The dogs did it again!

The dogs did it again By helping our daughters family enjoy their Christmas presents. It seems that Mikes family sent out some of their presents UPS and they sent them early, I might add. Mike Ellen and Sam live on a corner and the UPS driver delivered them to the back of the house instead of the front and put them on the back steps. He went through the gate to get to the steps. The gate is in the fence that keeps the dogs from running wild and they were in the garage sleeping at the time. They awoke and checked out the packages and went Wahoo! Inside of one of the packages was a case of World Famous, Bear Butte brand, Sturgis SD beef jerky . They ate it all making quick work of the packaging, as you might tell from the photos. Boo, the black Lab, probably ate the most because he had a powerful thirst that night when his masters came home (the jerky is a little bit salty). They took the dogs for walks but through the front door and never noticed the destruction out back. Don't stop reading yet as the devastation is not over yet. The dogs sleep in an upstairs, walk-in closet off of Sam's room. Randy sleeps on the floor and Boo inside a cage as he tends to wander a lot and besides he likes the security. Well, Boo's powerful thirst, alluded to earlier, transformed itself into an awful lot of Pee later on in the night. Boo's cage has a plastic bottom to it and he quickly filled it up, about 1" deep. That left no where for him to sleep so he just laid down in the cage. When Ellen got him out so he could go out, the next morning, she let him out of the cage and what is a Dog to do except shake himself and get the pee off of his coat. Shake all over the clothes in the closet and all over Ellen and all over downstairs as he headed for the door. The packaging has been transferred to our house [because someone is usually home] as we await the insurance inspector. Everyone should have a couple of big dogs in their house to help them keep a tidy house.

HAPPY NEW YEAR FROM NEW ENGLAND!!

They came back!

Our daughter, husband and grandson are out of their house and back with their two big Dogs Boo and Randy. I don't want to make it sound like they got evicted or anything but they had Asbestos Abaters at their house removing the nasty stuff from their old water boiler in preparation of receiving a new one. It was an old H.B.Smith coal boiler. A brief sidelight is in order at this juncture as HB Smith boilers were built here in Westfield and they were the top of the line, sold all over the world. If you have an old boiler it just might be and HB Smith. Recently the company was sold and the site is now a modern Supermarket. The Smith brothers owned the company in the 1850's and early 1900's and they and their respective families are buried in our cemetery, Pine Hill. One had a daughter who was the 1st child buried in this cemetery and we recently buried the last of the original family line, Edwin Smith who was in our church, a friend of ours and a member of our Board of Directors. Back to my story. Their particular boiler had been converted to gas but was highly inefficient. Their heating bill last year was $5,000. Time for a change so they have opted for a new, modern, high efficiency boiler. They left the house because of the asbestos removal being underway and their heat had been turned over for about 36 hours.

The two dogs would be much to much for our little Simon and Purrsey so we removed them to our office, next to the house and hoped they wouldn't rebel very much and cause very much damage. Boo and Randy arrived with a flourish and took over the house as they searched for the dog and cat. One of them even pooped in the dining room. At one point they started circling inside our house in a game of tag and my wife was standing at the kitchen counter as the two came charging by. They almost broke her in half at the knees. The next morning they exited as they had came, in a flourish. Most of the time they were here Boo cried because it was his first time away from home [except the night he spent in jail].

I let our dog and cat out from their temporary quarters and Simon rushed to the house to find all of the possible odors the two interlopers may have left. Purrsey treated it as a military mission and slunk all of the way to the house. Smelling, hiding, waiting. It had to take him 10 minutes to get over the threshold. It was a little traumatic for them but not nearly as much had we left them in the house to put up with the two monsters. It has been an interesting few hours.

Straighten up because I'm coming to visit for a few weeks!

Don't stand on the rope!

My dad thought it was time that my 19 year old butt needed some good education, in the woods, learning to be a man instead of a teenage drunk. I had spend the past year going to Forestry School at the University of Montana in Missoula and had managed to be on academic probation (0.4 on a 5 point system) as I had flunked everything except bowling 1 and 2. I was also on social probation because of drinking.That 1st day on the job on the sawmill woods crew would be a real lesson in life for me. The day before I had been at the McCullough Chain Saw store and bought a brand new, full brim, yellow, metal hard hat and I put 2 MSU stickers on the sides. The foreman picked me up the next morning at 4:30 AM because we had a one hour drive to the timber sale. Our chariot was an old International 4x4 with a crew cab. It was Air Force blue because my Dad had bought if at an auction from the Air Force. When he bought the truck it had 135,000 miles on it and our foreman Burt said they had just put another 100,000 miles on it since they had it. Other passengers were Bob who had worked in the woods for years and was our chief road builder meaning he operated the old (1942) Cat D-8 cable dozer or a logging truck. Bob had previously been a fireman at the Air Force base where he drove their Redox crash truck. Before that Bob had been in the Army in Korea. Interesting guy. Our other passenger was Tom and he was the Jammer operator. Tom had moved here from Oregon where he had spent most of his life in the woods and his son and I graduated from High School together the year before.He was some type of offbeat religion that didn't tolerate swearing and he evangelized once in the while. Tom also didn't change his trousers very often. His trousers were all wool and were very traditional lumberjack and they were full of pitch and grease. The crew joke was that when he took them off at night they just stood up by themselves. Tom wore a pair of corks which were high topped logging boots with steel pins on the bottom so he could walk on logs without falling off. Burt, the foreman, was another that had spent his life in the woods. Like Bob, Burt operated anything that needed to be operated or fixed. Burts daughter and I graduated from High School together. Burts face told a lot of painful stories as it was wrinkled and full of crags and pock marks and a whole bunch of small scars. Burts hands were the most powerful I had ever shook. Burt was the antithesis of a German woodsman. Burt, Mel and Bob (not the one I was riding with this day but Bob the mill foreman) had all been with my father since the first sawmill back in Galena. When Dad started that sawmill he offered all three of them equal partnerships in the mill. They all refused and wanted only to work for wages. They had all been togther in the CCC's (Civilian Conservation Corps). My father was as tough and rugged as these three were because when he and my Mom got married they moved to the Southern Black Hills for work. He built their first house out of logs. My mothers Brother-in-laws were in the logging and saw milling business in that area. He worked as a contractor for one of them cutting railroad ties. You did that with a double bitted axe to cut the trees down and a Broad axe with which you made the sides straight. They had to weigh 190# when wet. Tough life and I was now right in the middle of it. The expectations were high for me by my Father.

We pulled off the road on to one of our logging roads for a ways and then Burt stopped the truck and got out crawling into the back bed of the truck. There was an old brown and rusted job type box and he lifted up the cover and took something out. When he went by the truck I saw the words DANGER EXPLOSIVES on a large wooden box. My heart stopped but then I noticed that the box was all beat up and oil stained. I figured it was tools or something. Burt went up the road about 30 feet and turned a corner. Shortly Burt came back without the box and climbed back in. He lit a cigarette and took a small book out of his pocket and started to write. Suddenly the forest exploded and I think it was the loudest noise I had ever heard. Tom said, under his breath, "Fire in the hole". Burt hollard "everyone out and look for sticks". I shouted "what sticks" because I was all frazzled knowing I had been sitting about 6" from that dynamite and Burt explained that he had just blown up a box of last years dynamite that had sat in the tool box all winter and when it freezes and thaws out all winter it crystallizes and becomes a little touchy, a little bit unstable. So, you get rid of it and were looking for loose sticks that might have blown out and didn't explode. Didn't need any damn kids finding them now did we? After looking for 15 minutes or so we got back in the truck and head for the sale we were working. When we drove up we parked in front of a large log truck which was backed up to what looked like the ugliest crane I had ever seen. The driver was sitting on a pile of logs, reading the morning paper and had a cup of coffee in his hand. Burt introduced us and the driver got up as Burt extended his hand to help him up. His name was Paul and he was crippled and it looked to me like he had polio or something. I had seen a lot of that when I was a kid. Tom was in the cab trying to coax the old crane truck into some more life. Bob soon came by with the pickup battery and a set of battery cables and he and Tom finally got the Jammer started for one more day. The Jammer, was an old logging truck that had been retired from my fathers log hauling fleet and converted to a log loader or jammer. It had been an old GMC cab-over and now didn't have any doors or fenders and had been given the name Smokey. There was no room for a passenger as the seat and floor boards had been converted over to carrying spare parts and lots of tools. All were perched as if they wanted to fall out with any type of bump. On the back of the truck, just behind the cab, was mounted and old truck frame with pins so it could go up and down. On top of that was mounted a big spool of cable and this spool had a chain and sprocket on one end which was somehow hooked up to the power take off which was now running and singing as Tom oiled it. The frame had a couple of I beams welded to the end which was now up in the air reaching out over the top of the logging truck. The cable, from the spool below, ran through a chive or pulley on the end of the extended frame and terminated into some fittings that allowed for two other cables, each about 15 feet, to run through and each of these cables held a large metal hook assembly with a rope hooked up on the end. Up where the end of the frame was, a platform had been built complete with 2 long levers (a clutch and brake) and what appeared to be an accelerator pedal. As Tom climbed up to his perch Burt picked up a hook and hollarded at Steve (crippled truck driver) "grab your hook Steve looks like were ready". Burt started explaining to me the fine points of being a "Hooker" and how the system worked. 10 trucks a day were needed, in the mill every day, to keep it operating and that means that each of the 5 trucks would do one turn around and that would be 10 loads. If trucks broke down we would put our company trucks on the job until any backlogs were cleared up. What it meant for me was I was loading 10 trucks a day and I really needed to hustle. Burt loaded a couple of logs for me and I watched as he held the hook at the end of the log, as did the driver on the other end. Tom would release the brake, release the clutch and accelerate.Picture is of Ivans truck being pushed out of mud by Bob with our D-6 dozer As the cable went taught, the hooks were set in the log ends and Tom accelerated and the logs flew up over the stakes and onto the load where needed, guided by the hookers with their ropes. As the log reached its destination and the cable went slack, the hookers jerked on the hooks and took them over the stakes when Tom pushed the clutch in and the drum freewheeled allowing the men to guide their hooks to the next log. "Piece of cake" I said to Burt as he handed me the rope. "Don't stand on the rope" he answered and I silently said "Duh." The engine roared and my first log slipped effortlessly over the stakes. I tried to pull the rope out to fast and managed to turn the log on the truck bed. Tom jumped down onto the load, from his perch with a cant hook in hand and rolled the log into position. The next log went better and soon the truck was loaded. You really had to be quick because those logs flew over the stakes. They had to or we wouldn't ever get all of the trucks loaded. I quickly learned that when the driver hollars "CHAINS" you duck and get the Hell out of the way because about 30# of chains are actually following his voice and he came around and showed me how to help him get the chains so he could get the logs locked in (boomered) and get away as two more trucks were waiting in the background and time was money. It was an interesting job, slightly dangerous, and I liked all of the drivers even it they busted me because I was the bosses son. I was holding my own. The logs, which were in 10' to 16' lengths were decked along side the logging roads by skidders and thier teams of horses. We were always walking on top of those log decks and you always had to be aware of shifting logs and rattlesnakes as this was good rattlesnake country. Sometimes a log would come out of one of its hooks on the way up and you always needed to be ready to jump out of the way. Burt came back as we were loading our 5th truck and it would be time for lunch and I was starved. Mom had my lunch ready when I got up this morning and it contained 2 fried pork chops,two pieces of buttered bread, a tub of apple sauce and a nice sized piece of homemade apple pie for desert. I could hardly keep my mind off of my lunch, I was so hungry. We were loading the last few logs out of the deck and I was grateful to be walking on solid ground. I could feel Burts steely gaze as he watched me perform. Our last log was going up and Tom was accelerating very quickly to clear the stakes and I could feel myself lifting off of the ground, I lost my hold on the rope and was propelled backwards about 20' and upwards at a high rate of speed. I wound up at the rear of the, now removed, log deck smack dab in a small grove of aspin trees. My hard hat was gone and it felt like I lost all of my teeth. When I got my bearings I saw Burt leaning over the top of me with his hands on his knees. I didn't know what happened until I heard Burt say "I told you not to stand on the rope!"

Jobs at the Sawmill - Part II

As I aged I got more and more different jobs. I graduated from rock picker and sticker boy to jobs that changed daily. My first serious construction job came when I was assigned to the concrete crew of the construction company building homes. My first job was to feed the cement mixer. Three gravel, two sand and one cement. We had a large mixer that someone else operated as my job was just to feed the mixer. I would fill it up and then watch it mix, while adding water, as the "barrow operators" stood in line with their beat up wheelbarrows waiting for another load. Once it was properly mixed, the operator would dispense a "to the top" load of concrete to each operator and they would head off to the foundation while maneuvering around on 2x10 wooden planks. At the foundation they would dump their loads and hustle back to the mixer. Our foreman Mel was on he knees at the foundation directing where to dump each barrow while leveling the concrete and smoothing it out. Two other men were helping place the concrete with flat shovels and other jobs, at the direction of Mel, such as cutting keys in the foundation or shoveling excess concrete away from the foundation boards so the wooden forms would not be locked into place. These two men had the best jobs as they got to stand and talk a lot. They smoked while they worked and joked a lot with Mel. I envied them and aspired to their jobs but I couldn't figure out how to get on that part of the crew. I had to settle on being the "Mixer Loader" until I could figure that out.

Shortly the foundation was done and we merely switched to another foundation that was just like that one only on the other side of the mixer. It seemed that our crew was being decimated by the flu which was exactly how I ended up as "Mixer Loader". As we switched sides, we took a short break, where I heard that 2 barrow operators were moving up to work with Mel as his 2 men went home sick. Another man was coming down from the Sawmill to work with us but that left us still one man short. So this is how you move up, I said to myself. Striking while the iron was hot I went up to Mel, as he drank his coffee. "Mel" I intoned with my best deep voice and my thumbs stuck into my belt, "I can handle that wheelbarrow, I mean barrow, you know and I would like to take a crack at it." Mel looked me up and down and just said "sure". When we were back up and running and the new guy was learning how to load the mixer, I stood on the plank, behind my barrow waiting for my 1st load of concrete. The guy ahead of me told me the in and outs to "Barrow Operation" this amounted to whatever you do, don't let the load get away as Mel doesn't like that to well. Keep your feet the same distance apart as your shoulders. "Plow, plop" and the first load of concrete hit my wheelbarrow and I almost lost it but for the guy behind me grabbing the side. As I headed for the foundation I could hardly keep the barrow full of shifting concrete stable but I plodded on. The concrete ran over the edges as it sloshed from side to side. Got my load dumped and headed back for more. I brought over three more loads and we were at the corner and shifting directions and that is when it happened. As I came back with the next load I was feeling about as cocky as a 15 year old could feel because after all this was my 5th load and there was nothing to it. As I lifted up on the handles to dump, I hit a rock on the plank and lost control. I tried to over react to catch the load but all I did was steer the entire load of wet concrete into Mel's lap. I looked down at Mel and his entire lap was covered and I couldn't even see his legs. He was holding his float in one hand and just looked at me shaking his head slowly. "I think a better place for you Dickson is back loading the mixer" he said as he stood up and cleaned himself as best as he could with his hands. I looked back, as I got to the mixer, and there was Mel standing while one of the guys rinsed him off with the full force of the hose. Every day Mel wore clean, starched, Khaki pants and shirt, a holdover from his days working as foreman on the CCC's and in the Army. Mel was as tough as they come and he just stood there, still staring at me and slowly shook his head as the ice cold water ran over him. Good thing it was hot out. The next day I was returned to the Sawmill crew and my job as being a tailer.

Losing weight the hard way

Now that I need to clean up my eating act a bit[lower cholesterol, eliminate salt, add fiber, loose 100 #'s] I have been paying a bit more attention to food. For instance, I have had a cheeseburger almost every day of my adult life and it is really not good for you. I have noticed that it is really tough to get a hamburger that is less than 1/2 lb. When did that happen? Everything used to be based on the good old quarter-pounder. If you bought premade burgers at the grocery store, they were all 1/4#ers. If you barbecued and had guests over they all got 1/4 burgers and a hot dog. We ate at a nice restaurant tonight and as I was perusing the menu I came to a section entitled "Lighter fare" theoretically for those of us that need to loose weight. This section had two hamburger entries on it and both were 1/2lb-ers. "LIGHTER FARE" you have to be kidding me!!! I chose a nice dinner salad. [good boy Ted]Friendlys restaurants, out this way, are nice places to go with the family for supper and ice cream. Their specials all have free ice cream and everything that sounds like a burger is 1/2 pound and up plus fries and no matter how hard you look you can't find a 1/4 hamburger. I think the only way you can get a 1/4# burger is to order a 1/2# burger and split it with your wife. McDonalds has really pushed this 1/4# thing with the double as published. It has a mere 730 calories with 40 grams of mouth watering fat and yes they do have a 1/4 pounder. Isn't it ironic that they are about the only ones that can provide you with a 1/4# hamburger but it is only half as good as the double. Need to get off this subject.

I have been on diet since my Dr. told me I had a heart attack about 3 weeks ago. I have gained 11 #s since I started. But I have turned into a 100% whole grain kinda guy. Since I have to lower my cholesterol [147] I gave up my morning egg. Actually I used to have 1 egg, on an English Muffin or toast with a slice of cheese and a small glass of juice. Now I have some kind of 100% whole wheat breakfast food and milk. I have sliced ham or turkey on bread [100% grain bread] for lunch and a normal supper. My big problem is all of the cookies/candies/cakes/pies that have been showing up because of the holidays. My daughter makes cookies by the bucketfuls and leaves them on our porch and if nothing is around I manage to devour 2 sleeves of 100% whole wheat crackers and cheese without breaking a sweat but I haven't seen a burger in three weeks. I even gave up beer and switched to a nice glass of red wine now and then? A friend of mine who has the same type of problem I do says he wife sends him out to graze on the front law about once a week.

Puppy playdate.

Thought I would never be uttering those words. I don't like the term when used referring to kids and absolutely never when referring to pets. We never took our daughter to a "playdate" and my wife and I never had a "playdate" when we were kids. It is this new generation of parents that have coined that phrase and now Websters will want to make a new word out of it, if they haven't already done it. I suppose it will be political incorrect should I say "Sam is over next door playing with Tim" but I will need to be saying Sam is having a "Playdate" with Tim????? What happens to me if I refuse to use the word "Playdate"? Do I get censured by Merriman-Webster or something. Do the word police come and get me?

Sorry but I went off on that word a little bit. We had a puppy playdate today because GG is bringing her dog Maggie over to live with us sometime after the 1st of the year, for a while while she heads to Arizona to visit some friends and family. This 1st picture is Maggie in all her Pug glory.












Next picture is our Simon with Maggie as the two "Explore" each other.












The third picture is Maggie getting to know Purrsey over at the shop. That is Purrsey's back and hair standing straight up. Purrsey is not very impressed. When he got back to the house he immediately went upstairs and hid. seems he isn't quite ready for another dog in his life. When Maggie got into the house she went right to the middle of the living room floor and pooped. Probably trying to establish herself as Alpha pet or something.
Dec 26th Mike, Ellen and Sam are moving over here for a day and night as the asbestos removers go to their house removing the stuff as they are getting a new furnace. They are bringing their two dogs, Boo and Randy, with them. Boo is a Black Lab and Randy a Golden Doodle. Both love to play rowdy and rough and destroy anything in their way. You might remember that Randy ate two pair of my glasses and a couple of bags of apples. This should be enough material for a posting or two.

I need to update this posting because when I went upstairs to change clothes I found that the damn cat had peed on our bed. Probably the cat was upset because the little Pug chased him upstairs that he relieved himself on our bed. Seems he's making a little bit of a play at being Alpha pet. He better find another way of doing that, mabey kicking some butt or something, otherwise he is going to be working on Alpha Pet out in the shop at night.

Working at my Dad's Sawmill

My father had a sawmill in the Black Hills of SD when I was growing up. The main mill was located in Sturgis and was by far the largest. When I left the mill in 1972, because he had sold it, we were sawing about 100,000 board feet per day plus a railroad car full of chips for making paper. What I first remember is the mill was fairly small probably sawing about 10 to 15,000 feet per day. I was about 12 when I got my first job at the sawmill. I wanted money and my two older brothers worked there so I could ride with them at 7. I could only work until noon but that was OK because by then I was bored to death and it was time to go swimming anyway. My first job was called stick and rock picker upper. I was impressed with the title and told everyone how important I was. All of our roads were dirt and gravel and I was responsible to make sure all of the rocks were picked up and also all of the sticks. The sticks were about 3' long and 3/4" X 1 1/2" and were placed between the layers of green lumber in the piles as the left the "green chain" which was where all of the rough boards (green and wet) came out of the sawmill. The fork lift picked them up and hauled them to the yard to stay (1 to 2 months) while they dried. As my Dad explained to me, the forks would drive over the roads and hit the rocks and the resulting lurching would cause some of the sticks to come out of the piles. As these sticks laid in the road, other vehicles such as cars, dump trucks and logging trucks would drive over these sticks and they would fly up and hit the break lines and break them. Without breaks a logging truck could crash and kill the driver. So you can see that I had a very important job and I worked very hard at it to keep the drivers from being killed. I think I made $1.50 per 1/2 day and that was good money being the minimum wage was only 75 cents [in 1955 you could still type out a cent sign (¢) on the typewriter without it being a big deal]. Before long I was wallowing in dough and the envy of all my friends. I made more money than my friends that were paperboys. Eventually I ran out of roads and to get sticks I just followed the fork lift around so I asked my Dad for a different job, for a while, so the sticks and rocks could build back up. I got in Dad's car [a 1955 green Ford with dual air horns on the right fender and a spotlight on the other fender] and we headed for a remote part of the sawmill yard. It was the area where they dumped the slabs from the sawmill. Slabs are the outer part of the log, containing the bark, which was waste. They were put in an old, yellow, State, snowplow type, Dump truck that Dad had purchased at auction and it had no brakes [ too many sticks] and the truck went up to this remote area and dumped the slabs. They had to be piled as they were running out of room. My new job. Not very important though as there were no lives in danger. Well I piled slabs for days and then one day it was very hot and there was no shade. My 12 year old mind figured it out and I took some of the slabs from the pile I was making and slid them about 1/2 way off. The sun was on the opposite side so it made an excellent shade break. I crawled underneath for my break and promptly went to sleep. I was awoke by my Dad kicking the bottom of my foot because it was lunch time. Boy was he mad and I couldn't come back to work for a couple of weeks which was OK by me. I had enough money in my pocket to get by and this allowed me to go to the pool in the mornings also. 12 years old, swimming in the morning and afternoon with enough money to spend at the snack bar. Life didn't get much better than that in 1955.

Get a Hobby!

When you have a heart attack, everyone is a Dr. It is amazing as to how many people have had similar problems or their spouse, brother/ sister have. All have given me the same advise. Slow down, take it easy, stop stressing over everything, loose weight, exercise and get a hobby. I have a lot of little hobbies but none that I have ever taken serious such as : photography; this blog; painting; building furniture; fly fishing; professional roller skating………just kidding. I looked over the list and decided I needed something really new. I went out and took a class on how to make wooden pens! Had a fun time doing it and we sent all of the pens we made over to Iraq. Nice. So I spent $150 on a used lathe, $200 on misc. materials and cleaned my shop up to make room. I’ve made one pen but I have now taught my daughter how to make pens and she is off and running with a whole list of people she is making wooden pens for and I taught my grandson how and he to has a list of all his teachers and so forth. [picture is my 9 yr old grandsons1st try] They are making pens for all of the South Dakota relatives as well. Ellen’s husband hasn’t shown an interest yet but he has turned in a list. My wife tried but she didn’t have her glasses and couldn’t see. [valid reason] but she says she wants to learn. Keep in mind that I only have one lathe. Also keep in mind that all of these parts cost. Apparently we are going to sell pens when the fairs roll around next fall to recoup my expenses. We missed all of the craft shows this year. Darn!

In the pen building trade, the hard part is getting everything ready to turn the pen blanks. The stock has to be sized and cut, holes drilled through the centers of the cut pieces, brass tubes glued inside the holes and then drilled out and squared for the lathe and then you can turn the lathe on which by the way is the fun part. I have made one pen so far but I have prepped a whole bunch of stock for the various turners I have now taught and I noticed that no one is professing to have a desire to help with that phase? When I finish this post I still have to go out and clean the shop.
I will have to admit that it was fun to teach everybody and watch them get turned on to the hobby but it kinda looks like my hobby is going to be doing prep work. Does that count?

Sam turning his first wooden pen.

Sam putting pen together

unable to post

I can't post because I can't find any editing tools such as inserting a picture. Anyone got any clues with this beta thing. figured it out... go to posts then F5? Don't know why but it works. everything returns

Another cat posting

Think I will start back out with a cat posting. I have got to do some reading to catch up on this super silent Diesel Sub the Chinese have developed because I am sure I will have something to say about that. I have also got some old bicycle stories , a story, with pictures, of my sister-in-law’s latest tattoo, a couple of cop stories and one or two submarine stories. I might even venture back to the 1950’s and see if I can remember times when I was 10 years old. Alas I get away from my Purrsey story.

The picture says it best as Simon is bracing for yet another attack from the cat. Purrsey managed to escape to the outside world, a couple of months ago and has become a part time resident there. Simon insists on following him until he gets too far away. Simon will bark at him if he goes where he shouldn’t. It has become a rather fun match to watch. They wrestle and run until Simon runs out of steam and lays down for a cat nap and sometimes the cat will lay with him. If the cat is still out at bedtime Simon will not settle down until the cat comes in. I have had to keep a ladder close because Purrsey can get up on things but just can’t get back down. The worst incident was going up a tree, probably because of the neighborhood dogs, and spending three days up there until we found him. He sure was hungry when he got down. The nice thing about his moving outside is that the world in now his litter box and the house smells a whole lot better.

The cat usually wants outside at 4 AM and I foolishly oblige him. I have found that the constant meow’s go away when you oblige him and those meows can drive you insane if you fail or move to slowly. You certainly can’t sleep through them and the only other solution available would be killing the cat and that would make the wife unhappy. Therefore I get up at 4 and let the cat out.
This morning I let the cat out at 4 and then the dog wanted out at 5. At 5:30 I was having coffee when I heard a rather loud commotion on our side porch. I opened the door and Purrsey flew in the door. I noticed Simon, all agitated and patrolling the driveway outside the porch, back and forth. Off in the distance I could see our local, gray, neighborhood Tom, swaggering slowly to the South and home. I am sure he had just delivered a dose of “Who’s top cat in the neighborhood” to Purrsey and Purrsey’s hero Simon broke up the action chasing the villain away. “Good boy Simon”! Purrsey has had his butt kicked a couple of times now. He’ll eventually learn.