Durned Dawg!

So I got up on Valentine's Day ready to do various things. I fixed breakfast for my sweetie and got ready to go online to find out the day's news. Nothing. No intertubes.

So I went outside and found the problem, the place where the phone company guy had spliced the line together was broken. Now that was broken by the dog, specifically Cochise' Apache Princess. That wire is too high off the ground for Pugs to break.

So, $99.00 later the phone company repairman had the wire replaced. I was willing to try to splice it together but he had spliced in another type of wire and the colors didn't match.

So I never bothered to take pictures for Doggie Friday. Anybody want to buy a dog? I keep hoping this one will grow past the destructodog phase before I am homeless but I'm not taking bets.

Candles And Big Wax Spills.

Well, I am proceeding in teaching myself candle making. I was all set to go to my Cowboy Action Shooting Club's work day but Army Wife, Toddler Mom sent the bug that has them down through the internets and now I'll have to get better to die.

So, I was supposed to go help paint and rip the top off the blockhouse and then help hang the steel targets for today's shoot. Instead I stayed home and used tissues, mostly. And then I'd cough until I felt a little hairy ring in my throat, swallowed hard, and repeated.

It's really annoying, too. If I'd made the work day I could have had a practice shoot, for free. Instead, no. It's really annoying. I have a few boxes of those new (to me) sparklers, the ones that aren't on steel rods, and I have a bunch of those cut up into some shotgun shells, along with the black powder, wads and bird shot. If I have this figured right it should be very visually impressive. Oh well, maybe next month.

So, I have a few really impressive smelling candles, the problem is with the wicks. I don't know if the young lady I spoke to didn't know what she was doing or if I, somehow, misspoke but the wicks are too small in diameter for the size of my containers. It's more likely my fault.

Now I've made the candles work, by putting another wick in the bottom of the containers, I just stick the already made candle into a two hundred degree F oven until the wax is melted, plunk the other wick down and, viola! Trouble is, the old wicks are glued in the middle, already so the geometry is off. Oh well, it's experimental, anyhow.

I did try taking one wick off it's little metal tab or base and wrapped it round another wick and glued that in the bottom of one jar. That worked, nicely. That is what I'll do with the rest of the jars I haven't already glued a wick in, not many. Oh well, when I have the melting, wicking and fragrance down I'm buying a gross of jars. I'm looking hard at the 16 ounce Mason/jelly jars. These are five and a half inches tall by three inches in diameter. The wax blend I'm using, that will make a candle that really lasts.

The soy wax, with just a little real beeswax, does make a candle that burns and burns. I am going to have to buy a couple of melting/pouring pitchers, the old two saucepan country boy double boiler rig spills too much. This brings complaints from the kitchen management. And my reloading powder funnels don't work real well to move the fragrance oil from the big bottle to the one ounce bottle I use for measuring. And that fragrance oil stuff is WAY too expensive to be spilling. Oh well, this is a learning experience, right?

I have figured out what to do if the Democrats win this next election. I am going to buy a big bottle of the patchouli scented oil and sprinkle some on the deck and back steps. Then when they come for me the stench will throw off the dogs.


In other news, the thing that started this whole candle mess, that new bullet lube. I think it will work. I must melt down that fifty+ pounds of plumber's lead, add some tin and cast a few hundred .45 bullets. Then lube and and try it. Of course everyone acts like black powder bullet lube is some kind of rocket surgery or brain science. Truth be told, almost any wax/shortening or tallow mixture works. Just don't use pork or beef tallow for stuff you want to keep around. Once that lard gets rancid the stuff still lubes the bullets and keeps the powder fouling soft but it smells something awful. Now mutton tallow works and so does deer tallow. Me, I just use veggie shortening, the kind with no salt or butter flavor.

Okay, it is now Tuesday night. We had a big rain and thunderstorm last night.CAP is now a mud monster again. As usual we lost the phone and the internet until late this afternoon when the sun dried out the wiring. Seems that the phone company will not repair the kind of wiring we have and it will be some months before we can afford to replace it with the kind they do guarantee. Oh well, it's not like I talk on the phone. It does annoy me to lose the 'net.

We also lost the TV Satellite service. The annoying thing about that is that it is difficult to understand the East Indian accents of the tech support folks. We have it back now after much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Last, anyone with a prayer or good wish to spare can visit Tammi, of Tammi's World and see how her family is weathering the rough patch. I haven't been there yet today due to the internet problem but when last there I couldn't even leave an attagirl comment to my tall pal, her hosting company was having a spam attack. The nice thing about being a blogger nobody ever heard of is little to no spam.

Well that is my big week so far. I must go swallow a hairy ring now.

No More Politics For These Dogs.

The dogs have decided no more politics for a while. They claim it is bad for my blood pressure. They may be right. So I am going to play with the dogs and practice making candles and my new kind of bullet lube.


When, or if, the Republican Party wants to go back to it's conservative roots, they can call me. The dogs want me to write in Sunny Lucas for President. Suits me. We could save a lot of money with a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix in that office. I'm pretty sure the Secret Service bill would go down, ever seen the teeth on one of those critters?

The cost of Air Force One would go down, as we'd have to replace that big ol' jet with a small plane with a window for her to stick her head out. State dinners would be short and cheap. Even Science Diet is cheaper than that fancy stuff the human politicians eat. And think of the savings when we pay her in pork. Yes, and Sunny would give new meaning to the term "pork barrel politics". Just think of the Border Patrol under a Sunny Lucas Administration. Take a bite out of border crime.

So, in other news, I got the stuff to make a few candles. Unfortunately there is a problem keeping them lit. The wax melts and tuns over the wick and puts it out. I seem to bemember reading that this is a sign that the wick is too small. So in one candle I put it in the oven at 200 degrees F and when the wax was all melted I inserted another wick. Since the wicks are already glued in it wasn't centered right but it's burning well. So I am learning. I think I am going to have to buy jars, all in a bunch, from a candle making place instead of the flea market. The trouble with the flea market is each different size of jar needs a different wick.

Oh well, the lilac smells good and the candle place sent an ounce of a different scent oil, "clean cotton". It smells like fresh sheets, right off the clothes line.

I would take it as a favor if no one asks why the dog pictures are at the bottom. I did not change anything. Furthermore, don't anyone ask why the Bad Example Family Blogroll is visible when I access this on aol and invisible in Firefox.

So, Now What?

So, my state, Texas, doesn't vote until March fourth,but most of the people I would have voted for are out. Somehow that feels wrong. Worse, the one man I would never vote for is the Republican frontrunner. All those really smart people are telling me I must suck it up and vote for the man that has constantly stuck his finger in my eye because he is the conservative. He is for open borders. He wants to shut down Gitmo. He fought the tax cuts. He actively fought the conservative judges.

Um, that is my agenda. So, I must get behind McCain because otherwise someone who fought the tax cuts, wants to shut down Gitmo, , favors open borders and will fight against conservative judges will win.

Okay, I admit that I'm not the smartest guy in the world. But someone explain why I should work for someone who explicitly called me a racist because I want our border enforced. I have been compromising since the Reagan years, getting about the same promises from the Republicans that black Americans get from the Democrats. Just work with us through this one election and then we'll keep our promise. Except now they say we've beaten those nasty conservatives and they'll like it. Vote with us or you get a foul mouthed big spender, only this time it's no matter how you vote.

Well, I've had it.I'll vote for my Congressman, Jeb Hensarling did a pretty good job. I'll stick with John Cornyn. The rest of the Republican Party can compromise with anyone they want. If they ever decide to compromise with me, again, we'll talk. But as long as getting along with Democrats is more important than getting along with me, it doesn't look very good.

Battle For The Soul Of The Party

We might as well face it, we will probably lose the '08 election. The "country club" wing of the Republican Party have decided that McCain is their man and they will gladly lose this election if it means getting rid of those nasty Christian Conservatives. As lose we will if McCain is the nominee.

Does anybody besides McCain really think that the big Washington/New York/California media will back McCain in the general? Or will the media suddenly remember the Keating five? Will the media suddenly discover McCain's temper and foul mouth? Or will the media go back to form, hating anyone to the right of Vladamir Lenin?

There is a branch of the Republican Party that wants very much to throw the Religious Right over the side. Well, that is fine but be prepared to lose election after election. It is the Religious Right that mans the phone banks. It is the Religious Right that walks the precincts.

The Jurassic Park Republicans do not care about this election, if they can only rid themselves of us troublesome conservatives they'll suffer through four years of Obama or Clinton. One election means nothing if they can defeat those who fought against the McCain Kennedy Amnesty Bill.

The trouble is that McCain will not win, and in losing he will break up the big tent coalition. We will be looking at another generation of lefty governments as in FDR's time.

Berkeley, 1967

I spent the Spring and Summer of 1967 in the San Francisco Bay Area. I had a little bad luck and had a badly broken leg so they sent me to the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland. Then I went to the convalescent barracks at the Treasure Island Base, both long closed now.

The actions of the present day Berkeley City Council come as no surprise. Once I was able to go on pass I I found a place in Oakland, very near the border with Berkeley that was on the bus line and had an owner that wasn't exactly careful about checking the IDs of us Marines and Sailors in uniform, since I turned twenty that year, that was important. Beer, in those days, was a major food group.

Sometime during that Spring the antiwar types got ugly. It became unsafe to wait at that bus stop alone and in uniform. Things were thrown and if a guy was on crutches or in plaster the peace and love types would physically attack him. Peace was important to them, so important that they always tried for the wallet, too. The trouble was when we were in uniform. If we wore civvies we were okay, trouble is we couldn't buy beer. So we tried to stay in groups.

Seems those young peaceloving thugs are all grown up now and on the City Council.

Every Day A New Adventure

A big day yesterday, my Doctor appointment. So I drove in to town, a suburb of Dallas, to see my GP Doc. Oh, when did a GP Doc change into a family practice Doc? Oh well, anyway I got there for my appointment only to find that my Doc had moved on and I had a new Doc. An odd thing was that this new Doc looked down my throat instead of feeling it from the other end. Nice change. Anyhow my official blood pressure is 110 over 80. Fresh prescriptions for the same old pills, drew blood for the usual tests, and I'm out of there.



Then came another adventure, I have a Pard that works in the family scrapyard, excuse me, metal recycling center, and I drove down there for fifty-some pounds of scrap plumber's lead. It cost me a hundred rounds of handloaded ammo. I could had have a hundred pounds, I'll pick up the other fifty pounds another day. Now I can cast bullets. It's nice having gasoline.



This morning's big adventure was digging out the fire ant nest that was built in the hole where the water meter lives. We have a leak in the plumbing of the new water heater, I get to fix that. The fun part is that to get the door off (the water heater is set in a door outside the house) I need the stepladder. So now I have to leave the water off for a few days so the ground dries off.



Oh well, I've done this before, I turn the water on twice a day, flush the toilets and refill the jugs, etc. The good news is that it's real windy today and the next couple days. This should dry the ground out sooner. I like that, Cochise' Apache Princess turns in to a mud monster every time there is a cloud in Oklahoma. Then we have to towel her off when she comes in the house. That is a battle worth the skills of Bobby Lee or Georgie Patton. And seeing as how I'm a country boy that hates shoes I always end up with the gigantic mud monster standing on my feet. With claws she inherited from her grizzly bear ancestors.



In other news I'm really enjoying watching the Clintons, who always claimed that Republicans are the biggest threat to civil rights ever, acting just like the Democrats of my youth. I keep hoping that black Americans will look at what Democrats have actually done for them, instead of what they say. Back in the sixties the Donks fought to keep blacks in the back of the bus. Due to solid work by the Donks the blacks can ride in any seat on the bus they want, they just get shot at the bus stop. The blacks should thank the Donks.Remember James Byrd? Now the Donks claim that a hate crimes law would have done something. The Republicans just gave two of those peckerwoods the death penalty. The one that rolled over got life without parole. Now the Donks are trying to abolish the death penalty. But it's all our fault, so say the Donks.

Someday black Americans will notice that the Democrats are still the Party of segregation. They just let a few house slaves sit at the feet of the white masters. The Dems let blacks have token cabinet posts, how come it was Republicans who put blacks in jobs like Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Sec. State? Democrats talk, Republicans do.

Eddie Says It's Down To Mitt

Well, Edward T. Dog is rather unhappy that Fred is out.

He has surveyed the rest of the candidates and finds something missing in each.

What he finally decided was to gaze to the days of J. Edgar Hoover. Now in his day, he would put a lot of Irish Catholics and Mormons into the FBI. Both of those groups hated Commies so much that they were safer bets in the fight against the Soviets.

Cochise's Apache Princess isn't all that into politics but she is hoping that McCain shows up. Her teeth are right at crotch level.

In other news, Linda Lou's first Social Security chex showed up. Oh, the "X" is because there is a letter button on this computer *eyboard that just quit wor*ing. We are just about as bro*e as ever but we paid the property taxes and a mess of overdue bills. We still have some bills left but we're getting there. By March we should be all caught up.

Update: I switched keyboards to an old one we had around. Then I pulled the K key out and discovered the problem. I was clipping CAP's claws amd a clw tip hit the keyboard and slipped under the K key. I can now write anything I want about Robert Byrd (Dem KKK). Too bad I don't want to. Oh well, CAP's teeth are right at crotch level if HE shows up here, too.

Another Update: I ought to explain Eddie's thinking about Mitt. I'm not at all sure about that religion. It's seems rather outlandish to me, perhaps to others. After all, it may seem odd to walk through Nebraska with all your earthly possessions in a wheelbarrow but they sure did it.

But then most religions seem weird to outsiders, Mitt doesn't seem to bother anyone else with his religion and all during his time as Governor I never heard of him going after coffee drinkers or somebody enjoying a beer. Now the Democrats...

The main thing is that Mormons, being a minority religion, are used to enjoying their rights and seem to respect the rights of others. I have stopped in a couple small towns in Utah while traveling and even in a cafe run by Mormons I never had trouble getting a cup of coffee or Linda Lou her diet soda.

So, Eddie and I agree that, of all tie crowd running, Romney would do the least damage. Durn shame that we are forced into voting for least damaging but there you are.

Frank "Pistol Pete" Eaton, A Review

The title of the book is "That Boy Packs The Truest And Fastest Guns In The Territory". It is written by a friend and partner of Frank "Pistol Pete" Eaton, Eva Gillhouse. Perhaps you've heard of him, his picture is the mascot of the Oklahoma State Cowboys.

Born in Hartford Connecticut in 1860 his family went west after the War of Northern Aggression, to Osage County, Kansas. It's hard to imagine, today, but back then there were millions of acres of prime farm and ranch land given free to veterans and, sometimes, plain farmers, or would-be farmers. Being from Kansas stock myself, I understand, many don't.

Frank's father was part of the local Vigilance Committee in a time when such were needed. Aside from the ill feelings left over from the Civil War, the Santa Fe trail was right there so there were the folks robbing the wagons and then the ne'er do wells that are always on the "highways".

Frank was eight years old when outlaws murdered his father.

This book is the desktop publishing type, the pages are the size of regular typing paper, although the paper seems fairly high quality, it's not that thin stuff that won't last. The book is written in that same flat, declarative style as the old Elmer Keith gun books, the modern thing of slopping emotions all over the page hadn't come in yet.

This book recounts the adventures of a young boy learning to hunt and shoot, his hunt for the men who killed his father and the death of those men.

It describes his lifelong friendship with Rolla Goodnight, the son of Col Charles Goodnight of Goodnight-Loving Trail fame and his adventures as a Deputy US Marshall, cattle detective and ranch hand.

Reading it I could feel the sweat and taste that red Oklahoma dust. "Pistol Pete" died in 1952.

If interested one should send a check for $25.02 to Jim Huebner,

4224 Center Gate Lane

Sarasota, Florida, 34223



Jim has a simple deal, write and date the check thirty days ahead. He promises to tear up the check if the reader returns the book within 30 days.



Now, here is what took me so long to write this review. The simple fact is that Pistol Pete was probably not a gunman at all. There are no mentions of the man in any contemporary literature. No newspaper articles, no mentions in diaries and letters, nothing. Now an old west gunman was a famous fellow. I could see it if only half or so of his gunfights had ever made the news, but none? I can even see, sort of, a conspiracy among the newsies of the day to keep quiet the deeds of a Deputy Marshall who was too young to legally take the job. But those deeds would have been mentioned in letters and diaries, the blogs of the day back then. Too many of these gunfights had Frank out drawing the villain.



Now I am a (very casual) student of the old west. The only times someone outdrew another was in the saloon gunfights and those were fairly rare. Back then, as now, wearing of guns in saloons was frowned upon. Now not everyone obeyed the rules about checking your iron but most did, if for no other reason than weight. Most townies that went armed carried smaller guns, those old British Bulldogs were popular. Cowboys and ranchers tended to carry heavier iron. A feller on the range might need to kill a cow critter, to this day the most dangerous animal in America is a barnyard bull. Or a cowboy might want to kill a horse, more than a few were dragged to death when their boot got hung in a stirrup. Now a minutes though about the geometry of a cowboy shooting a horse while being dragged shows that a lot of penetration would be needed. Hence the popularity of those old Colt .45s and .38 and .44 WCF revolvers.A close range hit with any of those and the bullet will penetrate to next Tuesday.



Now a townie, of course, had a different set of needs from a gun. A man isn't all that thick and back then any solid hit was fatal, eventually. Remember, no X-ray machines and no antibiotics.



So, the book is almost certainly false. Still, if anyone enjoys the old dime novel type western, it's worth the money.

CAP Has Her Birthday Party!

So yesterday was Cochise' Apache Princess first bithday. Odder than that, I remembered it. Well, Linda Lou had it on the calender. Anyhow a doggie birthday party was in order.

Now I have it on good authority that sweets aren't really good for dogs so I needed something different for a cake. How about corn meal muffins? With bacon and cheese? Dogs like bacon and cheese, I think I read that somewhere. So I fried up four slices of bacon and made a batch of muffin batter, the box kind. Jiffy. Oh and I made a box of Jiffy rasberry muffins for us, too. A pretty good cheap snack, one egg, one quarter cup of milk and a fifty cent box of muffin mix. Even better, I bought a bazillion Christmas cupcake and muffin cups for half price the day after Christmas, for half price.

Back to the dogs, though.I fried the bacon up, good and set it on the paper towels, mixed the muffin mix and then broke the bacon up amd stirred it into the mix, then grabbed a large handfull of sharp chedder shredded cheese and stirred it in, too. The two Pugs got caught in a cheese storm when grated cheese fell from the sky on their poor defenseless heads. They licked franticly to keep from being buried. They got away with it but will probably have nightmares for years.

So, in to the oven and fifteen minutes later, muffins, too hot to eat. I was going to frost them with liverwurst, actually Braunshweiger. I decided not to, this roll I got was a lot is real "hard". Trying to spread it would have been difficult, also I probably would have been killed trying to get down the steps.

So the eating part of the party lasted about five minutes, dogs are not much to savor every bite.
Now Eddie knows what to do with a mixing bowl.

So I finally got the muffins down the steps and the feeding frenzy, er, party began. We were unable to sing Happy Birthday, the German Shepherd seems to be crossed with Kanagroo.

She would jump up to try to get the muffins off the plate. Then she ate each muffin in two bites, The she tried to snatch what was left from the Pugs. Oh, my!

Then the party was over. The next party will be in celebration of McCain losing this next batch of primaries.

Snow In Baghdad

So we got snow in Baghdad, that has to be absolute proof of glow-ball warming. Any kind of weather at all is proof of glow-ball warming. Because there is a CONSENSUS among SCIENTISTS! Never mind that every thing they have predicted hasn't happened. Never mind that the ones screeching the loudest that I must change my life haven't changed their own. It's a consensus.

Speaking of snow in Baghdad, it seems that those Iranian EFP bombs are blowing up more often again. I wish I could visualise the terrain over there. Since about ten minutes after the invasion was over we've had nothing but trouble coming in over the borders from Iran and Syria and it seems that our entire policy was let the bad guys in, let them bring whatever they wanted with them, and then have most of our troops go out and be targets.

Now I am no great military strategist, I am a one hitch EM from forty years ago. Still, even I know how to set up an L shaped ambush. I do not understand why or how we let all these clowns into the country over there, I do not understand how they manage to smuggle this stuff in.

Are the borders over there so covered in jungle that the bad guys sneak in under the triple canopy? Are the borders all crowded cities where they just lose themselves in crowds? Or is the military forbidden to control those borders because the Washington politicians are afraid we'll then want our borders enforced?

There is something seriously wrong. We do not have much, if any, more time to get it right. I have supported our work over there since 2003, not because I trust Washington but because our troops keep reenlisting. If the military situation was as bad as the Daily Koz types say, Sgt. Hook, Greyhawk and AWTM's husband would all be civilians by now. Those folks aren't stupid and, even though they are all married men, can't ALL want to die. I knew my war was being lost because we were losing so many men after their second or third hitches, after the second hitch you're half way to the twenty year pension.

New Blog!

My big sister finally started a blog of her own. The blog is called Nothing Much. So far all she has is the traditional sucky first post. Somebody needs to get over there and explain to her that SHE got the brains in the family, I only got the cute little butt.
As usual, I can't seem to make the link work, the addy is Califnotes.blogspot.com.

Wolves, Cougars and People

The other day I got an e-mail asking for a light bullet load for a .30-06 from a feller up in British Columbia, which is one of those Yankee States north of Oklahoma, I believe. Anyhow he wanted a load that would take down wolves. Now we don't have any wolves down here in northeast Texas and so I asked him why he was mad at wolves. Well, it seems that they have been breeding heavily lately and they are starting to cause trouble.

Each individual wolf will take down seventeen to twenty three big game animals each year. In an area that derives a good part of it's income from big game hunting, that can become a problem, fast.

My corespondent did not wish to be public on this, he didn't say why I. I presume it's because of the Bambiists, I didn't ask. He did send me a news story, which I was unable to transfer here because I'm not very good with computers. A computer wizard can probably find the article on the Monday, Sept.4, 2007 issue of the Vancouver Sun. It seems that a couple of families were out with some ATVs, pulling young kids around on a toboggan when a couple of very skinny, hungry wolves showed up. Their dog, a Rottie Mix went and duked it out with the wolves who were trying to get to those kids. Well, one parent went off after his rifle, a Ruger 10-.22 if it matters, while another adult waded in with a shovel. The two wolves were driven off but they then followed these folks back to camp. The guy with the rifle managed to then shoot one of the wolves, they dragged the wolf back to their camp (or cabins?) and the next morning the wolf had been dragged off and partially eaten. They then managed to shoot the other half of this pair. With a belly full of wolf.

Now, I never have claimed to be the world's greatest authority on carnivores. I have no idea how many wolves it takes to make an area unsafe for people, nor any great idea on how many wolves an area can support before the big game gets difficult to find. (Not that big game is easy to find without wolves) Questions like that must be answered by someone smarter than me. I do know that down here in the lower 48 people are now being attacked, and sometimes killed, by Cougars, aka Mountain Lions, aka Catamounts.

Now when I was a boy lots of folks hunted Mountain Lions. We hardly ever killed them, unless we used dogs, but we killed enough of them that they avoided people. In my entire youth I saw two Mountain Lions in the wild, both times it was through binoculars, way too far for a shot, while we were examining country to see if we wanted to go try to find deer over there. Yet seeing Mountain Lion tracks was common. I would wager that lots more of those big cats saw me than I ever saw.

Those cats were afraid of people, though. They stayed out of our way because we killed enough of them to maintain that fear. Now those days are over. In many states it's illegal to pop a big cat. We are not losing a whole lot of people and it seems that most of the ones we do lose are Libs, but even so, I liked it better when the cats were afraid of us. We are losing a lot of pets.

I bring this up because we are reseeding some of the West with wolves. Okay, fine.Can someone besides the Bambiists figure out how many can live on a piece of range before the big game, livestock and people are threatened?

Candles and Bullet Lube

I was going through a few websites looking at the recipes and supplies for my next year's supply of bullet lube for my black powder cartridges and it occurred to me that all I would have to add would be wicks and scent and I could be making candles, too. Lord knows we throw away enough jars that I would never have to buy those.

The question is could I make a few candles for small presents and home use without becoming an aged, patchouli-stinking hippie?

To make bullet lube I add a few ingredients to beeswax, this year I will also experiment with soy wax. To find these things I look at candle supply companies. It seems that the very best candles are made from beeswax and soy wax. Now Linda Lou loves Lilacs and they do not grow down here. Every year she wants me to take her up to Topeka during Lilac season, we hardly ever make it although we may make it more often now that we are retired. So, why not buy some Lilac scented oil and some wicks when I make my next bullet lube material purchase? Then I can think of other scents if this works. Hmm. Do they make a black powder smoke scent? That would be the perfect gift for Contagion.

Borders

Can we please find someone to defeat Kay Bailey Hutchinson in the Primaries the next time she is up for election? It's time for her to go, after she killed the border fence. We elected her to the Senate in 2006, we gave a clear mandate that we want the border secure and she goes and pulls this.

Why did I bother to vote Republican? Our jobs are taken away by illegals, our people are killed on the roads by uninsured illegals, illegal immigrant gangs are making our cities unlivable and these creatures we send to Washington ignore us. What does it take? I do not care that upper middle class working women want cheap nannies. I do not care that the Chamber of Commerce types want cheap labor, you can hardly find a US citizen on a construction site anymore and housing costs go up while the quality of the homes goes down.

We have begged Washington to secure the borders, one of the constitutionally mandated duties of the Federal Government. Instead the Feds are messing around with mileage requirements for the auto fleet. Excuse me but I have read the Constitution. It is silent on automobile mileage but loud in it's requirements to defend America.

Can you Washington idiots please quit farting around and build the effing fence? Yes. Build the fence, we'll worry about what to do about the illegals already here when you stop the invasion. Build the fence!

Can someone in Washington put a bill up to build the fence and have it come up before the election and then we can vote against everyone who doesn't support it. Of course those who want the invasion to continue can support those who don't support the fence and we can then see what Americans really want.

I have supported Kay Bailey Hutchinson since she was a political rookie, it's over. It was disgusting, Kay. You KNEW the desires of Texas and America and you sided against us. I hope your legs grow together.

Christopher James

We finally got some pictures of Christopher James. These are from Thanksgiving, when he was three weeks old. He is a big strong boy at three weeks. I think I shall give him some railroad rails for his fifth birthday, he can have hours of fun tying them in knots.

The other boys are also growing nicely. Perhaps we can go see that crowd this coming Fall.

Happy New Year!

Since we don't drink anymore here our New Year celebrations have become somewhat more sedate, albeit easier to remember. This year I celebrated New Year's Eve by finally trying to cook (and eat) liver and onions, mashed potatoes and gravy.

I am pleased to report that soaking the liver in milk really works. Now the downside of the project was that I bought calf's liver from Wal Mart, the liver was sliced so thin that it kept tearing into smaller and smaller pieces at every step of the way, making the preparation somewhat difficult. The good news was that it tasted wonderful.

I started by cooking the onions in oil until they were mostly brown, they then sat on paper towels, draining the excess oil while I fried the liver. The liver tore so badly I didn't try to dredge it in flour. It tasted fine without it, though. Then I made gravy out of the milk I soaked the liver in, some flour and the oil and drippings from the skillet.

Then I ate and ate. And ate some more. All three dogs got some liver scraps, the pictures above are of Ming the Merciless getting (more than) her share. She got a couple of extra little pieces because Linda Lou was snapping pictures.

My next try will be with beef liver instead of calf, in hopes that it doesn't tear apart so easily, otherwise I'll have to shop somewhere besides Wally World for my liver.

Then at Midnight I threw out a few firecrackers and then fired six rounds of black powder shotgun shells into the ground so that I had the empty brass shells to reload with powder, shot and some cut-up pieces of sparkler. If I can make those work I should be an amazing sight at the Cowboy Actions Shoots this year. Yee-haw!

William Is Five Years Old Today

William turned five today but because of the work schedule the grandparents got together yesterday for cake and presents.

It won't be many more of these birthdays before his first .22.

We finally got some pictures of Christopher James, I was getting convinced the boy was born with three arms or an extra head, not so. He is a great big boy, though, I'll post some of those pictures and his other three brothers tomorrow, the newest baby in the family for the new year.

Christmas, 2007

So Linda Lou woke me up at five AM to drive up to Plano to watch the kids open presents. It was a special set of Christmas presents for William. His daddy had his Transformers from when he was a child and they were all giftwrapped for William.

We were glad to get home, there ought to be some kind of a law against requireing a retired guy to wake up at five AM.

The next day we got a big rainstorm and, as always happens, we lost the telephone and internet connection. It's back now. So now I get to try to figure out what is going on in Pakistan.

Merry Christmas!

We seem to be fresh out of angels for a Christmas Greeting so we are just trying to make do.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Eddie T. Dog Endorses Fred

I have been watching to campaign for the Republican nomination for President and have decided to go with Fred Thompson. I agree with everything he's put out. And besides, he's got a Bulldog or Pug face. Not that it matters much, by the time we vote here in Texas the nomination is pretty well decided.

Just who decided that Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina should have all that power, anyway, and can we fire them? Now I have nothing personally against those States but I do resent that their votes should be more important than mine.

The only gripe seen about Thompson seems to be that he is too lazy for winning the job, the same gripe about Ronald Reagan, if I remember correctly, and he did pretty well. I am not sure I believe anything about Thompson being lazy. We get that information from where? That's right, the lamestream media. Every blogger who mentions Thompson's "laziness" has also railed against the disgusting lack of accuracy and evenhandedness of the media. Yet they believe Fred's "laziness" as if it were spoken by a burning bush on a mountaintop. Hmmm.

I don't know about my second choice. I know that if McCain gets the nomination I'm staying home in November.

NothingTo Say

There is nothing wrong here at the poor farm, I just have nothing to say and no new grandchild or dog pictures.

Not that having nothing to say usually stops me but for now... Oh, if anyone cares it is only about six weeks until Linda Lou gets her first social security check, that's when our after tax income nearly doubles. Then I might have something to say.

Doggie Friday

The dogs have destroyed another piece of furniture, note the duct tape over the hole in the expensive leather recliner.

Eddie had a sweater for the cold, Pugs are not cold weather dogs. The "experts" say that Pugs are inside dogs, I wish they'd told Eddie that, he loves being out with his "little sister", C. A. P. Meanwhile Cochise' Apache Princess doesn't understand why her momma lets Ming and Eddie in the chair with her but won't let the youngest puppy up there. As you can plainly see, C. A. P. is just a little tiny puppy, born to snuggle in the chair with her momma or daddy.

We let Eddie out in the cold with his sweater on, he came in without it. I found it the next day, chewed up and useless. We had to get dogs. We couldn't get a watchgoldfish or a lap snake, no, we had to get dogs.

Omaha

So now it comes to Omaha. A "big city" as Nebraska goes, more crowded states would call it medium sized. I know nothing about Omaha, I drove through it and was told that it's against the law to eat while driving. A 19 year old kid with a rifle seems to have wanted to "go out in style". So he went to the gun free mall with a rifle and started blowing people away.

So now it begins. If we had no guns! If ordinary shoppers had guns! It's because Bush was there!

I grew up around guns. The most common thing in the world was to see a boy, or boys, on bikes with .22s, riding out to plink or hunt small game. Other times of the year it was fish poles or (usually single shot) shotguns. Kids in rural areas brought their guns to school and hunted their way home. High schools had rifle teams.

Nobody shot down crowds of people. What has changed? It isn't the guns, we had guns.Nor was it semi automatic weapons, we had those too. Find a copy of The American Rifleman from before the 1968 Gun Control Act went into effect and price those little M1 Carbines, with 30 round mags. Or M1 Garands. Available by mail with no records in most places. Nobody shot down crowds of people.

Today they'd call out the SWAT Teams if anyone saw three boys riding through town with rifles, and Animal Control because of the dog runnin' alongside. Back then, it was nothing and we didn't shoot crowds of people. Can we PLEASE stop yapping about guns, pro or con and look at what else has changed since I was a boy? We had guns, we didn't shoot crowds of people. Now too many of us do. The guns didn't change, something else did.

The destruction of the family? The ending of spanking? That self esteem nonsense the schools are pushing? The war against masculinity? The war against Christianity? Something is causing this and we are talking about guns.

Well the guns aren't going away. We could pass a law tomorrow making guns illegal, everywhere like in most of Britain. Anybody notice that violent crime, including gun crime, has gone up over there since they passed that law?

People ought to be able to do some Christmas shopping without being blown away. And after we look at that, my Momma used to go to the Dept. Store, leave me in the book section or the toy section, shop and then come get me. Nobody worried. As a matter of fact other parents did the same thing. How come that can't happen these days. Oh, now Linda Lou leaves me in the book section but you can bet that my daughter doesn't leave William. What has changed?

Update: 12/06/07 I must not have been as clear as I try to be. AWTM mentions, in comments, other mass murders in Nebraska. I know about Charlie Starkweather, heck I know about Killin' Jim Miller and Tom Horn, John Wesley Hardin and lots of others who ran up a very large butcher's bill back in the day.

They, however didn't run that bill up all at once. And THAT is different. Teresa, of Technicalities fame, says it's the 24 hour news cycle, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and the rest of them. I dunno, back in John Wesley Hardin's day we only had newspapers but John Wesley was certainly famous back then. Far more famous than this kid in Nebraska.

Teresa is partially right, though, these kids want to be famous. And yet I can't remember the names of those losers in Columbine, what kind of fame is that? I remember Lee Harvey Oswald, I do not know the name of that guy in the University of Texas tower. I know I could find it in a matter of minutes now and back before I had this box I would have had to go to the Public Library. Charles Whitman. I wonder if the DIs in Parris Island and San Diego still tell the Boots about Oswald and Whitman when they issue the rifles? By the way, Oswald did it, it wasn't even very good shooting. Oswald only qualified at the very bottom of the pile, a feller that had been a really good shot would have had three different bodies in the morgue in fewer seconds. But I digress.

There have been killers among us since Cain couldn't get along with his brother, Abel. But it was only in 1966 when we started having these all at once murders and, after Whitman, it was a long time until the next one.

Oh, and I blame AlGore for Omaha. If Algore would have kept his fat mouth shut about Glow-ball Worming it would have been hot enough up there in Omaha that the kid wouldn't have been able to hide that AK under his clothes. In a Texas summer it is hard to hide an S&W Chief's Special.

Dear Washington

Hello again, Washington, this is Peter from flyover country. You must not get out here much because I hardly ever hear you talk about anything that has any relationship at all to what is happening out here.

What on earth is this National Intelligence Estimate about Iran? Just exactly what do you mean when you say it is plausible but unlikely that they are working to get nukes? Plausible but unlikely? Looky here, I have grandchildren I would like to see grow up, plausible but unlikely. That means that if millions of Americans die you won't lose your job, right? There is a little something more important than your job.

Washington, have y'all seen the inside of a grocery store lately? Have you seen gas prices? Do you remember how this Gasahol stuff was going to make driving clean and affordable? Funny thing happened, the process of making the ethanol causes far more pollution than gasoline does. Taking all that corn out of the pipeline did more than kludge up the air and making that ethanol took more than all that water. Have you look at what a dozen eggs cost? Have you seen a steak that wasn't paid for by a lobbying firm?

Look we out here in flyover country know that we don't have the campaign contributions that the Agribusiness has and we don't really mind that farmers make a living. We remember, though, that farmers did pretty well feeding the world while the oil companies fuelled it. That worked very well for a lot of years. Now we know that you are used to having things all your way but no matter how many idiot bills you pass the oil companies aren't going to feed us and the farms ain't gonna fill the cars. How about you figure out that the money the agribusiness companies sent you is not going to make up for the votes you won't get. I am just waiting for the people who will rise up and say vote for me and farmers will farm and oil companies will drill. Alcohol will be found in beer and down at the fabled Tequila Mines of Cuervo. Please, get off the Air Force jets and the chauffeur driven cars and get into your own car, fill up the gas tank and go do a little grocery shopping. Do you remember how?

Washington, the minute someone figures out that to win an election all one has to do is run on secure borders, an energy policy that is based on what we have in this world and going to war rarely but once we're in, fighting to win, you are going to be looking for a job.

I can't wait. Love, Peter.

Foer Throws In The Towel.

So, it seems the editor of The New Republic gives up on the Beauchamp stories. A fourteen page attempt to save his own job and not one hint of an apology to the men and women whose honor was trampled.

I served, starting some forty-three years ago, during the days of the draft, during the days of uniformed drug use. Yet even then we liked children and dogs, even then we honored those who wore battle scars. Yes the guy that caught a large piece of scrap metal 'cross the cheeks of his butt got a lot of noise about that amazing scar but it was in good humor and God help someone who wasn't THERE say anything to him. Including some kid with the sand of Parris Island still in his boots.

I've read Patterico, Malkin and Bob Owens of Confederate Yankee. I am still surprised at the people bouncing up saying that we are the ones attacking a serving soldier. Beauchamp may well have straightened out and is now serving honorably. I hope so. But he certainly was not serving his country or the men and women of the US Armed Forces with those stories.

Honor still means something to those men and women. I hope Beauchamp has learned to hold his, Franklin Foer has not. Here is something I don't understand. The Franklin Foers of the world feel free to gratuitously insult the people they say are stupid and dangerous, the men and women of the United States Armed Forces but won't say a word against the people going around exploding themselves. The liberals like to prove their "courage" by insulting those sworn to defend them while hiding behind those they insult. The Libs call this speaking truth to power. Franklin Foer wouldn't know truth if it bit him on the ass.

Behold! The Power Of The Cookies

I've blogged before about Linda Lou's oatmeal raisin cookies. They are her Grandma Hagen's recipe and they are a hit everywhere they go. I sometimes take a bag of them as a reward for those who do me favors. Like my gunsmith. My '92 Winchester clone is very difficult to detail strip and get it back together and I like to shoot black powder cartridges in it. So, a couple times a year I have to detail strip it and clean the black powder residue off the small parts and out of the nooks and crannies. Well, a dozen oatmeal raisin cookies gets me a spot to strip it down, clean it up and, when needed, help getting it back together. Price ten minutes of a professional gunsmith's time and see what a bargain those cookies bring me.

Well, I took a baker's dozen of those cookies with me to my Cardiologist's offices yesterday, I figure anybody keeping me alive deserves a few cookies.

Every month my insurance company sends me a statement about how much I pay and how much they pay for my medications. Since I am on social security disability, the government pays for my premiums. I am always careful to thank the taxpayers in the store when I pick up my meds. Well, anyhow after the Doc got his bag of cookies (enough to share with the staff) he had his nurses dig around and fill a bag with physician's samples of over two months of one expesive scrip and three months of another.

This is some five hundred dollars worth of pills. Of course my out of pocket cost is five dollars and thirty-five cents per month per scrip, so I guess the taxpayers should send me a card or something. Or not. The reality is that a bag of cookies is a nice surprise for those who do good things for us and sometimes the reward is great.

Carbon Footprint?

So I was listening to the radio and it seems that a ship, owned by an eco-warrior friend of Algore, had a batch of eco-tourists on board to check out the ravages of glow-ball worming. So they go down to Antarctica, run in to an iceberg, sink with 48,000 gallons of marine diesel in the tanks. So what is the carbon footprint?

Why do I suspect that the world would be a better place had we saved the diesel fuel and let the eco-warriors sink?

Thanksgiving, 2007

We drove up to Plano for Thanksgiving dinner with Dean and Stephanie and the kids. As usual I have much to be thankful for, the finest family a man could have is the start of it.

Actually my family is the last of it, the beginning was a few hundred years ago when a bunch of people got tired of the old country. Somehow they built The United States of America. It wasn't perfect but it was good enough that my ancestors called it Golden America. Since then my family helped to keep building and we are not through yet. Those kids will keep building Golden America, better than they found her. For that I give thanks.

Doggie Friday.

The dogs were having a feeding frenzy, Daddy had a BOWL! Did you know that dogs just love instant vanilla pudding?

I've read that any reference to Ron Paul will drive up traffic for a blog. Now I am not really a Ron Paul expert, Ron Paul comes from the Houston area. Houston is where God would apply the deodorant. Now Ron Paul is not the reason I don't go to Houston for free. I don't go there because big cities suck, I do not think that is Ron Paul's fault. I do not think that Ron Paul helps, though.

Now if Ron Paul came by the house, Ming would bark at Ron Paul. Eddie would jump in Ron Paul's lap. CAP would sniff at Ron Paul's crotch. CAP sniffs every one's crotch, Ron Paul would be no exception. Linda Lou says that it is because CAP's nose is right at Ron Paul's crotch level.

Now if anyone is interested, I don't have anything against Ron Paul except Ron Paul's stance on the war. Now I have no problem with someone being against this war, the thing is Ron Paul is being dishonest about it. Now Congress approved the "use of force". Ron Paul says that we need a declaration of war. I hate to break the bad news to Ron Paul and the Ron Paul supporters but there is no wording required for it to be a declaration of war. Once Congress approved the use of force, that is all that was needed.

Ron Paul should read the Constitution.

Black Powder .45 Colt Shotshells

On one of the Cowboy Action Bulletin Boards I am a member of a Pard was wondering about .45 Colt shotshells. Now I load a few shotshells, with smokeless powder, in both .45 and .38 Special for snakes so I got curious.

Now when I get curious I head for the reloading room and get busy. Many have said that in order to load .45 Colt shotshells you need to start with .444 Marlin rifle cases and cut them down to the cylinder length of the .45, then run the cut down cases through a .44 Special or .44 Mag die to get the front bit of the case to fit the front end of the chamber, then fireform the case.

After all that, then you have to take the fireformed cases and drop the black powder in, then a stiff card wad or, better yet, a gascheck, then add the shot, then another wad or gas check, and crimp everything down. That is a lot of work.

Now, I thought it would be easier to simply drop in some black powder and just seat a Speer Shotcap over the powder. Today I finally tried it. Now the first problem is that black powder is a whole lot bulkier than smokeless. One of the common smokeless loads is 7.5 grains of Unique, remember a "grain " is not an individual speck of powder but a weight measure, 7,000th of a pound. Now there simply isn't room for a normal charge of black powder under a Speer shotcap, this is one of the reasons that black powder almost disappeared in Gramps' day.

I could only get 20 grains of Black in, my .45s usually carry some 35 grains. But then my usual bullet weight in 250 grains and these shotcaps weighed some 169 grains or a little more an a single .45 caliber round ball.

Now there is a Pard that "invented" the .45 Cowboy cartridge, what he did was order a bunch of cases from the Starline Brass people. These cases have the .45 Colt rim and diameter but are only as long as the .45 Automatic Colt Pistol. Another cowboy action Pard devloped a Big Lube Boolit that weighed the same as a round ball but has that great big lube groove, and a more normal, although very short of course, shape. This bullet is named after him, the El Paso Pete bullet.

Another Pard decided to try the Cowboy Cartridge with black powder, he mamaged to put in about 18.5 grains and the El Paso Pete bullet and got over 900 fps. Well, it seemed to me that a little more powder and the same payload weight ought to work for shotshells.

It does. At least at "there's a SNAKE!" range. I took a gunfull of these out with my usual targets, a couple of Linda Lou's plastic soda bottles and let fly. At normal SNAKE! ranges the bottles were nicely speckled with birshot holes. Now after the bottles were hit and flew a bit all the birdshot didn't exit the bottles, I suspect it was those shot that hit the part of the bottle on the ground.

At any rate I shall stick to the more normal smokeless powders for these shotshells. It's not that a smokey shotshells WON'T kill a close up snake, the higher velocity of the smokeless powder would give better penetration at the longer range, though, and after shooting real black your shootin' iron needs to be cleaned fairly quickly while smokeless gives a little more time. But if Black was all I had...

My Head Is Cold

I needed a haircut, badly and we didn't have ten dollars to spare. So, is my hair short enough?

Has It Really Been 232 Years?

It was 1775 that the Continental Congress approved a Corps of Marines to give our sailing ships the power of infantry. Since then the men, and now women, have stood on the ramparts of freedom.

If it's November Tenth it must be our anniversary, Linda Lou didn't want me to forget it. Not much danger of that. Not after nine grandchildren.

Speaking of grandchildren, number ten is due on June 13th, if all goes well. We haven't really been married for 232 years, not even all my life. We've only been married for the part of my life worth remembering.

Waterboarding

I've noticed that the Dems are all up in the air over waterboarding again. I don't understand. From what I have read we've only waterboarded three people lately, all done by the CIA and none since 2003.

Now, excuse me for being a poor dumb redneck but wasn't the CIA still being run by that Democrat-appointed George Tenet back then? Now I don't particularly care if we waterboard a few AlQ types, for all of me we can gouge out their gonads and make them eat them, but then I am not real fond of those who would put my granddaughter in a burqua. However I am aware that a lot of folks don't agree. Or is it that they just don't agree when there is a Republican in the White House?

Anyway, here is my proposal: Every time someone starts screeching about torture we agree how horrible it was that the Clinton appointed Director of the CIA used to allow it but now that Bush has his man in the office that it is all over.

Morgan Shot In The Back And The Vendetta Ride Begins

After Virgil was shot things calmed down a little in Tombstone. The Earps and their wives all were living in the Cosmopolitan Hotel with Turkey Creek Jack Johnson, Texas Jack Vermillion, Sherman McMasters and a few other fellers guarding the hall.

This was when Wyatt's "marriage" to Mattie really fell apart and his romance with Josephine Sarah Marcus really took off. Sadie, as she was known was an actress/singer and perhaps also a lady of the evening. To make the politics/personal situation even more interesting Sadie dumped Johnny Behan for Wyatt. Well, at least she dumped Behan, he had a wandering eye, did Johnny, and it seemed that the other body parts wandered, too. No one is sure of the exact order of the Behan Dumping-Wyatt romancing.

Wyatt's "wife", Mattie was strung out on Laudanum, that is a drinkable morphine concoction, much used back then. Seems that Aspirin hadn't been invented. I have "wife" in quotes because there is no record of Mattie ever marrying. The Earps had a rather lurid family life. Seems that older brother James Earp had a wife named Nellie who also ran a sportin' house. Mattie worked in that sportin' house and it was there she met Wyatt.

Virgil's wife Allie was also a saloon girl as was Morgan's Louisa. Well, it stands to reason, the Earps main business was gambler/saloon keeper. Who would they meet?

So, we have Virgil healing, slowly, Morgan and Wyatt both with Federal law enforcement commissions but mostly working as gamblers and the tension rising. In February, 1882 Morgan sent his wife, Louisa to Colton, California to his parents.

By the night of March 18, 1882 men had to hire small boys to walk the streets ahead of them, cutting holes in the tension, just so they could get around. It is ten PM and Wyatt and Morg are killing time, waiting to close out the Faro Table at the Oriental Saloon. They are in the back room of Cambell and Hatch, a billiard parlor and card room, shooting pool.

In this room are Morg and Hatch, playing pool, Wyatt and George A. B. Berry, watching. There is a back door, solid on the bottom with the top half in four glass panes, the bottom two glass panes painted over, the top two clear. This so men could see inside while children could not, remember all those saloon girls.

Suddenly rifle fire burst out, a shot goes through Morgan's spine, exiting it lodged in George Berry's thigh, causing a painful flesh wound.

The other shot went high, right through Wyatt's hat but missing him. Morgan lived an hour, Wyatt, Sherm McMaster and someone named Tipton carried Morgan to a clear spot of floor where Doctors Matthews, Goodfellow and Millar all examined him and pronounced his wound fatal. They then moved him to a couch. He died about an hour later, surrounded by his brothers James, Wyatt, Warren and even Virgil, who was just begining to move around. Also were Allie and Nellie Earp, and a few other friends like Doc Holliday. Doc was raging and went through the town kicking in doors looking for various cow-boys. Morgan's last words were "I can't stand it...I've shot my last game of pool." The I can't stand it was from them trying to stand him up.

The best evidence points to Curly Bill Brocius and Frank Stillwell as the shooters with Indian Charlie, real name Florintino Cruz as the lookout.

The next day Morgan's body was shipped to Colton to be buried. The day after that Virgil, still very weak and sick, started his journey to Colton, also.He had to be carried up the steps of the train. An interesting historical note is that Allie wore his gunbelt so that he had access to a weapon.

When the train stopped at Tuscon Wyatt and Doc spotted Frank Stillwell on a flatcar, Wyatt and maybe Doc and Warren filled him with holes, beginning the Vendetta Ride.

Wyatt, Doc, Warren, Sherm McMaster and Turkey Creek Jack returned to Tombstone with a warrant out for them for Stillwell's death. We are told that this was a murder warrant although the reality is that they were merely wanted for questioning as Stillwell was a murder suspect himself and Wyatt was a Federal Officer. The Sheriff in Tuscon, Ron Paul, had worked with Wyatt for Wells Fargo, they were old friends. Had Wyatt stayed in Tuscon he would surely have beat the rap. Instead they left on the train with Virgil, getting off up the line and riding a freight train back to Benson where their horses were.

Returning to Tombstone they met up with Sheriff Behan as they were leaving town. This is when that famous conversation took place with Behan saying "Wyatt, I need to see you."

Earp replied "if you aren't careful you will see me once too often." The Earp Posse rode out of town, Behan then put together a posse of his own, consisting of at least one of the Clanton bothers, Fin, Johnny Ringo and about twenty of the cow-boys.

Here is where the history gets confusing. Including Stillwell history puts the death toll on the vendetta ride as somewhere between four and fifteen. We know that Indian Charlie was the next to go, he was cutting wood on Pete Spence's place. Now the Earp Posse wanted Spence, too as they were pretty sure that he was involved in shooting Virgil. What they didn't know was that Spence had turned himself in and was safe in jail in Tombstone.

There was more riding around by both posses and then Wyatt's posse rode up to Iron Springs where they were supposed to meet up with a friend with supplies. Instead they found Curly Bill and some of his pals. Shooting from cover, the first thing the Earp Posse knew was when the bullets started flying. Turkey Creek Jack's horse was killed, Wyatt came down off his horse and let two blasts of buckshot into Curly Bill. This spoiled Curly Bill's plans for running Cochise County, another shot went into Johnny Barnes, another cow-boy. Johnny died some two weeks later.

With all this shooting one would think that Wyatt would have been blown to doll rags. He had a bullet througfh his boot heel, several through his coat tails and pant legs and one through his saddle horn. No bullet touched his skin. Doc picked up Turkey Creek Jack and the Earp posse went to Henry Hooker's ranch to rest up and refit.

Meanwhile the Behan Posse returned to Tombstone having done nothing but spend a lot of the county's money.

From there the Posse moved out of Arizona and the vendetta ride was over, or was it? Nor the next few months several of the cow-boys met mysterious ends, not least Johnny Ringo. On July 14, 18982 Ringo's body was found by a teamster, John Yoast. Ringo was leaned against a tree with his gun in his hand and a bullet through his brain.

Now it is normal to think that he shot himself, there are a couple of details wrong, with that. Suicides are almost never found with the gun in their hand after shooting themselves through the head. The gun is still recoiling when the bullet takes out the brain, the hand muscles relax and the gun goes flying. Plus part of Ringo's hair and scalp had been cut off his head with a knife.

His boots were gone and his feet were wrapped in an undershirt. And one of his cartridge belts was buckled on upside down.

The one person we know for sure that had nothing to do with Ringo's death was Doc Holliday, he was in court on a larceny charge in Colorado during this. Buckskin Frank Leslie confessed to a guard in Yuma Territorial Prison that he did it, many claim that Wyatt Earp did it. I think Ringo killed himself but I wouldn't bet the rent on it.

A few years later the silver mines of Tombstone flooded and Tombstone went from growing city to a small town. Now it exist only to remove money from tourists, but once...

Wyatt Goes To Court

We last left The Earp Doc Holliday in the vacant lot between Fly's Boarding House and Harwood's Boarding house. The McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton are seriously dead, Virgil hit through one leg and Morgan hit across the back messing up the flesh over both shoulder blades and chipping a vertebrae. Doc had a bloody chunk blown out of the flesh over his hip.

The brave Sheriff comes out from the cover of Fly's Boarding House and places the Earp Party under arrest, and then scurries away when Wyatt tells him that he will "not be arrested by you". Shortly thereafter Wyatt and Doc post bond while Morg and Virgil are recovering at home.

This brings us to Judge Wells Spicer's court. Spicer, the Justice of the Peace, conducted an examining trial to see if there was enough evidence to hold Doc and the Earps over for trial. Something that is not much known today is that Spicer was from Monmouth, Illinois, the city of Wyatt Earp's birth. I have seen, in various websites, that Spicer and the Earps were related, although I can find no statements as to exactly how.

At any rate the Spicer hearing is very well known, with the transcript available on line. The keys to the Earps not being held to a murder trial are actually pretty simple. The anti-Earp faction claims that the Eaps and Holiday shot these men while they had their hands up, surrendering. They claim that the McLaury brothers and Billy Clanton were unarmed.One can, perhaps, forgive sarcastic old Doc Holliday for asking if Virg and Morg shot themselves.

Now about midway through this hearing, Will McLaury showed up. Will was a lawyer from Fort Worth, Texas and brother to Frank and Tom. He was pretty sure he could make the Earps and Doc do that funny dance at the end of a rope. He was wrong. Judge Spicer said that Virgil was acting as a law officer and that he was legitimately making an arrest. He then blistered Virgil for letting Doc into the party and wasn't too happy about Wyatt, either, him having just buffaloed Frank. Still, although Judge Spicer was critical about Virgil's choice of Deputies, he did have the right to deputise anyone he wanted so, case closed.

Ike and Will tried three times to get the case reopened, no one else wanted the case so, the Earps were free. Virgil was ambushed by shotgun wielding assassins. Witnesses reported five or six shotgun blasts, Virgil picked up some twenty buckshot pellets, wit another twenty-odd pellets hitting the Eagle Brewery and the Crystal Palace Saloon. This was the night of December 28th, 1881.

The lion's share of those buckshot pellets went through his upper left arm. He was crippled for the rest of his life although that did not prevent him from continuing as a law enforcement officer in several cities. Some five and a half inches of shattern bone and fragments was removed from Virgil's arm and it was thought that Virgil was going to die.

It was at this time that US Marshall Crawley C. Dake issued Wyatt his Deputy marshall's commission. Now Wyatt and Morgan were both Federal Officers.

Left at the ambush scene was a hat with Ike Clanton's name written on the inside. This intensified the feud.

Welcome To The World, Christopher James

Grandchild number nine made his appearance at 1240 AM Eastern Daylight time tonight. Christopher James XXXX born in a suburb of Charlotte, North Carolina. Nothing unusual to report about the labor, those kids seem to have making boy babies down to a science. The new boy joins his three brothers.

At eight pounds and seven ounces and 20 and a half inches he seems to be a sturdy young feller. he should fit right in to my squad in the Army of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.

I shall post pictures when we get them. These grandchildren are why I do not view the left as more than a passing pain in the kazoo. Liberals have one baby, late in life. We are outbreeding them. So we see four grandparents with two grandchildren on the Lib side and us with nine, so far.

Oh, I took the picture of the gun down and my blog went back to normal. I'll repost the picture later and see what happens.