Leaderboard

Played on a Traditional Chinese Guzheng | Moyu

Okay , everybody!! I just got off the phone with Forty! He sounded pretty good and he was in good spirits! He’s in the NorCal District VA hospital in Prescott. He told me that they have made some excellent progress and that he already is feeling much better. He figures to be in the hospital for at least another week! That’s all I have for now!! Keep it up!!

WELLL! Schoolmarm lied!! She said she wasn’t going to cook again for a few days. While I was gone all day, yesterday, she did biscuits, bacon, and sliced up some tomatoes! Hatfield brought home a big mess of fried chicken tenders last night. I had chicken biscuits with bacon, tomato, and cheese for supper last night! The home health lady just finished rebandaging my foot. Said it looked good.

The best thing to come out of Iowa is I-35… Apologies to my Iowa pards. That’s a cheesy Kansas City joke!

Part of the problem with a lot of these modern inexpensive devices is that they "reveal" all sorts of problems. Sometimes real, sometimes imaginery. How does the bore look if you inspect it the old fashioned way, i.e, take out the cylinder put your thumbnail behind the barrel and look in the other end? I just did this with a couple of New Vaqueros I have that have less than 100 rounds through them. With the fingernail test they look bright and shiny. I stick a bore scope in there and they look like the surface of the moon. The rings in the bore do not look like rings a lot of CAS shooters talk about. I.e., a double charge and the barrel got "ringed." They look like machine marks. I have been to one of the Ruger plants a few times and these are mass produced firearms. They are not hand fitted precision polished pieces. They are test fired and placed on racks. More than one round is fired. Then they are rolled out to the shipping area and wiped down, boxed and immediately shipped. They are not cleaned in the sense that many of us mean when we talk about cleaning a gun. How does the bore look without the bore scope? If it looks normal I would clean it and take it out and test fire it before getting too excited.

A few years ago, Schoolmarm and I took what for her was a bucket list trip! She had just finished up breast cancer treatment and decided it was time to go see some of the WEST! Along our itinerary were stops to visit a few of the people that we had become acquainted with on the Wire! We ended up staying with Forty and his little dog, Trinket, for a few days!! As a result, Schoolmarm is enamored with that ol’ cuss and we talk on the phone with him, sometimes four or five times a week!! We both consider him among our closest friends!!

@Marshal Mo Hare, SASS #45984, Nice choice of word there in your post title. Tidbit about the Donner Party

It had calmed a little by the time I got outside and got my phone configured for video 20240315_114834.mp4

While he is working at his computer, do you suppose he is quietly singing to himself "I'm a lumberjack and that's okay..."

Looks Joe Dirt got another car out of impound.

In the 1840s, emigrants were itching to go west in search of gold, new beginnings, and a glimpse of the West Coast’s famed beauty. So it wasn’t strange that Abraham Lincoln, then working as a lawyer, helped at least one traveler settle his affairs before beginning the journey. An Irish entrepreneur named James Reed had known Lincoln from their days serving together in the Black Hawk War in 1832. According to the historian Michael Wallis, Reed — a founder of the Donner Party — extended an invitation to the 37-year-old lawyer and his family to join the voyage. Lincoln was likely tempted: He reportedly had a lifelong interest in visiting California. But his wife, Mary Todd, was adamant they should remain in Illinois considering the difficulty of 2,000 miles of wagon travel with a young son and a baby on the way. The Donner Party departed Springfield, Illinois, without the Lincolns on April 15, 1846.

Get a set of snap caps. Pit them in the Barrels, pull triggers put away. Doing it with snap caps takes tension off of springs. Don't snap them without snap caps. If you do will mushroom firing pins.

Damn. Can't understand why I hadn't seen this thread 'til just now. Well... I've been prayin' for Forty for lots o' years; just ramped 'em up a notch! But he's a tough 'un ~ he'll be back on the circuit before ya know it! And for those of you who have never sat at table and shared a meal with Tom, if ya have the opportunity, do it! You'll walk away with a grin that'll just keep comin' back!

Every Christmas my daughter wraps up boxes of ammo and primers in black paper wrapping. It is my coal for the year from her. I look forward to unwrapping my coal every year. She does tend to get the wrong type or brand but it all works so who cares. It is the thought that counts. TM

52 submarines and 4 submarine tenders of the US Navy Reserve Fleet, Mare Island Naval Shipyard, California, circa 1946

The Eagles have a live version of Hotel California that has kind of a calypso feel to it. The version of the song as posted sounds quite a bit like the Eagles' calypso/live version. I liked the version posted, it's different and the musician has obvious talent.

Blackwater, thanks for the update on Forty, he didn't show up for Thursday morning breakfast at Zekes yesterday, as he usually does. Forty called Longshot Larry while we were all having breakfast to let us know he was in the emergency room, but that's all the information we received. Prayers are up from all of his pards who shoot with the Whiskey Row Gunslingers and the Granite Mountain Outlaws and enjoy breakfast with him at Zeke's Eatin' Place in Prescott. I know ol' Forty Rod will be up and around as soon as he is well, as he's an ornery old cuss and you can't keep a good cowboy down.

Thank you Pat. I listened for about a minute, and it was just noise. But based on what Pat said, I started listening to it again at about 2 minutes and 30 seconds. And wow. She was playing Hotel California. It was different. But it was kind of cool. But that first two minutes or so - that was just noise.

THAT’S WHAT I WANT It was Friday night. Two lean figures shrugged into backpacks, ran the water tubes over their shoulders, clipped the tubes in place. Two lean figures opened their rifles' bolts, thumbed in five rounds of dull metallic cartridges, pulled the stripper loose, slipped the stamped-metal clip into a pocket, thumbed the rounds down and closed their rifles’ bolts. Surplus Soviet bolt-action rifles were slung. One rifleman looked at the other. They walked down the hand-cut stone steps, off the grey-floored porch, walked to the neatly circumscribed border between the driveway and the yard. Two figures leaned forward into the dark, started to run, well-polished and tight-laced boots silent in the moonlit darkness. "I don't know why you even try," Shelly said quietly. "It's Friday night, you know you're not going to relax." Linn held his wife around the waist, leaned his head down, kissed the side of her neck, brought his mustache up until it tickled her ear. "I took Friday night off so I can have some time with you," he whispered. "Mmm, tell me more," Shelly hummed as her husband nibbled her earlobe, carefully, mindful of the pierced earrings. "The kids are getting some size to them. I thought it wise to be home. Girls Marnie's age are going out on dates." Shelly looked up at her husband, smiled. "I remember when you started dating me." "I do too," Linn grinned. "You made popcorn." "I didn't know you then. I figured if you turned out to be all mouth and hands, I'd just stuff popcorn in your mouth." They laughed quietly, Linn's eyes sliding over to the cupboard where they kept the popcorn popping kettle. "You know if we make some we'll have to make a couple batches." "Mm-hmm." Conversation was suspended as husband and wife held one another in the quiet of their immaculate kitchen. When they came up for air, Shelly whispered, “I’m liking this. How long will the kids be gone?” “It’s Friday night,” Linn whispered. “You know kids and their Friday night dates.” His mustache tickled her lip and conversation was suspended for a significantly longer period this time. Two figures ran through the mountain darkness, their boots setting a regular cadence on the lonely ranch road. They spread apart, running just outside the tire tracks -- a depression in the dirt roadway passed between them, shining-wet with standing water, reflecting the increasing starlight -- they converged again, continued their run, turning a little now, heading uphill. Jacob and Marnie ran steadily, not competing: each ran in step with the other, each brought the slung rifle off the shoulder, carried at high port: they slowed, stopped, moved behind what looked like a 55 gallon drum over on its side, set up on some kind of platform. Marnie went first. She cycled her bolt, thrust the rifle into the end of the drum, sighted on the rectangular target in the distance, pulled the trigger. A white-painted silhouette twitched, gave a satisfying CLANK as the surplus Soviet slug smacked into it, knocking cheap white spray paint into dust. Every shot was the same -- a dull fump! *clank!*-- their labors in constructing a muffling chamber had been successful; Marnie fired four more times, then Jacob. They would police their empties the next day, in the daylight: Marnie topped off the Mosin's magazine with single rounds while Jacob fired, she waited while he reloaded, then they resumed their run. No words were exchanged, no conversation held; each one heard, in their memory, the singing chant their pale eyed Gammaw used when running with Willamina's Warriors: they could have recorded such running songs, played them back on a miniature player of some kind, but neither wanted anything that would interfere with their hearing. Marnie had been wounded, deeply and severely injured, at too young an age, and this honestly scarred her psyche: Jacob grew up a lawman's son, and had listened to his father's, and other lawmen's recounting of close encounters of the unpleasant kind. Both knew that unpleasantness, that violence, visited itself upon all souls at one time or another. Both knew they were going into the law enforcement profession. Both knew they intended to be ready when violence came to them. Both lean young figures ran steadily through the night. Linn carried his wife up the broad, hand-fitted stairs, the same set of stairs his ancestor’s best friend Charlie Macneil built into this fine old house more than a century before, the same stairs up which Macneil carried his own bride for the very first time, the same stairs up which Linn carried this same bride for the very first time, many years before, and not a few times since. Linn’s eyes were a light blue as he looked into his wife’s face, into her eyes: he stopped halfway up, leaned his head down, kissed her, whispered “I could swim in those eyes,” and as Shelly giggled with anticipation, he resumed his ascent. There was just enough moon to see by, with their eyes acclimatized to the dark: Jacob stood, breathing deeply, controlling his respirations. Marnie exhibited no such control. Her face was contorted in a teeth-bared grimace, a mask of hate as she assaulted the bayonet dummy, a plastic mannikin on a spring-mounted pipe stand: Marnie’s grunts and snarls were genuine – Jacob knew these were not the sounds of a weaker-muscled girl trying to generate more power with each strike, these were honestly the sounds of someone who hated! – who hated with a deep purple passion – someone who drew on the hell that scarred her young soul at far too young an age, and only now, now that she was far from the place that hurt her, far from the now-dead people who’d done such terrible things to her, now she could let that hate out, and she did. Viciously, violently, with absolutely no reservation whatsoever. Jacob watched as Marnie assaulted that bayonet dummy, using her rifle the way their pale eyed Gammaw taught them: Marnie used the rifle with the deadly efficiency their Gammaw learned overseas – muzzle thrusts, butt strokes, rakes, cuts: Jacob knew the Mosin was built by the same people who built anvils, he knew the rifle was made for uneducated, ham handed peasants to use in wartime, and watching his sister’s controlled, full-power assault on the mannikin, he was glad for the rifle’s more than robust construction. Part of his mind remembered his pale eyed Gammaw telling him the US Military no longer mounted a bayonet lug on their issue M16s and M4s because “the Mickey Mouse gun is too delicate to take the stresses of bayonet fighting” – her words – which is why she’d been known to snatch up an AK and lay about the enemy like Samson laying about with the jaw bone of a jack mule. Jacob watched his pale eyed sister’s fast-moving fury and wondered if that’s what their Gammaw looked like when she waded into the middle of the enemy, and then he remembered someone who’d served with her, someone who’d told him in quiet voice that his Gammaw went into an ambush at the top of her lungs, murdering from within the enemy’s close-packed ranks, how she’d screamed like a damned soul falling into the vortex of Hell itself, and how that long, sustained scream froze men’s hearts while she drove Soviet steel into men’s guts and ripped it free, spraying blood and men’s lives as she did. Jacob shivered, blinked: Marnie was backing up, breathing heavily: here in the mountains, this granddaughter of a fighting Marine was silent, pale eyes glaring at what used to be a bayonet dummy. “That one’s dead,” Jacob grunted. “On to the next.” A pair of sixteen-year-olds turned, continued their run, deeper into the mountains. “Next dummy’s mine,” Jacob grunted. “Yeah,” Marnie grunted back. Linn came downstairs, freshly showered: his wife was relaxed, smiling in her sleep. Linn was restless, as he always was, knowing it was Friday, knowing things happened on Friday, knowing he might yet be called. Coffee gurgled in his big ceramic mug, steamed as it warmed in his hands: he trickled in a little milk, prowled restlessly, turned out the kitchen light and looked out the night-darkened window over the kitchen sink. I don’t see a white wolf. This is a good thing. He looked at the clock. He had no worries about his young: their younger children were asleep, you could fire a cannon and they’d not wake; his eldest two, Jacob and Marnie, were out, but Linn knew they would not be on the road, or partying, or carousing. He’d helped them lay out their running course, and he’d helped them design and build the steel drum muffler, lined with Styrofoam and insulation and set up on a well built platform of crossbucked scrap lumber. I wonder how well it’ll work for them, he thought, smiling a little as he remembered hanging the steel silhouettes, delegating their painting to Marnie’s precise hand: when the first can of the cheapest white paint they could buy, hissed dry, Marnie stepped back, yelled “Quarter a shot!” and tossed it skyward. Father, son and daughter all three drew and fired: what used to be an aerosol can spun, fell, hit the ground, six holes – three entrance holes, caved in a little, three exit holes, torn metal petaled out, bore mute testimony of the accuracy of the draw-and-fire of three pistoleros. Linn smiled as he remembered the moment, sipped his coffee, half expecting the phone to ring: I know my luck, he thought, there’s damn little chance I’ll get a night’s rest of a Friday night. The Bear Killer's head came up, his ears lifting: Linn saw the great black brush of a tail start polishing the floor. Jacob and Marnie came in, breathing deeply, controlling their breath: Linn knew they'd been out for a run, and anyone else running for the distance they’d just covered, would have been taking deep, air-hungry, gasping breaths. He himself knew he could not have sustained the run his eldest children just managed. Linn knew they'd been busy in the barn, cleaning corrosive residue from the bores; they stood the rifles muzzle-down in the gun case, muzzles resting on folded rags, to catch any surplus oil that ran out of the now-scrupulously-clean barrels. Jacob and Marnie came in, sock foot, set their unlaced boots on the rubber boot tray, came over to him, breathing deeply, their cheeks healthy pink and cool to the touch. "How'd it go?" Linn asked quietly. "Marnie outshot me," Jacob admitted, grinning, "as usual." "Not by much," Marnie countered, "and I couldn't outrun him!" Linn smiled quietly, nodded, looked across the kitchen. "Popcorn?" Marnie laughed quietly. "You have to ask?" "Sis?" Marnie shook grated Parmesan on her popcorn, flipped the bowl carefully, distributing the powdery flavoring evenly: she looked at her brother, raised an eyebrow. "Sis, every girl in school is strapping on high heels and chasing boys on Friday night. You're out running with me. I know I suffer a sparkling personality and ravishing good looks, but your social life really sucks!" Marnie lowered her head, glared playfully at her brother over a set of nonexistent spectacles. "I could say the same for you, Little Brother!" "I'm serious, Sis." "So am I. Why aren't you out drinking beer, chasing girls and running hot cars?" Jacob sook his head, frowned. "My automatic pilot hasn't taken over yet, Sis. I'm honestly afraid of what I might become once it does." "You look pretty controlled to me." Jacob's jaw eased out thoughtfully as he frowned at his fragrant bowl of freshly popped corn. "I don't want to betray a girl," he whispered. "I've seen too much of that already." Marnie nodded, sampled her popcorn: Jacob saw the approval in her eyes -- whether for his answer, or for her popcorn, he wasn't certain. "Sis, we carry the genes for addiction. Gammaw's Mama was a drunk and a damned drunk. I'm told it skips a generation. That would be us. Passion can be as addictive as alcohol or drugs." Marnie closed her eyes, nodded, shivered. "I'll meet the right girl and raise a family, just not yet, and I don't want to start because I have to." Marnie rested her hand on her belt, stood hip-shot, regarded her brother with a an appraising look. "You sound hopelessly old-fashioned, Jacob." "Yeah," Jacob nearly whispered, looking bleakly into his popcorn. "Passion. Uncontrolled strong emotion. Once I start I might not be able to stop." "Able? Or want to?" Jacob's young eyes were haunted as he replied quietly, "That's what I'm afraid of, Sis. I might not want to stop, and that's addiction!" Linn looked across the kitchen, at the wall phone hanging patiently beside the door frame. “At the risk of throwing a jinx on it,” he said finally, “I’m going to give up and go to bed.” Marnie set down her bowl of popcorn, skipped up to her long tall Daddy and gave him a quick, tight, happy hug, pressing the side of her head against his chest: Linn chuckled, hugged her back, buried his face in her hair, took a noisy sniff. “You smell like outside,” he chuckled, and Marnie giggled to hear his voice rumbling deep in his chest, and Jacob grinned to see this interaction. For a moment, for one quick little moment, Jacob saw Marnie as a giggly little girl, and Linn as the laughing big strong daddy, and Jacob thought to himself, That’s what I want. In due time, yes, but that’s what I want!

Jake! His last name is Taylor! I’m not sure which hospital. I left him a message when I got home this afternoon. (Separate story) He hasn’t returned my call yet! He was dealing with the VA, but he’s been in and out of the ER somewhere. One of the doctors’ name is pronounced like the tiger in Jungle Book, Sher Kahn I think. I will post the hospital info when I talk to him, hopefully tonight.

“Ants ate this lollipop completely, but the wrapper is still spherical.”

My wife called my attention to the Moon.

No stress at all.