Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted January 21, 2018 Share Posted January 21, 2018 Here goes with the next tale. I followed someone I knew into the future and saw a pale eyed relative screaming in delight, riding a fast, powerful and responsive Stallion across the Martian sky, either going to or coming from a place called Firelands. Now we have another pale eyed relative headed toward a place called Firelands, but by somewhat slower means. It didn't start the way I expected and like as not it'll surprise me some more. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texas Bart Posted January 21, 2018 Share Posted January 21, 2018 Thanks, and I was all prepared for a longer break. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Short Term Emory Posted January 22, 2018 Share Posted January 22, 2018 It’s off to a GREAT start and I like the 1st person perspective. Keep up the fantastic work Linn. You are an outstanding author! I so look forward to each chapter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cactus Jack Calder Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 You got me at “The Sheriff’s Son”. Keep on writing and I will keep on reading. As Emory said this is off to a GREAT start. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cactus Jack Calder Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 Just finished the current chapter. Yes it is good. You are a gifted writer. Thank you for sharing your talent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted January 30, 2018 Author Share Posted January 30, 2018 I just got a good dose of humility. I have to be careful what I write, for it does make a difference. I'd mentioned (I think it was when the original Firelands was on the now-defunct Belle Alley) my old squad partner, Fredericka, was diagnosed with cancer. It was incurable and she knew it, I kept her supplied with each new installment as it hit the screen, and she told me more than once that she would reach for what I shipped her during those long and very dark nights when it felt like doom itself was wrapping her house in black-velvet folds of the long night itself. Now my baby sis sends that she read chapter 3 and ... well, let me quote her: "... You've left me hanging just before the gunfight! "Then there are those little wet spots full of memories on the paper in chapter 3. 'She didn't walk so much as she glided ...' "No doubt about who you were describing there!" Baby Sis could see plain as day I patterned Old Pale Eyes after my own father, and the woman back in Kansas, as seen in a grieving son's memory, looks very much like my own red-headed Mama. When baby Sis wrote "... those little wet spots full of memories ..." it was like Cousin Jeff telling me my father read The Sheriff's Journal and had to set the book down and wipe his eyes, and walk away from it and compose himself. I touched that strong man on a very deep level and I honestly had no intent to bring him nor anyone else to tears, but my words moved him most powerfully, and my sister as well. Little wet spots full of memories. I'll remember that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Short Term Emory Posted January 31, 2018 Share Posted January 31, 2018 I reckon so!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted February 6, 2018 Author Share Posted February 6, 2018 I reckon this is a good place for one of them-there caveat things. Caveats is like asterisks ... you know, them funny six arm stars that mean "If you want the whole truth, look someplace else." Caveats mean look out, you been lied to, or maybe you're about to be. Well, maybe not, but I ain't makin' much sense this morning. I'm back on rotating shifts and Wallaby Jack is exactly right, the word "shift" in that phrase is correctly spelled without the letter F. Not only did I have to stay awake through those hours of darkness, it snowed and I tried to keep doorways and walkways cleared off, but even using a leaf blower it was snowin' so hard all I got done was wear myself out and right now I'm so tired I fell asleep three times trying to cut and paste today's installment onto the proper page. If there's parts that don't make sense or none of it does, why, that's honest fatigue and I'll try to fix it when I'm somewhat more rational, and rested! (Ran that idiot leaf blower five hours hand runnin' ... three times when I got to my start point you couldn't tell I'd even started ... so I'd start over!) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Short Term Emory Posted February 6, 2018 Share Posted February 6, 2018 I’ve been blowing snow since 5 this mornin at my house, our neighbor’s and where I work. I feel the worn out part. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted February 7, 2018 Author Share Posted February 7, 2018 Daggone now, pard, you're not supposed to imitate my bad examples! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Short Term Emory Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 The really exciting part is I’m headed to our company’s new location in Grand Rapids, Michigan tonight and I’m sure I’ll have the opportunity to move even more snow up there over the next couple of days. Lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted February 25, 2018 Author Share Posted February 25, 2018 Kidney stone, folks, out of action for a few, be back soon as I can. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cactus Jack Calder Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 Get well soon. I’ve been enjoying the story, but you take care of what needs doing. Best Regards, Cactus Jack Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 Posted February 25, 2018 Share Posted February 25, 2018 A little something to do whilst convalescing and getting better. please feel free to make as many copies as you need Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted February 26, 2018 Author Share Posted February 26, 2018 Many thanks, pards, I needed both the encouragement and the grin! I'm movin' stiff and sore ... reckon I'm not drinkin' enough beer ... (Brief anatomy lesson: the tube from kidney to bladder has an inner diameter the same as a human hair. Passing even a microscopic stone through this tiny lumen is like passing a Kenworth through one leg of a pantyhose. It don't work so good!) Hound dog is cuddled up ag'in my tenderloins, emphasis on tender ... Sailor-dog must know the pressure and the warmth are helpful! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texas Bart Posted February 28, 2018 Share Posted February 28, 2018 Glad you made it back!! I haven't been through that but understand it is very painful. Take it easy for a while! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Short Term Emory Posted February 28, 2018 Share Posted February 28, 2018 Prayers for it to be over quickly. I have two people where I work that are dealing with the same issue. Not a good situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted February 28, 2018 Author Share Posted February 28, 2018 This one passed. Still sore, feels like it turned shavin's out of my innards all the way down the high pipe. Male anatomy as it is, once it gets down the high pipe from the kidney to bladder, it'll free fall through the bladder and unless it grows to considerable size in the bladder, generally washes out the last length of discharge line without being noticed. Bladder stones, on the other hand, can and do grow larger than the last section of plumbing's inner diameter. (I am cringing as I write these words so I better stop that foolishness!) Fluid challenge, a nursing intervention, natural since I"m still a nurse ... guzzling half a gallon of water every 8 hour shift and making the Russian racehorse look like an amateur! Citrates are good to dissolve the microscopic scoundrels, I'll be drinking more of 'em for a while! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted March 20, 2018 Author Share Posted March 20, 2018 Now that latest post, where Jacob is considering he was meant to be in a particular place and then it happened again ... ... yes, both those events described, really happened. The former, the boy inhaling a rabbit's backbone, happened to my Granddad, and his Pa treated him just like Jacob did the rancher's little boy. My own bride occluded just like Annette did and had she (my wife, not Annette!) not been married to an old veteran paramedic she'd be long since returned to the earth from whence she came. I'm going to get some Shut Eye, just finished up my week of midnight shifts and -- Wallaby, you're right, "rotating shift" is indeed correctly spelled without the letter F! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 Posted March 21, 2018 Share Posted March 21, 2018 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted April 9, 2018 Author Share Posted April 9, 2018 Now I really have to add a comment about the next to last post, the one that had Jacob's lovely feminine (and pregnant) wife rollin' that hogs head of Molassess off that fellow. Women are amazing and wondrous creatures and I have reservations about that admonition that women are the weaker vessel. Sandra Mae back home grabbed holt of a two man generator and packed it across the firehouse bay and didn't seem to be terribly distressed. I've offered the opinion that my adopted mother (long story there) would have found to be in possession of a spine made of whale bone and stainless steel upon her death, and I doubt me not when that graveyard is given an archaeological examination ten thousand years from now that's what they'll find in her interement. Back when dirt was young and so was I, back when I ran the water treatment plant for the largest rural public drinking water system in the continental US (not in terms of customers served nor in gallons pumped, but in miles of line in the ground), an old timer came in to get a load of water -- not uncommon where underground coal mining, especially longwalling, broke the overlying strata and wells and water tables went dry. Sunnyhill Coal out of New Lex had a brick mason employed full time doing nothing but building cisterns for people who'd lost their wells thanks to the mines. Anyway this old timer drove a wore out Chevy pickup truck, the bed had long since rusted off and been replaced with a sad wood flat bed and he had what used to be a fuel oil tank laid on its side and boomed down to the bed with chains and binders. He didn't have two nickles to rub together and your kitchen table has more tread than the tires on that old truck and when he pulled under the pipe and filled his tank, one of them rear tires let go and down she went on the rim. He regarded the sight sadly and then got ready to jack it up and I said that's an awful lot of weight, let's do this under power, just open the valve and dump the load and I'll get the air compressor and you can go ahead and plug it once she's back up and he said he didn't want to pay for a load of water just to pour it out on the ground. I laughed and said I'm makin' more all the time, it's on the house, so he opened the valve and I went over to get the compressor out of the garage. He'd brought his granddaughter and her little girl with him, the little girl was maybe two and she was the cutest little thing, hair as blond and fine as ripe corn silk, big blue eyes, she was wearin' a frilly little sun dress and white sandals and she was happily stompin' in the sheet of water on the concrete apron and laughing at the yellow-sulfur butterflies that come around anywhere there's fresh water. When that tire let go that truck lurched over on that side, the weight broke a cross member and the bed dropped, that tank snapped a chain and started to slide and that little girl was under where it was going to fall off. The mother said "Oh no you don't." She stepped up and grabbed that still-full tank of water. She picked it up. She shoved it back. I saw the tank start to slide and the chain fly in the air and I let go of the compressor and started to run hard as I could and it felt like I was running through cold molasses. I reached in the company truck as I went screamin' past and come out with a pry bar and me and that old timer drove our bars through that rotty truck bed and down ag'in the frame and cammed that tank back and I held it as he reset the chain and oncet we got a new timber under it and then secured down and the two of us quit shakin' I set my hand gentle like on that woman's shoulder and in a gentle voice I said "Mother," and she give me a funny look for I was head and shoulders taller than she and I reckon she figured I was gettin' ready to bite her head off down to the waist. I said "Mother, do you know what you just did?" Now what she did was -- in that moment -- the naturally right thing to do so I don't reckon she gave it a second thought. "Mother," I said, and my voice was still gentle and quiet as I did some fast mental math, "you have just grabbed hold of, and shoved back, a quarter, of a ton, of steel, and water." Had I not been ready to catch her she would have hit the ground. When the moment was upon her she did what was natural and right, but when I put it into words ... she went dead pale and her knees give out and I kept her from hittin' the ground in a dead-out faint. Women are strange and wonderful creatures. I was a paramedic for many years and could add tales of mothers who've picked up a car fallen off a jack, or the back of a pickup truck, I could tell you the tale given me by a Malta-McConnelsville medic of a mother who picked up a rolled-over A model John Deere, but I did not see these things. I did see a woman on a hot Athens County afternoon stop her little girl from being crushed. When I wrote of Annette teeth-locked and the cords stuck out in her neck as she tucked her bottom and hoist, it was with the memory of that young woman and that tank of water. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 Posted April 11, 2018 Share Posted April 11, 2018 .... sometimes the truth IS stranger than fiction ...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted April 22, 2018 Author Share Posted April 22, 2018 AAARRRGGGHHH!!!! I thought I had three more chapters saved on two thumb drives. Two is one, one is none, two backups and I'm in business, so so I thought. Turns out one thumb drive was three chapters ahead so I copied from E to D and wiped out those three I was looking for! Please pardon any distant screaming on the distant wind, I'm going to have to re-write them from memory! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 Posted July 1, 2018 Share Posted July 1, 2018 Last reply was April 22 ………. ………… it's been a while since we tell'd you how good you write ………. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted July 2, 2018 Author Share Posted July 2, 2018 Thank you, my friend, it hasn't been easy. (Insert tales of woe, interspersed with miscellaneous weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth!) I figure along those lines I'll save myself a world of work by wearing a T-shirt that says "Complain, complain, complain!" That way I won't have to actually complain, just wear the T-shirt, save me time and effort! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Willy Cheaten Posted July 4, 2018 Share Posted July 4, 2018 I must say that I really enjoy your writings. Please keep writing and I will keep reading. Thank you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted July 5, 2018 Author Share Posted July 5, 2018 Willy, thank you. Very kind of you to say so! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted August 8, 2018 Author Share Posted August 8, 2018 I was taught in Police Basic that "The best lie contains an element of truth." The best fiction, I've found, is written with some element of fact. I weave an awful lot of actual history into my tales. The latest entry, where Jacob discusses a particular pierced patchbox and the inletting job ... well, I included a photo of the particular piece that prompted the post. (Pardon me while I wipe the P-sputters off my screen!) The old gunsmith that did this work was unhappy with a job he'd done, he shook his head and lamented "If a man is goin' to build a rifle stock, he'd ought to work in the fanciest wood he can get his hands on. It's no more work to cyarve a fancy wood than plain" -- and he's almost right. Fine inletting is something else. Curl in wood comes from alternating layers of hard wood and harder wood, and as your chisel transitions through dense into denser and back, the resistance changes, and you have to be really, REALLY good to get a good tight inletting job in curly! It was I who spoke of the Master's Piece, and it was my father who closed one eye and listened close to my words of explanation, the day he handed me that rifle and expressed his satisfaction with his work. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Short Term Emory Posted August 9, 2018 Share Posted August 9, 2018 Love the way you tell a story Linn. It’s easy to tell a lot of them come from experience because you speak passionately and with first hand knowledge of the events. Keep up the wonderful work. I look forward to every entry!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted August 27, 2018 Author Share Posted August 27, 2018 (rubs eyes) (reaches for coffee) (takes noisy slurp) Howdy ... is it morning or evening? (squints at window) This business of a rotating shift is hard on an old man! (another noisy slurp) Night before last we had rain come through in bands ... the weather man called it "training" and what I called it is not fit to repeat unless you're using a language that the clergy do not know, to quote the Irishman. Imagine a conveyor belt pouring water from its entire length, moving overhead ... if it's crosswise to its line of march, you get a brief shower, but if it's lined up the same way it's traveling, whatever is directly underneath gets just plainly inundated while three feet to the side gets little or nothing. That's what hit us. Until lightning hit something nearby, power surged some critical circuits out of existence, I was running around getting everything restarted, we got just over a half inch at the plant and the south half of town got enough of a monsoon some cars were window sill deep in flash floodwater. Oh yeah ... power went out at 15 til 5 in the morning, right when we started getting calls on flooded streets and flooding basements ... actually "WE" did not get the calls, "I" got the calls, and me the only soldier in the fort! To quote Charlie Macneil, "I'm gettin' too old for this!" Anyway last night things were almost as uneventful as the night before was distressing, it was my fifth of five midnight shifts, it's after ten AM so I can give the yard a haircut without too much worry about frying pans being slung in my general direction! My apologies. When I get beyond a certain fatigue level, my creativity falls off badly ... did manage to post one today ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 Posted September 8, 2018 Author Share Posted September 8, 2018 I'm trying to keep at least one chapter ahead on the thumb drive so all I need to do to post is cut and paste. This tropical storm what's-his-name is supposed to be reaching a curled fist well north and the county EMA is warning us we'll likely get two, three, five or seven inches of rainfall ... this is not good ... I've been trying to fill in low spots along the foundation since the last inundating rain. As long as power doesn't go out and my sump pumps have electricity I am all set. Otherwise you're going to hear muffled profanity in six languages as I start setting things up on blocks in the basement! If that happens I may fall behind on the story and I'll apologize ahead of time for that should it happen. Should we ever have occasion to move I'll have a basement again -- this is tornado territory and I want to duck into my groundhog hole if a twister comes hard-walking through the county -- but the new hacienda WILL be on a hillside. Water runs downhill and I'll be happier if it runs downhill instead of into my hole in the ground! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wallaby Jack, SASS #44062 Posted December 15, 2018 Share Posted December 15, 2018 Sir, You continue to amaze me with your writings ………… thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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