other dog

I hope Mack (the digger dog- the other 2 don't dig holes) doesn't see that trackerhoe on marketplace, he'll want it so he can dig bigger better holes.

I suppose you could rent a big truck just like you can rent a car, remember the old "Ryder rents trucks!" commercials? Vicki from Florida rented a car in Richmond when they flew in last week and turned it in in Roanoke when they left, a one way rental. Just a thought.

Sounds like a good idea anyway, but I know nothing about a blasting cabinet. I'd certainly go with the test piece first. My sister in law gave me some cast iron skillets that were her father's to clean and reseason for her a while back. I cleaned them with a brillo pad first, then used Dawn and a sponge, and seasoned them on the grill. Then I scraped them with a metal spatula, Dawn and sponge again, seasoned them again. I repeated that process about 4 times, until I considered them good enough to cook with. These were not terribly rusted though, just dirty with built up crud from years of use. I looked at the Lodge Cast Iron website and they said even though some people say to never wash cast iron it's fine. They said just never let them soak and when you wash it to dry it immediately, preferably by putting it on the stove burner until it's completely dry, then put a light coat of oil on it.

That's the reason I use the Crisco, no salt. I bought a big chunk of cured hog jowl to rub it with before I do the Crisco. I'm sure it's loaded with salt, but salt works good to clean cast iron too. I just don't want to use salted fat to season it and then let it sit for months before I use it again. This is what I'm going to wipe it out with first, easy to grip and hold too.

Wow, the UPS man just left- delivered the new bigger stew pot. I don't know if it's better, if it's just as good I'll be well satisfied. Can't wait to give it a trial run. It's supposed to be "pre seasoned, ready to use" but I'm not falling for that. I'm going to heat it up, scrub it out with this piece of hog jowl I bought just for this project yesterday, then reseason it with Crisco before I use it. I've had the old one probably about 30 years, maybe a little more, and it still looks better than new. Ever since I've had it I've cleaned it and reoiled it with Crisco every time I used it. I was looking on marketplace for a used one before I bought this new one, and every one I looked at looked like they had just pulled it up off the bottom of the ocean, completely rusted, and they all wanted almost as much for them as this new one cost! It would have taken a LOT of work to get any of them back to usable condition. Usable to cook in anyway, you could put it in the yard and plant flowers in it, which I see people do quite a bit. Using these pots take a bit of work, but I think it's worth it.

Hmmm, the stew pot picture made me realize it just might belong here- If your stew pot stand is sitting on an old dish antenna, and your fire wood is propped up on a piece of a step off of a truck, and your "burn barrel" is 3 truck wheels stacked up, and a dog is digging a hole in your back yard...

I'm not too far away, just a few inches on the map.

I don't see how they could make that stick in court either, being that it's still a free country. They can't prove you were trying to avoid the scales, maybe you just enjoy taking the scenic route. They probably figure most people will just pay the fine and not even go to court. We all know it's all about the money anyway.

That's something I always dreamed of doing when I was young. Driving the entire Trans Canada Highway and on up the Alaska Highway to Alaska. In the summer of course. Now that I'm in "the 4th. quarter" it doesn't interest me as much, but it would be a great trip to make.

I saw a nice looking green car in Appomattox the other day. I saw this stew pot in the back yard Saturday. We made stew and had some friends over because Zina's sister Vicki from Florida and a friend of her's were visiting, they arrived late Thursday night and left Monday evening. Our stew pot holds 7 1/2 gallons, and for just the 2nd. time ever the pot was emptied. I didn't even get a bowl of stew myself, but I took it as a compliment because everyone liked it, and more than one said it was the best stew they'd ever had. Zina already said we needed a bigger stew pot. I could have- and should have- added that 1/2 gallon of tomato juice that I bought in case It needed more liquid, but I didn't think of it. It was pretty thick. But I did order the next size bigger pot anyway. It holds 9 gallons. Zina wanted to go with the 15 gallon, but it weighs over 100 lbs. The 9 gallon unit only weighed 10 pounds more than the one we have now, and it's an inch wider and an inch deeper, so it might fit the same stand. And if we're expecting like 100 people and all you folks came over I can always use both pots. I made more hot sauce too. We're going to Florida to see Vicki from Florida and go to the Turkey Rod Run next week so we'll take a bunch of hot sauce. People down there love the stuff. Vicki and her friend Debbie wanted to see Natural Bridge so we went by there before they went to the airport in Roanoke Monday. We saw this fire when we stopped on the mountain on rt. 130. It's still burning now, and as of yesterday they said it was 0% contained. It's on a steep mountainside and very hard to get to. They were using 2 helicopters Monday, we saw them with the big buckets dipping water out of the James River to dump on it. Natural Bridge-

Wow, hope you're doing all right. I'm glad you got to the hospital and found out before it was too late.

We raised and killed hogs too when I was a yungin'...that was many years ago. We had the scalding tank , but I don't remember what is was made from. Made a wood fire under it to heat the water, and my grandfather would run his fingers through it periodically and say when it was right- it had to be hot enough, but it couldn't be too hot. My uncle always had the job of shooting the hog, used a .22 short. Hit it in the right spot and it just dropped. Done. Right then. Then the butcher knife came out, then in the scalding tank. Me and my brothers helped with the scraping but not cutting the meat up. We made lard out of the fat too, and had real cracklings out of that process, and real pork skins. My mother made some fantastic cracklin bistits too! We had a smoke house, salt box, cured our own hams, the whole deal.

Over here at the Spout Spring trash dump site the guy that works there has a pole with a hook on it so he can scavenge himself. They have several huge dumpsters, we only had one in Gladys. They've got one for metal, one for cardboard, one for plastic, and the one with the trash masher machine for "regular" trash I guess. All the dump sites around here used to be open all the time, you could just throw away whatever you wanted to whenever you wanted to. Now they're all fenced in, only open during the day, and they all have a worker on site, with a little shed for them to stay in. Probably be a pretty good job for like a retired person or something.

I used to go that way to Boston most of the time. Some guys preferred going up 95, some said 81 and 84 was 100 miles farther, but it wasn't. I think maybe it was like 17 miles difference, but you had tolls to pay all the way up if you went 95. Then later on H.H. told us to run 81 and 84 because the tolls were so expensive. It didn't bother me because I liked to run that way anyway, but some of the others griped about it. I never understood why they wanted to be in the city pretty much all the way anyway myself.

Sorry for your loss. I used to run to Chicago a lot back in the 80's and I liked going there then- recent years not so much. Driving there now sounds like running I-95 to Florida, doing 80+ trying to keep from getting run over. That's why we've been taking the back roads. I'm too old for that nonsense now. But if you're expecting to get into any kind of altercation in Chicagoland you might want to look into getting a bulletproof vest.

Take plenty of pictures for us please. 😁

Yes indeed, it is a good show. Should be a good turnout with the nice weather too. We always check out the farmer's market, bought some good blackberry wine there one year. And found some cayenne peppers one year, when I didn't grow any. And they have lots of food vendors at this truck show too. I hate having to miss it.

Well, I guess that settles that. I was hoping it would be Friday, but I'll be going to a funeral Saturday.

I haven't talked to him for a couple of years, but he came to a lot of cookouts at the house in Gladys, and he also worked for F.L. Moore & Sons. Before that he used to own his own trucking company, FWC. They were right on rt. 29 south of Lynchburg, across 29 from the truck stop. So now I don't know what to do.

It's time for the ATHS Show in Colfax, N.C. again. The weather is supposed to be sunny and beautiful Saturday, with a high in the low 80's. Just wondering if anybody else was going? We're hoping too, we were looking forward to it, but a good friend of mine passed away yesterday and I don't know what the funeral arrangements are yet.

Oh, and nice pictures, thank you!

That's a good show, I've been a few times. They used to have it in July but since they changed it to September I've been going to the Winchester, Va. show instead. Maybe I should try it again, the last 2 years there just hasn't been many trucks in Winchester.

Yes, and also make sure to leave them plenty of hi tech weapons to use against us.