other dog

I cut the grass yesterday, sawed some cherry wood up into smoker size pieces, and put some straw around the potatoes. When I got the mower out from under the deck a baby snake was under the tarp. It was brown with an orange undercarriage, about a foot long. I smashed it to smithereens with a grubbing hoe, then threw it in the fire barrel. Today I had a few pole bean seeds left over, so I decided i'd plant them over there by the fence where that little maple tree is growing, so they could climb up the maple, if they even come up. When I scratched out a little trench to plant them in- with the back of a claw hammer- I uncovered a baby snake, about a foot long. It was gray with a white undercarriage. I beat it to a pulp with the claw hammer, then threw it in the fire barrel. I don't care how big it is or what color it is, if I see a snake i'm gonna kill it. So, those cabbage are really growing, eh? I re-seasoned the grill and all the grill grates today too, getting ready for the first big cook out of the year next weekend. That summich is shining like a new one! Everybody come on over, i'll smoke some meat and we'll hoist a few cold ones!

"and honey said my next project is to make that yard look like it doesn't have big giant ruts in it and a big bush was dragged across it, so I guess i'll order a 55 gallon drum of bondo and some green paint".

that is sharp looking, like the paint job!

We haul some trees, used to a lot more when I was at H.H.Moore's. Saw something the other day i've never seen before- I was coming down 501 on the way home and saw a truckload of trees pulling out of the nursery at Winfall with the dirtballs to the rear, trees leaning to the front of the trailer. Looked like the tarp was well wrapped around them, but i've never seen them laying to the front, and don't know why they would load them like that. If the tarp came loose it would tear them all to pieces...maybe he wasn't going very far, I don't know.

Don't have much this week either. Made a trip to Boyers, Pa. and then down to Sharon and back to Lynchburg, then I finished the week running a couple of mill roll loads out to Milton,W.V. and back. Picked up a load of beams going to Roanoke when I got back to Petersburg yesterday. Winner Steel used to use these cabovers to move coils around in the plant, but now that it's Sharon Coatings P.I.&I. uses their own trucks and these are parked inside the building collecting dust. There's another one parked up in front of these two, all look to be in great shape. I saw a redwing blackbird too. Saw another cabover on 422- the road is actually flat here, I just grabbed the camera up and snapped before I had it leveled out. Back side of a cabover Ford. Got behind a line painting crew, and was stopped right beside these fine looking animals. I've posted this truck before, but this is the best picture i've taken of it. I had to pull over across the road from it and put a strap on the tool box door on the trailer. Some units at C.F.Marion Logging in Cumberland,Va. I was headed down rt.60 to Richmond with a load of coils when I heard the D.O.T. was at the county line, so I whipped up into their yard to catch my log book up. Never saw any D.O.T. And I saw a girl with a really nice ass painting this rail in Petersburg. Watched the big yellow machine back in slot no.2 and drop a ladle. Then when I got back to the yard I saw this fuel tank raft under construction...

Part of the C.F.Marion Trucking fleet in Cumberland, Va.

"Hey Fred, did you finish welding up all the tack welds on those gussets last night?" "Me?..no, I thought you did when you put all the bolts in those holes I drilled!" "...bolts?..uh-oh!"

I thought I heard on Coast to Coast AM the other night that buried somewhere deep in the thousands of pages of obamacare b.s.- that nobody seems to have read by the way- was that people who didn't sign up on the first go-round would be fined, but it was not a very substantial fine, then the fine was more if they didn't sign up the next time, and if they hadn't signed up by the third time they'd lose their driver's license. I also thought I heard that everyone on obamacare would eventually have to have a chip implanted in their forearm? That sounds like the mark of the beast to me! I was half or 2/3 asleep when I heard this, or thought I heard it. Sounds unbelievable to me, that's why it might be true.

Looks like it could be Winfall. In fact, A lot of the pictures look like they could be from a lot of places around here. Countryside looks similar, roads look the same, same folks at McDonalds. Not too many WWII tanks around these parts though.

geez... good thing I got here before Ken did!

quite contrary- how does your garden grow? ..who cares- but mine's looking about like this. I got onions, taters, peppers, tomatoes, squash, and okra in there. More tomaters in these truck wheels- Got corn, green beans, and...well, that's all, in the other garden spot- but as soon as the corn comes up i'm gonna plant pole beans in between each corn stalk. Got this dog too.He's old, like me, but he's a great dog. I like the picture on the Kingsford charcoal bag- kinda reminds me of me.

Check this out Vlad- the cabbage plants today-

He might have also played a Craftsman 1/2 drive ratchet on the intro to ''Give Me Shelter", but that has not been confirmed.

Nice!..and I was about to call out a search party to see where you've been!.. had "feelers" out from sunny south Florida to Duff, Tn, to Elko, Nv, and Washington to New Hamster- but you done good!

I'm on it...

Larry Wales, of Amherst, Va. had this fine looking small fleet when he lived in Massachusetts.

So on the way back from the eye doctor we stopped at the Winfall Mini-Mart to get beer some bread and milk. I was astonished to see this inside- The nerve of some people- bringing their cat inside a place of bidness! Especially a place that sells beer milk and bread. Besides that, it was the ugliest cat i've ever seen. So I complained to the manager of course, and he told her she'd have to take the cat outside. I heard her tell the manager that her sister was waiting in the car, so she called her sister to come take the cat while she was in the store. She was walking it in the parking lot when I left.

Thanks Mike, we're still really busy, I loaded for Boyer, Pa.yesterday but I had to take off today because I have an eye doctor appointment in Lynchburg this morning.

Didn't take a lot of pictures this week but I got a few- lots of dead bugs on the windshield shots though. Saw this fellow in the road just after I pulled out of the driveway Tuesday morning. Saw this woman pushing a wheelbarrow across the road. Saw this guy having a bad day by the road. They had sniffer dogs there trying to sniff out a clue too. Couple of long loads at Hubbard, Ohio. Corvair pickup for sale. My Grandfather used to have one of those. Old Chevrolet by the road. A couple of big Mack trucks.

You'll have Waynesboro just over the mountain from you, Richmond, Dinwiddie, and New London, that I can think of right off hand. They're all within an hour or two, or about 20 minutes if you drive the car to the track.

Thank you Mike, same here!

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Well...i've told this story before, but it's been a while. Once upon a time, a turned a 1998 Freightliner over. This one here in fact- I had been running my ass off all week, picked up a load of coils in Middletown, Ohio and unloaded at Walker Muffler in Harrisonburg, Va. on a Thursday evening. They had nothing going on when I got unloaded, so I went home to Appomattox, Va. At 4:45pm the dispatcher called and told me to go to Salem, Va. and get a load of joists going to La Plata, Md. I didn't like it, I didn't want to, but at the time we pretty much had no choice. I was highly pissed too, because it was a quarter 'til 5- and if i'd gone straight from Harrisonburg down I-81 to Salem, i'd have been there already. Should have never answered the phone, but that's hindsight. So I leave on this mission, drive 2 hours to Salem, chain the load down- which was the biggest and heaviest load of joists i'd ever pulled. It was 3 tiers high, about 47,000 lbs. if I remember right, but they wanted to get it all on one load. Got to La Plata around 3 am, after having been up since about 7 or 8 am the day before. I found the job site, happy as hell- all I was waiting for was the wheels to stop turning so I could jump in the bunk. I turned in off of rt. 301 and felt the trailer drop into a hole. It was actually a ditch- unmarked by the way- and I came to an abrupt halt.Then the truck rocked back and forth a few times- instead of calming down like I thought it would, it actually went over farther to the right every time it rocked. I thought "gee- this sumbitch is gonna turn......". And the last time it rocked it kept on going...and turned over on the right side. First thing I did was reach for the key to shut it off as I was capsizing. Then I climbed out of the escape hatch- AKA the driver side window- and started to find a phone. This was before cell phones were invented. Then I decided I should catch my log book up, so I climbed back in the escape hatch, found my log book in the debris pile, and was sitting there doing my log book when a cop shined a flashlight through the windshield. He said "are you all right?" "Well, yeah- just turned over." Long story short- I called headquarters to explain the situation. They sent a wrecker to the scene. Never saw the cops again-I was off the road on private property, so I got no ticket. They set the truck up, towed it to a garage, took the fan off because it was broken, and I drove it back to Appomattox. And I have never tried to find a job site that i'm not familiar with until daylight ever since.

I like vanilla myself.