Hardpan Curmudgeon SASS #8967

Not quite forty years ago I was working for a li'l outfit called Bank of America, in San Francisco. One afternoon, on a whim, I walked into a co-worker's office. "Gail," sez I to the startled lady, "Gail, are you the Gail Cain who won the Bulwer-Lytton contest??" She recovered after a moment, grinned at me, and said "Yup!" and then recited her entry - winner of the first B-L award, 1983: Nice gal!

Slightly OT, but tangentially related... Windows 11. MS is going to ceas supporting 10 (and all previous editions) this October. But my computer, which works fine, will not support 11. So... I reckon I - and a few million other folk - will be shopping for a new 'puter. *Grump!*

Very cool photo! But I do hope them front-seaters had ear plugs....

I hope they paid someone well to clean and oil all them salt-water-soaked shotguns.... And THEN slapped somebody plumb silly for comin' up wit' the idea in the first place!

Care to share...? 🙂

I had a '64 1/2, dark green with tan interior. One hundred seventy cubic inch in-line six-cylinder engine, 3-speed manual transmission with non-synchro first gear. Riding the bus to work one warm San Francisco afternoon in 1971. Bus broke down; I couldn't afford to be late (again). Looked out the bus window, and saw this thing sitting on a used car lot. Bailed outta the bus, dashed across the road, wrote a check for five hundred bucks and made it to work with ninety seconds to spare! That thing had a few issues - on a trip to Hank's family ranch, I had to swap out the steering box before we could drive back to the Kappa Phi Delta house in SF. Surely wish I still had it! Traded it in on a '68 Bug. Hank and I drove that bug down to the ranch south of Fresno. His dad walked out, looked at my new ride, and declared "Well, I see you haven't moved up much in the world."

Well done, J-Bar... and a striking family resemblance!

Same two characters... thirty-one years later, sturgeon fishing. Feed 'em and they grow! The kid scored!

Dang... Busted! Hardpan

It does look good ~ fine job! By the way... what caliber? I've only shot 'em in .223/5.56, and never found recoil to be an issue - no "padding" required.

Auxiliary manual starter.

I think Joe nailed it. This guy is a nutcase... Three miles south, on the same road I live on. I'd say 'there goes the neighborhood,' but I'd be a mite late in saying it.

I was literally across the road when this happened... freakin' low-life idiot. He drove something like ninety miles to shoot some young man he didn't know ~ "I don't like big pharma." Walgreens Worker Shot

And that, Sir, is the crux of the issue.

There are a few....

Well heck... I think @Subdeacon Joe's post about "round engines" deserves more than being buried on page 907 of the "Memes" thread ~ those things are plumb cool! Heck... I'll re-post it below. So I followed Joe's post with a comment about sharing it with a retired Navy pilot I know, and did just that yesterday at the Monday Morning Clovis Veteran's gathering. And, as predicted, it brought about a big ol' grin; he indicated that Joe's post is pretty much spot-on. That led to a few stories... and the man does have some stories! Dennis actually just published a book about his adventures ~ a fun read; the premise is that try as he might, he never managed to kill himself flying - written with a good dose of humor. Definitely a good read. On Amazon! I had been a WestAir Airlines first officer for four years. I was landing in Los Angeles flying a nineteen-passenger twin turboprop Jetstream, following a Korean Air 747. The weather was clear. I had three and a half miles separation behind the Korean Air to avoid the wake turbulence, aka cyclonic flow, coming off the 747’s wingtips. The Korean Air landed and turned off the runway. I intended to land beyond where he touched down as per standard operating procedures. Descending below 100’ above the runway I felt a slight yoke movement from the wake turbulence of Korean’s right-wing. I initiated a climb to get back in sequence for another approach. In the next two seconds had full power on the airplane. Too late. I was caught in the 747’s vortices forcing the plane into a descending left turn. I countered the left turn. Two seconds later, I had full power on both engines, all flight controls at their limit for a climbing right turn but continued to descend in a left turn. Less than fifty feet off the pavement and descending, we were still out of control. We were going to hit the ground, uncontrolled. If I lived through the initial impact, I, and everyone else, would die in the fire.... I surprised Dennis during a class a few years ago... the "birthday present" of a Binford Hoist-O-Matic 2000 underwear lifter was a definite hit. @Subdeacon Joe's post: .

Other than a moderate climate and gorgeous secenery...? Lots o' freebies for lots of them folk that keep voting for the cretins generous people in charge ~ paid for by the rest of us state guv'mint, o' course.

And don't forget... california has mandated solar on all new homes since 2020. AND approved reducing the rate electric companies have to pay homeowners for power generated by those installations. AND is also considering allowing the electric companies to actually charge those homeowners a fee for essentially generating their own electricity.

Somebody was mighty busy!

I'll be sharing this with an acquaintance tomorrow - a former Navy pilot. He flew C-1 Traders and S-2 Trackers, and even radial-engined crop dusters. He's likely seen it before, but whether he has or not, it'll bring a grin.

"One written account, in the German newspaper Prager Tagblatt in 1879, noted that using honey to sweeten food avoided the risk of 'having your great-grandfather's atoms dissolved in your coffee one fine morning'."

Noooo thankee. I'd have to be drunk before I'd go that way, and THAT surely would not turn out well! Heck... I wouldn't want to drive it today, sixty+plus years later. Ol' Hardpan don' do well with heights!

And don't forget June...!