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Sometimes

.... nope, no worries at all .......... it's not my boat .....

I have noticed that Cowboys Like to Eat... Jabez Cowboy

EXPERT OPINION "Sir?" "Yes, Jacob?" "The Silver Jewel will be sending over supper for you." "Good." Linn shifted in his hospital bed, the way a man will when he's uncomfortable from what he considers an excess of bed rest. "Sir, I've been considering the Carbon Mercantile." Linn's eyes were carefully expressionless. "Go on." "Sir, it'll be remarked on that you went in with no more body armor than an irritated expression." "I doubt me not," Linn grunted, "that it will be spoken of. Or more likely I'll get spoken to about it." Half his mouth twisted up, half a wry smile, an intentional expression, not a result of internal or external injury. "I was off duty, ridin' fence, I heard the traffic and I was close by." "Sir, we could've made a tactical entry in front --" "I handled it." "Yes, sir, you handled it well but you were reckless." Pale eyed father glared at pale eyed son, his eyes hardening and becoming visibly more pale. "Sir, over and above the fact that I've only got one of you, and settin' aside that if you'd got killed, Mama would never speak to you again -- that was a tactically poor decision." "It worked," Linn said coldly. "Yes, sir, it did," Jacob agreed, "and this discussion won't leave this room, but damn it, sir, you're the only one of you I've got!" "You said that already." "Maybe I want to emphasize the point." "You were talking tactics, now your'e being selfish." "No more selfish that you were, you pale eyed hellraiser!" Jacob snapped. "If you want to strip your blouse and step behind the barracks, put 'em up because I'll go toe to toe with you whenever you want!" Sheriff Linn Keller eased forward, leaning away from his set-up mattress: he glared coldly at his son and said, "I can fire you at any time." Jacob leaned over the siderail and glared just as hard at his father. "Fire me then." Father and son regarded each other in hard headed, jaw bulged silence for several long seconds; the atmosphere between them fairly crackled, and finally Linn nodded. "Sit down, Jacob," he said, leaning back. "If you hadn't spoken as you did, you'd not have been doing your job." "My job," Jacob said coldly as he settled back down on Doc's rolling stool, "is what you've told me in the past: to keep the man above you out of trouble, and to keep the people under me out of trouble. Right now I am trying to do just that." "You're doing it well." Linn's teeth showed momentarily and he frowned at this betrayal of his pain, his weakness. Jacob hesitated and Linn stepped into the hesitation. "You've hit me where I live, Jacob. I don't want to leave Shelly and I sure as hell don't want to leave while you're here to make life interesting. You have children and I delight in them and I don't want to not see them grow and become all they are going to." His head dropped back against the sweaty pillow. "Jacob, all I could think of was ... hell, I wasn't thinking," he admitted. "The only thing in my head was that no one is going to come into my county and pull something like this." He swung pale eyes to his frowning son, grinned. "Look at the message it sent." "That the Sheriff is a damned fool?" Jacob grinned. Linn raised a hand off the covers, waved it. "Besides that. No, Jacob, you had the place surrounded, and when they looked out the back door and saw two rifles in their faces, they gave up and that left only the one. I couldn't know that, but your tactics are sound. No" -- Linn shifted again, frowning at the IVs in his left elbow, looking up at the chuckling pump, the bag above it -- "Why can't they put some Kentucky Drain Opener in that?" he muttered -- he looked at Jacob again. "Jacob, this sends the message that we don't fool around. Nobody will talk about establishing a perimeter, assessing the situtation and coming up with a plan. The only thing that'll get talked about will be that this county kicks the door and goes in killin' without hesitation." Jacob remembered the two dead men inside the front door, both with a fist sized hole through their wishbone, one with the distinct shape of a shotgun's butt mashed deep into his face where an old veteran lawman engaged the enemy at close quarters in an effective manner. "I'll agree, sir, you didn't hesitate any a'tall." "Had I been on duty instead of ridin' fence," Linn muttered, "I'd just have a bruise instead of a hole in my lung. Your Mama didn't say much when she was in but her eyes said plenty." "Yes, sir." "Sometimes, Jacob, we have to do something even if it's wrong. I did and it worked." "Yes, sir." "We want to send a message, Jacob. This sent the message that we don't negotiate, we kill. We don't hesitate, we kill. We send this message and we prevent future hostilities." "I see, sir." "Bruce Jones helps with that. Did you see last week's paper?" It was a rhetorical question; in an era of increasingly electronic communications, the local newspaper was still quite popular, and a stray thought tickled the edge of Jacob's memory, something about a tourist's review of Firelands describing the quaint habit of actually reading a print newspaper in public, at the barbershop, even on a bench on the public street. "I saw the paper, sir." "You saw how he covered the Lawman's Invitational." "Yes, sir." "He publishes scores like he prints the football team's scores. He shows lawmen on the line, knocking down steel plates, he shows them running an assault course and he's gotten some great photographs of men at a dead run, brass flyin' in the air, knockdowns at half-mast" -- he stopped, nodded. "That is also prevention, Jacob. We want to impress on the criminal mind that if they come here, they leave in a rubber sack." "Yes, sir." "That's not why I went in like I did." Jacob's left eyebrow quirked up. "Sir?" Linn leaned forward again, almost managing to hide a pained grimace as he did: being shot through the ribs is not a comfortable thing, neither at the time, nor when healing up. "It made me mad, Jacob," Linn said. "I won't have that kind of thing in my county so I went in with a full head of steam and I let my badger loose on 'em." Deputy Sheriff Jacob Keller nodded, considered, looked back at Sheriff Linn Keller, rose. "Sir," he said, "you are a hard headed and contrary old man." "I'm not old yet, Jacob, but I fully intend to get there!" Dr. John Greenlees tapped discreetly at the door, pushed it open, just in time to get a face full of laughter as father and son were apparently sharing something amusing. "Are you ready to get out of here?" Doc asked without preamble, then added, "you contrary old man?" Father and son looked at one another, looked at Doc, and Jacob shook his head. "There you have it, sir," he chuckled, "I am now given expert opinion on the subject!"

When a Dark Lord of Soot plays in the band...

Given the alternative…

I do believe that law would be put to better use if it were enacted in Chicago.

I don't, but at that part of the 1812, where they have that amazing percussion session, the French horns should be playing.

In regards to spurious "u's" in words, I quote Andrew Jackson - - - "It's a dam poor mind indeed which can't think of at least two ways to spell any word". However my English teacher was not convinced - - - drat. STL Suomi Clever folks those Aussies -

YEP!! Soup turned out fabulous!! Me ‘n’ Schoolmarm put two gallons into freezer bags this morning and popped ‘em in the freezer. I had me a great big bowl for lunch just now and we’ll put a couple gallons in mason jars for quick meals/snacks over the next couple of weeks. It’s going to be part of supper tonight as well!! Some of the best comfort food I’ve ever known.

I'm wondering if we can get a similar law passed here in Canada?

APEX "You know the rules," Linn said quietly. The boy ran back to the bench, seized a set of earmuffs: he clapped them on his head, twisted the switch, ran up beside the Sheriff. Linn turned, looked around: he and the neighborhood lad were the only ones at the range. Linn nodded. The grinning little boy raised his leg, stomped happily on the board protecting the switch: a well shaken can of something carbonated launched straight in the air. A grinning little boy and a pale eyed Sheriff followed its flight with their eyes. Somewhere near the apex of its rise, the boy's peripheral caught a blur: he hadn't time to steel himself for the concussion to follow -- BAM! -- and the can of cheap stuff EXPLODED in a bright spray against the cloudless late-fall sky. "Reload!" the Sheriff laughed, and the little boy's hand dropped to the open carton -- he gave the aluminum can a half-dozen vigorous shakes, dropped it into a thin-wall tube that looked like some kind of a homemade mortar -- The Sheriff nodded -- A sneakerfoot stomped happily on the weathered pine board -- BAM! An old veteran lawman grinned and a little boy laughed with delight. Linn looked at the lad, came down on one knee. "Like to try it?" The boy's eyes went big and round as he looked at this most potent talisman of the lawman's profession, a blued-steel, .44-caliber, single-action revolver: unlike the blocky plastic he usually saw in a lawman's holster, the Sheriff's revolver held an aura, a magic, whether from the gold-inlaid vine-work bordered around the muzzle, whether due to the gold Thunder Bird hand-chased into the frame, whether because of the red-inlaid rose-stem-and-leaves on the top strap... Or maybe it was because it belonged to this long tall lawman, a quiet man who remembered what it was to be a little boy, looking at his lawman Mama with big and adoring eyes. "Set up four cans yonder," the Sheriff said, and the boy snatched up the torn-open carton: he ran for the plank not far away, set four cans on the plank: he snatched up blasted-open, concussion-flattened aluminum cans and worked them into the empty cardboard carton, ran back, dunked the trash in the burning barrel. A grinning little boy looked up at the Sheriff, and the Sheriff gave the lad an approving expression, and each one's heart warmed to see the other's reaction. Linn rolled the cylinder around and dropped the loaded rounds into his palm, placed them on the loading bench, went to one knee. The loading gate snapped shut with a metallic sound and the Sheriff placed the plow handle in the boy's hand. "You'll grip it like this," he said, "this finger -- like so, above the trigger guard. Keep it there and keep it straight. Now your thumb" -- gentle and fatherly hands covered his, adjusting the lad's hold on the big revolver -- "there, just like that. "Now you remember I showed you how to run the sights." The lad nodded solemnly. "You'll run these just the same as you did the other. Now raise it up and get your sight picture -- both hands, just like that -- reach up with your off hand and ear that hammer back." A youthful thumb thrilled as it laid over the checkered hammer spur, felt the texture, brought it back, feeling machined steel chuckling to itself in the mechanical mystery inside the frame: youthful imagination populated it with wheels and levers and cogs and many more moving parts than there actually were. "Set your front sight where you want to hit, center it in your back blade." Young eyes looked over square black sights. "When it looks right, bring your finger down and ease back on that trigger." The boy didn't have to look. He felt the Sheriff's approval as the hammer dropped. Linn had him lower the revolver for several seconds, then bring it back up: dry fire is instructive for novice shooters and veteran shooters alike, and Linn wanted to accustom the lad to the revolver's feel, to how it handles, before trying live fire. "Okay. What do you think?" The lad surrendered the revolver to the Sheriff, his eyes coveting this blued-steel treasure. "I like it," he said in a small voice. "Shows you have good taste," Linn grinned. He dropped in three rounds -- alternated loaded, butter-soft, full-wadcutter handloads with empty chambers. "Now." He clicked the cylinder one more time, snapped the loading gate shut. "First up will be a loaded round. Same as before. Sights, sights and sights." The lad nodded, accepted the loaded revolver, his demeanor considerably less excited and visibly more serious. "Use your off thumb and bring the hammer back." Youthful imagination was less concerned with the complex mechanical mystery inside the frame, and more worried about how badly it was going to kick. "When you're ready." A little boy, not yet in his double digits, stood beside a long tall Sheriff, holding a double handful of frontier justice: young eyes held an absolutely perfect sight picture, young eyes widened with amazement as something blasted away from the plank with a spraying cloud of carbonation. Forgotten was any apprehension about recoil, or anything else, for that matter. Sheriff Linn Keller knew many delights in his life, and he rejoiced to see one today. He saw the absolutely unapologetic delight of a little boy who knew he'd done a good thing, a little boy who stood beside a grown man he respected, a man who approved of what he'd just done.

U bad? Say it idn't so.

........ and it's BAD!!!!!!!!

joke from WWII: If you have unknown troops in front of you and you want to find out who they are, fire a few rounds in their direction. If you are met with precision machine gun fire, they’re German. If you are met by a volley of precision rifle fire, they are British. If they surrender, they’re Italian. If there is a mass wave of infantry and tanks, they’re Russian. If there is a bayonet and sword charge, they’re Japanese. If everything is quiet for a minute or two, and suddenly you are in the middle of a massive artillery barrage and air strikes, they are American.

Sadly he is beyond Stupid... Jabez Cowboy