Farm News 07-03-05
Sunday morning, after chores, 72°
Environmental Education Group Experiences Holism
The Kaw Valley Heritage Alliance has an office in Lawrence. That should give you most of the information you need. This is a bunch of minnow huggers. Now, I don't have anything against tree huggers, but I think I like minnow huggers better. Like all those huggers, a lot of them are young women. Which would you like better (if you are a heterosexual geezer), a young cutie hugging a tree or a young cutie bent over in the middle of a stream trying to hug a minnow? I'll bet if those young women would advertise where they are going to be hugging minnows then a lot of old men would be able to spend a lot of happy hours watching them bend over and hug those minnows. Frogs like jumpin'; fish like swimmin'; older men like watchin' younger women.
Only something as involved in the unlikely as the divine urge could have caused a geyser to appear beneath the floor of the office of a bunch of minnow huggers. Alas, it was not the sort of geyser that would form a stream suitable for minnow, it was the sort of geyser that emits a dark liquid with a noxious odor, one commonly referred to as 'sewer smell'. Numerous consultations with a plumber and various non-experts finally convinced the owner of the building, a nincompoop, that there was a problem down there with the sewer line, and that the only solution was to dig down there and repair it.
For reasons that had nothing to do with minnow huggers, regardless of their posture, I was privy to these discussions; to wit, I served as one of the non-experts and discussed the problem with several others. Being on the spot and having the opportunity, I mentioned to the owner that Calvin was a good man with a shovel and available at a reasonable price. The owner, who had seen Calvin work, jumped at the opportunity, giving me an opportunity to gouge a higher hourly rate out of him than he expected.
Calvin owns a fine old truck that used to bear permanent stains of chicken poop. For some reason, probably related to hormones, he didn't appreciate the decorative properties of chicken poop and repainted the truck black. He did a nice job painting it, but the truck has never been reliable since losing it's stains. The day before Calvin was supposed to start digging in Lawrence, his truck refused to start, and has refused to start ever since.
Having negotiated the job for Calvin, I felt somewhat responsible for seeing that he could get there, so I drove him to work in Lawrence. Once there, the responsibilities of Geezerhood demanded of me that I supervise the process. So, I ended up supervising two teenagers, Calvin and Charles, the owners son, as they dug a hole under the floor.
First we had to cut a hole in the floor to give us access to the area where we wanted to dig. Then we dug. We dug through wet, black, smelly mud with numerous rocks and pieces of concrete scattered through it until, late in the day, we found the sewer pipe.
Once we found the pipe we had to start digging along it until we found the break. We cut a second hole in the floor and continued to dig. Then we found the end of the pipe. Not a break, the pipe just ended. Now, this was a real problem, and, considering the stuff we had on our hands we couldn't really engage in any head-scratching. It was then that the nincompoop owner told us, “Oh, yes, I remember someone saying that there were two pipes, one of them disconnected.” We continued to dig.
Late the second day we found a second pipe. We started clearing around it, searching for the break. We dug for a third day, following the pipe and searching for the break. Late in the fourth day, we found the break, a place where the soil had evidently settled suddenly after a half century or more, and separated the sewer line. We called the plumber. At this point the hole was about ten feet long, two to three feet wide, and four to five feet deep. Every bit of mud and rock had been loaded into a bucket and then carried out and dumped in the back yard as we dug. Calvin and Charles had performed admirably. Only young men would do that kind of stuff. Somehow, I think that one of the great underpinnings of society is the young male's capacity for stupid perseverance.
Each day Calvin and Charles accumulated a great deal of muck upon their persons. Charles, who has an active social life, attracted several pretty, clean, high school girls to come visit him at his job. They looked at Charles smeared with muck, sniffed the odor, and left giggling internally; being seniors, they were too dignified to giggle externally. Nice girls, and cute, too. I was pleased to notice that Charles has become sufficiently mature to recognize that all publicity is good publicity.
While Calvin and Charles toiled I spent the days supervising, which meant occasionally reassuring them that they were doing the right thing. The rest of the time I enjoyed the office. These folks are professionals and have a fine collection of tools and toys along with a pleasant atmosphere of dedication. Among other projects, they are working on a coloring book about minnow hugging.
After five days of digging, the plumber came and replaced the broken pipe. The next step is to start filling buckets with muck from the pile in the back yard, carry them inside, and dump it back into the hole. Although it has rained on the muck in the back yard, I don't think that it has washed out the smell, so another source of fill might be needed.
It's been a fun project. Supervising two teenage boys in a job which results in them being coated head to toe in black, smelly muck is a dream job for a geezer.
Turkey Poults Attempt Mass Suicide
We have all heard those stories about how stupid turkeys can be. “Turkeys will stand in the rain with their beaks pointed up and drown.” The turkey poults didn't do anything that stupid, but it was almost as bad. While there was a gentle rain going on in Lawrence, where I was supervising hole digging, slightly over three inches of rain crashed down upon the turkey poults.
Turkeys do not like to go into buildings. It's just one of their idiosyncrasies. The poults have a nice, new house with an attached yard. Instead of going inside when the rain hit, they stayed in the yard. When I came home five of the seven poults were unconscious and near death. Two of them recovered, so there are now four turkey poults instead of seven.
Anyone who has kept turkeys will be impressed by how quickly they learn, generally. There are just some things that they don't learn, like to go in out of the rain.
Worm and Other Problems
Last week my computer came down with a virus known as worm.Kalel.B@mm, not a nice thing. It is now repaired and full service is restored. Some mail and last week's blog posting might have been missing, but all is now back to wonderful, I hope. This note is being written on Saturday night, a few hours after I was finally able to remove the worm.
The worm entered my computer because I opened an attachment to an email that I thought was from the system administrator. I was being stupid, he lives only a half mile north of here, I could have called him before opening the attachment.
That same system administrator, bless his pointed head, had the FarmNews@GeezerNet.com mailbox pointed somewhere strange, so that I wasn't receiving mail from readers. That, also, is now repaired.
E-mail Subscribers: To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
Environmental Education Group Experiences Holism
The Kaw Valley Heritage Alliance has an office in Lawrence. That should give you most of the information you need. This is a bunch of minnow huggers. Now, I don't have anything against tree huggers, but I think I like minnow huggers better. Like all those huggers, a lot of them are young women. Which would you like better (if you are a heterosexual geezer), a young cutie hugging a tree or a young cutie bent over in the middle of a stream trying to hug a minnow? I'll bet if those young women would advertise where they are going to be hugging minnows then a lot of old men would be able to spend a lot of happy hours watching them bend over and hug those minnows. Frogs like jumpin'; fish like swimmin'; older men like watchin' younger women.
Only something as involved in the unlikely as the divine urge could have caused a geyser to appear beneath the floor of the office of a bunch of minnow huggers. Alas, it was not the sort of geyser that would form a stream suitable for minnow, it was the sort of geyser that emits a dark liquid with a noxious odor, one commonly referred to as 'sewer smell'. Numerous consultations with a plumber and various non-experts finally convinced the owner of the building, a nincompoop, that there was a problem down there with the sewer line, and that the only solution was to dig down there and repair it.
For reasons that had nothing to do with minnow huggers, regardless of their posture, I was privy to these discussions; to wit, I served as one of the non-experts and discussed the problem with several others. Being on the spot and having the opportunity, I mentioned to the owner that Calvin was a good man with a shovel and available at a reasonable price. The owner, who had seen Calvin work, jumped at the opportunity, giving me an opportunity to gouge a higher hourly rate out of him than he expected.
Calvin owns a fine old truck that used to bear permanent stains of chicken poop. For some reason, probably related to hormones, he didn't appreciate the decorative properties of chicken poop and repainted the truck black. He did a nice job painting it, but the truck has never been reliable since losing it's stains. The day before Calvin was supposed to start digging in Lawrence, his truck refused to start, and has refused to start ever since.
Having negotiated the job for Calvin, I felt somewhat responsible for seeing that he could get there, so I drove him to work in Lawrence. Once there, the responsibilities of Geezerhood demanded of me that I supervise the process. So, I ended up supervising two teenagers, Calvin and Charles, the owners son, as they dug a hole under the floor.
First we had to cut a hole in the floor to give us access to the area where we wanted to dig. Then we dug. We dug through wet, black, smelly mud with numerous rocks and pieces of concrete scattered through it until, late in the day, we found the sewer pipe.
Once we found the pipe we had to start digging along it until we found the break. We cut a second hole in the floor and continued to dig. Then we found the end of the pipe. Not a break, the pipe just ended. Now, this was a real problem, and, considering the stuff we had on our hands we couldn't really engage in any head-scratching. It was then that the nincompoop owner told us, “Oh, yes, I remember someone saying that there were two pipes, one of them disconnected.” We continued to dig.
Late the second day we found a second pipe. We started clearing around it, searching for the break. We dug for a third day, following the pipe and searching for the break. Late in the fourth day, we found the break, a place where the soil had evidently settled suddenly after a half century or more, and separated the sewer line. We called the plumber. At this point the hole was about ten feet long, two to three feet wide, and four to five feet deep. Every bit of mud and rock had been loaded into a bucket and then carried out and dumped in the back yard as we dug. Calvin and Charles had performed admirably. Only young men would do that kind of stuff. Somehow, I think that one of the great underpinnings of society is the young male's capacity for stupid perseverance.
Each day Calvin and Charles accumulated a great deal of muck upon their persons. Charles, who has an active social life, attracted several pretty, clean, high school girls to come visit him at his job. They looked at Charles smeared with muck, sniffed the odor, and left giggling internally; being seniors, they were too dignified to giggle externally. Nice girls, and cute, too. I was pleased to notice that Charles has become sufficiently mature to recognize that all publicity is good publicity.
While Calvin and Charles toiled I spent the days supervising, which meant occasionally reassuring them that they were doing the right thing. The rest of the time I enjoyed the office. These folks are professionals and have a fine collection of tools and toys along with a pleasant atmosphere of dedication. Among other projects, they are working on a coloring book about minnow hugging.
After five days of digging, the plumber came and replaced the broken pipe. The next step is to start filling buckets with muck from the pile in the back yard, carry them inside, and dump it back into the hole. Although it has rained on the muck in the back yard, I don't think that it has washed out the smell, so another source of fill might be needed.
It's been a fun project. Supervising two teenage boys in a job which results in them being coated head to toe in black, smelly muck is a dream job for a geezer.
Turkey Poults Attempt Mass Suicide
We have all heard those stories about how stupid turkeys can be. “Turkeys will stand in the rain with their beaks pointed up and drown.” The turkey poults didn't do anything that stupid, but it was almost as bad. While there was a gentle rain going on in Lawrence, where I was supervising hole digging, slightly over three inches of rain crashed down upon the turkey poults.
Turkeys do not like to go into buildings. It's just one of their idiosyncrasies. The poults have a nice, new house with an attached yard. Instead of going inside when the rain hit, they stayed in the yard. When I came home five of the seven poults were unconscious and near death. Two of them recovered, so there are now four turkey poults instead of seven.
Anyone who has kept turkeys will be impressed by how quickly they learn, generally. There are just some things that they don't learn, like to go in out of the rain.
Worm and Other Problems
Last week my computer came down with a virus known as worm.Kalel.B@mm, not a nice thing. It is now repaired and full service is restored. Some mail and last week's blog posting might have been missing, but all is now back to wonderful, I hope. This note is being written on Saturday night, a few hours after I was finally able to remove the worm.
The worm entered my computer because I opened an attachment to an email that I thought was from the system administrator. I was being stupid, he lives only a half mile north of here, I could have called him before opening the attachment.
That same system administrator, bless his pointed head, had the FarmNews@GeezerNet.com mailbox pointed somewhere strange, so that I wasn't receiving mail from readers. That, also, is now repaired.
E-mail Subscribers: To subscribe, unsubscribe, contribute stories, complain or send a gift subscription, send an email to FarmNews@GeezerNet.com . The editor reserves the right to steal ideas submitted, rewrite submissions, and sign false names to them whenever it strikes his fancy to do so.
posted by The Geezer at 7:59 AM
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