Here's a shot of the nearby Black Mountain. The next day the snow covered the mountain to the bottom (below).
This is the last gig with them. Jim McCartney will be playing lead in my place. He's a an excellent picker so it should work out well.
To the left is Caleb Melo, a fine young man and great
steel and lead guitar picker! He's....18 years old!
Have I mentioned that Porterville's got talent?! This is Friday, Dec. 6th at the Springville Inn and will be my last gig with "Duggins Citrus Express Band".
Caleb and his father, Paul Melo, our drummer, have a few numbers that they play together. So, Ol' Ran was on the drums keeping time for them.
Here's the band for the night. Left to right: Jim Duggins (lead guitar), Paul Melo (drums), Susan (Sooz) Newsome (lead vocalist), Randy Minnick (bass and vocalist), Caleb Melo (steel guitar behind Sooz).
This is Chuck McGuire from the "Country
Friends" band sitting in with us. Ol' Ran is
playing rhythm on Paul's acoustic guitar.
Ol' Ran the Bassman back at the helm of his late-70's Fender Precision bass. This has always been my "go to" bass. I love this big beauty! The only bass I love more is the fretless Precision bass. I've only seen and played one and it belonged to a friend of mine. It's still in his family as far as I know.
Most folks have run across a double-yolked egg but even Connie and I were amazed when she cut open a hard-boiled egg and found this!
This shows that it's not a "work day" for Princess Abby. It's her day off so she's showing us that warm sun and naps are her friends!
Well…..here we are again at the all-too-quickly-used-up end of a perfectly good year. Doesn’t that just sink your rubber duckie? MAN! I’m not sure that it’s been even a year since I’ve seen a year go by this fast! 2019 whizzed on by quicker than you can dust your horse blanket!
And, Christmas is just around the corner! Only 1,468,800 seconds until Christmas! Do
you know where your Visa card is?!
Cleaning Up: let me tell you, neighbors; this
time around, the cleanup for the annual yard sale was an entirely different
armadillo. Usually, in about a week or so, we are all tidied up and ready to
depart the ranch and head out for a grueling time of long distance travel. That
didn’t happen this year. In fact, we weren't sure that we would even be finished
cleaning up by the end of this year! Sheese!
It’s not
that we are lazy or such (we don’t have time to do even that!). It’s just that, almost simultaneously, there were so many
other priorities assailing us. That’s really not a complaint! I’m not sure if
anyone can believe it but we were so busy being blessed that we didn’t have
time to finish cleaning up!! I kid thee negative! Every time we turned around
someone was giving us tons of stuff (we're still inventorying it!)!
We hauled
trailer load after trailer load of good stuff back to the ranch and did the
best we could to find a place to store it. Most of it is at the hangar awaiting
our attention while other goodies are local. Some will be cleaned and priced
for next year’s yard sale while other things will be given away or sold. There are items that could end up on Craig’s
List or eBay so we’ll be checking that out, too.
However, after all this work, there’s still a chance we may not be as deeply involve in next year's yard sale. Perhaps we will just supervise and watch other sell their wares. It's a bit early to tell.
Anyway, it took until the third week in November to finally get straightened up around here. Even then, we were solely motivated by the fact that we had rain coming in. There were only a couple of days to work with until things were going to get sloshed so we had to put a hustle in our bustle. Do you know just how much hustle two old people have on hand at any given time? We used up a year's supply of hustle in two days! I turn again to my pal, Charlie Brown, for comment: AAAAAAARGH!
However, after all this work, there’s still a chance we may not be as deeply involve in next year's yard sale. Perhaps we will just supervise and watch other sell their wares. It's a bit early to tell.
Anyway, it took until the third week in November to finally get straightened up around here. Even then, we were solely motivated by the fact that we had rain coming in. There were only a couple of days to work with until things were going to get sloshed so we had to put a hustle in our bustle. Do you know just how much hustle two old people have on hand at any given time? We used up a year's supply of hustle in two days! I turn again to my pal, Charlie Brown, for comment: AAAAAAARGH!
In those two
days, we racked, stacked, packed, and parked, covered, and tarped everything we
could in every available place we could find. The Rancho Relaxo twins stuffed all of
their blessings in two trailers, the pole barn, the back patio, the barn, the
upstairs living room, and the hangar!
At the end
of the second day, two really really exhausted old people tumbled into two
craters in the bed. The next day, they could hardly even move. You would have
thought that both of us were 90 years old or more. It took two weeks to
reasonably recover from that track and field event and we’re still a bit goofy
yet! Thankfully, “Uncle Bo” (Ibuprophen) was an ever present help in time of
need….which was often (PRN).
Droning away: an interesting thing happened on
the way to pick up a three trailer loads of free goodies. The guy who gave us
what seemed like all of his worldly possessions (actually he only gave us the
things that were over the weight limit stipulated by the moving company) is
selling his home. A nice real estate agent just happened to be there during one
of the trips. So, Ol Curious George asked her if her company used drones to
take pictures with. She answered affirmatively but that they no longer had a
drone pilot. Well, says the curious one, “I’m a licensed aircraft pilot with a
good eye for photography. What do you think if I acquired my drone pilot’s
certification?”. She basically stated that she would assure me all the work
that she and 50 other agents could throw at me! Guess what?
I wasn’t about to duck that proposition!
Not having looked into the matter before, I was hoping that becoming a drone pilot had a learning curve at least slightly less than qualifying to fly an SR-71. I was right. The old wing nut looked up the qualifications on the FAA’s website and was almost stunned to see how easy this was going to be.
There are
two parts to the the matter: training and exam. One is basic airman’s knowledge of
weather and aerodynamics. The other was simply “Part 107 Small Unmanned
Aircraft Systems” rules and regs. Well, hang on to your old grey bonnet, Lil
Liza Jane! Because I already have a valid airman’s certificate (the technical
term for “pilot’s license”), the FAA waived the first part altogether! Zowie!
That left me with only about 30 minutes of studying the rules and regs. Then,
after an open book 35 question test, I printed out the official drone pilot’s
certification! Now, I are one! Whoooooooo, doggies!!
I looked
around quite a bit to find what I thought would be the best dollar value in a
drone. The one that should fit the bill is a “Holy Stone HS120D GPS Drone with
Camera”. It came in the mail a week ago but (when you see a “but”….this is
where things get.… interesting. "Buts" are not our friends)... I don’t have a “smart phone” (the dumb phone
has served me quite well, thank you). To see where you are going while you are
flying the drone, you need a smart phone.
The Smart Thing To Do: ooookay. I promptly ordered a
refurbished iPhone from “Best Buy” for a “C-Note”. However, I am expecting a
lot of media attention and huge prize for being the last person in California to own
a smart phone. That should compensate for that expenditure. At least the kids and grandkids will no longer be ashamed of
some of their old Luddite kinfolks and they’ll no longer drop hints about us
living in the stone age (surely they knew that we were there when the “Flintstones”
debuted on TV in 1960....BC).
Once all of
these things get glued together, there should be another income stream around
the ranch (I’m hoping it will always be overflowing its banks!).
Dinner and a movie: we finally got a….day off! I could
have sworn that I heard angels clapping and bells ringing! Well, just what do
old people do for R&R? I reckon it’s what they did when they weren’t old.
They go out for dinner and a movie, that’s what!
Rancho Ran
and Connie the Canner have fairly simple tastes (read: we’re both cheap dates)
so dinner was easy enough. We went to the “Olive Garden” in Visalia (the
nearest real town) and knocked over their all you can eat soup and salad special. If you consider all things, it was actually less than taking a couple of grand-kids to McDonald's!
Their spicy
Italian sausage soup with hot bread is my favorite and I proved it to them. I
think the poor waitress was worn out by the time we left. If she wasn’t worn
out, her tennis shoes surely were. We left a decent tip so she wouldn’t think
that we were there solely to brutalize the staff.
The movie
was one of the few historical movies I thought would be worth watching:
“Midway”. As someone who loves WW2 history, I couldn’t wait to see the CGI and
also just how closely to history the script would follow.
As expected,
the movie was actually pretty good. It did follow the historical timeline quite
well. But, if you were not really well acquainted with the history of the “Battle of
Midway”, you are sure to get lost on who was doing what to whom as well as when,
where, and why.
Other than
the CGI being a bit over the top (it was unrealistic, which I fully expected), the
action was realistically dramatic. I really enjoyed the flick and only caught a minor flaw in their Japanese aircraft attack (i.e. they included a specific airplane for the attack on Pearl Harbor that wasn't actually used at that time). I did some
research later and must commend the producers for having a top notch cast. The
acting was superb because the casting was superb. Also appreciated was seeing some humanity added to the enemy
combatants. This film was really well done.
Good gravy!: after all of the frolicking on our
day off, Thanksgiving Day pounced upon us. That turned out to
be….interesting…..too. We had invited two guests to join us and, after the
ever-busy Connie made preparations for the large meal, neither guest was able
to make it! So, being the two rather adaptable old people that we are, we just
decided to relax, feast on our nice dinner, and have a quiet and peaceful time
of it.
To make a
long story longer, Connie swamped the table with every imaginable edible
including grannie’s good gravy. The T-bird ended up perfectly cooked so we went
to town dismembering it. All that was left to do was to fill our plates. I always dig in good sized shovel but usually just scoop out Connie’s mashed potatoes with a backhoe. Being at the
top of the food chain has its perks and mashed potatoes and gravy has got to be
one of the best of them.
The
philosophy for such a supremely nice day was simple enough: "gobble ‘till you wobble
then take a nap". We did just that.
Princess Abby Report: did you know that, if you replace
one letter in “coon dog”, you have “corn dog”? Did you know that Abby doesn’t
mind if I call her my “corn dog”? Now, that, folks, is loyalty, eh?
Abby, the “I
leave my owner in constant wonder” dog, is doing great! She’s thriving and
happy. When she’s not racing about the ranch, she’s rousting my birds. She receives a good scolding for that. She must think they are play toys from God, or
something. At least she doesn’t bring one to me in her mouth expecting praise
for her great hunting prowess (yes…that did happen a couple of years ago. Thankfully, the
catatonic hen recovered).
I’m still
not sure why she still gets treated like a princess, though. Despite “her
naughtiness” moods, there’s a never ending supply of doggie treats, tug o’
wars, and petting and scratching. Guess it’s called puppy love or such.
To the dump, to the dump, to the
dump, dump, dump:
every now and again we have to load up Wooly Pulley and head to the local dump.
It’s actually a “transfer station” since it has been decommissioned by the
county. They park a couple of huge containers at the bottom of an embankment
and you back up them. You then unload and go about your business.
Well, that’s
easy enough to say, eh? Ah, yes; but this is Rancho Relaxo and not everything is as easy as it sounds. For instance, it really is a chore when the trash man is already
plumb tuckered out and three naps behind. But, a man’s gotta do what a man’s
gotta do and this man’s gotta go to the dump.
Some of the chore is prepping the trailer. In this case, it had to be unloaded so that we could re-load it (not unlike a Chinese fire drill). Then you deal with hooking up the trailer. Usually, the trailers are chocked with jack stands so they won’t sneak off without permission. All of the chocks have to be removed along with the jack stands. Once hooked up (which requires more lifting and tugging), then you back up the trailer to the trash cage and begin loading (which is just all kinds of fun when you're already wrecked). After the trailer is loaded, you must cover/tarp the thing or the dump manager will charge you an extra ten bucks for being stupid enough to scatter your garbage all over Tulare county.
When you get
to the dump, things are fairly easy. You just back up to the embankment, shove and toss stuff into the large containers, sweep up after yourself, toss the brooms and cans back into the trailer, then go home and park and chock the
trailer and unhook it. There was no nap after this go around. Not enough time.
UGH.
Gallus Gallus Domesticus Report: the ol' rooster wrangler is proud of himself. He's getting
pretty good at the basics of herding chickens again without killing some of
them. But, you just never know what’s going to happen when you’re dealing with
dumb clucks.
The other
day (when lots of things happen around here), the ol’ chicken dude decided to
pull the large cage out of the coop. Since we no longer have younger birds, it was decided that it should be out of the coop. The cage, you may recall, is the confine in which we keep
the younger birds while they mature enough to be introduced into the general
population. It’s also where all 15 birds have elected roost for the night.
So, imagine
what happened when the cage was no longer available? Do you think that my dirty birds
had the brains to consider walking only a little further back into the coop
where three really nice roosting racks were parked? Nope? Then, it should come
as no shock that, when the ol’ bird herder went out to shut the door on the
coop, there were only two birds in the coop! That there was a real “ding-a-dang”
moment!
What before
my two old eyes should appear but 13 birds roosting here and there. Some were
on the ground and some on the bales. Some were on the barrels but most
were on the….CAGE….which was next to the dog house! Charlie Brown had it right
when he hollered, “RATS!”. My lightning fast mind dryly advised, “That was brilliant,
Ran”.
It was time
to start wrangling the feather brained beasts so they wouldn’t drown in the
rain that was coming that night. The good news is that they were in their
evening “chicken torpor” so were easy to catch and replant.
What you do
is pleasantly engage them by speaking chickenese so they know you’re a “friendly”.
Then you slowly and gently but firmly grip them and began to speak good things to
them about their mother (we all know that mother hens are held in high regard).
A few more clucks and a few strokes of
their feathers and they settle down for the trip to the new perch. I had to do
that 13 times. *SIGH*.
Of course,
that meant that the cage had to be moved further away and laid down so that the
my gooney bird collection wouldn’t try to mount it again. That worked for exactly…one day.
The next
night, they weren’t to be found on the cage. Instead, they were scattered all
over the place again! That meant another round of rounding up chickens in the
dark. Out-thunk by the chickens again. Swell!
Well, Ol’ Captain
Jean-Luc Retard had an answer to this pluck-a-cluck mess. The birds were all
safely locked up for the night. Instead of being released in the mornings, they
are being kept there for a few days until their “clock” is reset and they
understand that they are to go inside the coop instead of parking out in the
rain (reckon their mother hen forgot to train them to do that).
There you
have it: another short episode of the long happenings at Rancho Relaxo, home of
Rancho Ran, the world's foremost authority (the previous one died) and Connie
the Canner, the world's greatest side-cook (a Freudian slip as she stumbled
trying to say "side-kick"): where the air smells like sweat and elbow
grease: where things can get...interesting and where...you just never know. Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are.
