Subterfuge and Hydraulics 101

You would suspect certain government agencies to be involved in subterfuge.  The CIA is all about trickery...intrigue...craftiness.  The FBI?  I'd say they've done their share of deceptions, guises and ploys.  But who would suspect the meek and lowly Missouri Department of Conservation of such chicanery?

In the early 1990's, I was the Crew Chief on a four-man survey field crew, working in the Peck Ranch Conservation Area.  It was in the late fall, rainy...muddy...overcast, just right for something to go wrong.  We were in two trucks, (myself in the lead, of course) driving into the area where we were going to begin traversing.  I had talked with the agents at the Peck Ranch headquarters and they had given specific directions on how to access the trail to our beginning point.

Included in these directions is the subject of this whole story. The trail we needed to drive down began at a small camping area with a gravel parking lot.  The parking area had guard posts or bollards around the parking lot to keep people from driving into the camping area (which really makes a lot of sense.)  These guard posts looked like short telephone poles with rounded tops and were firmly set in the ground. Here is the sneaky part...one of the posts was NOT set firmly in the ground. The Department had made a concrete post hole, about two feet deep, just the size of the post.  A post was cut to just the right length so that when it was put into the post hole, it looked just exactly like one of the other (firmly set) posts!  Our directions were to remove the post, drive through the opening, replace the post in the post hole and proceed through the  camping area to the old trail.

We followed the directions to the letter.  Since I was leading, I pulled the post out of the concrete post hole, set it to the side, drove on through and radioed to the guys in the truck behind, "Just drop that post back in the hole when you're clear".  One of the guys (I'll just call him Bob) wrestled the post back to the post hole, tipped it up and positioned it above the post hole...And dropped'er in!

I really haven't forgotten our lesson in Hydraulics 101. Pascal's Law states that the "Pressure applied to any part of a confined fluid transmits to every other part with no loss. The pressure acts with equal force on all equal areas of the confining walls and perpendicular to the walls."  Remember what kind of a day it was...rainy...wet.  The post was loose enough in the concrete post hole to allow water (fluid) into the post hole (confined space).  Along with the water, there were sundry other things that had made their way into the post hole...decaying leaves, mud, insects....which made kind of a black, smelly soup in the bottom of the hole.  When Bob dropped the post into the post hole, it applied equal pressure on this black-smelly-soup...and since it really was not fully confined, the black-smelly-soup shot up the sides of the post and right into Bob's face!

Now...None of us were witnesses to the "equal pressure applied to a confined fluid" but we certainly saw the effects! Bob had leaves in his hair...in his nose...in his ears...down his shirt, black gunk on his face...in his hair...in his mouth...and he had acquired a certain amount of ire! His first comment to me (when he could talk without getting more black goo in his mouth) was "WHY DID YOU TELL ME TO DROP THE POST BACK IN THE HOLE?!?".  In between guffaws of laughter, I said "Bob...Bob...I didn't mean for you to DROP it back in the hole, just ease it down so it wouldn't...Do what it did!!" He was hot for awhile but in a few hours we were able to laugh about it, marvel at the subterfuge of the Missouri Department of Conservation and discuss the darker side of Hydraulics 101...

The New Well

  We moved from the farm house at county line to the Conklin house at Junction Hill in the winter of '69. It was right beside the "Six-Acres" that Dad already owned and was just down the road from the Junction Hill Pentecostal Church where we attended.
  When we moved in, the only source of water was a cistern.  Let me explain... The house and the barn had gutters that caught the rainwater running off of the roofs.  Then, there was a maze of downspouts and gutters, above the ground, across the yard that carried the water to the cistern.

I couldn't find an example I liked so...I just made one. (OK...I know it's not Rembrandt quality but it will suffice!)

On top of the cistern, there was a filter that all of the water from the gutters ran into.  The filter was a concrete box built on top of the cistern, filled with gravel and sand, with a wooden cover.  Just imagine for a minute, all the things that got washed off of the house and barn, into the gutters, through the downspouts, across the yard in the gutters, then into the filter!  Leaves, grit from the shingles, small sticks and....and...bird poop... spiders... June bugs...LOTS of June bugs!...  The rainwater would filter through all the bugs and bird malarky, through the gravel and sand, and fall into the cistern.  The cistern was a round concrete tank, built into the ground, about eight feet across and fifteen feet deep.  There was a pump in the cistern that pumped the water to the house for drinking, toilets, baths, and such.  How 'bout a nice cold drink of cistern water!?!  As a matter of fact, the water did have a peculiar taste.
  It can get purty dry in the Ozarks during the summer and sometimes the water in the cistern would get low.  When this happened, Dad would call the old "water-hauler", Stanley Mock.  Stanley would pull up in his old truck with the leaky water tank, run the hose down into the cistern, turn on the spigot and fill-'er-up!
  It may have been Dad's plan all along to drill a well or he may have just got tired of drinking "June Bug Juice"!  Because in the summer of 1970, an old Well Driller arrived to drill us a new well.  Now the first thing he did was "witch" a place in our back yard for the water well.  In my recollection, he had a forked stick, shaped like a "Y" to "douse" with.

He took the two upper parts of the "Y" in his hands and started walking around the back yard with the bottom leg of the "Y" held out in front of him.  He walked around the yard between our house and the barn until he came to a spot where the stick started to dip toward the ground.  This was a sure sign of water and that's where they started drilling the well!
  First of all, they set up the drilling rig.  It was an old "pounder" or "pound" type rig (more accurately called a Cable Tool Drill Rig) that drilled by raising a heavy metal "bit" and dropping it over and over, through a piece of pipe casing, into the ground.

The "bit" was attached to a cable that went up through a sheave at the top of the derrick and back down and connected to a large hinged arm called the spudder.  The spudder was connected to a large wheel on the rig engine by a connecting rod that was set so that as the wheel turned, the spudder moved up and down.

  After the rig was set up, the drillers went down into our woods and cut down a bunch of saplings and hauled them back up to the "business" end of the rig.  They then proceeded to build a "brush arbor" to shade them from the sun.  They used some of the larger trees as supports, made a framework for the "roof" of slightly smaller saplings, then piled even smaller saplings with lots of leaves on the top to give them shade.  After drilling for awhile, the sludge or slurry had to be cleaned out of the casing.  This sludge was a result of the rock and dirt that was pounded out by the bit being mixed with water pumped into the casing.  After the bit was pulled out, there was a special pipe called the "bailer" that was lowered down into the casing and removed the sludge and ran it out on the ground. Now my Dad didn't want a big pond of gray soupy sludge in the back yard, so, being the handyman he was, he fixed the problem!  He built a trench out of boards on top of the ground that ran the sludge from the drill rig, down past the clothes line, around the little hill by the barn and under the fence into the barn lot!  No sludge in our yard!
  With all the pounding, the drill bit would get dull.  So...The drillers cleaned out the front part of the little open shed on the end of the barn and set up a blacksmiths shop.

It looked something like this...

They had a portable forge, complete with coal and a bellows.  Then there was an anvil and all the tools needed to sharpen the bits when they were dulled.
  As you can just imagine, this was almost more than a little boy could take in all at once!  The best I can recollect, it took two or three weeks for the well to be drilled.  Day after day...from sunup to late evening...Ka-thud! Ka-thud! Ka-thud!...for hours at a time.  And then...quiet for sludge pumping...or lunch...or driving more casing and then back to Ka-thud! Ka-thud! Ka-thud!
  Finally, the day came when the drillers drilled deep enough and hit a good supply of water.  It was time for the constant pounding to stop, the rig to come down, the blacksmith shop loaded up and the most exciting event of our summer to come to an end!
  Dad built a little concrete wellhouse in the ground around the well casing with a flat piece of concrete covering it.  The well was hooked up to the water lines in the house and for the first time in months, we enjoyed pure-de-ole deep well water!  No more "June Bug Juice" for the Riggs family!

Heaven's to Betsy!

You just never know!  On my morning walk in Branson and this "Heeleecoptor" appears.  I had just climbed a gi-normous hill and I wasn't real sure if it was real or an hallucination!

My Little Buddy

I have been very lax in getting pictures of the No. 1 grandson, Lucas Rey Miller, on this here blog!  So...here he is, the "Solemn Ole Judge", with his " ummm...I just woke up" face!

Grandma Riggs' Car

A 1995 Mercury Sable, white, blue interior, high mileage...No, this is not a classified ad...just a little story about a great little car.

I remember when Mom bought this car.  I don't know the year but it was from an individual on Minnesota Street, just north of 1st Street.  Not that it matters but if that person had just of known how much wear we would get out of it...

Mom drove the car until she passed away and we had to decide what to do with it.  The funeral was about two weeks before Tabitha was leaving for college at Ozark Bible Institute in Neosho.  She was driving a hand-me-down from Mom and Dad...an older model, white Ford Taurus with a hare-lipped left rear fender.  Our families sat down and talked it over and decided...that since Ryan Riggs had just started driving, he would get the Taurus and Tabitha would take Grandma Riggs' Car.

Tabitha drove it back and forth to college for three years and it never missed a lick! It even went through a couple of ice storms!  After Tabitha married, it stayed in Neosho for awhile, was parked at our house for awhile and even made a couple of trips to northern Indiana!  When Tab and Anson moved to West Plains, they drove it for awhile and when it was no longer needed, it just sat lonely and forlorn.  A few days ago, a fellow from the El Charro restaurant, stopped to talk to Anson about buying the car.  Anson washed the little car up, put in a new battery (free replacement!), named the man a price and it was SOLD!  Tabitha said she had a few tears in her eyes when he drove the car away!

One story about the car...

Tabitha soloed home, about a month or so after she started college.  We had a family reunion and then we were going to Branson, Missouri for a day.  We left her car at Ozark, Missouri and after we were done at Branson, we were going to pick up the car, lead her through Springfield to I-44, and then...Bon Voyage!  We cut it a little too close...It was 7:45...dark...a little over an hours drive to Neosho...and Tabitha had to be to the dorm by 9 P.M.!  We took off from Ozark, flew down the James River Expressway and finally made it to I-44.  I was talking to Tabitha on the cell phone and told her "We'll get you onto 44 and then we will exit off at Bois D'Arc and you just keep going."  The plan worked to perfection...we exited off, she passed by us honking and when we got to the stop sign at the overpass, we watched her tail lights disappear into the dark....

OK folks...I'm not ashamed to admit it...we sat there and just bawled for a couple of minutes!  After we got our composure, we pulled on across the overpass and headed east toward home.  But we didn't make it very far!  We pulled over at the McDonald's at Kansas Expressway (about ten miles east) and waited for her call to tell us she had made it.  When she pulled into the dorm parking lot, she had about two minutes to spare!

Not to be philosophical, but it seems there was more to this adventure than what we realized.  It was like those tail lights, disappearing into the darkness, was when we truly gave our daughter over to God's will and into His protection.  We have had hard partings since and I know there are some in the future.  However, I have said many times..."When you dedicate them to the Lord, you can't just holler "calf-rope" when God decides to use them beyond your zone of comfort......."

Egg-splosion!

Sometimes, you should just listen to your wife.

Not too long after Tami and I were married, we came home from church one evening and I began searching the refrigerator for a snack.  I finally scrounged up a hard-boiled egg (HBE) and thought I had hit the jackpot.  However, the HBE was cold and I figured it would be much better warmed up.  This is just the thing that microwave ovens were made for...right?

As I put it on a saucer and started to pop it in the microblaster, Tami stated, with a superior air, "Ray, you're not supposed to put eggs in the microwave."  I replied (with a superior air) "That is only raw eggs, in the shell."  I proceeded to explain about the yolk being inside the airtight shell and steam pressure building up inside the shell and the explosion that would ensue if you zapped a raw egg.  "This cannot happen to an HBE because there is no shell and no liquid" (also said with a superior and knowledgeable air.)

I popped the HBE in the micro, blasted it for a minute or so, popped it out and set the saucer with the HBE on the table.  Tami was already sitting at the table eating her cheerios and I sat down to chow down on my HBE.  It was just sitting there on the plate...but there was a faint noise...a gentle sssssssssssssssssss... Now that doesn't sound too ominous does it?  So...using my second digit (right index finger), I poked down on the HBE.

Have you ever been so totally shocked you couldn't move or scream or....????  With a KA-WHOOM!!! the HBE totally disintegrated on my plate!  My finger was still in mid-air over the now-nonexistent HBE.  There was HBE on the walls, on the ceiling, on the stove, on the refrigerator, in Tami's hair, it burnt little spots on her face and Yes...there was egg on my face!

And then...silence...We just sat there looking at each other for a few seconds and then both of us just burst out laughing!  We cleaned up the mess, I got me some cheerio's and sat down to eat again, with a new appreciation for my new wife and her "superior" culinary knowledge!

Oh My Laig!

Hank and Drover...what would our life have been like without Hank and Drover?...and Slim?...and Little Alfred?...and Wallace & Junior?...and Rip & Snort???  If you are not a diehard fan of "Hank the Cowdog", you have no idea what I'm talking about.

In the early 90's (the 1990's...), Mike and LaDona Blue were our pastors at Junction Hill Pentecostal Church.  They traveled quite a bit and they loved to stop at Cracker Barrel.  Back then, Cracker Barrel had a deal where you could "rent" audio books at one Cracker Barrel and return them at another one on down the road.  They started renting "Hank the Cowdog" on cassette tape and came back home telling us the capers of the "Head of Ranch Security"!  Well...we skedaddled on down to the library and rented some for Tabitha...and the rest (as they say) is history.  Tabitha (and Mom & Dad) fell in love with the escapades of ole Hank and Drover!

John Erickson, who hails from Perryton, in the Texas Panhandle, wrote these series of books about a ranch dog named Hank and his trusty sidekick, a stub-tailed mutt named Drover.  Mr. Erickson proceeded to read his books for audio books and do all of the characters' voices. Hank is the "Yogi Berra" of dogdom.  He can mess up the simplest phrases and idioms! Drover is a scaredy cat and is perpetually excusing himself from any work or task by blaming his gimpy leg...hence the phrase "I would do thus and so but....OH MY LAIG!!"  Other characters are introduced in the books such as "Pete the Barn Cat", the ranch hand "Slim", the owners of the ranch "High Loper" and "Sally May", the buzzards "Wallace" (Pa) and Junior (Son) and of course the coyotes "Rip" and "Snort"!  Mr. Erickson is still writing "Hank" books so if you want to get "edgeakated" in the world of "Hankdom" just go to his site right HERE

The last part of January, we traveled to the Texas Panhandle, the the City of Perryton...to our Nephew's wedding.  Bracy Bean and Briana Barton were married in Perryton and John Erickson even helped ole Brace propose!  On the way there, I was privileged to pass through the "Mecca of Dogdom", Ochiltree County Texas!  This is Hank's stomping grounds and is mentioned many times in his books.

The town of Darrouzett is also mentioned in the stories, although I think the spelling is different.

But the "Holy Ground" of "Dogdom" is a town called "Twitchell".  This is where Hank invariably gets into trouble when he rides into town with Slim or High Loper.  In the book, it is a full sized town with all kinds of businesses, but as you can see in the pictures below, it's just a wide spot in the road beside the railroad track! And it's spelled different!  I know the suit is incongruous with the surroundings but you gotta get the picture when you have the chance!

So...all you "Hank" fans out there...be JEALOUS!  I done been there and have the pictures to prove it!