They dance wildly outside the den, torches blazing in the darkness. They make noises, many unintelligible vocal intonations that no sensible one hears; no one listens because like the wild maniacs they are, the sounds they make have no substance, no meaning, and never a semblance of integrity. They behave as beasts, devoid of morals or conscience, dancing to a never-ending chorus of garbled nonsense, as they try their utmost to show onlookers, and each other, of their confidence for it is the onlookers, those who the madmen have pretentiously convinced are their allies, who must now be convinced it is their duty to enter the den and face the horror that those who dance and scream outside are afraid to confront. Some allies are even willing to try, such is their misplaced confidence of support from the insane ones. The lack of confidence of the madmen, never acknowledged, is nevertheless palpable to those of discernment. The allies are expected to be initiators of the insanity, and some of these have second thoughts, although they have pledged themselves to the service of the chanters who write the songs, and who have since become completely insane.
The allies of the mad ones finally begin to understand the reality that it is they who will be expected to sharpen their puny sticks and face the onslaught of the monstrosity inside the den. But why? They have all seen these types of dramas before. These same madmen, once they have stirred the hornet’s nest, have repeatedly been known to cut and run, and leave their vassals to their own devices. Although there are a few who plaintively mumble as the insanity of the chant reaches fever pitch, tragically they cannot muster the collective will to refuse to be part of the madness. Indeed, they all have very good reasons to refuse, their families will be in danger due to their cowardice, their nations may well be destroyed, yet they cannot bring themselves to entertain any notion of refusal to participate, such is their absolute dishonor and obeisance to the evil that commands them.
The great bear in the den is no longer in hibernation. He has made his demands quite clear. The idiots chanting outside his lair are too close for his comfort, but they continue to encroach, in the erroneous and arrogant assumption that the bear will not strike, or will only strike those who enter his lair, and that he will defer peacefully to those who wrest the unfortunate vassals in to aggrieve him. Each of the instigators, cowards in their own right, try and convince each other that the bear will retreat further into his lair and avoid conflict with those who cause his discomfit, at least with those who promote the madness from afar. They pretend to ignore the utter plain truth that the hackles of the bear are now on display for all to see, he stands at the entrance, great menacing teeth bared and with blood in his eyes, yet still willing to allow the crazies to retreat were they to come to their senses, but all of sound mind who witness the impending tragedy realize that the utter madness of the instigators has overtaken their sensibilities, and they will not back off.
Some of the addle-pated vassals try to keep up the pretense of subservience, for until the bear unleashes his fury, there are many who call themselves leaders, who stand to personally benefit for their perceived loyalty. For these ones, their love of pecuniary largesse dictates their unquestioning obedience. They have allowed the mad ones to convince them of their security, and have no notion of the wrath of the great bear, nor of how quickly and utterly his ferocity can destroy them; may God have mercy on all when the bear comes out of his den.
I am a great bald eagle. I’ve soared through the heavens for countless ages, over landscapes carefully arranged and placed by the Creator, landscapes once pristine, peaceful, and of magnificent beauty. I watched as strangers arrived here and tried to possess land that did not, could not, belong to them. I saw them slay the inhabitants, people who had learned to live in harmony with the mountains, rivers, great animal herds in a way so as to preserve the creation over which they held stewardship.
Intruders arrogated to themselves control of this nation over which I fly, and slaughtered any who opposed them. Those who could not, did not contest them were sent to arid dungeons of deserts; places that were of no attraction; of no wealth. I’ve soared over countless swathes of prairie where bleached bones lay desiccated among ancient and rotted remains of native settlements. Men do not know that even the majestic eagle dares to weep.
Somewhere in the Distance
Somewhere in the distance, on this bleak and lonely plain
‘Neath midnight skies of silver stars, a lone coyote’s refrain
Drifts along the prairie breeze in melancholy notes
Heard by none but ranch hands lying watchful ‘neath their coats.
A tumbleweed soon pauses from his trek which knows no end
And sighs the softest whisper to the chilly prairie wind
Perhaps a new direction on the lonely breeze to go
He’s roamed this land and knows of all its secrets high and low.
A full moon rises into view as ancient ghosts appear
Of weathered buildings, once a town, now dead for scores of years
Rusted hinges moan their tales as doors swing to and fro,
The gallows rots to dust as did her victims long ago.
The piercing call of Navajo is heard here nevermore
His tepee warm no longer stands, his woman at the door.
But why has man since disappeared where once such life abound’?
And why is no one living on this prairie to be found?
Perhaps if we could learn the song the coyote sadly sings
Or secrets told by tumbleweeds, or rotted doors that swing
Perhaps we might then understand why only ghosts remain
To ever haunt ‘neath midnight moon this bleak and lonely plain.
Mike Kitchens
So it began. The birth of a monstrosity that would grow to devour the world over which we great birds fly. They had the temerity to appoint me to occupy a position I did not seek. My image adorns every significant representation of their claims of ownership. They shame me. They own nothing. When they pass through that portal, the land they had claimed is still beneath me. Had they truly owned the land of this nation I watch, they would have taken it with them. They did not; they could not. They own nothing.
(This post, like the Eulogy to the Fallen Soldier, is to try and bring home the reality of what it’s got to be like on the cold battlefields of Eastern Europe and is published in the hope of getting enough people to understand that this slaughter needs to stop.)
I’m cold, hungry and so tired. Naught to see but ravaged land and the frozen earth of this ditch in which I have suffered for too long. Naught to see but the remains of my friends, some mostly whole, many more no longer anything but shredded body parts and bloodied limbs, bones and more blood than I ever dreamed could be shed. Those of us who are still alive might as well be dead, too. There is no hope here.
I imagine the guys who are firing on our positions are cold too. They don’t know us, whether or not we hate them; most of us don’t, and they probably don’t hate us either, although there are some units in the rear that hate everyone on the field. Those psychopaths even kill their own people, ostensibly to get them to fight, but some especially evil men simply kill for the pleasure of killing, doesn’t matter whom. Everyone knows of them – and they relish the notion that they are feared. There is a special place in hell for them. There’s also a special place in hell for the people who profit, in any way, from this murderous undertaking. Even the “bible believing” stockholders of the many “defense” contractors of the countries responsible for this.
If someone were to ask why we are here, there wouldn’t be many of us who could say. I have my own notions, but not for sure. We don’t get paid to know the politics; we simply get coordinates and fire our weapons. We don’t know if we hit our target, or who we kill. Did our bullets find young men who were alive – just beginning their lives, with the hopes and aspirations of all young men? Were they killed instantly, or do they lie suffering in pain and horror, as they succumb to that eternal sleep?
Even in these damnable trenches, we hear of the destruction wreaked all around this country. Many civilian people who have nothing to do with this war suffer immensely. Mothers continually pray to God that their sons might survive; heartbroken, realizing that in all likelihood they will never see them again on this side. I’ve been praying ever since I arrived at this corner of hell that God will see fit to spare my life, but I don’t hold much hope for that – there’s just too much death here for me to actually believe I’ll survive. Maybe I won’t – I’d just like to get it over with, one way or another. This abominable waiting for the end is another hell of its own, and no one but us guys in the trenches know what it’s like. Maybe if more regular people knew; someone, somewhere, would help get this madness stopped before all of us die.
The ice-cold dark water in these holes is unbearable. It’s filthy, with blood and waste, and we wade in it, freezing our feet. Our clothes are wet, most of us are bleeding from untreated wounds, which will no doubt become infected. What a dismal situation we are in, when we consider ourselves fortunate, even though we lose our feet to frostbite, just to remain alive. We keep our eyes and ears open for incoming rounds and it’s exhausting, the drugs help to keep us awake, but after a while, we become zombified, mindlessly pursuing and performing our mission of death. Of course, that’s what the leaders want. As much death as evil men can bring about.
It’s the ultimate conundrum when a man gets so tired of trying to survive, he starts to pray for death.
I told this story in a post on my old website, but alas, it went the way of the dodo when I did the big site revamp. I will attempt to tell it again here – for those who remember the earlier version, please understand that some of the details may be a bit different.
It was beautiful day in the summer, so I decided to check out the local golf course for a few rounds. Was playing the seventh, and not doing remarkably well, when a sudden thunderstorm came up and the few of us out on the course hurried off to the clubhouse and tried to wait it out, but as it seemed to be setting in, some of the guys started talking and even though I wasn’t exactly eavesdropping, I overheard a strange conversation. One of the fellows was talking about a local legend of a long-gone sawmill in a remote area out several miles northeast of town. As a relatively new resident of this neck of the woods, I didn’t know of any mill that had been up there, but as he related the tale, I became fascinated and eventually stopped pretending to ignore what he was saying and listened overtly and intently.
There was a fellow, I’ll call him Earl, who lived just outside of town, who spent a lot of time riding the back roads in the county. He went all over, mostly looking for tracts of land with timber that might be available, as he worked with logging contractors who operated in the area. In his travels he met lots of folks, one widow in particular from whom he had once bought timber, caught his attention, and he made trips out to her place once in a while for coffee and company and to help her with firewood and such. He had to go through some remote back country to and from her house, and there were places on the dirt roads where the woods were thick, dark, and foreboding, but as an outdoorsman with considerable experience in the woods, he didn’t really pay attention to the general spookiness of the countryside. So it was that one evening in late summer as he was going home from her place, he saw a magnificent buck cross the dirt road ahead of him, and it sported an incredible set of antlers. Such was that rack that he could hardly believe his eyes, and from that point on, he was hooked.
He drove around the area looking for a property owner’s residence so he might try and get permission to hunt in those woods, and about dusky dark, he came across a rusty mailbox beside what might pass for a driveway, mostly overgrown with weeds and brush, going back into the woods, probably to an unseen house. Since he had caught an instant case of acute buck fever, he decided to give it a shot. Even making an uninvited visit to some reclusive hillbilly’s house in the darkening evening didn’t seem to be an unreasonable risk, as long as he might end up with a chance of trying to bag that big buck.
Earl drove down the winding rutted roadway through woods that were so thick and dark, he began to wonder if anyone actually lived out there and even if this was a good idea. Just about the time he decided to start looking for a place to turn around to get out of this creepy place, he saw a dim light through the brush ahead. He slowly drove up and as he got closer, he could make out an ancient cabin back in the gloom; the light was coming from a kerosene lamp inside a mold-crusted window on the front side of the house. Tendrils of smoke wound from a homemade chimney. A very old dog, maybe part lab, began to sound off as Earl shut off his engine, and the front door opened, revealing a silhouetted old man with an ancient shotgun stepping out to meet the intruder. Earl could make out that the dim road kept winding through the woods past the homestead, but he couldn’t tell what might be down there in the almost unnatural darkness.
Earl was taken somewhat aback, he’d heard tales of anti-social fellows in these parts who didn’t like being bothered. Sometimes they were moonshiners or poachers, and it wasn’t the best idea to intrude on them. Earl stepped from his truck and approached the old man who must have been closing in on ninety, or maybe even older, but he seemed to still be able to get around okay. Earl quickly introduced himself and told the old fellow of his business, as the owner slowly lowered his gun. He explained seeing the big buck out on the road, and asked if the ancient resident owned the property, and if so, would he allow someone to hunt on it. Earl was prepared to offer him a decent tip if he’d consider giving him permission.
Until now the old timer hadn’t said anything, but Earl noticed an odd look on the old man’s face when he spoke of wanting to hunt in those woods. The old grandpa fellow asked Earl if he knew anything of the history of that part of the country, something Earl hadn’t given any thought at all, and furthermore, he wasn’t the slightest bit curious about prior goings-on there, he just wanted to try for that buck. The old fellow sort of shook his head, as if in disbelief, but curiously told Earl that if it was anybody’s property, it was his, and if he was sure he wanted to hunt there, he would allow it and there would be no charge. As Earl climbed back into his truck to start the engine, the old man mumbled something Earl couldn’t make out, but he did catch something about being careful not to allow the sun to go down on him in those woods! The old man seemed adamant about that part of what he said. Even the intrepid Earl, hunter and outdoorsman extraordinaire, was a bit rattled at the behavior of the old timer when they spoke of the woods. What could it mean?
A long time ago, in the late 1800’s and early 1900s, people were settling in this part of the Ozarks. Most folks built cabins, but some more affluent people opted to build regular houses using sawed lumber from the plentiful old-growth hardwood, but lumber required sawmills, and sure enough, sawmills started cropping up all around the country. Some of the early mills grew into sizeable operations, one in particular was the Duff Mill.
After the civil war, there was one Major Duff, retired and settled with his family on a large tract of property in Southern Missouri. He bequeathed land to his big family to build on, and even leased a few acres to a sawmill operator from Springfield who set up a mill there, and as time went by, the mill grew to a big operation, so big in fact, that a small mill town was established with a few hundred folks living there. Of course, a “company store” was established for the townsfolk. Several cabins sprang up on hillsides and in ravines and the townsfolk located springs in the nearby woods.
Flower beds and small vegetable gardens were planted and tended by family members of the mill workers to supplement the wild game and store provender for their survival. A company doctor came out from the city once a week to attend to the various ailments of the townspeople and such injuries sustained at the mill that didn’t require a trip to the hospital in Saint Louis; or burial in the small cemetery behind the mill. Like most early manufacturing facilities in those days, industrial safety wasn’t a thing, and that meant lots of people got hurt; many injuries were serious, and fatalities were more or less normal occurrences. In this regard, Duff Mill was notorious. The grisly accidents started early – one of the first wagon loads of logs to arrive at the mill somehow came unchained and logs fell off and landed on an unfortunate mill hand and crushed him. Some of the other employees retrieved his body and unceremoniously carried/dragged him to the area behind the mill and buried him in a shallow trench and covered him with the damp earth and pieces of the plentiful limestone from a nearby ravine. This was the first “grave” in the new cemetery.
As time passed, and the operation grew, the company brought in a foreman, a lanky, cantankerous middle aged fellow from somewhere in Eastern Europe . He spoke with a thick accent, he was abrasive, rude, and no one on the site liked him. The only thing of any interest to him whatsoever was the board footage the mill turned out, and he treated all of the workers like slaves. No one knew what his real name was, everybody referred to him as Jackson. He walked around with a piece of hickory limb about the size of an axe handle, and was known to fly into a rage and hammer guys with that club. At first some of the mill workers would stand up to him, and as was his wont, he’d weasel out of a confrontation, but the company would invariably send down some goons, who would accompany Jackson to terminate that unfortunate fellow, and as times were very hard back then, those guys got to where they would put up with almost anything to keep their jobs.
When a fatal accident happened in the mill, Jackson would send a worker to fill water buckets and wash the blood away, and immediately get everyone back to work. He seemed to relish going to the poor worker’s cabin to inform his wife and children of the tragedy and give them notice that they had to move out so the cabin would be available for the next employee. He would give a couple of hands a few minutes to bury the fatality and get back to work. No matter the severity of the situation, no matter how many coworkers needed a few minutes to deal with their grief, Jackson was only concerned with board feet. If they wanted to have a memorial service, they could do it after hours in the dark.
One accident in particular was especially tragic for the townspeople. One of the older guys was impaled by a long piece of wood that flew out of a big saw when the blade shattered. His wife was near the area where it happened, and when she learned of it, she ran to the scene of the accident where her husband of several years lay dead. Despondent at her loss and knowing Jackson would soon evict her from the cabin and having nowhere to go, she took a piece of the saw blade and sliced deep into her wrist and quickly bled to death. Several of the workers and their families wept over losing them, but mostly for her, for she’d helped a lot of families in their gardens and shared her own produce with those in need.
In spite of the low morale, the mill prospered, and word of its success spread around the countryside, even up to White River, where several unemployed guys heard there was a place to work a few miles away. A half dozen of them packed a few belongings and bedrolls and hiked through the log roads and open woods to Duff Mill, where they were immediately hired. Three of them were brothers, the Broomfield boys. Chad, George, and Ronnie. They all three took an instant dislike of Jackson, and he would find them somewhat different than most of the hands he intimidated.
Before the brothers had been on site very long, the older ones, Chad and George, were soon known to be excellent hunters, and they were often called on to provide wild game for the mill workers. Sometimes they’d be out in the woods for a few days, hunting and netting fish for camp meat. Of course, Jackson always took the choicest cuts of tenderloin and backstrap from the deer.
One rainy day, Ronnie, the youngest of the Broomfields, a lean and lanky young fellow not quite full grown, was carrying an arm load of firewood to feed the boiler when he slipped on the muddy hillside. Jackson was nearby and when he saw Ronnie fall down, he walked over and savagely kicked him in the ribs and screamed at him. The poor kid was helpless and in severe pain, so there was little he could do at the time, his older brothers were out hunting game, and by the time they got back a few days later and heard about it, they knew there would be a reckoning; the right time hadn’t come yet, but it was etched in stone.
Sawmills in those days were limited in the amount of business they could do. The limit was shipping. Some mills in or near towns where there were railroads did better than mills like Duff, out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but wagons to haul in logs and haul out lumber. As the mills in the towns grew, they could produce and ship lumber cheaper than Duff, and most of the nearby woods had been harvested requiring longer trips for the wagons, so eventually business started declining. This decrease in profits seemed to aggravate their living conditions and of course, going out of business made Jackson crazier and meaner than ever. The man was evil, and to the few hands who were still working there, he had become intolerable.
One day the expected notice came from the owners in the city. The mill would cease operations. Most of the workers and families had already packed their belongings as by now the impending shutdown was no surprise to anyone. As everyone was leaving, George Broomfield decided it was finally time to square up with Jackson, so he walked over to the foreman’s house – a fairly decent home apart from the hovels of the workers, it was the only two-story house in the town, and Jackson lived there by himself – the extra room was for company big shots on the infrequent occasions when they came to see the operation.
When George arrived at the foreman’s lodgings, he thought it odd that the door was partly open, so he didn’t bother to knock and walked in. Good manners were the furthest thing from his mind. The first thing he noticed was blood – spattered all over the living area and trailing up the stairs. When he mounted the staircase, he was surprised to see his younger brother, no longer a skinny kid, Ronnie had grown by now into a big muscular man. Holding a familiar hickory club the size of an axe handle, itself smeared with blood. He looked down the staircase and shook his head as he told his brother he wouldn’t have to bother with his errand – the bloodied club was evidence that Ronnie had already taken care of it.
Before the mill town completely emptied, a few of the hands drug Jackson’s carcass out to the cemetery and buried it under large pieces of limestone, which they were none too gentle about putting over it. As far as anyone was concerned, his fate was a result of the last mill “accident”.
Years passed, and all of the buildings slowly rotted away. The only things left of the former bustling town were the dilapidated foreman’s house and a few concrete walls, mostly from the drying kiln. Vines, briars, trees, and nature in general reclaimed the place until a person wouldn’t even know a mill had existed there. Except for the dark and foreboding shell of the foreman’s house. It would be on this very acreage that Earl, who had no idea of the days of the old mill and its history, would come to hunt his trophy buck.
Think tanks. That’s what they call them. They have important sounding names. They do important work. You don’t know what a think tank is? Think of a septic tank, only one that works backwards. These are institutions of magnificently knowledgeable people who, among many other very wise abilities, can see into the future and prognosticate – such as an opponent’s next move if one moves the queen to the knight’s third row and so forth. Such prescience concentrated within a relatively small bandwidth should at the very least warp time and space; of course, government leaders know this and bend their collective wills accordingly and apply whatever dictates that result from these esteemed academicians’ well-considered formulations and strategies. Especially when it involves US foreign policy. This level of wisdom cannot be contained by any known means and kept within the bounds of their group psyche, so it must by virtue of its virtuousness, be disseminated as the wisest of any available wisdom and it is therefore sought and unquestioningly applied in all profound decision making. And all their products come with the caveat that any strategic failure is to be blamed on the decision maker (conveniently neglecting to mention that the decision was based on their advice).
It was from these very founts of effusive omniscience that there were determined to be horrific threats of dominoes falling in southeast Asia and the existential challenges to freedom and the American way of life those damnable falling dominoes would surely bring upon us. All-prescient determinations were made with the certainty of these deemed threats in mind, and as always in avoidance of (and with the obligatory contravention to) common sense and/or any evidence of human compassion, they directed the government to apply military might in such a way as to avert the falling domino catastrophe, while befriending the locals’ hearts and minds by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of them, and with generous donations of napalm and agent orange onto their villages and the surrounding countryside. What could possibly go wrong? Beginning with the Gulf of Tonkin, this was one of the signature achievements of our academic caliphates, and by April of 1975, it had demonstrated to the world the effectiveness of the American think tank. (The tragedy that was the Vietnam war was/is no laughing matter, please do not read this as an attempt to make light of that – what is important is to realize what an unnecessary and complete failure it became).
There are countless examples of the value of think tanks to foreign policy. Due to their unparalleled genius, advice from outside-the-box thinkers like Brzezinski and Kissinger heavily influenced courses of action such as the partial destruction of southeast Asia, the complete destruction of select European countries, and the entire Middle East. Why, these efforts might have never been undertaken, much less accomplished with such thoroughness and rigor if not for the prescient instigation by such wise and learned groups of men and women. These types invariably advise the application of conflict and death in scenarios for which their impeccable wisdom is sought and most of the time these tidbits of proverbial insight have the unexpected (and surely unintended) result of a boon of massive profits for various contractors and arms suppliers.
We’ve reached a point in history where leaders hardly make a move without going to one or more of such gaggles of wisdom for consultation with their resident oracles, always gathered at the gates to guide their steps. After all, when a leader takes advantage such veritable fountains of profound academic and strategic thought always at his disposal, how could he possibly make a wrong decision? We might not have arrived at the opportunity to show the world how rapidly American forces could vacate the Kabul airport, if it had not been for the omniscient think tanks who doubtless inculcated the notion that we should be there in the first place. The decision to recognize that Guano character as president of Venezuela has got to rank among the most embarrassing (to us American citizens most of all) foreign policy decisions in our relatively short history. Seriously. Wonder which think tank got bonuses for that one?
Here in the US, there are many places and issues that don’t involve mass murder which beg for attention. For instance, the western United States sits beside the largest known body of water in the solar system – the Pacific Ocean, yet there is very little potable water to sustain approximately 40 million people of the Southwestern US. I don’t know what the cost might be of desalinization plants to rectify the water shortage, but I do know that (at the behest think tank(s)), the US government is once more sending tens of billions of dollars to finance a war that has nothing to do with our country. Wonder how much desalinization Americans could get for 20 or 30 billion dollars? Someone should put that question before the resident geniuses. Or maybe they’ve already considered it and decreed that our contribution to people dying by the hundreds of thousands in a faraway land (once more) is vastly more critical to American interests than drinking water. And don’t even get me started talking about the homeless and drug problems.
At this writing, and in what is sure to be remembered as one of the most stellar of all state department achievements possibly in history, our country staggers as it begins to suffer the effects of ill-advised sanctions, undoubtedly instituted at the behest of think tanks; the state department then convinced European allies to also implement the same on a perceived adversary. Leaders of European nations promptly started clawing and scratching over each other to be recognized as the most subservient to their beloved Uncle (and his infallible panels of magi). The effects of this monstrosity of foreign policy action are yet to be completely felt but suffice it to say they are not looking good. Energy structures worldwide are what a spinning reel looks like after a bad cast. Europe, our supposed allies, are bleeding on the economic ropes. We in the US aren’t far behind. I’m sure the think tanks responsible for this fiasco will be handsomely rewarded – and if they could know about such a well-financed cognitive mediocrity lurking in, and actually directing, the highest decision centers of the planet, Dunning and Kruger would probably give up and go rock hunting.
Just in case the aforementioned sanctions do not win the think tank golden award for monumental foreign policy blunders, these same people have gone forward with a back-up plan to put a price cap on oil from aforementioned perceived adversary, an initiative which makes the incredible assumption that said adversary would be willing to sell its oil to such states as attempt put this ingenuity into practice while there are states in the East queued in line to buy the oil at market prices.
If there was a way to communicate with goldfish, maybe we could ask for policy guidance from them. I’d bet good money that the fish tanks could be at least as (maybe more) capable advisors than the “think” tanks. And a heck of a lot cheaper.
High up on the tops of the ridges, forest became lea.
Yesterday his sister called and said his water wasn’t working. I was kind of busy, but as I’ve become accustomed, dropped everything and went over to see what needed to be done. I’d already put a temperature-controlled heater in his pump house, but it’s not sufficient in extreme cold due to the gaps in the walls. You’d have to see that collapsing old pump house to appreciate what it’s like to try and work in there, but we’ve had some -10F temps this winter, and a hydrant valve must have frozen and busted. Now that it has warmed up, the thing was spraying, and had been for who knows how long. Anyway, I had to make a trip into town and get a new faucet and put it on, and the job went smoothly enough. Afterwards I reconciled myself, as always, to the obligatory visit in which to hear stories and anecdotes on how clueless all the young people are nowadays and hopefully hear some of his unparalleled stories of the old days. I always listen – I enjoy listening to those tales, even the ones I’ve heard before, which by now is most all of them. After doing the job in that wretched pump house, it was nice to be out and sit and talk with him. I’ve also learned over the years that when it’s time to go home, it’s not necessarily impolite to leave him talking. He doesn’t seem to mind; in fact, he doesn’t really seem to even notice. There’s just no other way to go about it. He doesn’t stop. And as it’s so captivating to listen to him, if I don’t keep in mind that I have to go, I could get hooked for hours, and believe me, I have.
Old dilapidated pickup trucks and pieces of road maintenance equipment, some from the 1940s, silently sit in varying states of rust and decay, some hidden in the woods, others proudly rusting in the open sunshine of hay fields where beef cattle grazed not so long ago. It’s almost as if they’re watching; waiting, but for what?
Many years ago, and for years, he cleared the hill tops of the hardwood forests that are prevalent in this part of the country. Cleared timber and rocks to make hay fields and grazing pastures, and there are acres and acres of them. Said his dad paid him ten cents a wagon load of rocks, long piles of which are still lying along the fence lines where he took them all those years ago.
Timberline Road in the Fall
There’s an old barn down the dirt road, Timberline Road, that he built with his own hands as an adult, but also many years ago. Due to all of the cow fertilizer which accumulated there, and the fact that the cows are gone, weeds and vines are growing profusely all around it, winding up through rolls of used wove-wire fence, unidentifiable pieces and parts of farm equipment, and rusty gate sections. Back in the days before he got into the beef cattle business, he ran dairy cows there and attended to all the labor-intensive operations of feeding, milking, delivering calves, and the numerous other duties required. The fading and peeling white paint testifies to the many silent years gone by since the milk days. He morphed from dairy to raising beef cattle somewhere along the line, but in the last few years, he sold off his herd – just got too old to work them anymore. He sure has been lonesome there with all those old cows gone. Sometimes in decent weather I go over and ride with him on his ATV, and we go over his property, just like we did when we rode around to see his cows, but now that they’re gone, he just stares wistfully across the lonely fields he spent so much of his life working. Sometimes I wonder if he still sees cows and hears them lowing out in those silent fields of yesterday.
The Old Milk Barn
I’ve been living here going on five years, sort of across and about a half-mile down the dirt road from his house, an ancient homemade hardwood mountain hovel with a rusty tin roof – all precariously perched on the east slope of the hollow. I live in the bottom of the same hollow sort of on the west side. Not long after I moved here, there was a big dead tree still standing on his side of the road and since I had already done some odd jobs for him (free of charge of course), he always wanted to pay me for helping him but I wouldn’t take any money, so I went over to his place and asked him if I could cut it – we could square up with firewood – the tree needed to be felled because eventually it would come down in a high wind and land on the road. He okayed it and even grabbed his chain saw and showed up on his giant tractor to help. I was impressed that a fellow his age could still get out there and sling a chain saw like he did. Someone forgot to tell him he was too old to do that. But alas, age has overtaken him now, and he couldn’t work firewood anymore.
In the years I’ve known him, I’ve spent many an hour listening to his stories of life here in the Ozarks – mostly stories from long ago. A tough customer of a hardscrabble life in the Ozark hills, he’s suffered his share of accidents – once in a sawmill a piece of wood flew out of a saw and hit him in the left eye. He had to go find a friend to take him to Springfield (about 75 miles away) to the doctor, but they couldn’t save the eye. Years later as an old man with only one eye he can still see deer in the woods that most folks (including myself) don’t see.
He was working out in the woods cutting timber when he was younger, and felled a tree which came down in an unexpected way, and landed on his leg. He called his friend who was working with him to help him and he got free and finished cutting wood and loading the truck. It was only after he got back to the mill that he took off his boot and looked at his injury – his lower leg and ankle was broken in three places! And he’d kept on working. He tells another story of operating a tractor that flipped over backwards and trapped his foot under the steering wheel. He said gasoline was pouring from the tank right next to him, and the engine was still running. He had to cut his boot off to get free, and he did. He never said whether the tractor burned up after he got away. He was definitely a tough old codger.
He’s got a big buck cape mount covered with dust in the living room of his farm house. It’s got a huge spread – one of the biggest racks I’ve seen in person, but he never had it scored. I’m sure it would make book. He relishes telling the story of how he got it. Wasn’t even hunting. He stepped out of the door of the farmhouse down the road where his sister now lives, and saw the giant buck about 75 yards away, and went back into the house and got his gun and stepped back out and bagged it. There were family members in the house when he walked back in and told them he’d shot a big buck, they walked out in disbelief to see it. Sure enough, a monster buck was on the ground out there.
There’s a lone walnut tree in the hay field south of his house, on a slope down to the road. He tells me that’s where he wants to be buried – right under that tree. The tree stands patiently waiting. Maybe that’s what the old relic barns and vehicles scattered around are waiting for too. Who knows?
He’s grown old now, and his health is failing. Has diabetes, heart problems, arthritis or gout in his knees that hurts him so bad he can barely walk, and the good Lord only knows what else might be going on in that old carcass. He has to use a cane to get around anymore. His mind wanders and he has a lot of trouble remembering things. We recently talked and he mentioned that he might be interested in a nursing home. I encouraged him to do that, he is at a point where he can’t take care of himself. Hopefully he will make that call, I’m sure he’d be better off, but this old neighborhood and those hay pastures will never be the same without him.
I mentioned in an earlier post that I lost all of my old site content. I found this one in an obscure document file and reconstituted it for the new and improved Folkpotpourri:
Reach with open hand and open heart; take hold, if you can, those delicious hues of autumn sunset draped in lonely north wind mingled with bedraggled cloud, soon to be brooding for times of verdant summer mist, already near lost in forgotten stories of yesterday. Indeed, yesterday, the stately woodland rang with melodies of summer, orchestras of wild birds and breezes generously blown from tame southlands where it is easy to imagine such ambience is nurtured. Yesterday, where shadowy vines of darkest green wound grandly in a tapestry of misty treetops, trains of scarlet now cling to amber and golden hickory crowns revealing they indeed claimed for their own the loftiest boughs of the wood, as indigo and silent winds increasingly and incessantly coax them into a cumulative slow dance to the autumn symphony. The autumn stage is set, hasten to allow these scenes of nature’s marvel into your memory, do not ignore the accompanying sound – aggrieved rasps of black birds, lonely and whispery whine of the grey squirrel; cold, clear water from unseen woodland fountains trickling over limestone escarpments, soon to be immobilized by icy silence in bounds of copper and yellow leaves. Every roadway becomes a wonderland.
A great oak stands sentinel, watching somberly, attentively, as the furnace of summer wanes once more among the last few cauldrons of October, now interrupted by nights of cool mist wafting about starlit glens of intruding autumn shadow and whispering threats of rime to brittle, fallow leaves. His watch unbroken through countless seasons, has once more patiently awaited the gum tree and sumac to emerge from sylvan dressing halls where the Master adorned them with exquisite gowns of profound crimson; they drink from deep, unseen vessels to another celebration of inimitable woodland hues. Hordes of squirrels secret away for winter scraps of wild provender breathlessly scavenged among leaves, rocks, and prostrate moss-covered sentinels of yesterday.
Raindrops bide, percolating in low-hanging, leaden billows, at last to wrestle free and pitch to a bleak arid earth and to darken streams of dry stones patiently awaiting; blessed raindrops, to soak desiccated trails through endless thirsty hollows. Cold, autumn raindrops, to silence the crusty blanket of new-fallen leaves in expectation of the stealthy white-tailed stag; soon he will need the silence of wet leaves as he busies himself dutifully tearing openings in the fallow carpet to provide irresistible earthen patches to be searched out by does, in obeisance to the ritual that makes them this year’s concubines. A seasonal urge will soon take him and for weeks he will pursue his regal posture of golden but waning autumn and brook no interloper into his realm. He has no choice; his role is assigned by the Master.
In the coolness of the October night, as a full moon assumes command of the celestial ocean above, coyotes gather to discuss in shrill voices those pertinent notions of interest only to themselves (and perhaps the bobcat), but in nocturnal earnest, as shadowy breezes drift over a moonlit landscape abundant with small prey lurking fearfully, silently, and most intently eavesdropping on the conversation. Ignoring the crazed chorus of coyote howls, secretive night birds take notice of the changes in weather that are upon them. Occasional hoots and rustles in cool oaken boughs hint of their disdain; indeed, some have, in fits of irremediable insult, even departed to spend winter in climes greener and more amenable.
On most afternoons now, a murder of raucous crows stationed along the edges of the wood take up hurling insults and name-calling; not at all pleased with nature’s effrontery. Through tears in the dark clouds, rays of silver sunlight reflect from black feathers, perhaps illuminating, perhaps illustrating their displeasure at the way of things. Their antics and curses go unheeded however, by the autumn wind; it has chosen to stay and it will, mirth or grief of irascible birds notwithstanding.
It was a nice cool sunny morning with some blue birds soaking up the sun, all in a row on the high wire. It took some time to figure out what happened. There were a few low rumbles, they seemed to be coming from north of here. We live on a farm out in the wooded hills of southern Missouri, and north would be up towards St Louis. Soon as the booming sounds started the power went off. At first, I didn’t pay much attention, but with all the military stirrings going on in the world these days, you just don’t know what to expect.
I went inside the house, but with the power off there’s no internet, so no way to find out what’s going on. At least until the power comes back on, or until I get the generator started up. More distant thunderous booms that echo now less like thunder and more like tremendous explosions – and I’m starting to get worried. My kids are at work and the grandkids are in school. I swear I‘m seeing sparks and smoke coming from under the hood of my car, but it’s not running. Now the power line where those bluebirds were singing looks like it’s getting really hot and smoke is coming from the bucket transformer on the poles. Wow! The transformer just blew up sending a shower of sparks and molten metal flying all around the pole! I can hear blasts all over the countryside from more pole transformers exploding. All the fences are sparking and smoking. The woods around the power lines and transformers are starting to go up in extremely violent flames. And the cars are now on fire – all of them! Even the old broken-down ones out in people’s pastures. Our emergency generators are smoking – I’ve got to get them away from the houses before they burn up.
Now I’ve got an idea of what’s happening, because I’ve heard of what an EMP event could do to electrical circuits. Electromagnetic Pulse. That’s what happens when a nuclear weapon explodes. The only other thing I can think of that would do this is a coronal mass ejection from a solar flare. It happened back in 1859 and it was named the Carrington Event. Fortunately, the world did not have much electrical infrastructure back then, just telegraphs, and the induced currents caused the wires to catch fire – sort of like what’s happening to the power lines out here right now. I don’t think it’s a solar event either, because the warmongers in Washington have been beating the nuclear drums for a while, and I’ve been afraid the Russians were going to get spooked and do a first strike. I guess this is it.
A big problem for those of us who might survive a while because we live in areas that aren’t targets is that we lose all sources of information. We don’t have any way of knowing what’s happening. Don’t know if it’s a first strike or a retaliatory strike. Does Washington DC even exist anymore, or is it just a huge radioactive smoking crater? Are those beautiful, magnificient buildings of the Kremlin still standing?
How many of our big cities are destroyed? I remember seeing pictures of the devastation that was Nagasaki and Hiroshima when that monster Truman murdered all those Japanese civilians, and thinking that those bombs were tiny compared to what the psychopaths have in their arsenals today – the Russians have bombs that could literally flatten New York City and/or Houston. I cannot, nor can anyone else, begin to fathom the destruction of a 10 or 20 megaton thermonuclear weapon could wreak on a major city.
Lights go off and then nothing. No TV; no internet. No football – the treasury department that writes all the government checks is gone. Fear-crazed citizens make runs on Wal Marts and grocery stores and take everything they can. No one tries to stop them; the store employees are in a panic to get home. Problem is, with no operable vehicles, the only things people can take are what they can carry by hand. Everyone has to walk, even the police are stranded out on the highways. All troopers, city cops, and sheriff deputies are trying desperately to get home to their loved ones. No cops on duty anymore. No traffic moving anymore. Just lots of people running, screaming, hoping they can just get home, and that there still is a home.
Fires are blazing everywhere from the powerlines and transformers exploding. All electrical substations in the country are smoldering and blazing chaos. Forest fires are rampant and out of control all over the nation and there are no operable fire trucks. No firefighting planes or helicopters are available to fight the fires. Houses hundreds of miles away from the many ground zeros are burning both from the unchecked wildfires, and from EMP induced electrical shorts in home wiring. Almost every building in every town is on fire with no way to put them out. And these towns are far away from the targeted places where the bombs actually hit. This is truly a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions, the like of which has never been witnessed in all of human history. There will never be electricity in this country again. Let that sink in. Freezers will thaw out and food will ruin. Untold thousands of people will perish, starting with those vaporized, then those being burned up in their homes, and there are no fire departments available to help anyone. No hospitals; doctors and nurses are gone, understandably abandoning useless smoldering medical facilities. No industry, no UPS deliveries, no more dog food for the pups. If your house didn’t burn to the ground, at least you may (for a while) have a (dark) shelter from the elements.
Huge blasts of radioactive winds blow hundreds of miles from the explosions, of which there have been many. The first wave was intended to take out the military establishment. No way of knowing, but there’s no reason to believe that anything remains of the pentagon, DC or Langley, Norfolk, San Diego, Chicago, Houston, or any of the coastal cities where there are refineries. All cities with military infrastructure of any kind will be destroyed. The joke that has been for years a missile defense system has been exposed. The sick joke that a nuclear war could be “winnable” has also been exposed. The numbers of people succumbing to radiation sickness is beyond belief. There will be no schools, no stores, no food, and no government services; no disaster relief will be forthcoming. All banks will have ceased to function, so even if there is any money left, it won’t be worth anything. The bankers never were.
If you take medications to stay alive, you’d best have a good supply, because there won’t be any more. All livestock will either be dead from radiation, burned to a crisp in the fires, or promptly slaughtered by starving survivors, and it doesn’t matter to whom they belonged. Same with property. People will no longer obey private property signs, they will go anywhere they think there might be resources, food, water, at the risk of their lives, which aren’t worth much right now anyway. There will be no law!
Every military ship on and under the ocean, with the likely exception of a few submarines, will be sunk. All of the nuclear-powered ships will go to the bottom with reactors likely damaged, spewing radioactive contamination. Like dozens, maybe hundreds, of Fukushimas. Even the reactors that aren’t damaged will undergo meltdowns with no controls. The bible says that something will kill all of the fishes in the oceans, maybe this is how that happens.
The USSR detonated a bomb of around 50-megaton yield back in 1961. It was called the Tsar Bomba. The weapon had a 100-megaton capacity, but for safety they modified the yield. Awe inspiring is just too mild of a description of what that looked like. Since the bomb was so powerful, they calculated that the plane that dropped it had only a 50 percent chance of surviving – that is even after the plane released the weapon several thousand feet up in the air with a parachute to slow it down while the plane flew away from the scene at full speed. It did almost destroy the plane – they said the blast wave overtook the plane some 45 miles from the explosion and it lost over a kilometer of altitude before the pilot, Andrey Durnovtsev, could regain control and keep it from crashing. That thing made a mushroom cloud 37, yes 37miles, (60 km) high! An uninhabited village, Severny, 34 miles (55 km) from ground zero was obliterated, and buildings 100 miles away were damaged! The blast would have caused third degree burns 62 miles (100 km) from the explosion. I would expect if they still have these in their arsenal, they would use one on Cheyenne Mountain. It would probably take out Denver and Amarillo, TX and certainly everything in between. Instantly vaporized. What are our “leaders” thinking?
It sounds crazy, but if this happens, I want to be at one of the ground zeros. As bad as being vaporized sounds, it would be infinitely better than surviving into the nightmarish existence that would ensue. There will be marauding gangs of survivors, undoubtedly armed, in various stages of hunger, disease, emaciation, and injury. It will probably be a situation where anyone you encounter will be apt to kill you. For one thing, they won’t know whether you are out to kill them too, or maybe you have something they want/need to survive. A can of tuna or a bowl of beans might cost your life.
The landscape will be nightmarish. Imagine a few days or weeks after the event. There will be burned out stumps on land that was beautiful forest, now riddled with stagnant pools of black muddy radioactive slime, full of human and animal bones, charred flesh, and entrails. Few buildings will exist intact, and many will perish fighting over them. There will be no light at night. Light would attract unwanted guests. No music. No one will have any idea what’s going on. There may be a few survivors in places like subway tunnels, abandoned train cars, or in remote wilderness areas, but such people will have resorted to the basest of behavior, including cannibalism, in short order. Imagine! Human beings who once inhabited a civilized nation and lived decent lives will have to worry about being killed and eaten by other human beings! Zombie apocalypse, just with regular people, not zombies, although with burns and wounds, hair falling out and all out of sorts with radiation poisoning, they probably will look the part.
I have heard people talking like they plan to survive and stay healthy by hunting and foraging. Well, if a nuclear winter follows a nuclear apocalypse, foraging is going to be slim pickings. And the deer won’t last long if they manage to survive the bombs, radiation, and fires, there’ll probably only be a few very unhealthy specimens left, but if a gunshot rings out, I’m pretty sure it will attract whatever starving people hear it, so there might be more to deal with than just dressing a deer.
Bedraggled survivors will wander in shock around former cities in hopes of disaster relief which will never come. Desperate people will offer anything – gold, jewelry, ammunition, their own bodies, for sustenance. Helpless parents will watch in horror as their children starve, hoping against hope that they will awaken from this nightmare, but when this all comes down, it’ll be too late for them.
And we still won’t know what happened. Who decided that a nuclear war would be a good idea? Who “won” the war? Did any of our leaders survive to sign a surrender, and to whom? Or did Russia or China surrender? Will there be hordes of soldiers from some faraway land invading our country after the radiation dies down?
And what of the wealthy folk who built the magnificent bunkers filled with the necessities of life in which to wait out the nuclear winter? Do they actually believe they will emerge into a second garden of Eden complete with succulent fruit trees and minstrels singing their praises? First of all, the bible speaks of a great earthquake, such as has not occurred since people have been on earth, so I think a big part of those individuals will be entombed in those lavish bunkers. So maybe a few do survive, and after some months, maybe a few years tucked away, they stumble blindly onto the surface, a hardly recognizable landscape littered with human skulls, burned out cars and buildings, and destroyed terrain. When they went into the holes, they were wealthy, but after what has transpired, of the few commoners left, no one will be interested in their gold – and those old bank accounts? Well the digital age has completely and utterly vanished, and all those millions or billions they had on their ledgers is now squat. Even by this time, there will undoubtedly still be a few scroungy survivors, but instead of the fawning proles these rich folks were used to in the old world, those survivors will undoubtedly have a taste for some well-fed and plump upper crust brisket, so thanks for preserving some. It won’t help their situation any when they discover that some of the survivors actually know they caused, or at least played a part in causing the disaster. The scenario described does not take into account the likelihood that hapless survivors will undoubtedly spend their time searching for air vents to the bunkers in which to pour gasoline or whatever else they can find to upset living conditions in said refuges down below. Any who survive this carnage will be on a mission and will not easily be placated!
Who knows what the final outcome will be. How many millions, or hundreds of millions of people will be counted among the slain? When this calamity happens, it will obviously involve the deaths of millions. This destruction, I believe is prophesied as the destruction of the modern Babylon in Revelation 18, and most people I’ve heard seem to think (as I do) that the place named as Babylon is the United States, and it is utterly destroyed in the space of one hour, by fire! Completely devastated to the point that (verse 22) “the music of harpists and musicians, pipers and trumpeters, will never be heard in you again,” and “no worker of any trade will ever be found in you again,” this decadent place will cease to be! According to scripture, it’s not a bad thing that this evil place is destroyed. “Rejoice over her, you heavens! Rejoice, you people of God! Rejoice apostles and prophets! For God has judged her with the judgement she imposed on you.”
Time will tell, but I’m afraid we don’t have much.
