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bigbri131014



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PostPosted: 12/24/04 1:00 pm    ::: Happy Holidays!!!! Reply Reply with quote

Hope everyone has a good one!!! Very Happy


rebkell
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PostPosted: 12/24/04 1:30 pm    ::: Re: Happy Holidays!!!! Reply Reply with quote

bigbri131014 wrote:
Hope everyone has a good one!!! Very Happy


Yes, I hope everyone has a good time during the Holidays.


smenko



Joined: 18 Nov 2004
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PostPosted: 12/24/04 5:58 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Hope your Christmas is peaceful and your New Year Happy!


Smoovie



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PostPosted: 12/24/04 8:41 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Happy ChrismaHanuKwanzaKah



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Richard 77



Joined: 19 Nov 2004
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PostPosted: 12/24/04 9:59 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Smoovie wrote:
Happy ChrismaHanuKwanzaKah


You guys and gals getting that from that "Life & Style" show? I saw them using the phrase earlier in the day.

You can just call me Macaulay, cause I'm Home Alone...

Have a great day tomorrow everyone.


Slovydal



Joined: 17 Nov 2004
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Location: Indianapolis, IN


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PostPosted: 12/25/04 12:18 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

shyguy1701 wrote:
You can just call me Macaulay, cause I'm Home Alone...

Have a great day tomorrow everyone.


I'm "Home Alone" too. Merry Christmas!

Check this story out. These kids must have been REALLY bad! lol!

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,142527,00.html


buckfifty98



Joined: 17 Nov 2004
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PostPosted: 12/26/04 8:15 am    ::: HO! HO!.... HO! Reply Reply with quote

Another Christmas is in the bag. We do 99% of our shopping the day after Thanksgiving. Although we do not sleep on the sidewalk outside Best Buy to get one of the 5, $300 laptops that several hundred people are hoping for, we do venture out into the Holiday hunting grounds with our lists and Christmas Club money. We rent a hotel room smack in the middle of the main shopping area of Springfield and make patrols, have lunch, go to the movies, etc. For the entire month of December, I listen exclusively to Christmas music on the local radio station that plays it continuously, I ring the bell for the Salvation Army at the Mall for a couple of hours (handing out Chandi Canes to the little ones)(my Mom thought I got a job as a security guard at the Mall when some of my cousins saw me ringing the bell, they don't get to town very often), I put on a Santa hat and give Bath and Body Works Anti-Bacterial hand lotions to all the secretary/office assistants/drive-up bank tellers/fast food drive-thru people/etc. (Warm Vanilla Sugar, it smells great but it doesn't taste very good) that I come in contact with throughout the year.

Our 16 year old got us up at 4 a.m. on Christmas morning. I have video taped every Christmas morning explosion of paper and boxes and arguments and pajama styles since 1985. They are very boring but occasionally someone will scratch their bum or do something cute and it's nice.

I just love Christmas and I hope you all had as much fun as you wanted to. Now, I'm ready for Spring!



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Slovydal



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PostPosted: 12/26/04 11:30 am    ::: Re: HO! HO!.... HO! Reply Reply with quote

Dang, Buck you really milked the season for everything it's got! You set the bar a lot higher for me next year.
I think the only Christmasy thing I did was spending a few minutes at Circle Center Mall in Indy listening to the orchestra playing Christmas music at the Arts Garden.
I never even get around to putting my lights up.lol!
Next year I'll have make up for it!


dtsnms



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PostPosted: 12/27/04 10:05 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Buck that was great.

We had the traditional Jewish Christmas -- movies and Chinese.

Saw the Lemony Snicket's movie with Jim Carey. I loved it! Wife okay, kid likes the books better but liked it. Something about it, just clicked with me. I kept waiting for the next thing to happen, his acting is great in it, etc.

Chinese is always good too!


buckfifty98



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PostPosted: 12/27/04 10:13 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Oh yeah, Slovy, I immerse myself in Christmas. I'd get myself dipped in peppermint if I could stand to be sticky. I also did not get my lights up but I just have to prioritize some things. We put so many lights, garland, and ornaments on our tree that you can't really be certain there is a tree. But the real key is being in a Christmas Club. It sets money aside all year that only gets spent on Christmas stuff. And it's not just me, my wife is also a Christmas junkie. She bought 75 large tubes of body lotion from Victoria's Secret for the nurses who work for her. You should have seen me carrying that stuff out of there. The fun part of that adventure for me was asking them to give us gift bags to put them in instead of boxes (Yikes! that was going to take a while), so the sales girl started bringing this huge stack of bags, then suddenly we where swarmed by the Victoria Secret Managment Team, "We're so sorry but we only get a certain number of bags for Christmas, you'll have to take the boxes instead", said the Management Team Leader. And I said, "So, if we bought these one or two at a time over the next month, we could have bags but not if we just get them all now..." And her eyes went roving sort of crazy as if they were looking for the answer on the ceiling and walls and counter, but there was only fancy underpants everywhere and no answer to the bags or boxes question. The line was starting to pile up behind us. The sales girls and Management Team Memebers were looking at the Victoria's Secret Management Team Leader for the Answer. The Victoria's Secret Management Team Leader started to pick up a phone (I assume to call Naomi Campbell), put it back down, consulted in low tones with her Number Two Managment Team Member, turned to look at some sort of chart, turned back, touched the cash register gently with the tips of her fingers, smoothed her eyebrows and seemed to find her Final Answer on boxes or bags, and said, "We're so sorry but we only get a certain number of bags for Christmas, you'll have to take the boxes instead." All eyes turned to us, all of them blinking dryly, swallows going up and down, waiting for our Answer. "Sure, no problem. Just asking." I took up my burden, the cords cutting into my hands from the weight of the folded boxes, and wondered why anyone would wear underwear that tiny and fancy when the only person likely to see it is the person wearing it. And the line moved on.



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buckfifty98



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PostPosted: 12/27/04 11:04 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Thanks, dtsmns! Our Christmas is a pretty secular thing. My wife and I were both raised in abject poverty and so we go a little nutty materialistically. But we also get together with some family and tell family stories. I usually tell the Dad Trilogy. And sometimes I add Dad's Groundhog Day if they want. The Dad Trilogy is: Smoking Dad, Flaming Dad, and Yachting Dad. Dad's Groundhog Day is not about seeing a shadow and actually occurs in the Fall. The stories are about my Dad, who was known in our family for being an exceptionally intelligent person who was perpetually angry, stubborn as a green stump, and able to carry a grudge as if it were a papoose on his back to be cherished and protected, kept away from damaging logic or common sense. Although we don't think he ever killed anybody, there was always danger where he stood. My younger brother and I usually stood about 30 feet away during such adventures which, we believe, is the approximate blast radius if Dad should spontaneously explode. We would run into the blast zone when ordered to do so to light gunpowder or hold something steady while Dad hit it with a hammer, and then run back out before anything happened. My older brother, however, often lingered to long in the zone and has many scars to prove it.

Shall I tell you my family Christmas stories? They are a bit long.



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dtsnms



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PostPosted: 12/27/04 11:09 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

They sound like they're worth it. If you've got the time, I've got the read.


blzntr33s



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PostPosted: 12/27/04 11:35 am    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I must agree with dtsnms, Buck, I'd love to hear some of those stories too if you'd like to share Very Happy... The names of the stories alone sound hilarious.


buckfifty98



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PostPosted: 12/27/04 2:02 pm    ::: Smoking Dad... Reply Reply with quote

Winter, circa 1978. I swear, this is a true story.
I was home from college over Christmas break, sleeping in my younger brother's room. The room was where everybody slept in the winter, except Mom and Dad, because all the other rooms were too cold, but Steven (not his real name) was the youngest of us older kids still at home, so it was referred to as his room. Steven was about 16 then and had to participate in all of Dad's adventures. As a visitor and having been declared "cityfied" (for washing my hands spontaneously, even when we weren't about to eat), I was exempt from most things that could kill me.
Dad woke us both up early one morning, lifting the curtain (a blanket) that separated Steven's room from the living room, "Get up! I need ya to do somethin' for me", directed a Steven. The curtain fell and we both went back to sleep. Soon, the curtain flew open again and Dad had a fat snowball in his hand. He threw the covers off Steven and stuffed the snowball down the back of his underwear. Steven screamed, jumped out of bed, and danced around the room trying to get snow out of there. Dad was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes and I laid there clenching my blankets around me expecting some other unpleasant wake up call. But, I was a visitor who might never come back again if given sufficient provocation, and Dad just winked at me and left the room.
"Sonovabitch!" Steven said through chattering teeth as he quickly pulled on yesterdays clothes and went through the curtain into the warmth of the wood stove in the living room. I could hear Dad explaining to Steven what he wanted to do that day.
"Go out to the old Nova and take out the heater core. I'm gonna attach garden hose to it and lower it into the chimley flue from the top. Then we'll run water to it from the bathroom, the heat will heat the water and we'll save a ton of money."
We had only had hot water in our hovel for a couple of years, running water to the bathroom for about 3 years, and the old outhouse was still out there as a back up. So the subject of plumbing was still a hot topic at home.
I gradually got dressed for home life adventures. Insulated underwear, yesterdays socks pulled up over the bottoms of the underwear, insulated top tucked into insulated bottoms, and so on. I went from 45° in the bedroom into the living room which was heated to about 120° by the huge wood stove my Dad had made out of 1/4" plate steel (he was a professional boilermaker, Local 83). The problem was the old farm house had no insulation in the walls, had a few holes in the floor, and no forced air to circulate the heat. Also, as a nod to the whole hillbilly tradition, the house was on the side of a steep hill, so the East side was propped up by several stacks of flat stones to sort of level it and the area underneath was completely open to the elements (the dogs slept under there, I swear!).
Dad was talking to people on his CB radio which he maded himself from old televisions and other scavenged parts. His specialty is building linear amplifiers which boost the power of his CB to something far beyond legal limits. I had climbed the icy, home made tower outside to break loose the ice encrusted rotor on many late night occasions.
Finally, Steven comes in with the heater core and sat it down by Dad. "There you go, I hope you're happy." (Steven was getting cocky now that he's the only available slave).
"Great! Now I need you to go dig the garden hose out of the snow."
"Crap!"
I went to help. Like all good, white trash, we never rolled up extension cords, welding leads, rope, or garden hoses. They lay wherever they were used last which we thought was a good way of keeping track of things if you could remember where you used them last. We couldn't remember where the garden hose was used last. We finally came across two pieces, frozen solid, where Dad had done the hog butchering in the Fall. Dad came outside to participate in the great experiment.
He climbed up on the roof over the living room which was flat-ish because the living room had once been the front porch of the house. He took the stiff hose and started to thaw it by holding it over the flue opening at first and then as it softened, he ran the hose down into the flue. He raised and lowered it, up and down, up and down, like he was slowly plunging a toilet or making butter. The top of the flue was chest high on Dad.
My cousin, Bill, drove up about that time and asked what we were doing. Steven explained it to him and also told Bill about the snowball incident. Bill is my age and is a legendary prankster in our family. He once made a cow shit catapault but that's a different story. He talks sort of slow and with a country drawl but he's brilliant in the areas of pranking and women. "We ought to put something stinky in the stove," he says to Steven. Like I said, he's frickin' brilliant!
We had a huge collection of squirrel tails in the wellhouse. We thought someday (when we got cars) it would be cool to tie lots of squirrel tails to the antenna and drive around. I don't know why we thought that, we just did and we ate a lot of squirrels in those days so we kept them.
An arm load of squirrel tails went into the stove.
We nonchalantly went back outside to see the show. Nothing! The fire was too hot and cremated the squirrel tails almost instantly.
"What else have you got?"Bill said.
"We got a lot of old asphalt shingles off the shed."
An arm load of shingles went into the stove. We nonchalantly went back outside to see the show. We had put enough in there, that it slowed the stove down a little until the shingles started burning. Gently at first, black smoke began to waft up out of the chimney. Dad kept pumping the hose up and down.
It was a clear, cold day with no wind, not even a tiny breath and the smoke that was now beginning to come in earnest, came out of the chinmey like a tar fountain that settled back down around the flue, the roof, and Dad. He turned his head away from the flue and continued to pump the hose up and down. The smoke kept coming and engulfed him completely, settling around him like black fog. "Edith!" he screamed at Mom, "what in the hell are you burning down there." We could tell from the movement of the hose, he was still pumping it up and down. We could still see him from the knees down and he hunkered down there and got a breath, still trying to pump the hose, up and down. But everytime he moved, he drew the smoke to him and we lost his feet to the smoke. He jumped up to try to get a breath, we saw the top of his head for a second. He ran away from the flue, still holding the hose, but the smoke followed the vacuum he made and only got a couple of breaths before it caught him again. Now he'd stirred the smoke up so that the entire roof was covered in a 6 foot thick blanket of super rich, black cottony smoke and there was no place to go but the edge of the roof. He heard his footsteps and his face emerged, dropping down hanging over the edge of the roof just under the smoke. His face was completely blackened, his eyes where extremely white and vivid red at the same time. His teeth, which had never been brushed, never looked whiter for some reason.
We had long since gone into some sort of hysterical apoplexy of laughter. We couldn't take anymore but when that face came out of the smoke we kicked it up a notch and were nearly killed by it.
Dad's face, which was mostly just a guy trying to breath when he first appeared, quickly changed expression as realization dawned on him. I'm sure everyone in Hell has this sort of expression on their face most of the time but on this side of death it must be rare.
He jumped down off the roof, staggering around in the snow for a second or two, and came at us... all standing in a row, sitting ducks quacking and swallowing trying to stop giggling but GAWD it was hard.
"Do you want to fight" he snarled into Bill's face.
Bill appeared to actually think it through before slowly saying,"No, Uncle Lester (Dad's middle name, long story)."
"Do you want to fight" he snarled into Steven's face.
"NO!"
"Do you want to fight" he snarled into my face.
"No."
He turned away, glaring at us, "Fine, you little bastards, see if I try to do something nice for you again."
He went into the house and sat there for hours with his black face on, glaring at the CB, not giving us the satisfaction of washing his face. We never did get that cheap hot water.

EPILOGUE

We never spoke of Smoking Dad in his presence however, Bill's older brother Bob, says that he and my uncle and my Dad were discussing BTU's and the construction of some sort of heating device when Bob asked, "Uncle Lester, how many BTU's do you suppose are in an arm load of shingles?" He says Dad promptly stood up and went home without another word.



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buckfifty98



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PostPosted: 12/27/04 3:16 pm    ::: Flaming Dad.... Reply Reply with quote

Circa 1998, around Thanksgiving.
Dad and Uncle Pick, his brother, were mighty fishermen. They made their own pontoon boats too. Dad traded a pig to get his first pontoon boat from a neighbor way back in the early 1980's. It was far too pedestrian and commercial looking for his taste so he tore the top off of it and disassembled an old silver travel trailer and then reassembled it with cool modifications on top of the pontoon platform. It looked wretched. It sat low in the water and from a distance appeared to be a travel trailer that had been swept out into the lake by some bloated tributary. He loved it more than anything. His main problem was the motor. The boat sat so low in the water that the motor it had originally came with was just too small to push it at the sort of speeds he demanded from a floating travel trailer. He brought it home in the early 1990's and tore the pontoons off, and made new ones out of plates of steel. He took it back to the lake and it sat up nice and high, gleaming like a shiny silver travel trailer that was being barged around from place to place. The problem was that it sat up too high and the little motor was only bearly in the water. He used it that way for a few years anyway, not wanting to miss one day of fishing all summer, and forgetting about it all winter.
In the Fall of 1998, Uncle Pick found a tri-hull speed boat with a Chevy Citation motor in it. It would be perfect for Dad's pontoon boat if they could get it to run properly and work out a few kinks in the installation. They had it in Dad's back yard trying to get it to start while it was still in the speed boat. Dad was at the controls up front and Uncle Pick was sitting on the edge of the gunwale with his feet in the boat, operating the carburator and choke. Dad would hit the starter and Uncle Pick would watch for gas in the carb.
"It ain't gettin' any gas, Lester."
Uncle Pick got a small coffee can of gas and poured just a bit in the carb.
"Try it now, Lester."
Dad cranked it over and it hit just a tiny bit.
"Give it some more gas, Pick! It's tryin' to start!"
Ooooo they were getting excited.
Uncle Pick gave it a nice drink of gas and Dad, getting hyper and impatient, hit the starter while Unc was still pouring.
WHOOOSH! The carb backfired igniting the gas in the carb and running right up to the coffee can. Unc threw the coffee can away just in the nick of time but fell backwards out of the boat. He did a sommersault in the air and belly flopped onto the ground, landing on his Skoal in his bib overalls. He was stunned with his breath knocked out (he was about 65 years old at this time) but he finally got to his feet and looked around. Dad was on the ground about 30 feet away, rolling around and smoldering like a wet log.
"Damn, Lester, what happened to you?"
"You set me on fire you sonofabitch!," Dad said as he got up putting out little bits of shirt still trying to flame up. His eyebrows were gone, his mustache was just a bit of singed stubble, and the front of his hair was burned down to the roots. His face was a little bit raw and red but his nose hair had never looked better. The seats, steering wheel, and dash of the speed boat were melted but amazingly, not actually on fire. Dad had apparently saved the boat from certain incineration with his face and upper torso. Uncle Pick threw some water on Dad from a barrel.
"I think it's about ready to start now, Lester."
Dad just glared at him but it hurt to glare too hard.
"I think I might've broke some ribs with my Skoal can."
The speed boat is still sitting in the backyard, the motor is still in the speed boat, and it's waiting for a couple of brothers to get it started. I'll be standing back out of the blast zone.



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buckfifty98



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PostPosted: 12/27/04 6:16 pm    ::: Yachting Dad... Reply Reply with quote

Circa 1971, Summer time.
Dad was a mighty fisherman. He shot carp with a bow and arrow, put out prodigous trot lines, and "camped" along the Osage river all summer long. Camping actually meant laying in the rocks on a couple of blankets and eating marshmallows. The only problem is Dad didn't own a boat, but somehow in 1970 or 71 he got enough money together to buy a green, aluminum, flat-bottom, john-boat. About a 12 or 14 footer, I think. He loved it more than anything until he got a pontoon boat (see Flaming Dad). My older brother, Roy, rowed that john-boat up and down the Osage River and Weaubleau Creek until his arms nearly fell right off. Finally, Uncle Pick gave Dad a little green Evinrude motor and life really turned shitty. Now we could motor up and down the river at all hours of the day AND night. I usually had to hold the lantern which meant I ate bugs for several hours at a stretch because Roy still had to row the boat into tight places. Although we didn't have running water in the bathroom yet or hot water or a tractor, we did have a boat and a motor and really, those other things are just luxuries for city folks and rich hog farmers.
The Evinrude was finicky though and had to be tinkered with all the time. It wouldn't run at all when Dad got it and he worked on it far into the night for days on end which meant, we all worked on it far into the night for days on end. Someone had to hold the light, someone had to fetch coffee, and someone had to just sort of run around looking for stuff in the last place we had used it (see Smoking Dad). Roy usually held the light or something red-hot while Dad hit it with a hammer, Steven usually fetched cup after cup of coffee scalding himself as he walked, and I sort of ran around looking for stuff because the other two "couldn't find their ass with both hands". I must say, I was a good finder of stuff and rememberer of where we had used it last.
In any case, at last the ship and motor were ready to be launched. For her maiden voyage the good ship Misery was launched in Weaubleau Creek in a nice wide area that was about 4 feet deep and a 1/4 mile long. That part of the Creek was at the bottom of the hill we lived on (Copperhead Hill if anyone is taking notes) and it was actually a very nice creek for swimming. We took the boat and the motor to the creek in an old GMC pickup that the previous owner of our "farm" had left behind. We launched the boat without the motor at a nice little gravel bar. Steven and I thought we would put the motor on right there but Dad wanted to row the boat to a place where the water was deeper, near the bank.
Roy rowed the boat to a beaver slide where we often slide down into the water on the slick mud. The bank was about 4 feet above the water and the slide was about like any slide that comes with a swing set except made out of black mud and steeper.
"Perfect," Dad said, "we'll be fishing in just a few minutes now."
"Uh, Dad, how are you going to get the motor in the boat?" Roy asked.
"I'll show you. You stand up here and hold the rope, keep the boat tight against the bank. KEEP THE BOAT TIGHT AGAINST THE BANK."
Roy tossed the rope to Dad and then climbed/crawled up it to the top of the bank. Dad got the 50 pound motor out of the truck and stood poised on the top of the bank, the motor cradled in his arms like a baby. Steven and I were standing about 30 feet away, out of the blast radius. We looked at each other, already calculating that our 110 pound, 14 year old brother could not possibly hold the boat against the bank. The physics of the situation was painfully obvious to us and we took another step backward.
"Ready?"
"Ready! Dad."
Dad stepped off the bank and onto the mudslide and instantly lost his footing. He caught his balance by taking a quick step with the other foot and, in an amazing feat of balance and agility, was running full speed with a motor in his arms, down a nearly vertical beaver slide. When his foot landed on the front of the boat, it pushed out away from the bank a couple of feet but Roy, true to his task, pulled hard back on the rope with all his might. The boat was now moving back to the bank while Dad was running at full blast away from the bank, high stepping over the tackle boxes, oars, nets, rods, benches, and marshmallows. He almost made it but the second to the last bench tripped him up and he fell face first into the last section of the boat, the motor still cradled in his arms.
There was then an Oh Shit moment. We had lots of Oh Shit moments with Dad but each one has its own flavor and texture. This Oh Shit moment smelled like fish and sounded like a sack of rocks hitting a metal building. For a second we all thought Dad was dead in the boat and I was just glad I was out of the way in case he burst into flames (which is what I expected to happen on the occasions when we thought Dad was dead). Roy let go of the rope, since Dad was dead, there was no need to hold it tight against the bank. Dad, however, was not dead. He was gathering himself for the greatest blast of profanity any of us would ever witness. He needed a moment or two to catch his breath and to order the profanity into something coherent and memorable. He leaped up snarling and turning like a dog attacking a bear, saliva slinging everywhere, but Roy had let go of the rope and so the boat shot out from under his feet and he fell again. Roy grabbed the rope just before it could slip down the slide and pulled the boat back toward the bank while Dad tried to jump up again and of course, the boat was moving unexpectedly toward the bank now and so, he fell down again.
We were all panting and out of breath for our own personal reasons. Steven and I were just hyperventilating, Dad had been exerting himself energetically, and Roy knew he was far too close to Dad in a situation like this. Dad suprised us and just sat there, glaring at Roy.
"Are you done yankin' the boat around?" he said with clenched teeth.
"I think so."
"Fine. Let's go fishin."
Oh boy.
Roy held the rope while Steven and I got in, then he slid down the bank and pushed us away. Dad mounted the motor on the back of the boat, clamping it on with big screws. Things were a bit tense but things were almost always a little bit tense anyway so, whatever.
He pulled the starter rope a couple of times while I prayed it would start and by God it did start! Dad grinned wide and we could all breath again. He put the motor in reverse and we started to back up. Suddenly the motor started to race out of control but we weren't moving anymore. Dad killed the motor and tilted it up out of the water. The propeller had come off. He had forgotten to put the nut on that held it on the drive shaft. Roy and I slipped into the water and felt around with our feet until it got dark. Then we went home. We never found the prop and we never launched the boat from the beaver slide again. We did manage to lose the entire motor in the Osage River a couple of years later but that story is Fishin' Dad.



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PostPosted: 12/28/04 12:07 am    ::: One Last True Story: Dad's Groundhog Day... Reply Reply with quote

Circa 1974, Fall
Dad was a mighty hunter. He could shoot walnuts off a tree at a hundred yards with open sights using a strangers gun. He was a dead shot with a bow too and often split his own arrows in two. We had two hunting dogs back then, Baby and Yeller. Baby was a redbone hound dog, beautiful and sleek, she was trained to hunt squirrels during the day and raccoons at night. She would never hunt squirrels at night or raccoons during the day. She was the smartest member of the family. Yeller was a mixed breed but he was mostly a bull mastiff. His head was huge, his chest was wide, and his tail wagged his entire body. He was the muscle of the team and he only barked at turtles and ground hogs. Baby generally decided when it was time for the rest of us to go hunting. She would run off into the woods (which surrounded our house) and "tree" a squirrel at any given moment. She would chase the squirrel from tree to tree, even if it jumped from limb to limb, until it stopped to hide in a den or high in the branches. If she did, you could tell by the way she barked when the squirrel was treed, we were required by Dad to take a bullet and a 22 rifle and go shoot the squirrel. Yeller would follow her around but he never barked at all.
We were outside working on a Ford 8N tractor that my Dad had gotten from somewhere. It had caught fire and was generally ruined for most people but we replaced all the melted stuff from other junk tractors and got it working. Dad had also acquired a small backhoe and front loader that was made to attach to a Ford tractor, just not this particular Ford tractor. But with a few modifications, we had finally got it all working at the same time. The little tractor was made in the 1940's and really wasn't meant to have a backhoe and front loader on it. The tires looked like they might explode any second and Steven and I tried to stay about 30 feet away as much as we could.
We were all standing around admiring the tractor when we heard barking from out in the woods. It was Yeller barking, which was pretty amazing, but more amazing that he sounded very excited. Baby barked once or twice but you could tell she was just supporting Yeller. Dad sort of cocked his head and listened for a minute.
"Roy, ya better go see what Yeller's got."
Roy went inside and got a rifle and a bullet, came out and headed down the hill and into the woods. "Down the hill" was really down into a deep ravine on the south side of the house. It was steep and not much fun to go up and down. Pretty soon he came back up the hill and told Dad that Yeller apparently had a ground hog "treed" in a hole in a limestone outcrop at the bottom of the hill.
"Well, did ya take a stick and poke it up in there?"
"Yes, but it goes back too far."
Dad decided we all needed to go back down there and see if we could get him out for Yeller. He was still barking like crazy. We took some firecrackers and a couple more rifles just in case the ground hog wanted to fight. When we got to the bottom, it was just like Roy had said. There was a big chunk of limestone sticking out of the opposite bank of the ravine with a nice hole just big enough for a ground hog. Yeller was really excited to see us and he barked and clawed at the hole ferociously. First, Dad tried our old trick of taking a long forked stick and jamming it up the hole to feel for the animal. We often had to do this when a squirrel would go into a den tree. You jam the forked stick in there and twirl it around, ostensibly to get the squirrel attached to the end of the stick and yank it out of the hole. Of course, when it works perfectly, you have an angry squirrel on the end of a stick and both of you are about 20 or 30 feet up a tree. I never really liked that particular technique and deferred to Roy whenever possible. Anyway, Roy was right, the hole was way too deep and had too many turns to adequately use the forked stick ploy. And so, we lobbed firecrackers into the hole. That didn't work either for the same reason and the hole was basically horizontal, running back like a little cave. Dad was beginning to really hate that ground hog and Yeller was almost berserk with excitement.
"Roy, go to the house and get some carbide and gunpowder. I'll get that sumbitch outa there."
For the uninitiated, carbide is a carbon compound (it looks like small limestone pebbles) that gives off a volatile gas when it gets wet. It is used in miners lamps, which we used for hunting at night. We sometimes used carbide for blowing up stuff like ant hills and ground hog holes. When Roy got back we stuffed the hole with carbide, poking it back in there with our sticks. Dad splashed a little water into the hole from the little spring water that ran in the ravine right where we were standing. Steven and I could smell the gas starting to come from the hole and began to back up into our standard safe distance position. Roy however, loved to blow up stuff with carbide and hung back to see the explosion. Dad made a trail of gunpowder from the hole to a spot about ten feet away. He set the powder down a safe distance away and lit the trail.
It was a wonderful explosion. The ground jumped and I could feel it vibrating under my feet, about 30 feet from the blast. Frankly, I was pretty sure at this point, the ground hog was never going to come out. And also, I was pretty sure that it wasn't even in the hole. I could see further up the hillside, smoke rising from under the leaves in several places. The ground hog had many escape routes and just like Rambo, it had slipped out while we were jamming sticks in its hole. Dad and Yeller remained unconvinced and they both were furious at the ground hog. Yeller could now get a large part of his upper torso in the hole. We tried to clear some of the shattered rocks away but they were still in pretty big chunks.
"I'll be right back," Dad said, now obviously carrying a grudge against the ground hog. He went up the hill.
We were wondering if there was some dynamite around he hadn't told us about until we heard the tractor start. Pretty soon we could see Dad coming down the hill backwards, knocking down small trees with the backhoe bucket leading the way.
Yikes.
Dad got the backhoe in position and started clearing the smaller rocks out of the way. He got a good grip on a really big chuck and it lifted the front of the tractor with the front loader on it, completely of the ground. He operated the handles furiously, and to get more torque out of the machinery, he purposely made the front of the tractor come up and then let it drop, stopping just short of the ground to use the weight of the front loader like a cantilever to pull on the rock. We were sitting on the ground at a safe distance. Baby had gotten bored sometime around the carbide explosion and was sitting behind us, waiting for something to happen that looked like hunting.
Dad was getting madder and madder at the ground hog hole and he lifted the front of the tractor higher and higher, dropping it and stopping short of the ground with greater and greater force. Finally, he pulled so hard on the rock with the backhoe that the whole tractor came off the ground, the entire thing was pivoting on the stabilizing outrigger legs of the backhoe. He pulled the lever to let the front end drop and then jammed it the other way to stop it. There was a tremendous bang and the front of the tractor went all the way down to the ground. It took a second or two for the Oh Shit moment to sink in. The entire back end of the tractor had ripped out. The cast iron housing right behind the tractor seat had broken open, like a broken Cadbury egg, only the gooey center was hydraulic fluid running out onto the ground. The gears of the rear end could be seen gleaming in the sunlight.
Yeller was looking up at Dad. Dad was looking down at the gaping hole in the tractors ass and I was wondering how the hell we were going to get the mothereffer up the hill again. Without a word, Dad climbed down and started walking up the hill. We gathered up our ground hog assault weapons and followed. One thing was certain, we would be able to find the tractor again, right where we had used it last.



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smenko



Joined: 18 Nov 2004
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Location: metro detroit


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PostPosted: 12/28/04 1:03 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Can I just say--you are a good story-teller buck and the stories were both sad and humerous. Thank you for sharing these true-to-life vignettes of your remembrances. They took my mind off the tragic news of the Christmas season--tsunami deaths. Happy New Year. You should catalogue these stories and make a book out of them.


dtsnms



Joined: 23 Sep 2004
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PostPosted: 12/28/04 1:13 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

I think you can combine all these into a movie like "Christmas Story 2". Your dad sounds just like Little Ralphie's! Any lamps like legs in the front window?

Thanks for sharing your past Buck, what a great amount of fun reading it all (I had missed the last two until lunchtime today).


buckfifty98



Joined: 17 Nov 2004
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PostPosted: 12/28/04 2:20 pm    ::: Reply Reply with quote

Glad you enjoyed them. Keep in mind, for anyone outside the family, the context that surrounds family life is difficult to create in short space. It is hard to just dive in there without knowing the whole family history. These are fun to tell at family gatherings because they are family folklore. They are cautionary tales about what NOT to do and paths NOT to be taken. On the other hand, they are about being self reliant, inventive, hard working, and having fun regardless of your temporary circumstance. And these are just the Dad Trilogy with Ground Hog day as my Silmirillian. There is also: Roy and Buck Go A-Courtin' the New Girls. Making Gunpowder in the Attic. Cousin Bob and the Electric Fence. The Trial of Melvin Neely. Cousin Bill and the Cardboard Wings. Fishin' Dad. My Sights Don't See No Badges. Volunteer Firemen are Paid Too Much. The Hairdryer Stand. Smoking Meat in the Outhouse. Aunt Betty Kicks Ass. and so on.

And then there is the long list of grudges, superstitions, and impending calamities to be prepared for. I had a very colorful childhood.

And yes, my Dad had a lot of Ralphies Dads characteristics. I just WISH we'd had a major prize to put in the window. Something that FRA-GEE-LAY would not have lasted long at our place though.



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