake is never ‘silent’, there is a stead sound of popping, cracking, groaning, mixed with a roaring wind outside our house.
When it is really cold and new ice is forming, the whole body of ice moves slightly, especially in a wind. This creates what is called ice heaves or pressure ridges. I have see these heaves that were over 10’ tall, made by two opposing is shelves crushing against each other at a crack in the ice. These break the ice and push up huge blocks of ice to make almost a wall of ice that can for miles on a large lake. When these are encountered on the roadways, the ice must be chopped out and a temporary bridge put in place to drive a vehicle across the broken up ice.
On Friday night it was very cold and at one point we heard one particular ice crack that went for the longest time I believe I have hear one run. It must have lasted a full 20 seconds and rumbled close enough to our house that the water was pushed up through out fishing holes slightly. It is nothing to be fearful of, but interesting to watch the water raise up, maybe as much as in inch and then settle by down to its normal level. We wondered that time if a crack would actually form on the ice under our house, but it must have went somewhere else near us.
Now that my ‘winter vacation’ is over, it will be time to get back in the swing of a full work load that I have been avoiding since my hospital visit over Christmas. But today I must first do a little snowplowing to clean up a few inches that has gradually accumulated over the last week or so and has now gotten to be a nuisance to walk around in all the time. But being past the mid-point of January, I am not going to complain about a little snowplowing, it was months past due and still not very much of it.
We enter the lake near Baudette, MN right along the side of the Rainy River. Depending on the snow conditions our travel on the lake will either be on roads that are plowed and marked by the guide or if the snow is too much to keep a road open, we will be transported in a tracked vehicle. These are often a converted cargo van that has been fitted with huge tracks like a snow machine and can ride on top of the snow and go almost anywhere as long as they don’t hit a spot of slushy water on top of the ice. For safety they are also outfitted with an emergency floatation system that by pulling a lever the guide can inflate huge air bags that is suppose to float the vehicle. I have always wondered if they would work, but fortunately have never had the experience for finding out.
Depending on where the good fishing is located, we go out from 7 to as much as 15 miles from shore to what is called a “sleeper house”. This is where we spend the weekend fishing, sleeping and living.
This year was considered a good one for us. We did not keep track of the number of fish we caught, which were Sauger (a crossbreed fish much like walleye but never get very big), walleye and a couple whitefish. Sometimes we also catch large eel pouts, that look a bit like a cross between an eel and a catfish, only uglier than either, but fun to catch. We have eaten them, but I am not fond of their fatty soft meat, although if cooked properly it can be good grub, especially if you have nothing else!
We got started fishing around 11 AM on Friday morning and by evening had enough fish to feed 4 hunger fishermen all we could eat of the crisp fried fillets. Saturday night we even ate more, plus we froze some for bringing home.
There was no really large fish caught, the longest I think was a 22 inch walleye that was caught at 1:30 AM on Sunday morning. It seemed the sauger were biting during the daylight hours and the walleye after dark or late in the night, at least this year.
Being that the wind was on a ‘roar’ the whole time we were there with the thermometer around the 0 mark or below, we did not spend anymore time outside our fish house than necessary. The wind did bring warmer air by late Saturday night, but with it came snow on Sunday morning. That made the first 100 miles or so of out trip home Sunday a bit ‘dicey’ for the road conditions, but we made it safely back, having had a grand time on the ice.
For those unfamiliar with this type of fishing, there are a few things that are remarkable on a large lake like this one is. For one, the ice was good since they too had very little snow this winter. The ice on average was around 18” thick and even on a large lake that is enough to support almost any kind of vehicle. But the lake is never ‘silent’, there is a stead sound of popping, cracking, groaning, mixed with a roaring wind outside our house.
When it is really cold and new ice is forming, the whole body of ice moves slightly, especially in a wind. This creates what is called ice heaves or pressure ridges. I have see these heaves that were over 10’ tall, made by two opposing is shelves crushing against each other at a crack in the ice. These break the ice and push up huge blocks of ice to make almost a wall of ice that can for miles on a large lake. When these are encountered on the roadways, the ice must be chopped out and a temporary bridge put in place to drive a vehicle across the broken up ice.
On Friday night it was very cold and at one point we heard one particular ice crack that went for the longest time I believe I have hear one run. It must have lasted a full 20 seconds and rumbled close enough to our house that the water was pushed up through out fishing holes slightly. It is nothing to be fearful of, but interesting to watch the water raise up, maybe as much as in inch and then settle by down to its normal level. We wondered that time if a crack would actually form on the ice under our house, but it must have went somewhere else near us.
Now that my ‘winter vacation’ is over, it will be time to get back in the swing of a full work load that I have been avoiding since my hospital visit over Christmas. But today I must first do a little snowplowing to clean up a few inches that has gradually accumulated over the last week or so and has now gotten to be a nuisance to walk around in all the time. But being past the mid-point of January, I am not going to complain about a little snowplowing, it was months past due and still not very much of it.
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
We Needed That Pipeline
Most Americans work to provide for themselves and their families, which is only right and proper. But what some of us “working people” don’t understand is; why does it seem that our government is doing everything possible to make our lives “harder”?
Case in point, today the President has determined that the Keystone pipeline that has been in the works for sometime now, cannot go forward and must be put on hold until after the next election.
Mr. President, I have some questions; 1) Why is it important to hold up this nations supply of oil that Canada, our “friendly neighbor” wants to sale us? How can it even be questioned whether or not this “Private financed” project is good for our nation and economy? I also see where you want another 1.2 trillion dollars to spend for only God knows what, money that must come from the pockets of working Americans, but at the same time your policy in stopping this one project is costing us billions more by way of jobs that could be created with money put up by industry and not the taxpayers. It would help us toward cutting down on the amount of oil that we have to buy from the “not so friendly Arab nations”. It might also help stabilize the price that we have to pay for gasoline, the only viable fuel source we have right now to power this country.
2) Mr. President, who needs Iran for an enemy when we have you sitting in the White House, in effect holding us hostage? Why say we need to wait until after 2013 to decide whether or not to build this pipeline? Do you really think there are enough votes by the “anti-pipeline” environmental “nuts” in this country to assure you a re-election? Then, if you are elected, what happens? Will you be beholden to that crowd and thus put a stop to this project ‘forever’? All at the same time you are feeding us a complete line of ****** that you want what is best for the USA.
With respect, Mr. President I don’t think you need those few votes nearly as bad as our country needs oil from Canada.
Something is wrong with this picture folks. Our own president, who knows better than any of us, how close we are to another war in the middle east, with Iran this time, refuses to let Canada ship crude oil to us.
I will be the first to admit that I never had much faith that Barack Hessian Obama was going to be “good for our country” from the beginning. That based upon his own statements while campaigning for office the first time. One of those statements was to the affect that the coal companies would have to go out of business, because we could not longer be using coal as a source for electric power. Yet, he nor anyone else has a reasonable alternative at this point in time. What? Are we suppose to go back to the ‘dark ages’ and do without electric just because it “might” be having some affect on our weather, like warming us up. I wish he could have stood with me today, while I worked in sub-zero wind and then tell us that “warming” was a serious problem!
Ok, Ernie’s World is not very pleased today with our beloved president. Of course he is not the only one standing in the way of our survival. There is a whole army of liberal over educated fools standing side by side with him. Many politicians and tax leaching bureaucrats who are playing ‘high and holy’ with environmental claims are right there on his side.
Here is my opinion of the whole bunch. Hypocrites one and all! They deny common tax-paying working Americans the energy we need to “produce something” and pay their salaries, while at the same time while spending us into bankruptcy, they are flying around all over the world on fuel consuming jets and using up more energy than most large cities, and then tell us, we have to pay more for gas from the Arabs, because they just can’t allow us to buy oil from Canada.
The rumor is that if Canada can’t get this pipeline going soon, they will turn to China to sale their oil. Who would blame them?
If there was ever a time in our nation, when our national leaders have truly worked against its citizens, it is happening now right before our very eyes.
I think I best go fishing and forget about the “fools”, I don’t have a vote until next fall, but it is certain my vote won’t be for someone who is either ‘stupid’ or ‘anti-American’.
Case in point, today the President has determined that the Keystone pipeline that has been in the works for sometime now, cannot go forward and must be put on hold until after the next election.
Mr. President, I have some questions; 1) Why is it important to hold up this nations supply of oil that Canada, our “friendly neighbor” wants to sale us? How can it even be questioned whether or not this “Private financed” project is good for our nation and economy? I also see where you want another 1.2 trillion dollars to spend for only God knows what, money that must come from the pockets of working Americans, but at the same time your policy in stopping this one project is costing us billions more by way of jobs that could be created with money put up by industry and not the taxpayers. It would help us toward cutting down on the amount of oil that we have to buy from the “not so friendly Arab nations”. It might also help stabilize the price that we have to pay for gasoline, the only viable fuel source we have right now to power this country.
2) Mr. President, who needs Iran for an enemy when we have you sitting in the White House, in effect holding us hostage? Why say we need to wait until after 2013 to decide whether or not to build this pipeline? Do you really think there are enough votes by the “anti-pipeline” environmental “nuts” in this country to assure you a re-election? Then, if you are elected, what happens? Will you be beholden to that crowd and thus put a stop to this project ‘forever’? All at the same time you are feeding us a complete line of ****** that you want what is best for the USA.
With respect, Mr. President I don’t think you need those few votes nearly as bad as our country needs oil from Canada.
Something is wrong with this picture folks. Our own president, who knows better than any of us, how close we are to another war in the middle east, with Iran this time, refuses to let Canada ship crude oil to us.
I will be the first to admit that I never had much faith that Barack Hessian Obama was going to be “good for our country” from the beginning. That based upon his own statements while campaigning for office the first time. One of those statements was to the affect that the coal companies would have to go out of business, because we could not longer be using coal as a source for electric power. Yet, he nor anyone else has a reasonable alternative at this point in time. What? Are we suppose to go back to the ‘dark ages’ and do without electric just because it “might” be having some affect on our weather, like warming us up. I wish he could have stood with me today, while I worked in sub-zero wind and then tell us that “warming” was a serious problem!
Ok, Ernie’s World is not very pleased today with our beloved president. Of course he is not the only one standing in the way of our survival. There is a whole army of liberal over educated fools standing side by side with him. Many politicians and tax leaching bureaucrats who are playing ‘high and holy’ with environmental claims are right there on his side.
Here is my opinion of the whole bunch. Hypocrites one and all! They deny common tax-paying working Americans the energy we need to “produce something” and pay their salaries, while at the same time while spending us into bankruptcy, they are flying around all over the world on fuel consuming jets and using up more energy than most large cities, and then tell us, we have to pay more for gas from the Arabs, because they just can’t allow us to buy oil from Canada.
The rumor is that if Canada can’t get this pipeline going soon, they will turn to China to sale their oil. Who would blame them?
If there was ever a time in our nation, when our national leaders have truly worked against its citizens, it is happening now right before our very eyes.
I think I best go fishing and forget about the “fools”, I don’t have a vote until next fall, but it is certain my vote won’t be for someone who is either ‘stupid’ or ‘anti-American’.
Monday, January 16, 2012
Ice Fishing With Line or Spear
Soon it will be time for my annual trek up to the Lake of the Woods for a winter fishing trip. While going over my ice fishing gear this afternoon it occurred to me how important fishing has been to our wonderful state of MN, both in the past and current.
Prior to the coming of European peoples to this part of the world, the native Americans settled on the major bodies of water, for good reasons. One is obviously transportation. It was much easier to travel along the waterways of this state than ‘cross country’. I would say any time of the year. For during the short summers, the consuming insects, mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies were/are a horror to anyone caught in the woods or even on the prairie, if the wind was calm and the grasses were high.
During the wintertime, the many large lakes and rivers make for ‘super highways’ to travel on, either by snowshoe or dogsled. I have often wondered how the reality would have been to have been in this state, say around 1800, before there was much “civilized” influence to bring in roads, railroads and other modern forms of transportation. I have heard some “old timers” tell stories of their parents and grandparents who were some of the early settlers to the northern part of this state. They describe fish and fishing in terms that is hard to imagine for current day sportsmen. Naturally, the big excitement was in the spring of the year when the northern pike and walleye are moving up the small rivers from lake to lake. I have seen by spotlight some remarkable “schools of fish” at that time of year, but nothing like the old timers talk about.
The natives and settlers would harvest an mountain of fish in the spring by means of spearing fish in the streams as they migrated. Even now, the game wardens have about a month or so of busy activity during that time of year when they patrol for ‘outlaws’ who can’t seem to resist the urge to spear fish in the springtime.
Another means that was used in the past was fish traps. These were generally wire cages, just imagine a cage about 4 feet long and 2 feet all around, with a funnel of wire on each end and you have a fair ideal of a good fish trap. They would put these in steams under overhanging banks which are the fishes favorite passage way. Stories are told of traps so full it took several men to pull them from the water.
What I can’t get over is thinking about the fish feast these folks must have had! That at a time of the year when fresh food was hard to come by.
Then there is winter ice fishing. Most years from the central part of the state on north, from late November until April the lakes are covered with several feet of ice. I have wondered how the natives cut their holes for fishing, but I suppose they chipped them out with an ice chisel before the invention of augers. I am also guessing that they would have done what I would and that was to cover the hole over at night so a chopped out fishing hole could be used for many days before freezing shut.
For those who have never ice fished with a decoy and spear, it is an activity that is far different than fishing with a hook and line. I will describe the way it is still done and assume it was not a lot different from how it has been done, for who knows how long.
You start with a dark house, that means a structure build without windows of any kind and sealed against any light shining through the walls, doors or around the bottom of the shack. For the ideal is to lure the fish up close to the surface where you can run him through with a spear, about the size of a pitchfork, only the prongs are heavier with barbs to prevent the fish from getting off once you have it speared, northern pike is the legal species now, but in past history, any fish would have been ’fair game’.
The ideal spot is to go out on the ice in fairly shallow water, say 6-8 feet with some cabbage weeds showing in the water. That is a favorite place for the pike to hang out looking for an easy meal. Then you cut a hole in the ice, usually around 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, although we once used a house build for two people, that had a hole that was 2’ wide by 8’ long, that made a nice big hole to watch.
Once you have your shack over the hole and banked on the outside with snow to prevent light and cold air that will freeze your hole, you are ready to fish. It is best to have heat in the house, not only for comfort but also to keep you hole open and free of ice. Then the most common practice is to use a artificial decoy carved from wood with a lead weight sunk into it to hold it under the water. These come or are made in almost any size and form to be imagined. It is common for them to be from 4-6 inches long and of a bright color, red and white being the most common. You put this decoy on a string tied to the roof of you shack and drop it into the water anywhere from 2 to 4 feet below the ice. The decoys are made with metal fins that can be adjusted so that they will swim in a circle when you work the string, this swimming action is what will attract the predator fish. Then you wait. Sitting there in a darkened shack while the cold wind roars, with the water clear and bright enough to sometimes reflect light back into your shack and watching and waiting for a great northern pike to come in to attack your decoy is exciting to fisherman, all the more if you are hungry for some fish!
Sometimes a northern will cautiously swim up to have a look at your decoy from several feet away, usually under the edge of your shack where you can’t get a jab at him. At other times they will cruise in like a torpedo and attack the decoy like lightening and be gone before you know what is happening! It is for that reason that we sometimes use a live sucker. These baitfish are around 7 or 8 inches long and are rigged up with a harness around their middle and tied to the string just like the artificial decoy is. Under this circumstance you have to be on close watch or a northern will come in and kill your live decoy with one good bite and sometimes make his escape when he discovers his food is anchored to a cord. Then you are left with a piece of dead meat that is not likely to attract anything. No matter how you do it spear fishing for northern is great fun and can be very exciting. Regrettably, I had to give up the sport several years ago due to arthritis in my neck. One can be amazed at how stiff your neck will get while staring down into a hole of water all day. All the more reason for us to not put off the things we wish to do while we are young, there will come a day when we can’t do some of the things we would like too, due to the great enemy “time and age”.
All ice fishing is not so demanding. When we arrive at the Lake of the Woods, we will be met by our guide who we rent the ice house from. He will escort us out however many miles it is to where the fish are located this season (sometimes as far as 15 miles from land) and see that we are settled into a large sleeper house. These houses are completely outfitted with bunks, tables, gas lights, a gas cook stove and all along one wall will be our fish holes cleanly cut and ready for fishing. Such services come at a “cost”, but once a year me and three friends ‘bite the bullet’ and make the trip. If all goes well we will have a couple good feasts of fresh walleye cooked right in our ice house and good memories.
Sometimes I think God gave us fishing, more for the joy and memories than for the meat. I will enjoy both.
Prior to the coming of European peoples to this part of the world, the native Americans settled on the major bodies of water, for good reasons. One is obviously transportation. It was much easier to travel along the waterways of this state than ‘cross country’. I would say any time of the year. For during the short summers, the consuming insects, mosquitoes, black flies and deer flies were/are a horror to anyone caught in the woods or even on the prairie, if the wind was calm and the grasses were high.
During the wintertime, the many large lakes and rivers make for ‘super highways’ to travel on, either by snowshoe or dogsled. I have often wondered how the reality would have been to have been in this state, say around 1800, before there was much “civilized” influence to bring in roads, railroads and other modern forms of transportation. I have heard some “old timers” tell stories of their parents and grandparents who were some of the early settlers to the northern part of this state. They describe fish and fishing in terms that is hard to imagine for current day sportsmen. Naturally, the big excitement was in the spring of the year when the northern pike and walleye are moving up the small rivers from lake to lake. I have seen by spotlight some remarkable “schools of fish” at that time of year, but nothing like the old timers talk about.
The natives and settlers would harvest an mountain of fish in the spring by means of spearing fish in the streams as they migrated. Even now, the game wardens have about a month or so of busy activity during that time of year when they patrol for ‘outlaws’ who can’t seem to resist the urge to spear fish in the springtime.
Another means that was used in the past was fish traps. These were generally wire cages, just imagine a cage about 4 feet long and 2 feet all around, with a funnel of wire on each end and you have a fair ideal of a good fish trap. They would put these in steams under overhanging banks which are the fishes favorite passage way. Stories are told of traps so full it took several men to pull them from the water.
What I can’t get over is thinking about the fish feast these folks must have had! That at a time of the year when fresh food was hard to come by.
Then there is winter ice fishing. Most years from the central part of the state on north, from late November until April the lakes are covered with several feet of ice. I have wondered how the natives cut their holes for fishing, but I suppose they chipped them out with an ice chisel before the invention of augers. I am also guessing that they would have done what I would and that was to cover the hole over at night so a chopped out fishing hole could be used for many days before freezing shut.
For those who have never ice fished with a decoy and spear, it is an activity that is far different than fishing with a hook and line. I will describe the way it is still done and assume it was not a lot different from how it has been done, for who knows how long.
You start with a dark house, that means a structure build without windows of any kind and sealed against any light shining through the walls, doors or around the bottom of the shack. For the ideal is to lure the fish up close to the surface where you can run him through with a spear, about the size of a pitchfork, only the prongs are heavier with barbs to prevent the fish from getting off once you have it speared, northern pike is the legal species now, but in past history, any fish would have been ’fair game’.
The ideal spot is to go out on the ice in fairly shallow water, say 6-8 feet with some cabbage weeds showing in the water. That is a favorite place for the pike to hang out looking for an easy meal. Then you cut a hole in the ice, usually around 3 feet long by 2 feet wide, although we once used a house build for two people, that had a hole that was 2’ wide by 8’ long, that made a nice big hole to watch.
Once you have your shack over the hole and banked on the outside with snow to prevent light and cold air that will freeze your hole, you are ready to fish. It is best to have heat in the house, not only for comfort but also to keep you hole open and free of ice. Then the most common practice is to use a artificial decoy carved from wood with a lead weight sunk into it to hold it under the water. These come or are made in almost any size and form to be imagined. It is common for them to be from 4-6 inches long and of a bright color, red and white being the most common. You put this decoy on a string tied to the roof of you shack and drop it into the water anywhere from 2 to 4 feet below the ice. The decoys are made with metal fins that can be adjusted so that they will swim in a circle when you work the string, this swimming action is what will attract the predator fish. Then you wait. Sitting there in a darkened shack while the cold wind roars, with the water clear and bright enough to sometimes reflect light back into your shack and watching and waiting for a great northern pike to come in to attack your decoy is exciting to fisherman, all the more if you are hungry for some fish!
Sometimes a northern will cautiously swim up to have a look at your decoy from several feet away, usually under the edge of your shack where you can’t get a jab at him. At other times they will cruise in like a torpedo and attack the decoy like lightening and be gone before you know what is happening! It is for that reason that we sometimes use a live sucker. These baitfish are around 7 or 8 inches long and are rigged up with a harness around their middle and tied to the string just like the artificial decoy is. Under this circumstance you have to be on close watch or a northern will come in and kill your live decoy with one good bite and sometimes make his escape when he discovers his food is anchored to a cord. Then you are left with a piece of dead meat that is not likely to attract anything. No matter how you do it spear fishing for northern is great fun and can be very exciting. Regrettably, I had to give up the sport several years ago due to arthritis in my neck. One can be amazed at how stiff your neck will get while staring down into a hole of water all day. All the more reason for us to not put off the things we wish to do while we are young, there will come a day when we can’t do some of the things we would like too, due to the great enemy “time and age”.
All ice fishing is not so demanding. When we arrive at the Lake of the Woods, we will be met by our guide who we rent the ice house from. He will escort us out however many miles it is to where the fish are located this season (sometimes as far as 15 miles from land) and see that we are settled into a large sleeper house. These houses are completely outfitted with bunks, tables, gas lights, a gas cook stove and all along one wall will be our fish holes cleanly cut and ready for fishing. Such services come at a “cost”, but once a year me and three friends ‘bite the bullet’ and make the trip. If all goes well we will have a couple good feasts of fresh walleye cooked right in our ice house and good memories.
Sometimes I think God gave us fishing, more for the joy and memories than for the meat. I will enjoy both.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Simple Pleasure of Heating With Wood
Having used wood heat for part of my childhood and most of my adult life, I find that no other kind of heat source has what we might call “character”. Without a doubt all other common heating systems are ‘convenient’ when compared to wood. So ’convenient’ in fact, that they are taken for granted and forgotten about, that is until it is time to pay for the “fill up” whether it be fuel oil, propane or even electric.
For many years we heated our home with a combination of heating oil and wood. That had a great benefit, for if we were not at home to keep the fire up, the furnace kept the house at a reasonable temperature. But at that time heating oil was relatively cheap compared to now. I remember nearly having “the big one” when I had to pay over a dollar a gallon for it. We most often got by with two 250 gallon tanks that we would fill in August, as that was usually the cheapest time of year to buy heating oil.
Then a little over 10 years ago we moved to the farm. No furnace, just wood with a couple small electric back up heaters, plus a vent-less propane heater in the bathroom for quick heat when bathing. That we run from 100# tanks, one most often lasts the winter, unless it is especially cold.
Our heat source is wood. Two stoves, one in the middle of the house which is the main stove, plus a small stove in the kitchen that we use on cloudy days or really cold weather. This year we have had the pleasure of using, for the first time, a Soapstone stove. These stoves are build with cut soapstone, each square being 1¼” thick, all held together with a cast iron frame. They are also the most expensive free standing woodstove I know of, apart from the outdoor stove furnaces.
Those who know my wife will guess where she found this stove, at a garage sale of course. That is the only way we could afford, or justify the cost of one of these stoves. We got it in a good used condition for less than a third of the cost of a new one. Having used it this winter I can safely say that the cost of a new one would not be too much, as long as one can afford it. They are a marvelous heating unit! Naturally, they are heavy stoves by their very nature of being build from solid stone and cast iron. Ours weighs something over 500#. That is part of the secret to their great usefulness. The mass of stone once heated will hold heat for many hours after the fire has gone cold. I think the manufactures claim is 14 hours, in our experience, I have every reason to belief that this is close to the truth. Certainly when we wake up in the morning, even if the fire is long out, the stove is still very warm to the touch.
But there is more charm to wood heat than simply the stove that the wood is burned in. It is not always a lot cheaper. If one must purchase all their wood from a firewood dealer, I doubt that they would save any money at all. We use a mixture of purchased slab wood that we buy in 8’ bundles and must cut with a chainsaw and dry during the summer, plus we take out fallen or lightening struck trees from our own woodlot. This is our greatest cost saving item for heat, however it is also ’labor intensive’. I try to get the trees down and cut to 9’ lengths in the spring before the mosquitoes hatch and also before the sap gets up in the tree. They will dry much better and burn hotter if harvested when the sap is down in the fall, winter or early spring.
Then we have to cut the logs into 18” pieces and split them on the wood splitter. I used to split wood with a splitting maul, but after a couple hernia surgeries, back surgery and other physical problems, those days are over. We now use a good gas powered wood splitter.
As heat, wood has warmed and comforted millions of common people for as long as we have been on this globe. In nearly all countries of the world, wood has, at least in the past, been as necessary to survival as food and water. I like doing things in a way that I know my remote ancestors also did. I certainly got the better end of the stick, when it comes to the technology used to harvest firewood. The axe was the traditional method going back to biblical times. Even the crosscut saw is a relatively late invention in its use for felling trees, in this country it was late in the 19th century when the narrow crosscut design began to be used for felling, prior to the invention of a narrow blade the trees were chopped down with axes, then bucked up (cut to length) with a wide blade crosscut saw.
When you think of the pioneers having to mostly use an axe to gather firewood, no wonder we read about them building fire places that were up to 6 feet wide. Stories are told, which I have no reason to doubt, that some pioneers would drag a 6’ piece of log into their dirt floor cabin with a horse and then roll it into the fireplace! I am thinking that log would burn for awhile, if you could keep it burning. For wood does not dry very well in large log form, it needs to be split to dry properly.
As to the details of using wood as heat, it is usually a “learning experience” for the first few years. One will quickly realize that the specie and quality of your firewood will make a considerable difference in your comfort. Some wood, cotton wood for example, or Norway pine, will nearly put your fire out if at all green. Cotton wood, which thrives in western MN and ND and I am sure many other places, when freshly cut is will latterly drip water, it has a very high content of moisture. Then if it is well dried it will give off fair heat, but like many other soft textured woods, it will burn up very fast, almost like paper.
The best woods to use for firewood are the harder dense hardwoods. Hickory being one of the best, but that does not grow in central or northern MN. Our most common good wood is either white oak or red oak, followed by birch and ash. We do have in places and our farm is one of them, a specie of ironwood that rivals hickory when it comes to heat production, but they generally do no grow very big before they die. We have a few that are around 8 or 10” at the stump and still living, these are ‘huge’ for an ironwood tree. There is another specie of ironwood which has a different bark and purple wood on the inside, but that is properly called ‘hornbeam’; of course, the names of some of these trees are dependent upon the “authority” you talk to. Hornbeam is more of a ‘shrub’ and does not get very big at all that I have ever seen and generally rots before it even falls over.
Another thing about wood heat that should always be stressed when speaking of the subject, is safety. Many of houses burn to the ground yearly from wood heat. There are lots of causes, some just plain carelessness and others are sometimes things hard to control. Other than being careful in general, the best policy is to keep you chimney cleaned of creosote buildup. A chimney fire is a dangerous situation and has been responsible for a lot of fires. What happens is that by having greenish wood or keeping a low fire the heat is not enough to burn the wood clean, thus as the by products go up the chimney they cool and cling to the inside of the tiles or pipe, depending on the kind of chimney one has.
We make a habit of cleaning our chimney with a stiff chimney brush several times during the winter and always in the spring and fall, plus cleaning the stove pipes more often than that. It is in the stove pipe that many chimney fires get started and then set the creosote in the chimney itself on fire. By making certain creosote is not building up in the pipes is one way to help prevent a chimney fire. That said, it is still always a risk when one must take in heating with wood. That is why insurance companies hate woodstoves in houses. I understand their concern. But on the same hand I am willing to pay for the extra risk I cause them in order to heat my home the way I want.
The old saying that “firewood will heat you twice” is not quite accurate, in my experience. Certainly not the way we put up the wood. If we speak of trees that we take from our own woods. First, no matter how you do it, you are going to get warmed up running a chainsaw to drop the tree or if it is downed by the wind, cut it to lengths than can be gotten out with a tractor. Second, then you must cut it to 18” firewood length. Third, you split the wood and stack it on pallets that can be handled with the forks on a tractor. This is so it can be set out in the open air to get the benefit of the wind and sun to dry good before putting it into a shed for winter. That is the ‘fourth’ handling of each piece of wood. Fifth, you move the wood from the woodshed to the woodstove, usually with a stop by the wood box on the closed in porch before it actually gets to the stove and ‘makes heat’. By my count that wood will warm you anywhere from 5 to 6 times! It surely is more than twice.
On a cold snowy winter evening, it is a pleasure to sit before a glass door of a good woodstove, watching the fire while sipping on a cup of hot tea and reading a good book. When you choose to live in the country away from any semblance of city or town life, nor TV, the simple joy of a warm woodstove is something that I would not want to give up. Nor would I trade places with any of the ‘rich and famous’, who, though they may be able to afford a grand fireplace with ‘easy bought wood’, it is nearly assured that they cannot appreciate or enjoy their fire more than I do. For I am reaping the direct reward for my own labor, and that, without the cares of worries of a rich man.
This is a quote from William J. Dawson in “The Quest of the Simple Life”, published in 1907, it hit’s the point when we speak of ‘simple living’;
“It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only beget the more
torturing anxiety of how to keep it.”
While I set by my woodstove this evening, I won’t be bothered by such ‘anxiety’.
For many years we heated our home with a combination of heating oil and wood. That had a great benefit, for if we were not at home to keep the fire up, the furnace kept the house at a reasonable temperature. But at that time heating oil was relatively cheap compared to now. I remember nearly having “the big one” when I had to pay over a dollar a gallon for it. We most often got by with two 250 gallon tanks that we would fill in August, as that was usually the cheapest time of year to buy heating oil.
Then a little over 10 years ago we moved to the farm. No furnace, just wood with a couple small electric back up heaters, plus a vent-less propane heater in the bathroom for quick heat when bathing. That we run from 100# tanks, one most often lasts the winter, unless it is especially cold.
Our heat source is wood. Two stoves, one in the middle of the house which is the main stove, plus a small stove in the kitchen that we use on cloudy days or really cold weather. This year we have had the pleasure of using, for the first time, a Soapstone stove. These stoves are build with cut soapstone, each square being 1¼” thick, all held together with a cast iron frame. They are also the most expensive free standing woodstove I know of, apart from the outdoor stove furnaces.
Those who know my wife will guess where she found this stove, at a garage sale of course. That is the only way we could afford, or justify the cost of one of these stoves. We got it in a good used condition for less than a third of the cost of a new one. Having used it this winter I can safely say that the cost of a new one would not be too much, as long as one can afford it. They are a marvelous heating unit! Naturally, they are heavy stoves by their very nature of being build from solid stone and cast iron. Ours weighs something over 500#. That is part of the secret to their great usefulness. The mass of stone once heated will hold heat for many hours after the fire has gone cold. I think the manufactures claim is 14 hours, in our experience, I have every reason to belief that this is close to the truth. Certainly when we wake up in the morning, even if the fire is long out, the stove is still very warm to the touch.
But there is more charm to wood heat than simply the stove that the wood is burned in. It is not always a lot cheaper. If one must purchase all their wood from a firewood dealer, I doubt that they would save any money at all. We use a mixture of purchased slab wood that we buy in 8’ bundles and must cut with a chainsaw and dry during the summer, plus we take out fallen or lightening struck trees from our own woodlot. This is our greatest cost saving item for heat, however it is also ’labor intensive’. I try to get the trees down and cut to 9’ lengths in the spring before the mosquitoes hatch and also before the sap gets up in the tree. They will dry much better and burn hotter if harvested when the sap is down in the fall, winter or early spring.
Then we have to cut the logs into 18” pieces and split them on the wood splitter. I used to split wood with a splitting maul, but after a couple hernia surgeries, back surgery and other physical problems, those days are over. We now use a good gas powered wood splitter.
As heat, wood has warmed and comforted millions of common people for as long as we have been on this globe. In nearly all countries of the world, wood has, at least in the past, been as necessary to survival as food and water. I like doing things in a way that I know my remote ancestors also did. I certainly got the better end of the stick, when it comes to the technology used to harvest firewood. The axe was the traditional method going back to biblical times. Even the crosscut saw is a relatively late invention in its use for felling trees, in this country it was late in the 19th century when the narrow crosscut design began to be used for felling, prior to the invention of a narrow blade the trees were chopped down with axes, then bucked up (cut to length) with a wide blade crosscut saw.
When you think of the pioneers having to mostly use an axe to gather firewood, no wonder we read about them building fire places that were up to 6 feet wide. Stories are told, which I have no reason to doubt, that some pioneers would drag a 6’ piece of log into their dirt floor cabin with a horse and then roll it into the fireplace! I am thinking that log would burn for awhile, if you could keep it burning. For wood does not dry very well in large log form, it needs to be split to dry properly.
As to the details of using wood as heat, it is usually a “learning experience” for the first few years. One will quickly realize that the specie and quality of your firewood will make a considerable difference in your comfort. Some wood, cotton wood for example, or Norway pine, will nearly put your fire out if at all green. Cotton wood, which thrives in western MN and ND and I am sure many other places, when freshly cut is will latterly drip water, it has a very high content of moisture. Then if it is well dried it will give off fair heat, but like many other soft textured woods, it will burn up very fast, almost like paper.
The best woods to use for firewood are the harder dense hardwoods. Hickory being one of the best, but that does not grow in central or northern MN. Our most common good wood is either white oak or red oak, followed by birch and ash. We do have in places and our farm is one of them, a specie of ironwood that rivals hickory when it comes to heat production, but they generally do no grow very big before they die. We have a few that are around 8 or 10” at the stump and still living, these are ‘huge’ for an ironwood tree. There is another specie of ironwood which has a different bark and purple wood on the inside, but that is properly called ‘hornbeam’; of course, the names of some of these trees are dependent upon the “authority” you talk to. Hornbeam is more of a ‘shrub’ and does not get very big at all that I have ever seen and generally rots before it even falls over.
Another thing about wood heat that should always be stressed when speaking of the subject, is safety. Many of houses burn to the ground yearly from wood heat. There are lots of causes, some just plain carelessness and others are sometimes things hard to control. Other than being careful in general, the best policy is to keep you chimney cleaned of creosote buildup. A chimney fire is a dangerous situation and has been responsible for a lot of fires. What happens is that by having greenish wood or keeping a low fire the heat is not enough to burn the wood clean, thus as the by products go up the chimney they cool and cling to the inside of the tiles or pipe, depending on the kind of chimney one has.
We make a habit of cleaning our chimney with a stiff chimney brush several times during the winter and always in the spring and fall, plus cleaning the stove pipes more often than that. It is in the stove pipe that many chimney fires get started and then set the creosote in the chimney itself on fire. By making certain creosote is not building up in the pipes is one way to help prevent a chimney fire. That said, it is still always a risk when one must take in heating with wood. That is why insurance companies hate woodstoves in houses. I understand their concern. But on the same hand I am willing to pay for the extra risk I cause them in order to heat my home the way I want.
The old saying that “firewood will heat you twice” is not quite accurate, in my experience. Certainly not the way we put up the wood. If we speak of trees that we take from our own woods. First, no matter how you do it, you are going to get warmed up running a chainsaw to drop the tree or if it is downed by the wind, cut it to lengths than can be gotten out with a tractor. Second, then you must cut it to 18” firewood length. Third, you split the wood and stack it on pallets that can be handled with the forks on a tractor. This is so it can be set out in the open air to get the benefit of the wind and sun to dry good before putting it into a shed for winter. That is the ‘fourth’ handling of each piece of wood. Fifth, you move the wood from the woodshed to the woodstove, usually with a stop by the wood box on the closed in porch before it actually gets to the stove and ‘makes heat’. By my count that wood will warm you anywhere from 5 to 6 times! It surely is more than twice.
On a cold snowy winter evening, it is a pleasure to sit before a glass door of a good woodstove, watching the fire while sipping on a cup of hot tea and reading a good book. When you choose to live in the country away from any semblance of city or town life, nor TV, the simple joy of a warm woodstove is something that I would not want to give up. Nor would I trade places with any of the ‘rich and famous’, who, though they may be able to afford a grand fireplace with ‘easy bought wood’, it is nearly assured that they cannot appreciate or enjoy their fire more than I do. For I am reaping the direct reward for my own labor, and that, without the cares of worries of a rich man.
This is a quote from William J. Dawson in “The Quest of the Simple Life”, published in 1907, it hit’s the point when we speak of ‘simple living’;
“It would seem that the anxieties of getting money only beget the more
torturing anxiety of how to keep it.”
While I set by my woodstove this evening, I won’t be bothered by such ‘anxiety’.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)