Update on The Debster, and cousin Crazy George goes off-grid

I thought this was worth a chuckle ...

Well, the Debster has been home for a couple of days now, and life is settling back into some semblance of normalcy. She is still pretty limited in what she can do, but is improving daily. She gets up and down the stairs from the bedroom fairly well, and is doing her prescribed exercises with only a little bit of prodding from "the management of this torture chamber", meaning me. Her incision is healing nicely. She is normally a very slow healer, so that is VERY good news. And she has begun to cut back on the pain meds, also great news. One other thing that I really hope to see happen is that as the pain recedes and she gets some normal motion back, she will be able to work on strengthening herself all around. She has been in so much pain for so long, and hence virtually an invalid, that she has allowed her muscle strength to atrophy to an alarming extent. This is going to be a long process, but I hope that by the end of the year, after the other knee has been replaced, it will speed up quickly.

I received a letter the other day from my cousin Crazy George.

Hey Ronbo! [I'll explain that later]

Well, Patsy and I finally did it! We bought a spread near [name of town redacted]. You been yammerin about self-sufficiency and going off the grid for so long that we decided you just might be right.

 We have about 100 acres. It's kind of hilly, par for the course here in the Missouri Ozarks, too rocky to be great farmland. Most of it is wooded, but there are a couple of acres fairly level and clear, with a nice sized spring-fed crick running through it.

The nearest town is about 5 miles away, and our property is about a mile down a dirt road off the county road. The closest "neighbor" is about a mile away. There are NO utilities run out here at all.

This is a stock photo of a 1971 Airstream similar to George's.
He doesn't allow photos of his. Or of anything, for that matter. Kinda paranoid.

For the moment, we are living in our Airstream camper. We haven't decided what we are going to do about a permanent abode, but we are leaning towards building a log cabin. There is no shortage of building material, that's for sure!

There is a small outbuilding that hasn't fallen down yet. I'm going to do some repairs on it, and use it to house our garden tractor and our ATV. 

We had the crick tested, and the water has no chemical pollution. So I am going to put up a 500-gallon cistern, and a generator-powered pump from the crick to keep it filled. A good charcoal filtration system should take care of other remaining impurities. Eventually we will have to figure out a better water supply; that generator uses a lot of diesel fuel. Even adapting it to run on waste oil, and bio-diesel which I will be able to make myself, it is not economical enough to be a long-term solution.

I need to run into town and pick up some supplies, so I'll be mailing this from there. Give me a call. Although I don't have cell service out here, you can leave a message and I'll be able to get it when I get to town.

Hope to see you out here visiting soon.
George

Well, I have to go as well. Time to get the Debster up, get her breakfast, and finish the laundry. More to follow soon.

God bless!
Ron

Let's get this ball rolling, shall we?

WELCOME!

My name is Ron. I am a 50-something conservative Christian married man in Missouri, living with my beloved wife Deb and OUR dogs and HER cats. My step-sons are grown and on their own now. I work midnights for a company that transports rail crews hither and yon; Deb is retired on disability.

I'll be posting all sorts of things in this blog. Political & social commentary, Scriptural studies, good jokes that I run across, and anything else that crosses my mind that I think someone in the world might like to read. So buckle up and come along for the ride. No telling where we'll wind up, but I bet we have fun getting there!

WHAT IS A "TIE-HACKER"?

The title of this blog is in honor of my wife,  sort of. I never heard the word "tie-hacker" until I met her about ten years ago. She saw me one day in a pair of torn jeans and torn T-shirt, dirty and unshaven, and slightly odoriferous. (Hey, I had been working outside all day; what do you expect?) She wrinkled her nose and said I looked like a "tie-hacker" and needed to clean up, like RIGHT NOW! After I showered and changed, I asked her what in the world a "tie-hacker" was. All she could tell me was that it was a term her father had used for bums. (You gotta understand, I am from Saint Louis, and she is from tiny, rural, Monroe County, Illinois. I am always teasing her about her "Illinois-speak".) So I asked her if this was more of that Monroe County dialect that nobody else in the world speaks, and she hemmed and hawed. So, off to Google I went. Found out that it is an old pejorative term originating in the Ozark hills of southern Missouri. It referred to a certain class of people that lived WAY back in the hills, with only a nodding acquaintance with personal hygiene, and that made a living, of sorts, by cutting down trees, adzing them into railroad ties, and selling them to the railroad. Also, apparently they weren't too careful about observing property lines or property rights. So although the original description really doesn't fit me much at all, I have had a life-long love of the Ozarks, and own the entire set of Foxfire books. Hence, my choice of a title for this blog. Besides, I love to tease my wife, and I am sure that when she sees this her reaction will be, well, interesting. If I am lucky, eye-rolling will be the worst of it.

A LITTLE ABOUT ME

I enjoy reading almost anything I can get my hands on, although I do draw the line at the romance novels my wife occasionally reads. Yech! I dabble in gardening, and enjoy the occasional fishing trip and other outdoor activities when the weather is decent. I enjoy food FAR too much, as evidenced by my ever-expanding waistline, which is aided and abetted by my wife's extraordinary cooking ability. 
I am an avid genealogist. I have traced my family's history quite aways back, in some lines to the late 1600's! 
I have an eclectic work history, including such things as short-order cook, long-haul truck driver, skip-tracer, used car salesman, construction laborer, and plumber's helper, to name a few. 
I am a fanatic Cardinals baseball fan, and also enjoy watching football now and then. I enjoy most types of music, other than hip-hop/rap, which I cannot tolerate. I cannot sing at all; when I attempt it, dogs howl and run and hide. I can't dance, either, having two left feet and absolutely no sense of rhythm. Fortunately, Deb has an amazingly beautiful voice, both spoken and singing, so she handles the singing for both of us. 

Lately, I have begun getting into the "prepping" thing. Just on a small scale, at the moment. But we shall see. That just may expand a great deal as time goes by.

Well, that's enough for the moment. Until next time .....

Ron