other dog

I made a quart of the cowboy candy, and I made a pint of just pickled jalapeno slices. I use them for making nachos, one of my favorite snacks. I just wanted to use up some jalapenos, I've already got a couple of bags in the freezer for hot sauce but I want to save room for the Tabasco and cayenne peppers. They're not even ready to pick yet, but I've had lots of jalapenos.

What was this post about?..oh, I remember now. I got some new tires on the truck. I didn't put 33s back on it, I went with 31s. 33s were around $190 apiece, these were 150-something. Still high though.

Indeed, the 70s... C.D. Brown and Sons Supermarket had the hose going to the gas pump that rang the bell inside too. It was a supermarket but they sold Amoco gas too. And they also had the air compressor that you turned the crank for whatever pressure you wanted. And it was free, all the time, unlike today where you have to put 4 quarters in the machine to get air. My parents got all our groceries there, usually spent about $20 some dollars, for a family of 6. It was a little small grocery store, by today's standards anyway, but they had everything you needed. The meat department was all the way in the back and they pretty much cut everything to order. I remember the hotdogs were in a big box, about like a shoebox, and they were loose. The bologna was in a huge roll that they would slice, there was no such thing as a pound package of hot dogs or bologna then. They had to slice a pound of bologna for you off that giant roll, and if you wanted a pound of hot dogs they would get 10 out of that box and wrap them up for you. They also had clothes, boots, hardware, fishing rods, lures, guns- anything you needed, they had.

I remember when Rachel Campos-Duffy criticized Jill Biden for letting her husband run in the first place, and she caught a ton of flak for it. Turns out she was exactly right, just like she was right about saying that there was "fraud and shenanigans" in the election. And she was the the only one on Fox and Friends that had balls enough to say it. And I will never, ever, believe that that buffoon won a fair election.

Ain't that the truth!

Oh man, I just remembered - I have a bicycle pump!..somewhere. If I'd only had it with me and some Monkey Grip patches I would have been back on the road in just a few minutes!

Uhh, Freightrain - never mind. Sorry for any inconveniences. 😁

Oh...I guess I should call the man coming from Ohio and tell him "never mind", huh? 🤣

Yes, I'm thinking maybe he should bring 2 cans 🤣

It's good to have friends. I told Zina that I might as well go back home and get a jack and take the tire off so I could take it somewhere and get a new tire put on the wheel. About the only tire place that was open was Walmart. So she called our next door neighbor in Gladys to ask if her husband Travis had a jack I could borrow, since we were closer to Gladys than Spout Spring at the time. And Travis said he'd do better than that. He came out with his pickup and tools- he used to drive a service truck doing road calls- and also an old tire that he had that was the right size. He had a floor jack and an electric impact wrench, we had the flat off in a few minutes, then we went to a garage in Gladys that was open. They took my tire off, put his on, but it had a small hole in the sidewall. So we plugged the hole in the sidewall, which you're not supposed to do but it was an emergency fix. Then we found that it had another hole in the sidewall. Instead of fixing the second hole the guy at the garage said he had a used 31" tire that he could put on it instead if I wanted, so I said "yeah, let's do that". When he got done I said "how much do you want for that used tire?" And he said "nothing at all". So I said "how much do I owe you for all this?" And he said "$10". I handed him a 20 and he said " let me go get your change" and I told him not to worry about it. Me and Travis took the tire back and put it on and I asked Travis how much I owed him. He said "not a thing". I told him his pickup didn't run on air and gave him $20 anyway. Still feel like I got off really cheap today. And I have no one to blame but myself. I knew the tires were kind of sketchy - ok, not "kind of", I knew they were crappy and I just pushed my luck a bit too far. I had no jack and no spare tire. However, I did have a lug wrench 😁. I didn't finish the trip to Gladys with that used tire with no tread, I just turned around and went straight to Appomattox with it and left it at the tire shop. I'll get 4 new tires put on it Monday, and I'll check the junk yard for a used wheel and I'll start carrying a jack and a spare tire.

I posted some pictures of the dry rot cracks in my tires a while back. I must have deleted them off the phone, I don't see them now. Anyhow, I was driving down 501 heading to Gladys to get some more stuff today when I experienced sudden and catastrophic tire failure. No worries though, I have a friend in Ohio who's on the way here with a can of Fix-A-Flat now.

Wow, how wide is that grain head, 120 feet?

This is what I'm going to do with some of those jalapenos, it's called cowboy candy. Vicki from Florida told me about it, I'd never heard of it.

Yep, I've been staying pretty busy lately with moving, the garden, tearing down and putting up sheds, but when I first retired I couldn't help but notice that what used to be muscle turned to flab fast!

I like fried squash and onions, add some potatoes in with it and it's even better. That's about the only way I've ever had squash, but Zina makes a squash casserole that is absolutely delicious. It's got onions in it too, and I think she mentioned Bisquick, but I couldn't tell you what else. I was watching that yellow tomato that's almost ripe and never even noticed this red one- These peppers will eventually turn red too, I've only picked a couple of them so far.

Yep, that's a yellow tomato all right. I could have picked it yesterday, but it still has a little bit of green on it. I'll pick it this afternoon. Speaking of green, I picked the green beans yesterday, but I cooked them already. We had them and some squash with the ribs I smoked. Anybody want some squash or zucchini? We've got plenty 😁

Zina's new bird feeder, held onto the window with suction cups. Works great. A here's a girl in a car, from the interweb.

Nice garden! I don't know what to do with so many peppers either. I'll make some hot sauce like always, but I still have hot sauce from last year. I have a bottle I haven't even mailed to Bob yet, and have a box of hot sauce we were going to take to Macungie but forgot. I'm not used to having the garden grow as good as it did here this year. I was happy to get a tomato the size of a tennis ball in Gladys, and I put fertilizer in the rows when I planted, sprayed Miracle Gro on everything, but it didn't make any difference. This year I worked for a couple of days tilling and raking this spot over and over, and then just planting. Never put any fertilizer on anything but the peppers are huge and those tomatoes are almost softball size, and the vines are loaded. Maybe I should set up a roadside vegetable stand, about 4 or 5 vehicles pass by here every day.

We'll have green beans in a day or two, more peppers, and the tomatoes are looking good too. Everybody wants a ripe tomato by the 4th. of July, so these better get a move on! I planted some yellow tomatoes too, so maybe that's what these are, who knows...

Garden's looking pretty good too. We have lots of squash, zucchini, and peppers.

I got the grass cut, it's about 90 degrees here. As soon as I get the truck unloaded it'll be Miller time. My favorite Miller picture-

Guess I'll load the push mower in the pickup and ride to Gladys and cut the grass. We had a lot of rain in the last couple of weeks and I haven't cut the grass since the last time. We still have stuff to move too so I'll be loaded both ways.

Just for contrast to the photo for contrast, here's the group photo from 2018. It was on my Facebook memories today. I might have added the photographer and the caption later though.

I was going through some pictures a while ago and found this extremely rare, probably the only photo in existence, of the very first smoker shack I had. This was like a lean-to off the end of my back yard shed when I lived in Appomattox before. I built that shed too, it was closed on the back and both ends but open in the front. I used roof sheets that I salvaged from a house that caught fire, and all the wood was scrounged up from wherever I could find it. It's a wonder any structure I've built lasted more than a couple of days before collapsing. Anyhow, the smoker here is an old electric range, it has the door propped shut with a bar, and the fire box appears to be sitting on a cinder block and a piece of wood.

Well, it looks a lot better than my redneck Riviera. I mean my "all bidness station", I wouldn't think of sitting in that folding chair and drinking beer 😁. And now, "the rest of the story" behind that "smoker shed"... I just wanted a little shed to put over the smoker to protect it- and me- from the weather. I talked to "fence guy" about building me something because he did a pretty good job with the fence, his wife just had a baby, and he does handyman work for a living. And he's just a nice guy. I sent him this picture and told him I wanted something like this- This was a "do it yourself" kit from Lowe's or Home Depot, I think it was about 11 or $1200. I told him it didn't have to be anything fancy, just a small shed like this one that I built myself out of scrap material that I accumulated. So he said "ok, I'll build you something like that for $400". So I said OK, and he came over here when we were still in Gladys and put this "monstrosity" as Zina called it up, taking up half the back yard. That shelf he put on it was about chest high. When I saw it I was so pissed I made it look like this- Zina was beyond pissed, she was irate. It was nothing like what I told him I wanted, and nothing on it was straight, nothing was square, nothing was level. It was way taller than I wanted, and it was turned the wrong way - I wanted it parallel to the fence, not sticking way out into the yard. I had to take all those boards loose, and take the shelf apart with a ratchet. Not a nail in anything, he used all screws. And for some reason the screws were countersunk halfway through the board. I caught hell getting all those screws out, but I had to reuse the boards. He sent me a text message a few days later and said he was coming over to put the roof on it. I texted him a picture of it completely dismantled and laying on the ground and told him he could just drop the metal off, i'd do it myself. Then I had to go to the hardware store and get a pair of tin snips to cut the roof sheets shorter, and they were $22. But I'm real happy with the finished product, I think it looks pretty good. Now I've got to get the other grill that's still in Gladys over here. I'm going to need help loading it, it's really heavy. Hopefully I can get my neighbor to bring his tractor over this weekend to load it.