Ruger's Auction To Benefit Wounded Warrior Outdoors

Ruger has another special one for you this week! Ruger built a special order of Mini-14s for the Oklahoma Highway Patrol back in 1979, and then they made 300 more just like them without the OK Highway Patrol marks on the receiver.  Click Here to read all about it and to place your bid on this special rifle.  It will sell mid-day, November 1, 2017, so don't delay! $2335

Horowitz Halloween!

Recorded about ninety years ago...




Aeolian HallPublished on Mar 15, 2010 This is an annotated or Audiographic Piano Roll that Vladimir Horowitz made for the Duo-Art Reproducing Piano around 1928. He seems to stay very close to the Liszt arrangement, but in 1942 in a Chicago Concert, he first played his own arrangement of Liszt's arrangement. The work of Danse Macabre (or Dance of Death) is the Opus 40 of Charles Camille St.Saens, and was inspired by a poem by Cazalis that described skeletons dancing in a graveyard at midnight, as Death plays his violin.

Halloween Special

Here's my old favorite Halloween record again!

We Get So Soon Old

Way back in the Fall of 1972 my roommate and I went to the spelunkers' club meeting at Lowry Hall, at the University of Missouri-Columbia.  The cavers were a grubby bunch; dirty blue jeans, dirty beards, but Reed and I were at least in clean clothes, and maybe not too grubby looking. We were hoping to get leads on caves we could visit.   We watched a slide show of cave pics, and they did the necessary club business; but what my buddy and I were aware of through the entire meeting was a good looking blonde girl who sat right in front of us.  She was well dressed and good looking!  When the meeting was over she turned around and asked us if we could take her caving!!!!!  We hadn't seen that coming, but she had an assignment in one of her classes to report about spelunking.  I beat my roomy to the punch in getting her phone number, and pretty soon Susan and I were dating.  We actually went caving together, too!  Susan's Mother didn't much care for me when she found out that we were going to Rocheport to rappel off the cliffs along the Missouri River.  Mothers are funny that way. It's amazing how quickly forty-five years have gone by.

Tuesday Torque: Buck's Branch Sears Economy at Pinckneyville!

We just have to show one more video of the big old Sears.  Gary Bahre took the Sears and his freshly restored Fairbanks to the Fall show, and they both were in fine form.  I think Gary is going to have to cut back or build onto his engine barn!

Up With The Chickens and Back To Work!

Back To The Old Grind!

Nice, But Not The Big One!

Here's one that is cute this year; maybe a trophy in a year or two!

Weekend Steam: 30-90 Russell, Pulling the Sled; Lots of Torque!

Merle brought this one to my attention.  I have seen it before, but I don't remember if we have featured it here.  Fifty years ago, the old-timers wouldn't have done pulls like this, because it wasn't what these engines did.  Things change, and new people own the engines now.  Crowds enjoy seeing what they can do.  It is a bit dangerous.  100 year old metal sometimes fails, and repair parts can't be ordered; they have to be fabricated.  You really have to appreciate the owners who put on a good show for us.




Thanks, Merle!

That Made A Little Racket!

We bought our Grasshopper mower back in '06, and have had good, reliable service from it.  We grease the bearings that can be greased regularly, and we keep a logbook so we know the hours.  We typically grease it every four hours, but sometimes let it go to eight.  This gizmo is the electric clutch for the mower deck.  It rides on the crankshaft at the back of the machine, and has two ball bearings that are sealed.  One of them failed at a little over 800 hours, which is a pretty good run, but this assembly is pricey.  The new one is installed and is running well, but now I wonder; should I pop the clutch off every couple hundred hours, tease  the seals up and shoot a little grease in, or would that be inviting trouble?  There is also a little gearbox hidden under cover on the mower deck that cannot be greased.  The jackshaft and driveshaft feed power into it, and there is no way to access it for service other than tearing the machine down.  H-E-Double Toothpicks is going to break loose when the seals let the grease out of that!  I better talk to the dealer before next Spring.

What A Dog!

Jack Dog is eleven years old now, but he still acts like a young dog.  He stays outdoors as long as the weather is good, but I put him in the utility room with Spike at night, when it storms, or when it is really cold.  (He has a solid, heated doghouse for cold weather.) I walk him out to the road and around the yard before I put him in.

Every night as I walk him, he stops, turns to face me, and sits.  He wants his hugs and petting.  Every night. 

It's our special time every day, and then he goes in for his bedtime treats and spends the night with his cat.