True Blue Sam's Christmas Festival!

True Blue Sam is really busy with work this week, so I am "Blogging Light" and re-posting Christmas records we recorded last year.  They are just as good as ever, and you can play them as many times as you wish without having to change the needle or wind up the phongraph.  The paper fold-out nativity scene resides in Bea's house, and we are pretty sure it is at least 100 years old.

In Need Of Sunny Days

We're at the shortest day of the year, and the sky has been dismal and depressing. Warm sunny days are a treasure, and this bit of video was shot last October while I was out looking at tree planting projects for next spring. Warm, sunny day, and a 208 popping away; pretty sweet.

Monday Already

Back To The Old Grind!

Video by farmboy00000.

Not My Victrola: Another Christmas Special!

Here's another great piano roll from Jim02026.

Weekend Steam: Wisconsin Santa Train

Wisconsin & Southern Railroad brings in the holiday season as Soo Line locomotive 1003 slowly treks south from Plymouth,WI on a snowy December day.

Courtesy of flightsimman

Crankin' It Up: Are We Having Fun Yet?

If you are having trouble getting in the holiday spirt, The Hoosier Hot Shots are just the boost you need. The aluminum Christmas tree now resides in Chez EJ, up in Chicagoland, and he has it in a front window with the rotating color wheel, for all passersby to admire and enjoy.

Gunblast's Gum Blast

Jeff Quinn did some early Christmas shopping for himself, and he demonstrates his new toy for us with the help of his grandson.

Do They Still Have Five And Tens?

Poets' Corner

I grew up in an old Iowa farm house, so I know a little bit about being cold; enough that I don't plan on going to Alaska during the winter. A good cold snap like we are having right now always brings to mind the winters when I was a kid, with numbing cold, and lots of blowing snow. My favorite poet, Robert Service conveys powerful impressions of the frozen north, and he has a way of entertaining you with his stories so that you can see the action in your mind. 'Blasphemous Bill' is one that always comes to mind when winter weather get serious.  Better put another log on.

The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

I took a contract to bury the body of blasphemous Bill MacKie,
Whenever, wherever or whatsoever the manner of death he die --
Whether he die in the light o' day or under the peak-faced moon;
In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, mucklucks or patent shoon;
On velvet tundra or virgin peak, by glacier, drift or draw;
In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, by avalanche, fang or claw;
By battle, murder or sudden wealth, by pestilence, hooch or lead --
I swore on the Book I would follow and look till I found my tombless dead.

For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, and his mind was mighty sot
On a dinky patch with flowers and grass in a civilized bone-yard lot.
And where he died or how he died, it didn't matter a damn
So long as he had a grave with frills and a tombstone "epigram".
So I promised him, and he paid the price in good cheechako coin
(Which the same I blowed in that very night down in the Tenderloin).
Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie",
And I hung it up on my cabin wall and I waited for Bill to die.

Years passed away, and at last one day came a squaw with a story strange,
Of a long-deserted line of traps 'way back of the Bighorn range;
Of a little hut by the great divide, and a white man stiff and still,
Lying there by his lonesome self, and I figured it must be Bill.
So I thought of the contract I'd made with him, and I took down from the shelf
The swell black box with the silver plate he'd picked out for hisself;
And I packed it full of grub and "hooch", and I slung it on the sleigh;
Then I harnessed up my team of dogs and was off at dawn of day.

You know what it's like in the Yukon wild when it's sixty-nine below;
When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads through the crust of the pale blue snow;
When the pine-trees crack like little guns in the silence of the wood,
And the icicles hang down like tusks under the parka hood;
When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, and the sky is weirdly lit,
And the careless feel of a bit of steel burns like a red-hot spit;
When the mercury is a frozen ball, and the frost-fiend stalks to kill --
Well, it was just like that that day when I set out to look for Bill.

Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush me down on every hand,
As I blundered blind with a trail to find through that blank and bitter land;
Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, with its grim heart-breaking woes,
And the ruthless strife for a grip on life that only the sourdough knows!
North by the compass, North I pressed; river and peak and plain
Passed like a dream I slept to lose and I waked to dream again.

River and plain and mighty peak -- and who could stand unawed?
As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed at the foot of the throne of God.
North, aye, North, through a land accurst, shunned by the scouring brutes,
And all I heard was my own harsh word and the whine of the malamutes,
Till at last I came to a cabin squat, built in the side of a hill,
And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, frozen to death, lay Bill.

Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, sheathing each smoke-grimed wall;
Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, ice gleaming over all;
Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, glittering ice in his hair,
Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, ice in his glassy stare;
Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, with his arms and legs outspread.
I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him, and I gazed at the gruesome dead,
And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; but still, goldarn his eyes,
A man had ought to consider his mates in the way he goes and dies."

Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut in the shadow of the Pole,
With a little coffin six by three and a grief you can't control?
Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse that looks at you with a grin,
And that seems to say: "You may try all day, but you'll never jam me in"?
I'm not a man of the quitting kind, but I never felt so blue
As I sat there gazing at that stiff and studying what I'd do.
Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs that were nosing round about,
And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, and I started to thaw Bill out.

Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, but it didn't seem no good;
His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, as if they was made of wood.
Till at last I said: "It ain't no use -- he's froze too hard to thaw;
He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, so I guess I got to -- saw."
So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, and I laid him snug and straight
In the little coffin he picked hisself, with the dinky silver plate;
And I came nigh near to shedding a tear as I nailed him safely down;
Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, and I started back to town.

So I buried him as the contract was in a narrow grave and deep,
And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, when the Judgment sluice-heads sweep;
And I smoke my pipe and I meditate in the light of the Midnight Sun,
And sometimes I wonder if they was, the awful things I done.
And as I sit and the parson talks, expounding of the Law,
I often think of poor old Bill -- and how hard he was to saw.

from BALLADS OF A CHEECHAKO by Robert Service

Looks Like A Finger-Chopper-Offer To Me

This Keystone Common Sense Feed Cutter from 1872 is a great demonstration of the dangers of agriculture past, and a good reminder for all involved with machinery today.  One of my great-grandfathers (the father of Charles, the dashing lad with the Model T seen at the top of the page)was maimed by a corn knife accident, and that was a tough problem for someone making their living on the farm.  This nifty fodder processor offered, not maiming, but amputation to farmers, their spouses and offspring, if they were careless in their judgement while working up a corn shock, and you have to wonder if this machine has any tragedies attached to its history.  Making a living can be tough at times, so be careful out there.