god's real country

I meant the whole midwest as God’s country, but now that you mention it, what I really meant was the flat country, where those glaciers rolled the land nice and smooth and deep in topsoil like Illinois until you get down past Mount Vernon, when you start getting those pesky, useless hills. Not that I have much truck with Hoosiers, but their land is nice and flat, but once you go east into Ohio or west into Iowa it gets pretty hilly. I’ve been up to Milwaukee and that’s pretty flat, but further north there are all those lakes and lakes are associated with hills. I can’t say for Michigan but it is right north of Ohio, so I don’t think it has the proper flatness.

I won’t deny that hills are nice for postcards and stuff, they are plenty pretty and all that, and I guess if you want to be mathematical about it, you get more surface area per square mile going up and down like that. But it does make it harder to get from here to there, and having lived in Champaign for twenty years, I generally judge a land’s worth by how much corn you can grow on it and corn likes flatland. If you can grow a lot of corn, you can have cornbread for breakfast every morning, and you don’t have to go traipsing through woods with a fragile weapon searching out and destroying god’s cute little critters, like some savages.

No wolverines in Michigan, what is with you guys? We have plenty of suckers in Illinois and Missouri is full of puke, and Indiana is full to the gills with Hoosiers. Well way back Wisconsin and Michigan were full of woods before we chopped them all down and floated them down the lake to Chicago where we put them on boats and trains and sent them out to the plains so that a bunch of stupid Kansans could get up out of their stupid sod houses. Seems to me that those weasel types would like woods because they have those stubby little legs and wouldn’t be up to chasing anything very far.

Oh there will always be somebody believing something. Just a couple days ago I came across something on fb lauding some the new astrology for 2015. After 5,000 years they have finally come up with one which is accurate.

God's Country

If God wanted people to live in Illinois, then why did He create Michigan? The northern part of our state is frequently called "God's Country". Although the exact location of the line that separates God's Country from the rest of the country is subject to disagreement, I'm sure most people would agree that it's well north of Chicago and Detroit.

All kidding aside, It's not certain that wolverines ever lived in Michigan. If they did, there must not have been a lot of them because wolverines are so cranky that they don't even like other wolverines. I read somewhere that it's because their skull is too small for their brain, so it is believed that they have constant headaches. Wolverines and Badgers are both members of the weasel family, and I understand that all weasels are pretty fierce. Even the little ones that turn white in the winter commonly attack animals that are much bigger than they are. Wolverines and badgers are much larger than those weasels so, when you piss them off, they must be a formidable force. Ironically, the little dachshund was originally bred for the purpose of hunting badgers. The intended purpose of their short legs was so that they could go right into a badger's den and drive it out. As fierce as badgers are, they are intimidated by anything that has the guts to go into their den after them. At least that's what I was told by some hunters I met while I was in Germany. German hunters wouldn't lie, would they?

Now that you mention it, I believe there is a tree called the "Ohio buckeye", but I don't know if the tree was named after the state or the state was named after the tree. I don't think there is a plant called a "hawk eye", but there is one called a "hawk weed" which is common in the Upper Peninsula. I think the term "hawk eye" or "eagle eye" just means somebody with particularly good vision who notices things others might miss.

Historically, people have used religion and mythology to try to explain things that they didn't understand. Nowadays we have science for that. Although most people don't understand science any better than they understand religion, they are comforted by the notion that somebody understands it. This is probably for the best. If people stopped believing in preachers and scientists they would all be out of a job. With unemployment as high as it is, we certainly don't need to flood the market with any more unskilled labor.

suckers and hoosiers and pukers, and the good, the bad, and the ugly

The story I heard about Hoosiers is that they were always getting into fights and at the end of the fight there would often be an ear lying on the floor and they’d ask, “Who’s ear?” The story I heard about Illinois is that there is some plant called the corn sucker and Illinois was named after that. But then I’ve heard a lot of other stories too. We Illinoisans generally prefer to be known as The Land of Lincoln (we are admired throughout the fifty for our consistent honesty), and Missourians, who live in The Puke State prefer to call it The Show Me State.

Wolverines, badgers, weasels, ferrets, et al, there is a whole menagerie of these furry predators that must people never see in their lives. When I was in Madison I saw a representation of a badger and it was an extremely ugly and fierce looking animal. Well that’s what people like. Nobody calls themselves The Chipmunks or The Sparrows.

I think a buckeye is a plant or a seed. What about a hawkeye, some other plant or the eye of the animal?

Before I get off the subject of states, people in Missouri, especially St Louis, call hillbillies Hoosiers. When they learn that Indianians call themselves Hoosiers, they are like, well, how about that?

Illinois was always swampy, not just in the Chicago area but all the way down. Well I think all the midwest is swampy from being caught between the hot breath of the gulf and the Calgary Clippers. Well just another reason that God (Who I don’t believe in) had a plan (that I also don’t believe in) that this was where humans should live in North America, plenty of water, nice and flat, no hurricanes, no earthquakes to speak of, just pesky little tornadoes, and those nice long winters to build our characters.

I think the bible does claim in several places that if you are nice to god, he will be nice to you, but then there is Abraham and that extreme practical joke, and god and satan sitting in their soft chairs with their brandy and cigars and making their gentleman’s bet about Job, and I have to think chuckling a bit when he raves about why this is happening to him. But then on the other hand sometimes it says something like that rain thing too.

There is always that theological debate about how if god is so just, how come all these terrible things happen to good people, and then those crafty priest types say, well that is god’s justice which we can’t understand, and I suppose the answer would be how come I can’t have my own justice that he doesn’t understand.

Well two different versions of god I suppose the bad god of the old testament and the good god of the good testament, and if you can squeeze the father and son and holy spirit into one I suppose there is room for the good and the bad, and then there must be an ugly in there too, like one of those subatomic particles, like the Higgs bosun that we know must be there, but have never detected.

One thing I have never understood is those believers whose spouse or children die, and then they become unbelievers. Did they think that all those other people around them who had terrible things happen to them, that they were all a bunch of sinners

Good as New Almost

I was able to patch Ol' Betsy up with electrical tape. (Duct tape proved too wide for the job as the stock is curved where the cracks are.) It's not as dangerous as it sounds. What happened was the machine screw that attaches the wooden stock to the metal part of the gun had become loose over time, probably because wood tends to dry out and shrink a little in storage. The cracks were likely caused by the stress put on the loose stock when the gun was fired. The metal parts were just fine, the only thing damaged was the stock. I taped up the stock, tightened up the screw, and shot the gun several times to make sure it still worked. This is only a temporary fix to get me by for the rest of the season, I will order a new stock from the manufacturer before next season.

I paid over $600 for this gun, more than I have paid for any other gun in my life. I was looking at some cheaper models but, as soon as I picked up Ol' Betsy and held her snug against my shoulder, it was love at first sight. You see, a gun has to fit properly in order to shoot properly. The really rich sportsmen have their guns custom fitted by a gunsmith, the rest of us just keep trying guns off the rack until we find one that fits.

Hoosiers come from Indiana, Buckeyes come from Ohio, Wolverines come from Michigan, and Suckers come from Illinois. Each of these names has a story behind it, the only one I'm not familiar with is the Ohio Buckeyes. Hoosiers got their name from their funny way of saying "Who's there?" when somebody knocks on their door. Michigan Wolverines were so named by some Ohio Buckeyes during the Toledo War because they were such fierce fighters. I'm sure that the habit real wolverines have of pissing on their food so that no other animal will touch it had nothing to do with it. When Illinois was virgin prairie, a man could travel a long ways during a dry spell before coming across a source of drinkable water on the surface. In many places, though, the ground water table was near the surface if you knew where to dig and wanted to go through the effort of digging a hole every time you wanted a drink. In areas like that, crayfish often dig holes to the water table, where they hang out during dry spells. Illinois frontiersmen used to find a hollow reed or something, stick it down a crayfish hole, and suck up the water. Hence the name, "Suckers". I am not making this up!

The original Christmas Ship sank with all hands in 1912 while carrying a load of Christmas trees from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Chicago. They had also shipped some trees by rail, which arrived shortly after news of the sinking was received. The captain's widow insisted on supervising the sale of those trees, giving some of them away for free to poor families as her husband had always done. The surviving family kept this tradition for decades, but I don't remember when or why they stopped. I have a book about this somewhere but, I don't want to dig for it tonight. The newspaper article I read says that the current practice of the Coast Guard delivering the trees in collaboration with several Chicago organizations has only been going on for 14 years, so that's why we never heard of it in our youth. I'm surprised, though, that your local news media doesn't say much about it.

Jesus said, "God causes the rain to fall upon the just and the unjust alike.", and I tend to agree with that. Most of the dramatic climate changes and mass extinctions on Earth happened before there were any humans living on the planet, so I don't think they happened for our convenience. When something like that happens, all species including humans have to either adapt to it or perish. Humans have learned how to manipulate their environment more than any other species to date. Sometimes that has come back to bite us, but mostly it's been a survival advantage for our species. Of course, nothing lasts forever. Maybe we will go down someday just like the dinosaurs but, until that happens, I intend to live forever or die trying.

a new ol' Betsy?

Well I reckon Ol’ Snooky and Gisele got purty dang tired of singing that Davy Crockett song Saturday after Saturday, but I reckon they couldn’t get any other jobs after ruining their voices smoking those stubby little Luckies. I smoked Camels for a bit in my early twenties, thought it made me a tough guy. What an idiot. Then I drifted through a lot of different cigarettes, I don’t know how I chose them, I guess I thought they were cool for some reason. And then during a period of not much money I got to bumming a lot off a guy who smoked Kools, and you know, once you smoke Kools, you don’t go back.

Down to a pack every other week now, though once or twice a year I cheat a little, feel terrible about myself, cough a bit, it’s not even that much fun, outside of those first couple cigs it’s no fun at all. You know you can drink a case of beer on a Saturday night, and you will probably have some fun, and you might also get in trouble, but at least something will happen. You smoke a carton of cigarettes on a Saturday and all you’ll be doing is coughing all day Sunday.

Well I don’t know shit about fixing anything practical. I do have a roll of duct tape and I use it generously, but it never fixes anything up good as new. It looks great at first but then it just loses it’s grip.

So I did a little internet research on the cost of a muzzle loading gun. Brrrr, chilled me to the bone all those bloodthirsty types and all those poor dead deer, you guys are a bunch of savages, savages you hear me. Anyway seemed like there was quite a range in prices, from like a hundred to a thousand.

There was one gun called a Ridge Runner (about a hundred bucks). That’s one of my favorite words for hillbillies, I think you told me you had stump jumpers and something else in Michigan. Do you have any Hoosiers? What’s the derogatory name for people from Ohio? Well everybody needs hillbillies to make them feel smart. Back in the old country we had the Slovaks until they get fed up with us looking down our noses at them and seceded, and left us with the silly sounding name of Czech. I suppose we could have called ourselves Czecho, but that sounds even sillier. I guess now we mostly go as the Czech Republic, which still sounds a bit funny to me. Like as opposed to the Czech what? The Czech Tyranny, the Czech Oligarchy, the Czech Empire?

About the plan what I was thinking was how folks are always falling all over themselves to praise the lord for a bright sunshiny morning, but if they are going to do that shouldn’t they also be praising him for a dark and rainy morning, and for the tornado that wipes out the town except for the one guy who believes that the lord went out of his way to save him and kill everybody else, because why, he put an extra buck in the collection plate the day before?

I’ve heard the story of the Christmas boats before, and I was able to google and find the arrival of the boat, but I didn’t see it on any of the local news shows. I don’t know why, it’s the kind of story they love. One of them could wear a funny old-timey hat and joke with his pals back at the station and they could all get starry eyed about all the joy it will bring to the poor kids. Well Merry Fucking Christmas.

Ol' Betsy is Broken

The Ballad of Davey Crockett was the number one song on the Hit Parade for a long time. I don't remember exactly how long, but it broke the record.

I read a book about Dan'l Boone once, and he didn't exactly have a boring life. He was captured by the Indians several times and they adopted him into their tribe at least once. He was with them or so long that, after he finally escaped and made it back to the settlement, he was charged with desertion and treason. He beat the charge, but some people never did trust him after that. He made a fortune in real estate, but pissed it away and eventually died broke.

My Grandmother used to make her own soap out of lard. She gave me a bar of it once, I took a shower with it, and I smelled like bacon for days afterward.

I smoked a pipe and cigars before I ever smoked cigarettes. I never did like the smell of secondary cigarette smoke, but I did like the smell of pipes and cigars when other people were smoking them. Cherry Blend was my favorite, and I really tried to get used to it, but it made my mouth feel like somebody had cleaned it out with sandpaper. If I smoked it more than once or twice a day, I couldn't taste my food for a day or two afterwards. I finally settled down with menthol cigarettes. I still don't like the smell of secondary cigarette smoke, but I decided that I would rather smoke something that tastes good to me and doesn't burn the lining out of my mouth.

The muzzle loader season opened today, but I couldn't get out today. My plan was to practice yesterday and go out tomorrow. My first shot went off the mark, and the breech became hard to open after that. Come to find out that Ol' Betsy had developed a crack in her stock, which made the other parts not line up right. I jiggled things around a little and everything popped back into place, the crack in the stock closed up so that you can't hardly see it. I had to shoot the gun one more time because that's the only feasible way to unload a muzzle loader, but I'm not going to shoot it anymore until I can assess the damage and see if I can fix it. I didn't want to get into it until I have the time to do it properly. The stock will have to be removed and the parts that interface with it will have to be checked out. If everything still works, I should be able to duck tape the stock together and keep the crack from re-opening. Then I have to re-zero the scope, which means to make sure that the gun is shooting where I aim it. They don't always, you know. Any little thing can throw a scope out of adjustment. What you do is shoot at the target several times, and then adjust the scope to aim where the bullets are actually hitting. If you can't get two or three bullets to hit within an inch or two of each other, then you have some other problem that will need to be addressed before you can do anything with the scope adjustments. Best case scenario is that I can get out hunting on Sunday, worst case scenario is that I'm all done for this season. If parts need to be ordered, or the gun needs professional attention, The season will likely be over before I can make that happen.

The reason I mentioned The Plan is that you seemed to imply that God, or whoever is in charge of such things, was remiss in allowing our rabbit population to crash like it did. The thing is, nothing in nature stays the same forever. The Creationists believe that it does, but they're just not paying attention. Truth be known, I don't know for certain that there is a Plan but, if there is, it's not put there for our convenience. If there is no Plan, then we still have to adapt to whatever happens, it's not going to adapt to us.

I understand that our Coast Guard Cutter Mackinaw delivered a load of Christmas trees to you guys today. Did you hear about that? They have been doing this for years, and there is quite a story behind the tradition. They were supposed to dock at Navy Pier this morning and unload the trees tomorrow. There will be a brass band and other assorted hoopla. Can you see Navy Pier from your balcony?

following his legend right into the west

I had to look it up, we were ten years old, Disney had us in the palms of his money grubbing hands, there was the Mickey Mouse club every evening, and I think it was Wednesday or Thursday was the Disney show, so cool. And then along rambled ol’ Davey Crockett. Never heard of him before. They used to talk about pioneers in school, how they made soap out of fat (WTF) and lived in these sod houses. Boring. There was that Dan’l Boone character, but he was square man, square. When Davey was shooting himself a bear (barr) when he was only three, ol’ Dan’l was probably sitting in his sod house making soap.

It was a whole big deal, there were the shows, there were those cool coonskin caps, that wonderful song that I would play over and over. I broke it twice and had to get a new one. I believe it was on the Hit Parade. Snookie Lanson might have sang it. I have no idea on that last thing, but I loved the names of the singers on that show, Gisele MacKenzie, that hot little French number, even if I was a little unsure at that age, about what hot was, she was.

And the toys. Sometimes Davy had his whole aisle in the toy section, nothing but cool Davy Crockett stuff, so cool. I can’t quite line this up with the facts, but I think here is where American industry realized that they could make a lot of dough selling stuff to kids, and here was this big baby boom bulge coming right up, so they advertised to us, not our square parents, made us think we were something, told us we were the leaders of tomorrow and swelled our heads and made us think that we were so important that we could stop the war that was trying to draft us. So maybe it wasn’t the Beatles, maybe it was Davy Crockett.

But it didn’t last long. I was only a few years from my teens, and then the girls, those very icky girls that we had gone to school with for all our lives as long as we could remember, that were always playing hopscotch or jumping rope or something stupid, began growing breasts. Oh my. And then there was high school, and then when when my parents drove me to my first college dorm room I casually opened a desk drawer and there was an old Playboy issue that somebody had left behind. I couldn’t get rid of my parents fast enough, and then, well some things are better left unsaid.

Hugh Hefner big time hero among us college men. They always called us men, probably in a misguided effort to prod us into acting mature. Since he had gone to the U of I he was particularly big there. We all bought pipes and smoked some awful stuff called cherry blend which smelled like a French whorehouse, and were cool man cool. Not that it did us any good, but what the hell, we weren’t Hef. What we needed to do was read more Playboy, find out what was cool to wear, what was cool to drive, what was cool to drink, soak up that deep, deep, Playboy philosophy, and maybe there was something else in that magazine, anymore I forget what.

But probably you shouldn’t take any of those Playboys into the blind with you or certain fluctuations in heat and noise might spook the deer. Still no deer? isn’t time running out? Are the deer inscribing Elmer Fudd graffiti on the blind when you are away. Do you find yourself muttering “Dagnabbit?”

it seems to be part of The Plan.

The Plan. Oh you guys, you wishy washy I’m not really religious, but let me drop a little reference to Him every now and then, maybe it will smooth out a little rough spot when St Peter is drawing his finger down the book (Or maybe I should say St Finger is drawing his... Oh never mind, all that talk about that magazine has discombobulated me a bit) and I am trying to sneak Old Betsy into the pearly gates with me.

Everything that happens is the plan, if it doesn’t happen that is the plan too, it’s circular reasoning, it doesn’t make sense, I almost think you just threw it in to piss me off.

Oh.

Well you win that one. But you still haven’t bagged a deer. Dagnabbit.