Raising the bar at Falling Downs

We may have raised the bar, but I fear we may have alienated our base.

Yup, these small time blogs that nobody reads grapple with the same kind of issues that haunt the big political parties.

The Dems have a base. People with post-secondary educations.

The GOP base is born-again Christians who forgot to read the New Testament.

In Canada, the Conservative base is people who wished they lived in the US, at least if that black guy wasn't in the White House.

The Liberal base is made up of folks who have fond memories of Trudeau's dear daddy.

The NDP base is the folks with post-secondary educations.

The Green Party base just went out for a breath of fresh air and will be back in a minute.

Our base here at Falling Downs is the literate hillbilly crowd.

Ya I know, "crowd" is totally the wrong word...

But we did something today that might alienate our base...


We no longer have a broke-down washing machine on the front porch.

We are now counting on the various parts cars scattered about the property to maintain our hillbilly cred.

Not sure how that's gonna work out. As a matter of fact, me and Junior spent the afternoon with booster cables and ether re-arranging the fleet, and pretty much everything still runs, at least with a little bit of encouragement.

Oddly enough, some guy from Albrights Auto Wreckers left his business card in the door the other day. Apparently he had his greedy eye on our fleet. Underlined the part where it said "scrap."

I don't have no scrap around here, Mr. Albright.

At the moment, my weakest link is the old Allis loader/back-hoe. While it is true that she has not been functional for a couple of years, that is no reason to conclude she will not rise again. I am 99% sure that the non-functionality stems from a relatively minor wiring flaw somewhere in the ignition circuit.

You don't dispatch a family member of a quarter century's standing to the scrap-yard for a minor wiring flaw.
That ain't happening around here...

So while some challenges lie ahead, at least the Farm Manager will be gratified that there is no longer a broke-down washing machine on the front porch... did I mention that washing machine was a Kenmore not five years old?

Don't even get me started on how they build shit today....

Trouble-shooting the Allis-Chalmers 480

Or maybe it's an 840. I have trouble keeping numbers in order. I think it's part of the Alzheimer journey.

Either way, there is an issue with the Allis. Namely, she won't start.

This wouldn't be an issue except that the Farm Manager has a couple of chores lined up that are gonna take me ten hours with a shovel or ten minutes with Allis.

So I'm highly motivated to get her fired up.

Spent the entire day on it today. Except for that little break in the afternoon when I headed out back to do a little fishing in the creek. Found out that the beavers moved their dam about a hundred yards downstream. That means the water is a bit deeper upstream of the dam. Had one of the hounds with me, and the first thing she did everywhere I wanted to cast a line was jump in the water.

Took away the element of surprise.

Still, it was a good afternoon.

How lawyers are wrecking civilization

The stupidity implied by the above picture cannot be directly attributed to lawyers.

But let me explain.

The guy who parked Allis in this mudhole and then couldn't get her out was guilty of one thing; he didn't have the old brain switch in the "on" position when he made the decision to pull into the corner field.

After sending the back-hoe operator packing I spent the better part of an afternoon trying to get her out, only to have it dug in deeper than ever by the time nightfall set in.

Had to spend a few days coming up with a plan. In the meantime I had to bear the scorn of everybody in the neighborhood driving by and tut-tutting about how that was ever gonna come out of there.

I was able to at least sow seeds of doubt by claiming that Allis-in-the-mud was an "art installation". I called it "Spring Thaw". Pretty sure nobody really believed that, but it kept them quiet for a few days.

I'd almost had Allis out of the mud at one point but I ran out of solid ground that I could claw into and drag her out.

That's not quite true. I could have clawed into the road. Unfortunately the Township guys are sharp enough to figure out that there might be a connection between the tore-up road and my back-hoe parked behind the barn a couple hundred yards away.

I'd noticed that the hydraulics seemed a little out of mojo at the far ends of the boom's reach and picked up a five gallon pail of no.32 hydraulic fluid at the Tractor Supply Company to top things up.

That's when I noticed the warning on the side of the pail. It shows a baby  bottoms-up in a bucket of hydraulic fluid. In three languages I'm warned that "small children can drown in small amounts of liquid."

Great! I'm trying to focus on getting Allis out of the mud and now my already-stressed intellectual resources are preoccupied with babies drowning in buckets.

Hell, if one baby can drown in a bucket, how many could be lost in the mud-hole? Why are they haranguing me with such self-evident nonsense?

Then I realized; it's the lawyers!

They have to bring up every possible eventuality that might ever occur when someone somewhere uses their product with their brain switch in the "off" position.

Hey, if your missus is running a day-care in the back of your heavy equipment maintenance facility, one of the tots could crawl away from day-care corner and end up head-first in a pail of no. 32 hydraulic fluid.

Then somebody might sue.

So the real purpose of all these silly warnings is to make sure people can wander through their days with never so much as a passing nod to something called "common sense".

Lawyers are killing common sense.

Gun lessons at Falling Downs

Never point a gun at a person.

That's the first lesson in gun safety. Unless you intend to shoot them.

I remember a few years ago I was giving Junior the walk through on the latest Glock in my collection (which I don't have any more, in case any of my readers at various law enforcement agencies are wondering) and as we were wrapping up I said don't mention this to your school chums because I don't have all the paper work quite in order just yet.

So Junior says, don't worry, I assume everything around here is illegal so I never tell anybody anything.

And that was before we had the still! Ya have to love a kid like that!

This comes to mind because I was taking a few target shots at the old Allis-Chalmers today. It's really pissed me off. Fired her up this morning meaning to head back into the field where I'd carved a breach into the old stone fence a few weeks ago. Did a rather poor job of it. Figured I'd clean things up a bit.

Get into the corner field and whoops, if the fucker don't sink right down to the axles. Damn! And I just went through that field a few weeks ago!

Spring has sprung and the frost is out of the ground. That eight ton back-hoe can't go where it used to.

I'm trying to lever my way out of the field. That's the beauty of hydraulics. Made it all the way back to the road. Then there was nothing to grab onto to pull myself out. I mean I could have clawed into the road, but then the township guys would be all over me. No point drawing unnecessary attention to oneself.

So Allis is sitting in the mud waiting for things to dry out a little. Could take weeks.

In the meantime I've been using it for target practice. I can hit it from the front porch.

Bullet holes add character to farm machinery.