The Life And Death And Then The Life, And Death Again, And Finally Life.... Of A Rocking Chair.

Working on furniture probably my most favorite thing to work on, regardless of what kind of a piece of furniture it is... is family pieces. Something handed down for a few generations and used. When customers bring them in, I usually get the story about how Great Great Grandma carried this chest of drawers on her back, across the Chisholm Trail while fighting Indians with the other hand and dodging charging bison, while Great Great Grandpa rode in the wagon suffering from cholera. Sometimes the stories are even better, but I love 'em all. I truly do.

This little report is about a rocking chair. In particular, this rocking chair.



The lady (Dianna) that brought in this dainty little thing was originally from our neighborhood, since moved away and had come back for a weekend visit with her mother (Frankie Mae) who lived down the road from us, and unfortunately has since passed away. She was a treasure and a half. Anyway I got the story about how many generations it had been handed down and it was so special to her and I assured her that it would be returned to her in fit condition to be handed down for many more generations in her family.

Now looking at the picture, it's a little tough. Lots of square nails driven into it and wire tying chair parts together, the normal "make do" type of repairs that I see a lot of. But the killer was someone over the years had tried to weave a new seat for it out of binder twine... and had done a pretty poor job of it. It originally had a woven cane seat. Not to toot my own horn, but I seem to be able to sort the roses from the rat turds when I see a piece of furniture in the rough... and this one was a definite "rose". To this day I don't think I've worked on a rocker that was so dainty, so light... it weighed just a few pounds. It was so ornate with all the spindles and beads and the turned "beehive" side spindles, I WANTED to work on this chair for Dianna.

And I did.

An unbelievable amount of work went into it. "Disrepairing" the crude repairs that had been handed out to it over the years, replacing broken pieces to make them look like they'd always been there, a new woven seat went into it, a complete reglueing from top to bottom and finally, the finish. It looked awesome. Of all the furniture I've worked on, this silly little rocker still stands out in my mind.

So it now has "life" once again. Dianna came and was moved to tears when she saw it, she was in love with her families small legacy. She just said over and over "It's beautiful Jace". That's part of my payment. When they cry, I know I've done my best.

Now then... let's get a little more in depth with this tale of this chair.

Not to be rude or crude or anything else, but Dianna is a large girl. Too large to fit into this delicate little chair, it obviously was going to be the centerpiece of a corner of her living room and that was it. Anyway, I put the chair in Dianna's car and she left to go to her Mother's house to show it off.

30 minutes go by, my phone rings. It's Frankie Mae. Now Frankie had a pretty severe Missouri drawl. One syllable words always became 2 syllable and often times 3.

Frankie Mae: "Ja-ace?"

Me: "Hi Frankie, what's going on? Did you see the chair yet?"

F M: "Ye-es, it's just beeeutiful."

Me: "Dianna seemed real happy with it too"

F M: "Oh ye-es, she was just thrilled to pieces, but Ja-ace, she had an accident."

Now as if on cue... waaaaay back in the background from Frankie Mae's end of the phone I hear the mournful wail of Dianna.

Phone background: "Ohhhh noooooooooo ahhhhh"

Me: "What happened? Is that Dianna? Is she alright Frankie?"

F M: "She's a little skinned up Ja-ace, but she'll be juuust fine."

Me: "Skinned up?"

F M: "Dianna was carrying the chair into the house so I could look at it and Ja-ace... she tripped on a cra-ack in the dumb old sidewalk and fell on the chair."

Phone background: "Ohhhhh nooooooooo waaaaaaaa waaaaaaaa" Frankie Mae paused while Dianna finished her mourning before starting to speak again.

F M: "Her chair needs a little fixing Ja-ace"

Now in my mind I had Dianna pictured, her frame and stature, tripping and falling on the most delicate little maple and pine rocker on earth... and I had pictured nothing but a small box of broken chair, smashed to smithereenies. No longer a chair. Never to be a chair again.

Me: "Uh... how bad is it?"

F M: "There's some pieces busted clean offa it."

Phone Background: (with new fuel) "AAAAIIIIIIIIII NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OHH MYYY GOD AAAAAHHHHHHH"

We both waited for Dianna to take a breath and I told her I'd be right over to pick it up and see what we could do. And I left.

I've never seen such a pitiful sight as what I saw when I walked into that kitchen. A skinned up Dianna and an even more skinned up rocker. Dianna just sitting there with a box of tissues in her lap and washcloths on her knees. I looked it over and it did look much worse than it really was. I assured her that it was gonna be just like it was and she seemed to be a little better.

I hauled it back to the shop, did some massaging to it and a little gluing and she came by the next morning and I loaded it back in her car again. I've done several pieces for the family since that one.

How did it look all finished? Like this. It lives. :-)

Reading a cow's body language. Lesson 1

I have been trampled, stomped, kicked, butted, fell on, squished, knocked down, had my truck charged, had my Honda 4 wheeler tossed about 6 foot in the air once by a mighty well pissed off bull. In short, any kind of punishment that a bovine type creature can deal out... I have been the recipient of said punishment at some point in my life, and I feel every single one of those incidents every day when I get up.

I used to revel in being in the middle of a cow fracas and was quick enough to dodge most hooves and heads. Nowdays, I prefer standing on a gate as to being in the middle of 50 head of 1000 pound cows in a barn corral. Things hurt me more the older I get, and what's worse, I heal slower.

When Sal and I started dating and I showed her my cows, she was more than a little intimidated by the size of 'em... never having been close to a cow in her life. She'd had sheep and such, but cows were a whole new game for her. I tried to reassure her that it was pretty safe being in the close proximity of a cow if you learned to think like a cow and understand her body language.

You can imagine the look and reaction that a gentleman receives when he encourages his date that it's best if she thinks like a cow.

Next stop is the florist to fix that.

Anyhow, I've got a couple of pictures to help illustrate a couple of cow poses that best demonstrate some cow body language. In this first picture you see a brand new baby calf, about 30 minutes old, mostly licked clean by his momma and doing the stumbly, hop walk getting his earth legs.




Okay, now look carefully at the tilt of the momma cow's ears. See how she's holding her head up high? See how she has positioned herself so that she's kind of hovering over her new baby? Okay, here's what this bit of cow body language means in human terms.

"Mr. farmer Carhart wearin' man... one step closer and I'm gonna dole out an ass kicking that's gonna make you wanna gladly go home to be with the Lord 'cause you're gonna linger on the edge of life for a week or two first."

There's a slight variation of this body language that doesn't give you that 2 week lingering. You just die.

The next pose that you'll generally see is this one, immediately following the last pose.



Even the common layman, or city person can identify this bit of cow body language. To verbalize what the cow is saying in this pose...

"That's right, you better run, round boy. HA! I laugh at your puniness!"

Run For Your Lives, Here Comes The Colon Scope!

Welp, after 11 days in the hospital, my mom finally came home today and she's doing well. She had to have the slack yanked outta her chain a bit towards the end of her stay there... for her own good, but that's a whole nuther story. It's reached that point in our lives where a parent and child sometimes switch places... it's not a real easy swap either.

Eh well and C'est la vie, cousin.

A few of you have already heard this story, but it just seemed like a great time to wheel it out again because... well just because. The whole hospital thing and all that with my folks and sometimes a little levity goes a helluva long way in life.

Alright, my folks (Dad is 80 and blast to be around and my Mom is... is "interesting" lol) decided to each go have a colonoscopy done on the same day and naturally needed chauffeuring to the hospital and back home, and seeing to it that all questions were answered and asked and etc. etc... so it was "I" that got this task. First of all I couldn't believe that they both wanted this done at the same time, and knew that it'd be, at the very least an interesting day, and most probably would generate at least one good story. With proper mental preparation... I lovingly performed my sonly task, and hauled my folks in to a duo of colon scopes.

To give you the cutting edge feel for this story you gotta know a bit about my Dad. Dad is 80 but his mind is about 40... sharp as a tack and a hoot to hang out with now that I've grown up and realized just how smart Pop is. But my Dad's one thing that he's stumbled with his whole life is his inability to get the proper word out for the thing he's describing. Either that or he so horribly mangles a word that you just gotta make a good guess what the heck he's talking 'bout and go with your gut feeling. I call it "Dad Breaking Out In Norm", after the comedian Norm Crosby who made a comedy career outta torturing the english language. Best of all, he's a good sport with me being reduced to tears at some of his Normisms, usually laughing along with me... but sometimes falling to his standby response to me "Oh you damn honyock..." No, I do not know precisely what a honyock is, other than my Dad decided that "I" was one at times from about 14 years old to present day.

Okay so Mom and Dad are getting their things done and I take off and eat a late breakfast at a restaurant, 'cause I know when they get done, they're gonna be starved to death and THE ONLY place they'll eat is Ponderosa... and Ponderosa makes me sick. Really. So, I go back to the hospital and they've just wheeled Mom out and she's totally incoherent and not much entertainment at all for me, but then... THEN they wheel Dad out and he's always a riot when he's 'bout half lit on any kinds of meds. We've witnessed him wrestling little monkeys with hammers, among other things, while coming out of morphine induced, post surgery stupor.

So I'm in the little recovery area with Dad (Mom is 1 curtain away) and I ask him if he had fun and all the usual stuff like that... and I get the "you damn honyock" response And I ask him if they found anything cool while they were looking around in there and he says (Normism number one coming) "Yeah... they found 3 Pollocks"

Now see, most people would be quite alarmed that a doctor had found 3 saltwater fish in their parents lower innards during an exam... not me. After wiping my tears with the 3rd Kleenex I said "I think you mean Polyps, Dad, but if it WAS Pollocks...that's cool too" I got another "Honyock" and my folks came around, we gathered up their paperwork and we left, yes, for Ponderosa.

We get to Ponderosa and I tell 'em that I already ate and I'm gonna run across the highway to the Tractor Supply store and shop a little bit, and I'll be back in about 45 minutes to pick them up. So I do, and I get back to Ponderosa and they're about done eating, and I'm sitting with 'em and visiting. Now the place is absolutely packed, I think every table is filled 'cause it's right at noon, and a couple stops by the table that are friends with my folks and chat a little bit. The man asks my folks what they're doing in town today and my Dad (Normism number two coming up and quite possibly the ULTIMATE Normism) says.... "Shirley and I both had Colostomies done this morning"

Folks, let me tell you something. There is NOTHING... NOTHING that can quiet a busy restaurant quite so efficiently as my Dad, or probably anyone for that matter, announcing loudly that he and his wife both had a colostomy done that morning and thru the miracle of modern science... there they were at noon sitting in a restaurant eating buffett food like crazy.

I sit there staring at an imaginary spot on the table top for quite awhile, trying to scrape it away with my thumbnail, and I say to Dad "Colonoscopy". But he doesn't hear me and I glance sideways a little to see just how much concern the neighboring restraunteurs are showing at the news... and as near as I can tell... concern is not what they are showing.

Eh well... I loaded 'em back in the car and took 'em back home and all is well with the world.

Towers and Calves

My buddy Gary called this morning and said the Telephone Co. was coming at 9 to climb the tower... this tower lol and start hanging electronics on it, and of course I got over there just as soon as I got back from the farm. They sent a boy out 'bout my size to climb this thing. Me and Gary were both immediately wondering about this decision that they'd made, we were thinking they oughta be sending a short and skinny guy up there, and this guy was DEFINITELY uncomfortable going up this thing.

There he goes...




The guy got to this point here and just stopped. We stood and watched him for a few minutes and finally Gary hollared and asked if he was okay... and he started up some more.




Almost there...





And finally he makes it. At this point we're both kinda worried that the guy was just gonna lockup up there and not be able to come down. Poor guy was obviously outside his comfort zone. He just stood up there for a real long time, just kinda watching the world go by.



In the end there was some kind of electrical interference of some sort and they had to bring all their stuff down. Friday another climber is coming out with all new electronics. I was bored to tears watching this poor schmuck, I dunno if I'll make it for the Friday climb.



The calf crop is progressing nicely with not too many problems this year. The cold snap from a few weeks ago was pretty tough on the calves ears that were unfortunate enough to be born on those 3 days. Took the tips of them right off and gives 'em kind of a clip eared schnauzer look... if schnauzers looked like calves.




And there's always the genetic throwback. We've got some Simmental lineage in our brood cows and every once inawhile you get one of these little chocolate colored rigs. They don't sell quite as well because of their color, but they're kinda cute.




A nice little puddle of babies.





And finally a little guy with attitude on his face.

Where's The Bacon?

I love bacon. I mean I REALLY like bacon a lot, if there was any food that I love as much as bacon or maybe more, it'd be peanut butter. A while back when I was making a peanut butter sandwich, there was some leftover bacon in the fridge and, well... I flung some of it on my sandwich and Lord have mercy! It brought back memories from years and years ago, delicious!

Maybe it's an acquired taste, I dunno, but doing a search turns up gobs of hits for peanut butter and bacon food items. Like a regular old peanut butter and bacon sandwich. Another website has several recipes for peanut butter/bacon stuff, including (lol) Peanut butter bacon rollups. And finally a recipe for a peanut butter bacon mixture from none other than Jif Peanut Butter. Anyhow, I'm not the only one that likes this combination. On the other hand, you can probably find a recipe online for vanilla/pickle/onion ice cream, so....

When I was a lad, 40 some odd (heavy on the odd) years ago, I swear I remember a product that was peanut butter with bacon already in it... kinda like that goober jelly spread stuff. Like a lot of things that happened when you were little, things sometimes become "fact" and maybe that's what happened with this. Hell I dunno, but it sure seems real.

I've done all sorts of Google searches on this, almost to the point of obsession trying to find mention of this stuff somewhere on the wide wide world of the internets and there ain't a trace of it.

Any of y'all ever remember seeing or eating this stuff 40 some odd (heavy on the odd) years ago?

And just outta nowhere, and nothing to do with bacon OR peanut butter, a pic that Sal snapped of the back of a local dairy truck a few months ago. Just made us smile.

Love Me Like A Man by Bonnie Raitt

Just experimenting here a bit with putting youtubes up on my blog. This is a little video that we did with the group of friends that I play with. The gal doing the vocals, Martina... talent running out of her ears. Her mom, on the upright bass is actually trained in classical opera and has a pretty amazing voice. The harp player... that's Louis, our doctor. Very gifted with that thing, loves the blues. The guitar player, Ronnie has been involved with a number of bands over the years and is a whole lotta fun to play with. And Bradon... LOL the kid with the walkon sippy cup/harmonica performance... absolutely kills me. The mandolin is fairly new for me being a long time guitar player, been playing it for a few months now. Anyway, this song is getting some looks on Youtube now and I'm a youtubaholic. Thought I'd see how this works with the blog. That is all, carry on. :-)

How to show a steer in one easy lesson.

Yesterday debijeanm left a comment on my post about watching a calf being shown at a local fair. I've done that. Just once, but I did it and I did it with more style and flair than those folks that were there, had ever seen before OR since.

At one point in my career as a boy I belonged to 4-H. I didn't really fit that mold too well, but some of my friends were in it at the time and it seemed like a good thing and for my parents, it kept me outta trouble.... usually, when I was participating in some 4-H'edly type of activity.

My big 4-H project was to raise a steer, fatten him up, make him purty, keep records of his feed and rate of gain and finally show him in a show ring for all the world to see what I'd done. Now I know that there's 1000's of kids that do this and seem to love doing it, but friends... there's just not a whole lot of entertainment value in poking the feed to a calf and watching him get fat. It'll bore you to smithereenies if you get to dwelling on it much.

Now don't get me wrong... man I was good at making a calf fat. That sonofagun put on weight faster than Liz Taylor between husbands. Filled out like August roadkill, man. I washed him and combed him and talked to him, played the radio for him, led him around like a 1000 pound puppy dog and gave him a name. Sue. The Johnny Cash song "A Boy Named Sue" was popular at the time and I thought I was pretty cool naming him that and not dorky at all.

On a whim one day, in serious moment of "watching the animal get fat" boredom, I decided that Ol' Sue needed to be rode. Now I'm not talking Bullrider type of riding, I'm talking 'bout getting up on the back of Sue and riding him around like a goldanged horse.

And so I did.

Albeit there were a few wild rides, as much as Sue liked me and all, he didn't take to having a passenger too much. But I was persistent and he was patient and pretty soon I was riding him all over creation. In retrospect it was probably anti-productive giving him all that extra exercise when the main objective with this whole project was making him fatter. But it sure was entertaining!

Anyway, the day finally came when it was time to show Sue in the showring at the local county fair and I was ready beyond belief. I'd dressed up like a cow shower person should and had Sue all primped and primed, right down to shoe polish on his hooves... 'cause to a livestock judge that's evidently a normal thing. I led him into the showring and the judges were all walking around us and making me turn him around and walk him past them and they were looking at things that I didn't even know what.

Everyone seemed real satisfied with what they'd seen and they said I could leave the showring so... I just hopped right on Sue's back, gave him a "giddyup" and rode that sonofagun right outta the showring, across the fairgrounds and into the barn there.

Yes I did.

A calf show is one of the most boring things on the face of the earth to stand and watch and I felt like I was just taking this thing on up to the next level in entertainment value. I don't think that there was a single person there that day that had ever seen a kid hop on the back of his show calf and ride off into the sunset on him. I got a blue ribbon but always felt like I got slighted some... shoulda got to go to the state fair with him.