December 7 Changed Everything,

and touched everyone. I've known lots of veterans from WWII, and it's true that most of them didn't talk much about their experiences. Usually you can glean only a little bit at a time, even with those you know well. Today, we really can't fathom the changes to everyone's life, as the entire country became focused on fighting a war, with the iron will to win it.

 How many parents felt their hearts sink when they received one of these?

Men from every corner of the country, all part of a team.  These guys even had a couple of Code Talkers with them.

"This guy got killed on Guam, this guy died on Iwo, this guy got shot all to hell, this guy went nuts.  I got tired of seeing the guy next to me get it." It's a wonder that any vets go to reunions.  The memories need to be kept under control.  Good things and bad come out when your vet opens up and talks a bit.  "Navy guys would trade booze for souvenirs."  "I always picked up the first BAR I could find after landing."  "When you came off, you would fill an ammo box with oil, put your .45 in it, and bury it under your bunk so you would have it next time."  "On Iwo, you would go hole to hole, and you always had either your .45 or your Ka-Bar in your hand when you went into a hole....I sure got tired of sticking that Ka-Bar in Japs." O.T. is the Marine holding a pith helmet.

Re-post from ten years ago.

Home Fires Are Burning

 Days have been warm but nights are cold now. We let it burn down through the day and build it up again in the evening.

Cherrybark Oaks Grow Like Weeds!

This photo of Susan and a cherrybark oak in the front yard was taken in 2000. We planted this tree as a twelve inch seedling in 1991 or 1992.

Look at it now! Cherrybark oak prefers 109 Raccoon soil here in Southern Illinois. Raccoon is a bottomland soil, but is not as tight as Bonnie and other bottomland soils. It functions like a transitional soil between slopes and the flattest bottoms. Cherrybark will grow well on Bonnie and also on many upland sites, so we used cherrybark seedlings in tree planting projects whenever they were available.

 I always think of Mel Gerardo when I see a planting project. Mel Gerado was the first district forester at Fairfield, IL in the 1950s, and later ran the state nursery at Anna, IL. He did a marvelous job of cranking out a huge variety and number of seedlings for the big Conservation Reserve planting years. Mel was a Marine and fought at the Chosin Reservoir. The thousands of acres of successful tree plantings in Illinois are a testament to his professionalism. If your third grader in Illinois brought home a seedling for Arbor Day, you may have a reminder of Mel at your house, too.

Same Old, Same Old

 

The Ugliness Of Poachers

 I pass this spot frequently when I am going back and forth through the country. Last year, and again this year, poachers are dumping deer carcasses along the road. (Six in one spot this year.) These deer had only the best cuts taken out of them and they were not field dressed or skinned. It is maddening to know we have people of such low morals nearby.

I Can't Even Spell Operating Engineer,

 but we put the replacement pole in the ground without any trouble. We used the old pole, steadied up with guy ropes and the loader, and lifted the new one with the RTV. Got it tamped in now and now we move the hardware.

20,000 Phone Calls Home

 We got Mom (Bea Johnson to the Blog World) a cell phone more than twenty years ago. With unlimited minutes we could talk whenever we wanted, and Mom enjoyed calling her brother Chuck every week and talking as long as they wanted. After Dad passed away we never failed to talk at least three times a day, morning, after work, and before turning in. Our last call was Thursday afternoon last week, and we could tell that it was the end. Mom passed at 9:29 Friday morning, November 10, 2023. 

When she was living alone in her house, she got nervous about being able to protect herself, so she took up shooting. We would go out to the local range every time I went to Iowa to see her, and she went to Reno a couple times to attend Mike Gallion's Gun Blogger Rendezvous. She took the Iowa concealed carry class and qualified with her .45 Blackhawk because that was her house gun, and the big cartridges were easier for her to handle than stuffing .22s into a magazine. I put together a small collection of photos for those who remember Bea here on our little blog. 

Habits die hard. Every time I look at the time, I think it is time to call Mom. 

Dance Macabre

Illinois' Gun, Magazine, Parts, And Accessory Ban Update

 Valinda Rowe of Illinois Carry provides some information on the status of heinous legislation that was dropped on Illinois residents in January. When she talks about vagueness, you must read and understand the law to see just what that means. Semi-autos with a barrel shroud are outlawed. The definition the law uses is any covering of the barrel that would protect your hand from being burned if the barrel is hot, so any stock that covers part of the barrel forward of the receiver makes the gun illegal, and the stock would then be an illegal assault weapon attachment. Any attachment you can grasp with your support hand is an illegal assault weapon attachment, so a bipod or rifle sling are both outlawed if the IL State Police take the law at its word. It is a mighty big can of worms. Here's Valinda:

Shooting Old U.S. Military Guns With Clint Smith

Genie Garage Door Opener Major Malfunction Cured!

 

One of our Genie openers refused to run. It would start and then reverse immediately, whether going up or down. The rheostats that adjust the power limits made no difference when we adjusted them, so we removed the cover and looked around inside. Mud dauber wasps had stopped the "Optical Interrupt Wheel" from turning. If it does not turn, the motor immediately reverses. It is part of the safety built into a door opener. The mud dauber nests were removed, the wheel was re-installed, and now the opener runs again. That was an easy fix!

Safety Rules Save Your Skin, Save Your Chin!

Remember to always get away from the stump when you turn a tree loose. Bad things happen at the stump! Wood slings back from treetops that your falling tree contacts, and trees can make unpredictable moves when the hinge breaks.

Dusty's trail camera caught me walking by, and note that the bar is behind me. That is where you want the bar if you trip and fall, so you don't land on the sharp teeth.There is a safety rule for everything when you have a chainsaw.

Springpoles Again

 Springpoles smack down chainsaw novices. The key things to remember are to find the apex between the ascending and descending sides and then attack on the inside at that point. Shave it, notch it, or make a face in it. Stand aside and cut on the tensioned side. I like to make a hinge sometimes, but it usually won't be necessary. I demonstrate that here, so you will have that little method in your toolbox. Attack it from the tensioned side, or too high or low, and you are likely to be injured. Do it right and the danger disappears. 

Do You Have What It Takes To Be A Tree Grower?

 About thirty years after we (Susan and I) planted this little patch of timber I am now doing a much needed thinning. Can you bring yourself to drop trees you planted with your own hands? Sure you can! If you don't, your plantation will stagnate, and trees will drop out one by one from overcrowding. Thin it yourself and you choose the best ones to finish out. Now you just have to live long enough to send them to the mill. Let's see, these trees need another thirty years; I am almost 72 right now. Piece of cake. I just have to keep on with clean living and break that statistical ceiling!

June 29! Pay Attention To The News! Your Rights Are On The Line!

 William Kirk of Washington Gun Law YouTube channel updates regularly on Second Amendment news. Subscribe to his channel, and check in frequently. The bad news is that Illinois appeals probably won't make it to the Supreme Court until next year, after the deadline to have your banned firearms registered. Registering them is fraught with danger. The IL State Police will be writing the administrative rules, and I think they won't publish those until after the deadline. The ISP will be enforcing this evil piece of legislation with rules yet unknown to the public, so don't be caught after January 1 with your banned firearms in Illinois... Also don't forget that anything the police can call an assault weapon attachment is a thousand dollar misdemeanor. The way the law is written, they can call a rifle sling an assault weapon attachment. Study the law and try to figure your best moves before December 31.

Concealed Carry In Illinois; How It Came To Be

 Valinda and Mike Rowe are modern day heroes, and we are proud to call them our friends. Listen to Valinda tell of the process that brought us concealed carry in Illinois.

Wonderful Wildlife Surprise!

 We have four pairs of geese hanging around the pond this year, and also too many raccoons. I had given up on having goslings because of nest predation, but today five goslings appeared, grazing their way around the pond with the proud parents.

It looks like we will have fawns soon.

Stump Talk

Here we are looking at a stump from a harvest eight to twelve years ago. We were counting eight nodes on oak seedling sprouts, so we are pretty close on the timeline. Black oak stumps fall apart pretty fast, and you can see that the sapwood is almost totally gone, and bark is hanging on just at the bottom of the stump. One of the things you learn is to estimate the time since a tree was cut by the stump. White oak stumps last much longer, and down in the bottoms, stumps disappear quickly with rot and floods erasing them in short order. We figured out a plan of action for this timber, and the new owners will be busy. They will need to do two or three burns to bring up oak regeneration through the competition, but they have trails in place, so that will be easily managed. They can break up the woods into three burn units and rotate the burn to the next unit every spring. In ten or fifteen years they should see their young oaks popping up throughout their timber.

Are You Stumped?

I have been told all of my adult life that you can steer a tree by making the hinge thicker on one end. I believed that early-on, but never had any luck making it work, and have never actually seen anyone successfully "turn" a tree once it is released to fall, but I still hear this method promoted.

If we set up a pointer at 90 degrees to the front of the hinge cut, we should see the treetop to the left of the pointer. OOPS! The treetop landed slightly to the right!

This pecan stump has an extraordinarily thick hinge on the right side, ostensibly to make the tree go in that direction. What is the result?

The treetop lies to the left. I have yet to see this method work the way its promoters say it does. You can watch loggers doing this on YouTube if you check out the tree falling videos. I have seen write-ups that tell they are using a "swing cut," but the tree goes in the direction it starts without turning. Putting a tree where you want it is simple, and doesn't require any magical skills. Go to the spot you want the tree to land on, look back at the tree, and if it is vertical in relation to you, aim straight on with the sighting line on your saw. Correct right or left in the opposite direction of side-lean, up to your side-lean limit. If the tree has more side-lean than the hinge can hold, pick another spot to drop your tree into. You can handle about half as much side-lean as you can back-lean. With back-lean, all of the hinge is holding against it, but with side-lean, only half of the hinge is holding against it.

In addition to being an ineffective method of aiming a tree, thick hinges destroy value in the most valuable part of the tree. Those long splinters should have remained in the log to become part of the lumber produced, but defective lumber will be cut now from an otherwise good log. One of the skills a logger needs is the knowledge of how thick he can make a hinge without causing fiber to pull as the tree falls. You can see on this stump that pecan begins pulling fiber when the hinge is a bit thicker than 1/2 inch.

Another common mistake you will see in timber operations is the tall stump. The wood in this stump is perfectly sound, and the logger should have cut this tree just a few inches off the ground. In this case, about forty board feet of the butt log was left behind, which would have been worth around $5.00 to the landowner at junk hardwood prices.

Women On Target, Carmi Rifle Club, 2023

 

                                                             Click The Picture To Enlarge

Carmi Rifle Club had our annual Women On Target event this past weekend. Fourteen ladies participated, and all had a great time shooting pistols, rifles and shotguns. Debby, on the right put ten rounds into the Ten Ring on her target, and that is remarkable! She was shooting a Ruger Mk III Target Pistol with the factory trigger and a red dot sight on top, offhand at 15 feet. Valinda Rowe, on the left is our primary instructor. Come to our NRA Day in June at Carmi Rifle Club, and Valinda can teach you to shoot, too!

Gordon Lightfoot Favorites

Phantom Doggie Mystery Solved

 

We have been getting nighttime photos of a canine for many months, and at first I thought it might be a coyote, but it's a dog. A coyote would not be so predictable. We finally got a daytime photo, courtesy of one of our hunters. It's a happy little fellow. Now we need to find the owner. He isn't causing any problems other than marking on the dog yard fence, which really sets off our dogs when they go out.

Annual Valentine Song Festival! You Are The Song, Arlo Guthrie and the University Of Kentucky Orchestra

I hope all of our Internet friends have a wonderful Valentine's Day! Thank You for visiting!

Annual Valentine Song Festival! Time In A Bottle, Jim Croce

Annual Valentine Song Festival! Love And Marriage, Frank Sinatra

Annual Valentine Song Festival! At Last, Etta James

Annual Valentine Song Festival! Fever, Peggy Lee

Annual Valentine Song Festival! The Old Songs, Barry Manilow

Annual Valentine Song Festival! These Foolish Things, Rudy Vallee

Annual Valentine Song Festival! Gentle On My Mind, Glenn Campbell

Annual Valentine Song Festival! Come Down My Evening Star, Joan Morris and William Bolcom

Annual Valentine Song Festival! Save The Last Dance For Me, The Drifters

Annual Valentine Song Festival: Smiles and Whispering....

The end of eras (Ragtime, pathetic ballads, minstrel songs), and the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. 

Smiles, Joseph C. Smith's Orchestra: 

Whispering, Paul Whiteman's Ambassador Orchestra:

My favorite recording of Whispering, The Comedian Harmonists:

Annual Valentine Song Festival! Oh Boy, Buddy Holly

Annual Valentine Song Festival! True Love Ways, Buddy Holly