The scene makes me sickish

He crashed his car in a bad snow storm. She rescues him and begins nursing him back to health. This story haunts me on a re-occurring basis. I have never seen or thought of anything that causes my skin to crawl every time I think of it. And, for some reason, I think of it. The scene makes me sickish. I am not like that. I don't get sickish.

The scene is in a bedroom on a bed. Kathy Bates has rescued James Caan from the wreck near her house. She is scary, but you don't notice until the scene. Cann is an author who is "killing off Misery" in his last novel of a popular series. Kathy Bates is a fan of Misery's.

She walks in the bedroom with a sledge hammer. Cann can't move because of injuries. She puts a plank under his leg, swings the sledge hammer down, smashing his foot. In my recollection it actually shows the leg broken just above the ankle. Like deformed broken...his scream. My ankle feels weird when I think about it. And, I think about it. Misery

I can't figure out why I think about it. I rarely remember movie scenes let alone think about them. It's weird.

The Wind Blew Right Through The Boards

I also spent many boring hours in the swamp in the late summer haying. Dad would have me mow the tules for cattle feed in the winter. It wasn't very good feed but there was lots of it. There was close to one hundred acres to hay. I would just go around and around the square field for several days to cut it all. The ranch was under the training flight path for jet fighters out of Nevada and Klamath Falls, OR. One day I was mowing hay in the swamp when one went over. The shadow and noise came at about the same instant, causing my heart to stop, and die, as the sound of the tractor covered up the jet noise until the moment of the shadow. Hauling those light tule bales was a breeze though compared to heavy alfalfa bales. We would stack the hay high up in the lower barn.

The lower barn was down close to the swamp at the north end of the property. No one that grandpa Leo ever talked to knew when it was built and it was always felt to be very old in the 1960's. All the main timbers were hand hewn and wooden pegs held them together. It was a very large hay barn, about one hundred twenty feet long, with manger stalls under the roof so the cattle could feed out of the weather. When it was empty and you looked inside knowing you were going to have to fill it you got a pretty overwhelmed feeling. Dad had put a tin roof on it. The roof came from buildings he helped tear down at the Pit 3 powerhouse.

I spent some the coldest times in my life in the lower barn feeding cows. The cold north winds would just pass right through the boards not to mention the sifting snows. Some mornings would be ten or more degrees below zero. I would get up in the barn and find several inches of frozen crusty snow on the bales. No amount of gloves or hard work could keep my skinny hands and feet warm. Sometimes it felt like I had no feet or hands left. When the tule hay ran out we would begin feeding off the back of the Hoopy. (See my blog of Sept. 8. 2008 for more about Hoopy)

In the mid 1980's we had to tear the lower barn down as it was starting to fall and had collapsed in one place. My father-in-law, Bob McKernan, along with help from Mexican hands, Bruce and me took the barn down. For some reason we all still loved that old barn no matter how daunting the job of filling or miserable the job of emptying it was.

Wildland Fire Early Warning System

Well, this summer has been quite a year for wildland fires. Starting especially on June 21. The foothills and mountains around Redding were dotted with columns of smoke. Within a few days we were covered in that smoke....for a month! So dense we had no open windows at night even when it was cool enough. I have a $225 electric A/C bill to prove it.

So, I have this wildland fire early warning system at my house. Actually everyone in east Redding does. There are days when it sounds like England during WWII to me. I'm sure it's not quite or even close to what those bombers sounded like taking off, scores at a time. But, here at my house when I hear that deep multi propeller drone having just lifted off Redding Municipal Ariport I know there is another wildland fire.

Sometimes only one will take off and it almost goes unnoticed. Once in a while one takes off every five minutes several times during the day. Those are either big fires or endangering structures. Today was one of those days. I'm not sure what time I first took notice today but I did mention it to my wife. Several had taken off within about five minutes of each other. There is a large smoke column to the north.

Since then there have been several more during the day. The last group of four bombers left around 5:00pm. I do know that, since I was trying to get a late afternoon nap. They're really not that loud but I started thinking of a title for my blog!

What a life.....God is good!

Thanks to Steve Hobson for the image: http://steves-digital.net/default.aspx

Hauling hay on a wooden sled, exciting and dangerous

Hauling hay on a wooden sled, exciting and dangerous. Grandpa Leo and dad built a sled from full 2x12 boards to haul hay bales from the field to a stack or barn. The sled must have been about eight feet wide and twice that long with a cable attached to the front of the sled and hooked to the tractor . We pulled it with our Model G, John Deere tractor, the B just wouldn‘t pull much hay.

I liked the G, it had an electric starter but could be cranked if the batteries were dead. The Model B had to be started by hand though. It had an exposed flywheel that you just grabbed hold of and gave it a spin (it almost always started). Usually I could start the B without opening the petcocks. The petcocks are valves on each cylinder (there is only two on these two models, Johnny Pops) that can be opened to relieve some of the compression. The G almost required the petcocks be opened to start even with the electric starter.

Back to hauling hay on a sled. You needed a tractor driver and a stacker. I was very happy when Bruce got big enough to be a stacker. The tractor driver would just drive beside the bales of hay and the stacker would grab the bales with hay hooks and stack them. Sounds easy and it was except when dad got the bales so heavy they out weighed me. Then the driver had to stop and the stacker would have to drag the bale up to the sled now because the driver went by it. The stacker would have to decide whether to buck the heavy thing up to an empty spot or start a new bottom layer. Start a new bottom layer sounds good but some times there are a bunch of heavy ones and you just can’t have that much bottom layer before going up with the stack.

Then when you get to the front of the sled the danger and excitement begins. It is probably being pulled between two and five miles per hour. If your little brother was mad at you he would just drive too fast to keep up with the bales. The driver has to watch where he is going or he runs over bales. The stacker must be careful to not step off the front of the sled so it doesn’t run over him and smear him under the sled until the driver noticed. The driver would never be able to stop in time.

Exciting!

I started driving Hoopy before I could reach the peddles.

Hoopy is a 1928 Chevrolet one ton truck my grandpa Leo bought new in Redding. When I was very young, I think before ten or so, dad would let me steer the Hoopy while he cut the bales and fed them from the back of the truck to the cattle. Most of the time this feeding was done near the lower barn. Dad would set the throttle and point me at a mountain in the Big Valley mountain range. He would then climb on the back and start feeding. Sometimes I would get too close to the swamp so dad would have to climb back inside, turn the wheel, and get me back on track.

I wasn't tall enough to reach the peddles so I could stop or strong enough to turn the wheel. Old vehicles had hand throttles so it could be set and just leave it. This is how I learned to drive.

As I got older, it was often my turn to feed from the back of the truck while Bruce (he's my little brother) or someone drove. Most of the time we drained the water from the radiator so it wouldn't freeze. It had too many leaks to put antifreeze in and waste it. One winter that was very cold I remember dad had to set a fire under the Hoopy's radiator to thaw the water. Hoopy wouldn't start after we poured the water in so the water froze. We only had to be careful of the lower hose because everything else was steel and it wouldn't melt.

Hoopy had to be hand cranked to start. Dad always told me to set the timing retarder/advancer before cranking it. He said it was more likley to kick back if not set right and the crank could break an arm. I think I always remembered to do that. It has wooden spokes for wheels, wooden slats in the roof, a four cylinder engine and four speed transmission.

I spent many an icy cold or wet rainy morning on the back of Hoopy too. Bruce still has Hoopy at his house in the hopes of getting it running again. I hope he does someday before it gets too deteriorated.

Painted Dunes

Painted Dunes
Originally uploaded by jga154

No more SNAPS. It's been over fifty-two hours now. I'll move on.

A week ago I spent four nights in Lassen Volcanic National Park at Butte Lake. It was a trip focusing on photography and learning the area. Friday evening several other photographers from northern California met me there. Saturday at about 4:15am we hiked to the top of Cinder Cone. It was a tough hike but well worth it. For more on this story visit: http://flickr.com/photos/rueb/

One other photographer spent Sat. night there too. This was the first time I took my trailer out camping alone (that is without my wife). With the exception of Friday night and Saturday it was lonely. I went out Sunday morning with Steve then he went home too.

I did miles of hiking and took hundreds photographs but the down time was still....lonely. The cooking wasn't bad but I forgot I had a frozen chicken breast to BBQ. Ended up eating turkey burgers three nights in a row. Good thing I like them. I had a t-bone one night.

My last night there I hiked about 2.5 miles to the Painted Dunes in hopes of catching a nice sunset or at least magic hour light on the dunes. It was a good idea. Except, you really can't see much of the dunes unless you are on top of Cinder Cone. There were a few clouds in the west but I blew it. I made the mistake of not waiting long enough after sunset and the clouds turned pink all around me. Problem was I was hiking back on the trail in between the trees and Cinder Cone. I had no good view of any horizon. Well I knew better but didn't follow my rule of staying at least a half hour after sunset.

Two younger guys who were from another country (one had a Barbie backpack on) had climbed the Cinder Cone and caught up with me on my walk back. They had also climbed Mt. Lassen to the peak that same day and had seen the whole sunset from Cinder Cone. They were headed for the Burning Man thing in Nevada next. Nice to be young and in shape.

When I got back to camp it was very dark. I finished reading my book and went to bed. Returned home on Monday - nice to be home.