Timestepper

Armadillos... buddy of mine in West Texas call 'em 'possum on the half-shell. Can't say that I've seen any in our area, but my best friend and I found a dead one along the Arkansas River, uphome in Kansas, several years ago and I'd never seen one anywhere north of Oklahoma to that point.   Guess they're moving kinda' like 'yotes only without the redeeming qualities of a coyote.

Does seem a bit overkill, doesn't it?   Probably a good thing it wasn't a 'possum or 'coon or they might've activated the National Guard.

UPDATE:   Heard today that the team owner is finally knuckling under to critics who claim the name "Washington Redskins" is offensive to certain groups and has agreed to change the name simply to "Redskins."

I paid, IIRC, about $128.00 for mine back in 1984. Saw it at a local sporting goods store, put it on lay away and didn't smoke for 3 months - literally put all my tobacco money in a piggy bank for 3 months. On the day I finally picked it up, after paying for the gun, I had enough left over to buy a box of shells for each barrel... and a pack of Marlboro. Been offered more than ten times what I paid for it and the only other owner it'll ever have besides me is the person I leave it to in my will. 

RIP Millie, you are missed.   Condolences, Robert. It'll never get better, but it will get easier.   Funny how when one's heart is full there's room enough for the whole world, but when it's empty there isn't room for even the tiniest grain of sand...   I can't say anything to make it any easier, only time will do that. In the mean time... we're all here and thinking of you and wishing we could do the impossible and a little of us hurts along with you.   Peace, friend.   :sadwave:

Watched a demonstration in high school (back when the earth was still cooling) in which an once of gasoline was placed in a tin tuna can at the top of an inclined plane and a lit candle was placed at the bottom of said plane. It only took about ten seconds for the gas fumes to gravitate down to the candle, then WHOOSH! KABOOM!    (TS been respectin' gas fumes ever since!)   This also counts though - I guess - in stupid stuff I've done:   Knowing that gasoline fumes are heavier than air, I thought it'd be funny to "booby trap" a buddy's campfire one night. He was camped at the base of a tall sand bank on a shelf along one of our favorite rivers and I decided to sneak out and mess with him a little.   I snuck up on his camp undetected and buried a baby food jar about half filled with gasoline at the top of the bank, then removed the lid and crept quietly to some bushes about forty feet away to "hide and watch."   Once I got good and and hid, I picked up a rock and tossed it out past his camp. Just as I expected, he called out "Who's out there?" and when no answer came he tossed some dry sticks on his fire to make it blaze up so he could see better.   He'd gotten no further than the edge of the firelight when the fumes drifted down and... well... did ya'll know that half a baby food jar of "regular" buried in the dirt is enough to cause a whole 15 foot sand bank to collapse and cover your buddy's tent? And I still ain't sure how he made it to the sandbar in the middle of the river without getting his feet wet, but I guess that just goes to show that truth really is stranger than fiction...

To that end, has anyone considered using caltrops? They're easily made and can be highly effective for home/castle defense. They are easily deployed and if several are strung together, they're also easily retrieved for redeployment or to allow temporary ingress/egress.   I won't say that I currently have them in use, but you probably also don't wanna' walk through our woods if me or my wife isn't with you. ;)

Couldn't agree more. I know what I'm doing about it. Besides sitting on your high horse and bitching what are you doing about it?

Went down and talked to the guy living out of his pickup. Pretty nice guy. Turns out he's homeless because he chooses to be - Well, actually what he said was that he could get 3 hots and a cot if he wanted, but that would require doing something against the law to the woman he's been married to for the past ten years (and is now separated from) and he chose not to go that particular route no matter how much he feels she deserves it.   Thanked me profusely for the noodles and the coffee pot - he's in a tight spot right now because his employer cut back his hours to avoid having to offer him healthcare and he refuses to not pay his bills and hasn't been able to find an extra job to make up for the lost wages. Told him I could relate.   Asked him if he'd thought about or applied for food stamps or EBT. He said he'd rather starve than be labeled as one of the moocher class. Told him I understood perfectly then I admitted that his noodles had been purchased with an EBT card. Told him lots of folks don't understand how the rules have changed and that it's not as easy to get and keep as it used to be. He said Yeah? What about the guy with the fancy cedar walking stick and new blue jeans he saw in Walmart with a pocket full of cash and using an EBT card? I told him it might've been me - bought the jeans before my accident and hadn't been able to wear 'em out much... spent 3 months in the recliner with my foot propped up and used the time to make the walking stick in hopes of someday using it to walk. Had the cash in my pocket because I'd just sold a pair of custom made cowboy boots I bought a couple of years ago and couldn't wear anymore thanks to surgery number six which permanently fused my left ankle. Explained that Walmart was on the way to the power company and I didn't think that leaving the cash in the car was a real good frickin' idea. He said he reckoned that maybe things weren't always what they seemed after all. Told him yeah, but good luck convincing anybody else of that.   Nice guy. Enjoyed talking with him. Told him to go ahead and apply for assistance - the way the system works and the way things have changed, he'd probably be back to sh*ttin' in tall cotton before he got approved, if he got approved (it took six months for us). Told him I'd bring him some more noodles next week and not to worry about the stigma, if anyone said anything tell 'em it was my taxes that went to feed him - theirs had been used up funding a study of the sex life of the Abyssinian crotch cricket and if they didn't want to fund stuff like that they'd better quit voting for the ******* idiots who keep giving away their tax dollars for stuff like that...   Learned some things today. Reckon I'm richer for the knowledge so I guess that classifies the day as a success in my book. Hope everyone else had a successful day, too.   :hat:   ...TS...

Right. I know you're not talking about me, you're talking about all the people who aren't like me. They're the ones I'm talking about, too. Some of them even used to be like me. Can't rock a baby to sleep six nights in a row and then get mad because it wants to be rocked to sleep on night seven. You can make an automatic rocker but then you lose the right to gripe when the rock-ees start crying when it breaks down.   Don't like that so many have come to depend on and even demand the automatic rocker? Don't gloat when it fails, work to help change things so that fewer find the automatic rocker desirable.   Now, even though I quoted and responded to a particular individual, this post isn't really aimed directly at anyone... unless you think it is...

Well, now that I've pissed everyone off... :rofl:   As I've said, I agree with a lot of what has been said here. I personally share in the opinion that a hand up shouldn't be given (nor taken) as a handout. And again abuse is rampant, but again - and I mention this from first hand observation - it's not as rampant as those who've never had to rely upon it seem to believe.   I lumped myself in with the leeches because the overall tone of this thread didn't really make much of a distinction.   I mean, to read a blanket statement like "I have never seen a person swipe an EBT who looked like they missed any meals, ever." and a few other things I've seen in this thread, kinda' makes a person feel like he's already been stuck in the same category. And it doesn't make a damned bit of difference how hard he/she may or may not have worked before, during or after. How would you know? Have you ever taken the time to actually talk to one of these lowlifes?   I'm not defending the guy with the $450.00 jacket although I had to put $300.00 worth of fancy footwear on a credit card recently and then tack another $80.00 on for modification of said footwear in the hopes of someday being able to walk again. (So far it hasn't helped and I may end up maxing out my credit card on orthotics to that end.)   Maybe I'm taking things too personally. But maybe... you know what? Never mind. I decided a long time ago that if I wasn't going to get off my ass and work to change something then I didn't have any business bitching about it.   In fact, I got a great deal on Ramen noodles earlier this week and I know of a guy not far away who's living out of his pickup and might not have been able to stock up, so I think I'll go shoot the #### with him and give him some noodles and an old coffee pot to boil water in...   :leaving:  :surrender:    

Confessions of an EBT Leech   In January I was averaging slightly less than a thousand bucks a week before taxes. Then I tore a quad tendon and a few weeks later (after wok comp. kicked in) had about six hundred fifty bucks a week coming in. Then, on March 15th, while on "hawk patrol" in our back yard (my wife had left the door of the chicken run open and the hawks were having a heyday with our bantys), I became the reluctant recipient of a self-actuated adventitious ballistically induced subcutaneous astragalus aperture (my left knee buckled and as I stumbled, I accidentally shot myself in the freakin' ankle with a .357mag rifle - been around guns literally all my life and it's not supposed to happen, but sometimes it just does). Anyway - BANG - six surgeries, several weeks in the hospital and ZERO income from April until the second week in July when I was able to start working part time in our office, making about a hundred eighty bucks before taxes. Since then, I've missed three weeks of work because my wife contracted viral meningitis in mid August and spent a week in the hospital and then needed 24 hour care for a couple of weeks afterwards and there was no one else to help.   Man, talk about being damned glad to be one of those weirdo prepper types! We had enough food set by to get us through quite a spell, but we went through our savings pretty quickly just trying to keep heart & soul together and purchasing "specialty items" that I needed that insurance wouldn't cover.   One of the members here spread the word while I was still in the hospital and a collection was taken and, as much as I detest accepting "charity" of any kind, the money couldn't have come at a better time. I know I haven't thanked the members and friends here on TGO nearly enough and I'd like to take this opportunity to once again thank everyone for the words of support and their donations when I was at my lowest, both physically and mentally. Mere words cannot begin to express the depth of gratitude and humility I continue to feel for the outpouring of support.       I said all that to say this: I'm not out to chew anyone's ass and I agree with some of what has been said here so far and there was a time when I, myself, thought that everyone who received food stamps or an EBT card was lazy and no account and just needed to get off their butts and get a job...   Then all of a sudden I had no choice but to apply for EBT myself. I haven't been able to buy beer or cigarettes or even a hot rotisserie chicken from the grocery store like a bunch of people seem to think. We can't buy gas, batteries, hot nachos, or even freakin' toilet paper. I applied for (and was rejected by)  Social Security Disability - figured since I'd paid into it all these years, I'd take a little out until I could get back on my feet (no pun intended). NO ONE wants me to get back to being a productive member of society as much as I do. And as I type this I still don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to work full time. And we're still getting by on less than two hundred bucks a week.   I agree that there are a lot of abuses to the system. I've heard radio talk show hosts go on and on about the worthless EBT card leeches stocking up on steak and pork chops at the end of the month. And I was outraged right along with them. Then I had to become one of those worthless leeches myself. And I found out a few things. I'm not going to bother to share what I've learned here because I've read this thread and I'm beginning to doubt that it would make any difference.   And no, it doesn't look like I've missed many meals. Part of that is because, thanks to careful planning on the part of my wife and myself, I haven't. And part of it is because I still can't get around well enough to get the physical exercise I need to get myself back into decent shape.    There's more I could say, but I won't bother because it won't change any minds and besides I've got to worm my way under the house and work on a water leak that I can't afford to pay a plumber to work on, so I'll leave you with this:   There are a lot of abuses to the system. Not nearly as many as people seem to think, but they do exist. I'm sorry that I'm one of the leeches who uses EBT. If it's any consolation, I haven't bought any ammo, guns or fishing gear since before I got hurt. Every cent I make goes back into our household and I've even been forced to sell off some pretty dear possessions to keep the lights on...   I just pray that none of the gloaters here ever have to eat their words and become an EBT or SSI leech. Believe me, it's not only not fun, it's humiliating and degrading and top of everything else, you get to listen to people you used to respect talk about how worthless you are and what a drain on society you are. Oh sure, they won't mean you, personally, but that's only because they don't know you're an EBT leech. When they find out, they'll feel sorry for you and pity you and become conciliatory...   ...and that's even worse.     :(

Condolences to all who have lost loved ones to cancer and congratulations to those who have survived it. Lost my maternal grandfather to lung cancer when I was in high school and I've known and loved others who lost the battle as well.   As to the O.P., I can't honestly say that I, personally, know more people now who have cancer than I did say 30 years ago, although, largely thanks to modern media, I know of more people with cancer.   It could very well be that cancer is more prevalent now than it used to be, but it could be - as others have suggested - that thanks to modern medicine more cancer is being diagnosed that would've otherwise gone unnoticed or been attributed to something else. I suppose it could also be that, as populations have exploded the ratio of cancer has remained about the same, but is more noticeable now simply because "X"% of a million is a bunch more than "X"% of a hundred thousand.

Dang, didn't mean to kill the thread!   Not a ghost story maybe, but I've got several Civil war re-enactor friends who've been to Gettysburg several times. The general theme of the story they all tell (several of them were together, others were completely separate incidents) is of being out walking in uniform late at night behind what would have been "enemy" lines for whatever uniform they were wearing (some re-enact Union, others Rebel, still others have been both) and feeling a distinct enmity and resentment towards them.   I know that the mind can do strange things and maybe it was imagined, but I've heard basically the same story 1st hand from several different and otherwise credible individuals.   There's also a small canyon in the Rocky Mountains that absolutely and unexpectedly gave me the heebie jeebies on an otherwise beautiful and uneventful day. I mean, I hiked into the canyon to explore on a beautiful, sunny day with not a care in the world. By the time I'd gone a hundred yards, the hair on the back of my neck was standing up. By two hundred yards I was trying to talk myself out of feeling like the target of some evil and malevolent force. By the time I turned around 50 yards later, I was absolutely terrified. But by the time I reached the canyon mouth again, it was a beautiful day and I was back to not having a care in the world - outside of being somewhat weirded out by the experience. A few days later, I made it out of the mountains and was doing some research at a local library and discovered that, in 1836, eleven trappers for the American Fur Company had been caught and massacred in the canyon by <tribe omitted> Indians.   I didn't see any "ghosts." But I know what I felt and that - as far as I knew at the time - I had absolutely no reason to feel it. And it doesn't bother me to think about it all these years later, but I also know that no amount of money could ever get me to go back into that canyon.

Saw a <state of origin deleted> State Trooper actively texting while he passed me on a rural 4 lane highway. A quarter mile further down the road I saw him rear end another vehicle that had slowed to make a left turn. When I stopped on the shoulder and walked back to offer assistance, I was told that the best way for me to "assist" was to get my lying, air polluting, semi driving ass on down the highway before I was ticketed for causing an obstruction to traffic.

Reminds me of the guy who was fishing from a bridge while my wife and I were canoeing. He cast his line just as we floated by and his sinker bounced off the side of the canoe and his hook snagged my fish stringer. After many apologies on his part and some laughter and ribbing on the part of me and his buddies about cheating and trying to catch someone else's fish, I unhooked his line and we went on our way.

Setting: Gay Johnson's Truck stop (in 1989, before it was bought and refurbished by Flying J), Rawlins, Wyoming after a blizzard (which closed I-80 for three days).   One of the last guys to make it into the truck stop before the interstate closed had fought heavy slush and snow for several miles and, after sitting for three days at sub-zero temps, his trailer brakes were frozen solid. From somewhere he came up with a propane weed burner and was under his trailer thawing out his brakes. That wasn't the stupid part. The stupid part was when he turned his head and started talking to someone at the back of the trailer and didn't notice that the weed burner was no longer warming his brakes so much as heating up his right front inside dual.   When the tire blew... well, let's just say that it wasn't pretty and instead of being delayed by three days and a few hours, he was delayed considerably longer with an extended hospital stay.

Noted the word kidding. Wrongly assumed that you were kidding about enjoying John Wayne's death. (My bad.) I've looked at Woods and I've looked at Dern. Using that criteria, there's also a resemblance between myself and Clint Eastwood. And I've liked Clint Eastwood ever since James Garner threw him in jail in "Support Your Local Gunman." :squint:  :D   Note: Still like James Woods and wish him all the best in his continued battle against all that is wrong with POTUS and the current administration.   :up:

Ummm... James Woods wasn't in that movie - Bruce Dern killed John Wayne in that particular flick.........(not kidding.)   Have always been a fan of James Woods - even his bad guy roles. Just something about his style that makes whatever character he's portraying ring a little bit truer than most.   Absolutely tickled to see his tweets regarding POTUS and love his perspective. Maybe we could talk him into running in 2016?

Okay, I guess I'm in the dark here - are you like missing some miniature upside down suspenders or somethin' that goes with it that makes it so you gotta' keep your arms crossed while you're wearing it? I mean, I know that in the pic of BBS he didn't have his arms crossed, but he also had it just flopped over his head instead of wrapped around his neck. Does anyone know where you can buy miniature upside down shemagh suspenders at or do you have to make your own? (They didn't list 'em on the site I was looking at.) ...Just seems like it'd get kinda' awkward if you always gotta' have your arms crossed when you wear it... :shrug: :whistle: :hat:

Uhhhh... SHE was the one who fell off, all I did was get a boot hung up in the stirrup. And I used an orally applied, mutually induced internal salve made from a chronologically enhanced alcoholic distillate made from Zea mays and Hordeum vulgare L. (We shared a bottle of Bourbon.)       Yep. :up:

I'm sure we could arrange that. :P   Reckon I won't bother to list what I carry. Partly because I don't wanna' get laughed at and partly because most of what I carry is rattling around inside my brain pan. Suffice it to say that I keep things exceedingly simple and most of my "medicines" grow wild.   As a general rule, I don't even carry bandaids, although I've found a tube of superglue to be a handy thing to have. And Tylenol sucks. Acetasalicylic acid (aspirin) is readily found in willow bark and willow bark tea does the job just as good as aspirin does without having to carry an extra container around (granted, it's a little less "handy" than aspirin, but willows grow on creek banks a lot more readily than do Walgreens).   You fellers with the big modern bags and the knowledge to use them impress the hell out of me and I'm glad you do what you do and I hope you keep it up. For me, I guess knowing what part of a cattail to find an anesthetic in, or that spiderwebs make a good coagulant and other silly, outdated, "frontier" type stuff is about all I'm good for.

Hope this helped.   ...TS...

In 8th grade I was playing backyard football with a couple of buddies when one of them accidentally poked me in the left eye as we both tried to tackle the other guy. My eye didn't bleed. It hurt like nineteen kinds of hell for a little while, but otherwise was just red and I could see out it - kinda' like yours.   To be on the safe side my mom took me to the ER. Damn good thing she did because I had a scratched cornea. This was in the days before life flights to major trauma hospitals (the nearest of which was 150 miles away) and my family Doc was afraid that my cornea wouldn't survive a bumpy, 150 mile ride in an ambulance, so I spent TWO WEEKS in the hospital with sandbags on either side of my head to prevent any kind of movement which might further damage my eye.   That was 38 years ago next month and thanks to a family Doc and a mother who "just wanted to be on the safe side" I still have both eyes and I told you all that to tell you this:   Get your butt AND your eye to a Doctor RIGHT NOW!!! Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, GET TO A QUALIFIED DOCTOR NOW!!!   As I type this, it has been more than twelve hours since you started this thread. Waaaaay too much time to be screwing around with something as potentially serious as this.   I wish you all the best and hope you get better soon. And I hope to God that, "just to be on the safe side" you are visiting a doctor as I type this.