lot buffalo curse

There are many symbols of the old west, cowboys, Indians, buffalo and long horn cattle, and of coarse the horse.  There numbers are fewer now than they were a hundred fifty years ago, but the spirit of the old west live on. The mouse and I were out on the spring round up when we stop to visit with an old Indian sitting on a blanket looking out on the prairie. He kept saying Ta-Tonka and pointing at a dust cloud moving our way. Will! The first word that came to my mind was stampede. I was just about to yell stampede when the old Indian said “buffalo spirit”. I took another look, it was hard to see with the wind blowing in my face making my eyes water, but I could some humps in that cloud of dust. Now! I know there are no free ranging buffaloes in this part of the country.  So it had to be something else.  It sure was not horses or cows or the lone ranger and as I said “there ain’t no buffaloes in this part of the country.”

Mouse pop up and said “he is talking about that old legend of white buffalo woman and the curse of the buffalo.” Will! I said “Oh” not knowing what the heck they were talking about. So; I ask just what the heck they were talking about. The old Indian stood up and told the story of the buffalo’s curse. It seem that the spirit of the buffalo cannot go to the happy hunting ground because of the way there killed by the white buffalo hunter so the buffaloes spirit have to roam the plans  forever and punish the white eye. Just then the wind pickup and mouse and I pulled up our bandannas and cinched down our hats, the old Indian pull the blanket up around him and put his back to the wind. The dust cloud was getting closer. With all the dust it was hard to see but it could be a buffalo stampede, but one brush me as it few over old paint. It was a darn tumbleweed blown by the wind.

Now I don’t give much stock to these old stories but then again the tumbleweed showed up about the same time the buffalo disappeared and there numbers are the same as the buffaloes once were, so there maybe something to this. So when you see the tumbleweeds roam the prairie just remember the spirit of the slain buffaloes are roaming the land. Will mouse it’s going to a long day in the saddle those beef have scattered all over after the spirit buffalo stampede, so let round-em-up, head-em-up, and move-em-out..

 See you all back at the ranch.

Thank you for stopping by and your comment god bless

ghost town

The ghost town

John AKA (doggie) cliff AKA (the nose) and I AKA (the squirrelly Englishman) were out in the west desert the other or west side of the Great Salt Lake looking for geodes and other rocks of value. It was a hot August day; the alkali dust was all most too much to take. The directions we had seem simple enough but I think we were lost but we knew where we were, if you know what I mean.  We came across a trail that took off from the main trail/road we were on and fit the directions we had. It look like it had not been travel in quite some time. There was a bit of a stream along the trail but the water look bad.  Rust and sulfur deposit were along the banks and the all present alkali.

 We decided to take a chance and go up the trail and maybe fine fresh water and the geode we were looking for. We had gone about a mile over a very ruff trail into a canyon in the foothills of the Newfoundland mountain range. The trail was getting a little hard to fallow but there was no place to turn around we would have to back up about a half mile to turn around. So we press on up the trail. It kept getting worse till we came to an old wooden bridge. The bridge was in no shape to support the old dodge truck we were in so we stop and got out to find a way across the stream, it was about three foot across and maybe 6 inches deep. The banks were about a foot high. We end up breaking down the banks with a rock pick and a GI shovel so we could ford the stream. We could see that there was a wide spot up the trail about a hundred yards. It was up hill so we were not sure what we would find up there.

As we got to the wide spot we could see the metal roof of a building so we push on. After a half mile or so, we had the building in sight but there were five buildings. We pulled up to the middle of the buildings or courtyard and got out to look around. The first building look like it had been and office/home it was vary dusty and look like no one had been there in years. There was something strange about this place that gave me the willies. Things were just laying there like someone had just left. We found a ledger but it was not to legible and we think was written in German. The last date we found in it was 4/18/1906. It looks like we were the first people to be here in sixty years. As we looked around there was a lot of stuff there clothing, books, and thing that people just don’t up and leave behind.  We look in the other building it was equipment shed with a steam donkey engine and air compressor and air drills stuff for mining.  Across from it was what looks to be a cook shack or mess hall with pots sitting on the stove and whatever dry up and decayed in them. Bottles of caned food were still on shelves. There was a table where card were dealt out an about a dollar fifty in change on the table, it looked like three people were playing. Empty glass sat on the table you could see where what ever was in them had evaporated. Again we got the felling that the people just up and left. The other building was a bunk house and again it was like the other building thing just left. The last building was a barn and coral.  Our best guess was there had been eight to ten people living there.

About fifty yards up the canyon we found some rails for an ore car heading into a rock slide. We started to think that we knew what had happen here. There had been a mine cave-in and those that were not in the mine came to help then whole mountain side came down trapping them all inside, our best guess.  

The one thing that kept coming to mind was the safe in the first building that we found. We tried to get it open with no luck, and we could not move it. Our wildest dreams were lock up in that safe. We decided to pack all we could of value in the truck and leave then come back with a bigger truck and tools to get the safe open. We had not plan to do an overnight-er and we really did not want to stay there. It was spooky. 

We had fifty miles of bad dirt roads plus another hundred to get home. After we got back home we did some research and found there had been a German settlement in the area about twenty miles to the north around the late 1800. The date we found was the date of the big San Franco earthquake. The pieces of the puzzle were coming together. We went back three week later but could not get there because of three day of heavy rain and it was to muddy. We plan another trip for the next summer. Believe or not when we tried we could not find our way back to it.  After all it was a Ghost town. 

some more to read about the area that give some in site to the problem we had in finding it again http://www.expeditionutah.com/2013/01/the-mines-camps-of-the-newfoundland-mountains/

Thank you for stopping by and your comments god bless

lot of hair

Lot of hair

I guess people have been using hair pieces since the beginning of time. Now most of us have hair on our heads, I think. At one time in history it was a status symbol to ware a wig, maybe that where the term “hot head” or “don’t flip your wig” came from, I don’t know. Toupees, wigs and others hair pieces, that I do not know the name of; have been the source of many a good laugh over the years. From a toupee falling in to a man soup to it being cot on a branch, or something.

Here are a few funny hair moments I have had:

I was at a late night picnic party and enjoying a young ladies attention when my little brother decided that all the kissing was to much for him so he grab a hand full of our hair to pull us apart. Will; she was wearing a wig and it came off much to his surprise. It did liven up the party.

Then there was the war dance, we were at a bar waiting for a friend to close up the place so we could go party up the canyon. Ed a full blooded Ute Indian was arguing with a Navajo girl we pick up at the Pow-wow. In the mix of the conversation Ed tried to give her a kiss and pulled off the wig she was wearing and began to dance around the bar with it. Before the weekend was over they got married, hard to believe but it’s true.

 A pony tail mystery . Back in the day of the poodle skirt, I was at a bar called the old mill. They had a live band and a nice hardwood dance floor. There was this girl that had cot my attention, she was wearing a blue poodle skirt, but it had white horses on it, and a white angle blouse and a long pony tail. I ask her to dance and we did. We stayed on the dance floor for three or four songs, then they played a good fast jitter bug tune and we started to dance I spun her around and the pony tail came off and few into the drummer. She screamed and ran off. I retrieved her pony tail and looked for her she was gone and so were her friends she came with.  I never got her name as we dance most of the time and had little conversation. I kept the pony tail for sometime but I never came across her again. I guess I’m just not a prince charming.

Then there was Ralph a guy I work with. We were working the graveyard shift and waiting for the go ahead to continue with the testing we were doing. Ralph leaned back in the office chair with his feet on the desk and his toupee got cot on the wall. Just then the boss came in to check on us. Ralph sat up and the boss had to laugh at what we saw. We had work with Ralph for years and did not know he was bald. Ralph was trying hard to put that thing back on his head.

 It was a year or so after my wife and I got married we were in Yuma Arizona at my aunt house. I had gone to town to get some stuff from the store. When I got back I came in with the groceries and sat at the table with a cold drink. After about ten minuets I ask my aunt where my wife was. Then they all started to giggle she was setting across the table from me. They had put a wig and makeup on her and I did not recognize her. She did look good.

I hope you liked these bad hair moments, and I would love to hear about some of yours.

Thank you for stopping by and your comments god bless

lot of summer fun

Back about 1966 a friend of mine and I made some home brew root beer; this is how it was done. I don't know why or I don't remember the why he made such a large batch. It started out like this he had a twenty gallon metal garbage can new unused and washed. A bottle of hires root beer extract, five pounds of sugar, five gallons of water, and a couple of pound of dry ice. You mix the sugar and water first in the garbage can. Then add the bottle of root beer extract stirring with a wooden paddle, he made for this purpose. Now the fun part you add the dry ice.  Then put the lid on loosely for sure.  Warnings have you ever shaken up a warm soda pop bottle then open it?  Now if you put the lid on too tight it will come off with a bang and root beer foam everywhere. This had happen at least once or twice that I know of.  Adding the dry ice is how you get the carbonation in the mix. You keep adding dry ice a little at a time till the mix has the desired level of carbonation. If you add too much dry ice or too fast it will freeze. After about two hours it’s time to put it in the bottles i.e. clear gallon glass jugs. 

With all this hard hard work it’s time to have a party and enjoy our labors, and we did. We loaded the five jugs in the trunk of my buddy’s 55 yellow Buick convertible. 

You know that trunk was so big you could hide a little league team in there with room left over. Anyway we probably look like Alabama moonshiners loading that stuff. We put in some hot dogs, you could get a package for 49 cents back then and they were all beef, still had the skin on them. Eight to the package the buns came six to the package and were 10 cents and were always smaller or larger than the dogs. Next came marshmallows, and a water melon of unknown origin; Heck we had enough food to feed an army for a week in there. Will we call around and found some girls that wanted to go on a picnic up the canyon, some how my younger brother crashed the party. Anyway we all, head up the canyon with the sun setting at our back, and sing or maybe screaming to this beatles song. 

My buddy’s name is Richard 

and we all called his ride the yellow submarine. 

Thank you for stopping by and your comments god bless

Lot of shooting

Yesterday at my church someone came to church to kill someone.  A shot rang out and one man down, and all went for cover.

 Here is the news story:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=25619666&title=man-shot-at-ogden-church-suspect-arrested-after-manhunt&fm=home_page&s_cid=featured-1

I am glad he did not get the job done, and I want to say thank you to all who prayed for the victim Jim. It was his son-in-law that did the shooting. For those who may think this had something to do with religion, will you are wrong. It was a family problem, which I do not know the details of. I know both victim and shooter from our social meeting at church. Prayers are needed for both. No law could have stopped this, if not a gun, it could have been a knife or club.  It is the unresolved problem that rages in a person mind that they and we cannot resolve or control. It something we all have to learn to do, that is to solve our differences in a peaceful manner.  Someday we may have the ability to read a persons mind and what a person is thinking of or planning to do, and then maybe we can do something about the problem. We already have laws and a commandment “thou shalt not kill” and a number of gun control laws on the books, not one of them have stop the killings.

Here is something to think about, the shooter could have been any one of us. How many times have we been so mad that we could have done this? Have you ever said I will kill you or wish you could kill someone? If we got rid of all the guns in the world, the knifes, and then the rocks at which point we would not have a place to live. We could stop these kind of thing from happening with a lot more understand one another. Please don't think that I am defending the shooter because I  am not. I just know but for the grace of god this could have been me shooter or victim. 

Thank you for your prayers and god bless.