Timestepper

Naw, you can bring a real one. I doubt that we're gonna' have any HA/PC (historically accurate/period correct) police out there, but if one was to show up he might laugh at your forgery.

The pic was taken by a guy named Charlie Leiker and appeared in the Hay Daily News several years ago - Aug. 8, 2000, I think, but couldn't say for sure without digging out the clipping. Charlie was/is considered to be one of the best news photographers in the country and it was said that anyone who did their internship under him could pretty write their own ticket to any newspaper in America. For a few years there, I seemed to be one of his favorite subjects - or at least he always seemed to have his camera out when I was around. Another pic he took of me - in my old '85 4X4 Dodge pickup, driving down a flooded street in Victoria, Ks. (I'd been out muddin' and wanted to wash the under carriage without getting dirty myself) was picked up by the A.P. and wired all over the country. This one might have been, too, I honestly don't know. The whole story on this particular pic is this: Some fellow buckskinners and I had our Mountain Man Camp set up out at Fort Hays State Historic Site for "Fort Hays Days." The previous day (Friday) had been spent demonstrating flint&steel, knife & hawk tossin' and other day to days of frontier life for 9 hours - we literally had something on the order of 3,200 school kids coming through, 10 to 30 at a time, every 15 minutes for NINE hours, NON-STOP. (I knew when I got up that morning that it was going to be a loooong day because I'd been hit with sinus infection over night. The kids weren't supposed to start showing up until 08:30, but I'd barely gotten one cup of coffee down my gullet when they started showing up at 07:30! And I was the "mouthpiece" for our camp!) Anyway, fast forward to Saturday morning - Fort Hays was open to the general public and things were more relaxed but I still had a bitch of a head cold (notice how my mouth is open in the pic? It's because that's the only way I could breathe! But I'm getting ahead of myself.). Anyway I was up and had the coffee going when Charlie showed up so I poured him a cup and told him he could hang onto the cup while he walked around taking pictures of all the other stuff going on out there and any time he needed a refill, just to come on back and help hisself and take a load off his shoes and shoot the breeze for a bit. He took off, but came back pretty soon and pretty much hung out at our camp the rest of the morning "shootin' breezes." I was tuckered from the day before and still sick, so mostly I sat and chatted a bit with folks passing through while my stepson and some of the other skinners took turns torturing my knives & 'hawks by throwin' 'em in the general direction of the 'hawk block, but every now and then - when a fair-sized group would come over, I'd get up and go over and show off a little. Back then, I had the reputation of being the top one or two best knife & 'hawk chunkers where ever Mountain men got together West of just about anywhere but the Pacific and at least as far East as St. Joe, Missouri. (That's the rep I had - truth is I've never been worth a damn at anything but showing off, but I'm pretty darned good at showing off.) Anyway, I had my stepson stand off to one side with a total of five knives (of varying size) and four 'hawks. I had another of each stuck in my belt. When I nodded, my stepson would start tossing me one of each every few seconds, starting with a knife and alternating every other toss to a 'hawk. Well, when he'd start tossin' them to me it was either get stuck or grab 'em as they went by and throw 'em at the 'hawk block and I didn't care to get stuck, so I did what I was good at (showing off) and commenced to stickin' 'em in an inverted 'c' or 'x' pattern, putting them close together so everyone could see just how damn good I was (at showing off). Well, I'd done this a couple of times (always with that heavy-assed Mowrey rifle in my left hand, because everyone knows that a real mountain man ain't gonna throw away his rifle to fight with a knife or 'hawk and besides, I was... showing off) when Charlie got a gleam in his eye and started getting up and hunkering back behind the 'hawk block and just barely off to one side with his camera every time I got up to throw. At one point my (now EX) wife asked if he was sure that he really wanted to stand that close to a sick man with a loaded rifle and sharp implements. Charlie told her, "I've been taking pictures of this guy for a couple of years - he knows I'll sue him if he breaks my camera!" I don't know how many rolls of film Charlie wasted on my ugly mug that day for that one picture, but he had morning coffee, then ate lunch (roasted buffler tongue and some other fixin's) with us and finally left about 3:00 that afternoon because he said he had a deadline. This pic was on the front page of the Sunday edition. The director (Bob, whom I've mentioned before), was pissed because it was the third year in a row I'd made the front page and his "soldiers" were relegated to a couple of grainy pics on page three. The people in the background of this pic are Hannes Zacharias (one of Hays' City Managers) and his family - my favorite part of the whole pic is just that they look like they were having fun (and I figured that's what the whole damned event was supposed to be about - Fun - education comes second for me, because if it ain't fun, I ain't gonna' learn worth a damn!) So now you know the whole damned story (which is waaay more than what you asked for) and I'd better do a "save" because I hope to hell I never have to type it all out again! ...TS..

Me too what you said regarding the derailment. As to the other, I'm a truck driver and I'm a smoker and I'm 20 pounds heavier (6'1" - 205) than I'd like to be. The problems apnea could potentially cause for me would be to never have another decent night's sleep in my life because I fell asleep at the wheel and killed someone. THAT's why I got checked. Not to say I don't get tired during the day, but I don't get SLEEPY during the day unless I'm sitting somewhere and have a few minutes with nothing to do. Then I close my eyes, think of my wife briefly, then take a few moments to sort out the sounds in the background... then I sleep until someone or something wakes me up. I'm GLAD I can cork out and recharge a little whenever or where ever I have the opportunity; it's come in damned handy over the years. I WISH I could sleep for 10 hours straight like my wife does. I WISH I could sleep through the dogs doing their business like Mike.357 does. But I'm a light sleeper. Always have been unless I'm really sick or it's raining. Sooo... if some bad guy (or gaseous mouse) wants to break into to our place while I'm home, they'd better damn well be prepared to get wet. With apologies once again for the derailment, we now return you to your regularly scheduled thread. Please carry on!

I've been checked. No apnea. And I really don't snore that bad except for during allergy season. Just had a knack, ever since I was a kid, for completely relaxing at any given time enough to doze off - almost borderline narcolepsy, except that I do it on purpose. I also seem to have some sort of clock in my head because no matter when I set the external alarm for, I invariably wake up about 3 - 5 minutes before it goes off. Last I checked that particular ability/quirk wasn't one of the side affects of sleep deprivation. Guess I'm just weird. As to why I can sleep all night long when it's raining - never could figure that one out except that I just can't hear anything over the sound of the rain. Works in the truck, at home, or when I'm camping. (But I still wake up before the alarm goes off.)

Damn! Glad she missed it! My wife missed a 24" copperhead in the driveway by about the same margin summer before last... and she was wearing flip-flops!

Oh yay! I killed another thread! (Ya'll can thank me later. )

No, you're catching on.

Well, that's certainly logical... in a NoLogic kind of way...

MikeGideon does bring up a good point: How far is too far? And for those of us who enjoy practical jokes - how much are you willing to suffer in the way of revenge to maintain a friendship? Example: Several years ago I had a good friend whom I knew hated snakes, so I, in the natural course of being a dear friend concerned with curing him of this particular phobia, would routinely walk by, drop a piece of rope in his lap and holler, "Snake!!!!" and, after he returned from the top of whatever tree he'd been sitting under at the time, would kindly point out that no, my bad - it was just a plain ol' piece of rope after all, YUK YUK! Well, much to my joy and gratitude, instead of reacting he finally one day just glared at me and said, "Oh hardy har-har! Why dontcha' try something original for a change?!!" So later on I caught a small grass snake, walked by where he was sitting, dropped it in his lap and hollered, "ROPE!!!!" It took some doing, but he finally got me back and our friendship is still in good shape. I'd tell you what he did, but I don't think the statute of limitations has run out yet and like I said we are friends and I'd hate to see him get in trouble or anything.

There's a ballistic lubricant product called Strike Hold that I use exclusively on my guns which also contains a capillary action dialectric compound which dries out phones pretty good. In fact I'd used it several times before I found the phone I've got and it worked all but one time. Great stuff! That said, maybe switching phones just prior to dunking and pretending to drop his phone in the river would be better - he already knows I've got butterfingers because I had to dive for mine last year (thank God the water was only 6 feet deep and really clear!)

Thanks! And quite the contrary - other than being just a tad weak, I feel absolutely fantastic! It's such a relief to be rid of it that I actually volunteered to take my wife out dancing! At 2:00 o'clock on a Sunday morning! (Thank God she remembered that neither of us like to dance!)

Can't I just volunteer to "find it, download it and test it for him" and then explain afterwards that maybe his phone wasn't so smart after all?

Okay, let me start off by saying that I've always loved a good practical joke. And on the rare times said practical joke has backfired on me, no one has laughed harder at me than I have. (Although, admittedly, they rarely backfire and I take them as good as I give them.) Soooo... I have a Casio GZ'ONE cell phone - I've had it for almost 3 years, it's virtually indestructible and I absolutely love it. It's waterproof, dustproof and highly shock resistant. I have beat hell outta' this phone, used and abused it and turned down upgrades because it has served me so well. And did I mention that it's waterproof? Now, I've got a fishing buddy who also loves his phone. It's one of those superduper smartphones and he brags about it more than I do mine. He's also really gullible. What I'm wondering is... Would it be unethical of me, next time we're fishing and he gets to bragging on his phone, to dunk my phone in the river, then tell him there's a really neat APP he can download that'll tell him the temperature of the water just by dipping his phone in the water?

Uh, yes Sir, Mr. President! Ummm, I'd like to suggest my new hero Dolomite_supafly for the cabinet position of Secretary of State!

Yeah, Karma's kind of a neat old broad sometimes, ain't she?

Man, Mike, I envy you your sleeping abilities! My wife gets ticked because I can go to bed and go right to sleep while she has to lay there and listen to me snore, but then I wake up when a mouse farts. Heck I probably wake up half a dozen times through the course of a night and lay there and just listen for a few minutes. When I'm satisfied that everything is right with the world, I doze off again. Seems like the only time I can really sleep good and hard is when it's storming and I'm guessing that's only because I can't hear anything over the sound of rain on the steel roof. Guess since I'm on the road during the week, a home alarm system might still be a good idea for my wife as long as I remember to disable it on the weekends. Definitely food for thought!

Congrats and good luck!

One thing I can't quite wrap my brain around - and believe me, I absolutely do not want to demean or disparage the O.P. - but I always thought that the purpose of Home Alarm systems were to give peace of mind and a sense of security. Now, because of one evidently false alarm, the poor O.P. is more insecure than ever. Even to the point of second guessing himself. Man, that would suck and I feel for anyone who finds themselves in this situation. There have been times in the past when I considered some sort of home alarm system. But this thread has been an eye opener and I now think it's probably the last thing I want.

I DID IT! I FINALLY PASSED THE LITTLE SON OF A BITCH!!!! It was only 4mm, but it was the biggest freakin' little 4mm chunk of sheer evil and misery I've ever experienced in my life! Not sure what finally did the trick - whether it was the olive oil/lemon juice treatment or the beer I drank for supper or if karma just finally figured I'd suffered enough, but whatever it was... Damn! I'm so unreasonably happy, excited and down right relieved that I can't get back to sleep and don't even care! Thanks, one last time, for all the well wishes, advice and commiseration! Took 151 hours, 24 minutes to pass, but it's finally gone! :woohoo:

Heck yeah, Dave! And I'll see if I can find a handle or two and maybe bring a couple of my trusty ol' 3-J's... far as that goes, I can always use a "co-instructor." Yeah, stick bread, Bannock, it's all more or less the same, just slightly different recipes and slightly different ways of baking it. What I call stick bread is really just a very simple flour recipe made into dough then rolled out and wrapped around a green stick to cook over the coals. I've also got some hardtack that I'll bring along so you guys can try some of the "standard fare" rations of the 19th century soldier. Might also bring along a couple of candle lanterns that aren't too tough to make and one that literally anyone can make with just a Mason jar, a couple of sticks and some foil. Not sure what else, but as I've mentioned ad nauseum, I haven't really been thinking too clearly this week. But I'm sure WD-40 will come up with stuff that I haven't even thought about in years. Beginning to sound like lots of fun! ...Don...

Wow, some pretty good advice! Thanks! I've actually passed two stones prior to this, but the most recent (a 6X9mm) was 8 or 9 years ago. And I'll never forget that excruciating taxi ride from the Flying J truck stop in Oak Grove, Ky. to the ER in Clarksville, Tn. (or the $60.00 round trip freakin' fare!) At any rate, when this one started in last Sunday evening, it didn't present quite like the first two. In fact, I'd commented to my wife, "This is weird, if it wasn't for the fact that I'm not nauseated and it doesn't hurt to pee, I'd swear I was trying to pass a kidney stone." Next morning I felt pretty good - even used the restroom a couple of times with no ill-effects - went ahead and unloaded in Alcoa then headed back to our yard in Knoxville still feeling fine. It wasn't until I used the restroom one last time just prior to hitting the road that things went to hell in the proverbial handbasket. By the time I got back out to the truck - which was only a hundred feet or so away - I was doubled over in pain and had broken out in a cold sweat. Turned around, hobbled back inside and got the boss to take me to the ER clinic down the street and have been fighting the damn thing ever since. What I can't figure out is why I can't seem to pass the damn thing even though it's only 4mm. I've been pushing the fluids - drank so much damn Cranberry juice that you'd think I have stock in Ocean Spray - doing everything right, and then got hit suddenly with the big double whammy Thursday of not being able to keep anything down at all, which ultimately cost me a total of 7 hours (and God only knows how many hundreds of dollars) between the clinic and the ER at Park West. The only plus of this whole ordeal is that at least I wasn't somewhere on the road unable to get home when it hit me. So, thanks again for all the well wishes and for putting up with my whining. And especially for the advice and the chuckles! ...Don...

Aw man, you'll have to keep me posted on this, Dave. I quit watching the History Channel years ago when I saw some nimrod pouring powder into his rifle directly from his powder horn. I mean, I was willing to overlook some of the obviously PC historical inaccuracies just for the sake of watching something besides "Friends." BUT that was too far over the top. 'Course now I don't have cable and, unless I'm laid up sick like this week, don't have the time to watch during the week anyway. So yeah, keep us posted on this and I'll cross my fingers that the "History Channel" actually gets their history right. ...Don...

Best (read almost the only) laugh I've had all week! Thank you.

Well, after much further reading on da' interwebz about the olive oil/lemon juice thing, I decided to give it a try. No ill effects so far, so I guess that's a plus. If it actually does work, you can bet your sweet bippy that I'll be regaling the urologist with tales of how a plain old "folk remedy" saved the day. And if it don't work, what the heck, nothing else has either. One of the docs I saw in the ER Thursday told me that the more jagged the stone was, the more it would hurt to pass and through the miasma of pain and nausea I told him, "Jagged, hell! I think this motherf*cker has claws!" I'll make an admission right here and now: Screw peace on earth and good will toward men, after this the kindest thing I could ever wish for anyone is that they never have to deal with kidney stones!

Good question, Moped. For starters it'll probably be pretty mundane stuff like flint&steel fire starting, stick bread & ash cakes, maybe some wild plant foods (depending upon what we find at Spot's place), etc... Mostly, I think the simplest thing for me to do would be to just demonstrate the way I camp and if anyone has any questions or wants to learn some particular thing, then we'll take it from there.