Thanksgiving 2014

Don't you just love Thanksgiving!  A truly American celebration of God's wonderful blessings to us throughout the year!  The words of the song "Old Hundredth" or more commonly known as "Doxology" come to mind...

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!
Praise Him all creatures here below!
Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts!
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost!

As this day comes around, I can't help but reminisce about past Thanksgivings.  We usually went to Grandma and Grandpa Fox's house.  Somehow though, we made it to Momo and Popo Riggs' house also.  With all the scheduling we have to do with our families now, I just wonder how Mom and Dad did it.  There were not a lot of cousins my age at the Fox's farm but there were plenty of places to play and if we wanted to, we could watch the football games with Dad, Grandpa and the Uncles.  There were "dozens of cousins" at the Riggs' to play with so it worked out pretty good.  I sure miss those times but I hope my nieces, nephews, great nieces and great nephews and (soon to be) grandchild(ren) will remember Thanksgivings with Uncle Ray.

I have scanned some pictures today so I will just let them speak for themselves.....

I don't know the exact year on this(can't read the calendar) but it may have been the Thanksgiving after Grandpa Fox passed away in May 1970.  From the left, Aunt Mary, Grandma (Parzettie) Fox, Me!!, Ralph, Mom (Helen), Dad (Leamon).  I haven't said a lot about my Aunt Mary but she was a wonderful person.  Her mind was affected by a high fever when she was a child but she had plenty of personality!  I loved my Aunt Mary...

I think this was actually Christmas of the same year (1970).  Why do I think this?  Well now...EVERYBODY knows you have turkey on Thanksgiving and ham at Christmas!  We also added Aunt Ella Williams (Mom's sister) and Uncle "Curly" Burl Williams to the table.

I really miss Mom and Dad on days like today...

I think this was Mother's Day, early 80's but I found it when I was scanning pictures.

My Old Friend...

Do you remember when Paul Harvey advertised the "Aladdin Stanley Steel Thermos?"  He also plugged for Wells-Lamont gloves and I can still remember his tag line..."Wells-Lamont is Stuuuuborn about Quality!"  Ole Paul could have been advertising the Aladdin Thermos.  I posted a few days ago about my Dad insisting on buying quality.  My "Old Friend", an Aladdin Thermos, is quality and has been with me through thick and thin, cold and hot, deer seasons, long distance trips and tags along every day to keep "Hot Stuff Hot and Cold Stuff Cold!"

If I'm not mistaken, Mom and Dad got this for me, for Christmas, back in 1982 or 1983.  You can see by the shape it's in, it hasn't been mollycoddled.  This isn't the original cup.  I dropped it out of the truck one day and ran over the "cup" end of the thermos.  The stopper is the original and you can see it has been used and abused.  The handle...well....when we lived on Fifth Street in West Plains, we had a gas hot water heater.  I would put my thermos in the water heater closet out of the way and one day...the plastic handle was turned toward the bottom of the heater....Yep, kinda melted and dripped off!

Last night I decided to try out the quality of old "Therm".  I have said for years that I could leave it in my truck, full of hot coffee, in freezing temperatures, all night, and in the morning the coffee was still hot.  I filled the thermos with hot water from the tap, then made a pot of hot water in my Bunn Coffee Maker.  I poured the tap water out after a few minutes and filled it with the hot "coffee" and set it outside in the 22° weather.  By morning the temperature was 34° but still cold enough for a test.  I brought it in this morning, poured a cup, and (according to Tami) it was as hot as when I filled it up.  Experiment successful!

So...my best friend Tami and my old friend "Therm" are headed out, in the snow, to Silver Dollar City!

"Putting one over" on my Dad!

Most folks thought that my Dad was a pretty serious person.  He didn't ever get really excited but he joked around and had a mischievous side to him.  Before Ralph and I got really hard and heavy into hunting, Dad had killed a nice buck.  It was an eight point and had a small but nicely-formed rack.  He mounted the horns and put them in his office, right beside the mounted Chipmunk and Screech Owl.  When we got old enough to hunt, Dad would tell us, "When you boys get a bigger buck than mine, I'll take those horns off the wall!"

Ralph killed his first deer on the "Coon Forty" down by the government pond.  I killed my first deer on the "Old Bob Thompson place", out of Dad's truck, while leaving the deer woods to go to school.  They were both smaller than Dad's buck.  In fact, mine only had one horn! We rocked on a few years with the horns still hanging on the wall.  Until 1982....

We were hunting in the East Woods or Big Woods, on the north side of Mount Prairie Hollow, near the Butyne Ranch, when Ralph killed a big 11 point on opening morning.  I shot at a 10 point that morning also but missed him.  I didn't get any more shots until Monday when I went hunting with Popo (this is what we called my Grandpa Elmer Riggs).  We had left the woods and were just driving the back roads "road hunting."  We pulled out on E Highway to start home and Popo spied a big buck and some does, across Gunter's Valley, heading toward the creek.  Well...Popo, being the excitable person he was, stops the truck in the middle of the highway, rolls the window down and shower's down on the old buck with a shot or two!!  The deer started makin' tracks for the creek and Popo proceeds to make a 17-point turn in the middle of the highway to get back to the creek so we can headem' off!  We made it to the creek, where it crossed the dirt road and started up it, wading water at times, to get to where the deer should cross.  When we were close, Popo said "I'll go up and see if I can see'em".  His head had no more than cleared the top of the bank when two does ran down into the creek and up on the other side...And right behind them was a huge buck!  I didn't even have a shell in the barrel!  When the buck started off the bank, I levered a shell into the barrel of my 30-30 and threw the gun to my shoulder.  By this time he was half-way across the creek and when I got a sight on him, he was just topping out on the opposite bank.  I cut drive at him and he fell like he had been pole-axed!  Popo and I climbed the bank and there he lay, with his nose under a field fence...a big 9-point buck!  Popo walked back and drove the truck up the field and we pulled the deer under the fence to gut it out...but...Popo was just too excited.  He couldn't wait to show off the deer that his grandson had killed!  "We don't have time to gut it now..."!!  We loaded it up, drove home to show it off to everybody and gutted it out at the house (which is a whole nuther story!!!)  However...Dad was not at home and wherever he was, we couldn't take the deer to show him.

We hung the deer up in the shop to cool and waited for Dad to get home.  I took his deer horns off the office wall and put them in the center of the kitchen table.  I was so hoping he wouldn't go into the shop when he got home...and he didn't.  He parked his truck and walked up to the back door, into the house and into the kitchen.  I was sitting at the table just waitin' for him!  When he saw his trophy antlers on the table, a big ole grin came on his face and he said "Well, what happened?"  I said "Come on down to the shop and I'll show ya!"

We went to the shop and examined the deer and I can tell you, he was some proud!  We took a few pictures and after awhile, when Ralph came out, proceeded to process the deer.  Ralph and I were real nice to Dad though and didn't rub it in too bad...We even allowed him to put his trophy antlers back on the wall!!

Quality, Sentimentality and the Billfold.....

My Dad always said "When you buy, buy the best quality you can afford."  In other words, if you can afford a thirty dollar hammer that will last you ten years, that's better than a ten dollar hammer that will last you three.  So, with that in mind, how long should a good quality billfold last?  If you look at the billfold below, you could say that it's ready to be retired.  And you are right!

On the first day of deer season in 1985, my Dad didn't go hunting with Ralph and I.  He said he didn't really feel like it and when we came in around noon there was a note on the table that Mom had taken him to the hospital with chest pains.  Later that night, he had a massive heart attack which eventually caused his death three weeks later.

In Ralph's growing up years, he had been quite involved in leather-craft, so he had bought a billfold kit from Tandy Leather and was going to make a new billfold for Dad for Christmas.  Well, he went ahead and crafted the billfold and gave it to me for Christmas that year.  I have carried the billfold ever since and just recently, it has literally "came apart at the seams."  I really hated to give it up because of it's sentimental value...But...after twenty-nine years....I think it's time for a new one!

Ralph made the design of a Transit on one side

And my name with a North Arrow on the other side.  The "R" and the North Arrow are pretty well worn off!

This is where it was coming apart at the seams

I decided to try my hand at making myself a new billfold.  I bought a kit from Tandy Leather in the same design as the old one.  I followed the instructions (almost) exactly and it turned out pretty good!  Not tooled like Ralph's, and not as smoothly stitched but good enough to carry all my money around!

 

If this one lasts twenty-nine years, that will put me at eighty years old, senile, toothless, in the nursing home and with no need for a billfold!

Tri-State Corner

I was traveling home from Kansas the other day on US166 and when I came through Baxter Springs, I decided to make a little detour.  Just after I crossed into Missouri, I went through the roundabout and headed right toward the Downstream Casino!  Hold it! Hold it!  I didn't go to the casino...I have better sense than that.  Just a few hundred feet from the roundabout, there is a gravel road leading south with a little sign on the stop-sign which says, "3 State Marker".  I headed down this gravel road to the monument shown below.  As shown on this monument, it represents the point at the southeast corner of Kansas and the northeast corner of Oklahoma, on the west line of Missouri.  The next few pictures are self explanatory.

Looking west between Oklahoma (on the left) and Kansas (on the right)

This was the only sign left on the stone marker.  Vandals had torn the other off.

Looking north along the line between Missouri and Kansas.  Missouri on the right and Kansas on the left...Hmmmm...

The photographers were taking too long so I had to sit down.

The Photographers...

These buffalo are in a field with a pipe fence, along the south side of the entrance to the casino.  The ones in this picture were in a corral on the west side of the gravel road to the "3 State Marker".

Looking south between Missouri (on the left) and Oklahoma (on the right)

Another shot looking straight north between Kansas and Missouri.

Deer Season 2014 - Opening Day

The opening day of Missouri Deer Season 2014 has come and gone.  We had our gathering at Ralph's house and (as usual) had a wonderful time.  We didn't kill any deer but made lots of memories.  The lease where we hunt has been logged off since last deer season so I had to find me a different stand.  I found a place looking down a ridge where there were some scrapes and a couple of places where deer had bedded down.  I was sitting with my back to a logged tree top and piled a few cedars in front of me to break up my outline.

 If anyone cares, the view straight up from my stand was unique, with the moon shining through the trees.

It was about 21° when we got to our stands and very still.  After about thirty minutes the wind kicked up and I started to get colder.  Even the coffee I brought along didn't keep me warm long.  About the time the picture below was taken, I was seriously considering heading back to the truck.

I happened to look down toward the the ground in my stand, and would you believe it?!  Somebody had left their boots in my stand!  They were just sitting there where my feet used to be.

I knew they couldn't be mine, because mine had already froze off!

Even if the morning was cold, we are a hardy bunch,  and so Ralph, Claire, and I loaded up in "Rocinante" (AKA "The Ranger") and headed back out in the afternoon!  (Still no luck but the season ain't over!)

"Journey to the Center of the...Courthouse"

I have visited many courthouses in my surveying career and each one has proved to be a unique experience.  Usually, it is the architecture that stands out.  Just think about it...Who wants a court building that looks like the one in the county next door?  Sometimes it is the "rotunda" in the center of the building that is so grand and beautiful.  The monuments and statues on the lawn prove very interesting at times.

I was working in Fredonia, Kansas which is the county seat of Wilson County and made a visit to their seat of government.  I had to get some deed copies so I stopped in at the Register of Deeds office (which would be the Recorder of Deeds office in Missouri.)  The ladies there were very helpful in showing me how their system was set up, so I could research on my own.  I asked about their survey records and was shown where the index and books were in the records room.  Then the lady said, "If you're needing older surveys, I'll have to show you where they are in the basement."  Hmmmm.....  So she goes to this "hole" in the floor and starts the "Journey to the Center of the Courthouse"!  Yes Folks, it was something right out of a Jules Verne novel!

We descended this spiral stair to the basement!

Kinda give you vertigo doesn't it?

Goodby Earth.........

Definitely not ADA friendly but a very unique experience and also good exercise!  Watch your head though, that metal tread plate is very unforgiving!

And behold!  A wealth of (un-indexed) survey records for my perusal.....