Stay Tuned For The March e-Postal Scores

Mr. C is recovering from major surgery, and he has forwarded the e-Postal entries to me.  I must hit the road for work this morning, but tonight, barring unforeseen catastrophes, I will assemble the scores into a table and post them here on True Blue Sam.

What About The Cat?

Quite a few have asked about the cat that put the hole in my hand.  Most assume that I would have done him in, but that's not the way I am.  Big'un was the cat that bit me, and it was my fault.  He was hiding, and when I reached for his front end, he nailed me.  I didn't understand at the time why he was acting that way, but it all became clear last week.  Back in February I saw that Big'un's right eye had turned red, and I caged him, and took him to the vet.  He was a bad patient, but we managed to give him a shot of antibiotic, which had no effect on the eye.

He went back to the vet and had surgery to remove the eye, and we began taming down the little barn cat as he healed.  It wasn't long until he welcomed contact, and he would purr as soon as he was picked up into my arms.  He stayed off to himself during the days, but at night he was glad to come to our bed and sleep with us.

Then, one day, he didn't want to be touched, and that was when he bit me.  We kept him fed and watered, but left him alone, and he stayed hidden most of the time.  Last week I put on the gloves and caught him.  His remaining eye was tinged with red, and he was wasting away to skin and bones.   Friday morning we had him at the Vet's office.

The eye was unresponsive, and was dying.  Feline Leukemia was the first possibility our vet mentioned, and then FIV.  She tested him for both of those diseases and the results were negative.  That left cancer as the greatest possibility, but whatever the problem was, it meant Curtains for our little Big'un.  Our Vet put him down for us, and he's buried with Nellie, Hank, Marvin, and Hey Joe.  We have lost several pets, and both our fathers to cancer; it's a cruel monster.

Doin' It The Hard Way...

Back To The Old Grind!

He Is Risen!

Not My Victrola: Groundbreaking "Jass"

Livery Stable Blues is one of the most fun Jazz songs you will hear, and it's from way back before Jazz was spelled with Z's.  By the Original Dixieland Jass Band, 1917.

Crankin' It Up: Really, Really Old!

This Climax Record dates back to the very early 1900's, and it's a good one.  What's really neat is that the age of the record gives us a glimpse of how this song would have been performed by folks when it was first published.  Samuel Siegel, the Mandolinist was born in 1875, and lived until 1948.  That means of course, that he learned this song from musicians that played it when it was first published. 

Weekend Steam: Across The Pond Again

Here's another video by Keith Appleton, this one featuring a Stuart Beam Engine.

Vintage Johny Cash for Good Friday

Old Cemeteries And Good Intentions

You would hardly know from a casual look that this hilltop in rural Hamilton County is a cemetery.  The last burial that we find in records was in 1915, and it hasn't been too many years since it was wrecked.  The intentions were good.

Rawl's Cemetery had eastern red-cedars growing all over it, and someone had the idea that if they sold the trees, they would have money to take care of the cemetery.  The sale was done, the trees were cut, and the care was hiring someone to mow the cemetery with a  tractor and bush-hog.  The destruction began, and continued until the money was gone.

                                                      

Stones were knocked down by the tractor and mower.  Some stones landed on the corresponding grave and were pressed down by the tractor, but most were broken and moved from where they belong.  The 

 good news is that the person mowing this cemetery didn't heave the stones into the adjoining woods, so 

many of the stones can still be located for record-keeping.

Graves can be found this time of year by the flowers planted generations ago at the headstones, and many of the graves are sunken, so the markers can be found, such as they are.

Little Dora Manchester is one that we have a photo of from the 1970's.  Her headstone was intact, and standing at her grave back then.  We found her again, but pieces are missing.  She died in 1863.  Daylilies have covered most of the cemetery now, and that seems to be keeping the ground fairly clear, except for oaks that are migrating out from the nearby timber.  We can beat the trees back with no impact to the stones but restoration of this cemetery will be difficult due to the heavy damage that occurred after the cedar trees were removed.  What a sad mess.

And, We Are Almost Out Of Firewood!

Country Boys Learn This Lesson Fast

Tractor tires are great grippers, and they will really pull you in lots of different soil conditions.  The angled lugs also have great mud-moving ability that you won't appreciate until you see it in action.  Once is enough for most of us, though I did see one boy from Chicagoland who stuck a borrowed tractor to the axle twice in one day, and couldn't understand why.  Study the picture of this old Case tractor....

Click The Pic To Enlarge

Note the 1/2 of the wheel has the lugs packed with mud.  When your load stops you in a muddy field and those wheels begin to spin, the lugs are pumping mud out from under the tire.  Figure about 1" per lug.  These tires have about two dozen lugs around the circumference, so the 1/2 turn dropped the tractor one foot.  You can't fight it by gunning the engine; you have to shut down.  This tractor is hitched to a pull-type disc without wheels and hydraulics to lift it, so it will have to be unhitched, and then the tractor should jump right out of the holes that it made.  If the driver had let the wheels spin he would have had the rear end of the tractor flat on the ground in another turn.  It doesn't take long to wreck your day, and many farmers have been hurt or killed over the years trying to extricate tractors from this predicament.  One farmer I heard about chained a fence post to each wheel, thinking that the tractor would lift itself up and out of the situation.  He paid for his inexperience with his life when the tractor flipped over backward instead of going forward.  Listen to the old-timers if you fool around with old equipment.  It will save you a lot of trouble, and might save your life.

Nobody Knows...

This song came around in my head today, and it's the right time of year to share it again.