A Bit of Fall Humor

If you live in the city, or can afford to exploit others to do your yard work, you may not see the humor in this.

But there I was, feeling all smug and satisfied with myself.

After an overnight frost, I’d gotten to work with the leaf blowers and had cleaned off the gravel between the house and  shop/office/gym building.  It was a great feeling of satisfaction.

Zeus the Cat, supervising there off to the left, then sent me a telepathic message. “Hey Fatso! Look at the roof, you idiot….”

He’s still running.  This is why God made hot buttered rum for the fall. And it stands as proof that even after more than 70-years, I still don’t know everything.

Write.  Make it a double.

George@ure.net

14 thoughts on “A Bit of Fall Humor”

  1. Sir,

    A tot in the teapot banishes a tempest? Just as Earth is under Moon, so are houses under roofs. Except in America where I understand many abodes are covered by ruffs. In order to help you turn a new leaf, may I point to “Speaking American: How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk: a Visual Guide” by Josh Katz.

  2. Have often pondered what your composting methods are for your big pile of leaves is. Knowing that once you reach a specific tipping point in the size of your pile it becomes necessary to employ large scale mechanical equipment. I once saw several years ago in the 70’s, on a news program I believe, a piece of equipment that was used at a composting facility called a Wolverine or some such. The machine was what appeared to be several large powerful string trimmers suspended from a self-propelled tractor that rolled over the windrows.

    Currently, the leaf windrow here at El Rancho de Chaos is 12’w X 8’h X 40’l. Usually, over the winter we will dump the leaves by the loader bucket periodically into the feedlot rather than try to mix manure into the widrow by hand.

    I have a plan to build something similar to the machine I saw all those years ago using an baler.

    73

  3. After I posted the comment regarding the leaf composting tool I have on the drawing board in my head I suddenly remembered a story from a long time ago. I was about 8 years old in this story. It is sort of long so if necessary just skip over it,

    When I was a little guy the ranch was where my grandparents lived. Deep in the Ozarks in those days. I spent every second I could there exploring the woods, rivers, and creeks. There were some neighbors down the road. Just imagine the Clampets before they struck oil. The father was an old lazy scarecrow with his wife and 9 kids. Scarecrow never worked a day in his life according to my grandfather and spent all his time drinking beer and laying around while the boys and his wife did what work they could to scratch out a living in the Ozarks of the 1950’s. One of his boys and I were the same age and we would spend our summers fishing, and exploring the acres of old farm implements, many of them horse drawn, old junked cars and trucks. It was amazing for an 8 year old.

    If you were around there at that time you might recall that a lot of folks made and sold Sorghum on the side of the road. Similar to taping maple trees only the Sorghum cane was grown and harvested then boiled down to make the syrup a lot like molasses. This was done mostly by hand since Scarecrow spent all of the money they could scrounge up on beer. That summer Scarecrow, who fancied himself quite the expert on everything, designed a contraption that when drawn down the rows of cane it would strip the leaves and leave the stalks standing to be cut and hauled to the grinder.

    He had the boys cobble up the contraption that consisted of an old model A rear end mounted on some wheels about chest high. This was driven by the tractor pulling it PTO. On the ends of the device were old wheels that had strips of old tractor tires bolted to them so that when the pto was engaged the wheels would spin and theoretically strip the leaves from the cane.

    He was pretty proud of his invention and I remember he had my grandfather, my dad and uncle and me come up to see it. My friend Jack was told to go get the machine and drive it out for us to see. Pretty cool to see my fishing buddy driving the old homebuilt tractor with the marvelous invention behind it. He pulled an old tarp off of it that was put there to keep it secret he said and stood by it like it was a prize bull or something. My grandfather just said something to the effect of What the &^%$ is that. Well, Scarecrow began his demonstration pointing out all the fine points of his invention and how he was going to make lots of money selling them. He was standing with his back to the machine when he said all you have to do is pull the PTO lever and away it goes. At the same time he pointed at the lever and Jack reached down and engaged the pto. It immediately began spinning the strips of tracor tires.

    Before Scarecrow could react he received a half dozen or more strikes form the strips across his back side. Salp, slap, slap, slap, slap, slap. He howled and started running across the yard and into the shack they lived in. I turned to see Jack driving the machine back around behind the old barn and saw my grandfather, dad and uncle doubled over laughing so hard they could barley stand up.

    73

    • “folks made and sold Sorghum on the side of the road”

      When I was a little boy.. we would stop and visit with relatives that made the molasses syrup yumm..
      When I was in the military a friend of mine had a mother from Vermont I believe that made maple syrup..she would bring eavh of us a gallon of syrup when she visited.. it was wonder..

      Good luck with the invention Jim.. and thank you for taking us down memory lane .

    • Jim, that’s a great story. I’m an Ozark hillbilly from long line of Ozark hillbillies and old scarecrow sounds a lot like my grandfather! haha I’m sure it wasn’t because I don’t have any uncles named Jack!

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