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Post by FrostyTurnip on Nov 28, 2023 22:21:29 GMT -6
The ID via the camera seemed to be their most helpful leverage as they could put the description immediately on pn all points bulletin and let the boys and girls run with it. It also let us all know which direction they were headed when they left. They were willing to take an eyeball description from me, but I intuitively knew that the camera was much better at providing them their description.
And to that camera bonus, I will be trimming the neighbor’s trees and brush down as well. I cannot believe I am actually going to trim the entire block. Most would call code enforcement, but if I were in their shoes I’d prefer the neighbor to be more discrete. The perps are entering and exiting the block under heavy vegetation. I’m about to remedy that. I sure wish some folks actually lived in those houses.
In front of the old house where the robbery happened is the city’s power plant. The employees park out front street side, etc. The police officer said that an employee there had called them as someone stole their plate. Just the plate off his truck. I believe this is why they were acting so quickly this time. Sorry to say. Anyway, it’s time, time to ready the property in defense of these types of activities. Hard to keep up!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Nov 29, 2023 11:57:13 GMT -6
It's really nice to hear that our law enforcement officers are on the ball! It didn't use to be that way here at all.
When we first moved here we had quite a bit of trouble with people getting way too brazen with their nocturnal activities. We had just built a 20 x 20 shop building to move our tools from Hulbert to our new house, but had not moved into the new house yet, nor had we taken the time to fill the shed with tools.
My middle son was spending the night here at the house by himself that night, just to get away by himself. (He was about 18 years old at the time). Sometime in the middle of the night, he heard someone driving down our hollow in a pickup truck. He never looked out the window because he thought it was just us. We had been doing a lot of driving back and forth at the time, hauling furniture and whatnot.
Then, he heard a loud crashing sound in the shop building and got up to see if we needed any help unloading something. To his surprise, when he opened the front door, he startled two intruders who had gone into the empty metal tool shed, and finding nothing to steal except a gallon can of 16 penny nails had thrown the can in anger, hitting the empty metal shed wall, leaving a dent in the metal and several scratches on the new white paint. That sound was what brought John out to investigate.
When they saw John, they took off running, jumped in their pickup truck, and peeled out of the driveway. John tried to give pursuit, but the transmission was slipping so badly in his old '84 Chevy truck that he had to chase them in reverse. Needless to say, they escaped.
John called me, I called the Sheriff's Office, only to be informed that they had no jurisdiction here because our house was located on 'Restricted' land. We'd have to call the Cherokee Marshal Service instead.
By the time I drove from Hulbert to Moodys, the Marshal Service still had not arrived. When they finally did show up they had little interest in taking a complaint form two white people. It was very frustrating, to say the least. It was at that juncture that we realized that we were going to have to be our own Police from now on.
Shortly thereafter, I discovered you don't actually have to shoot the intruders to make a lasting impression. After several incidents here in one summer, I finally got tired of the brazen nighttime activities and fired a .30-30 deer rifle through our open front door one night at a random oak tree in our front yard and sent a trespasser running for cover.
One night that same year, but more toward Christmas, we were flagged down by our neighbors who told us they had just come home from a Bingo game to find a burglar inside their home. When they unlocked the front door, the intruder jumped out their kitchen window and took off running South, toward our house.
When I got home, I took out my Mini-14 and went walking through the woods, listening for footsteps in the heavy Autumn leaf cover. It was pitch dark out there and I didn't want to give away my position, so I never turned on a flashlight. I just went by the light of the moon and sat quietly under a big oak tree, as if I was hunting deer.
A few minutes later I heard feet shuffling through the heavy leaves; coming my way from the neighbor's direction. (My neighbor lives about 30 feet in elevation higher than our house, up on a hill about 300 yards away.) So it takes quite a while to walk from there to my house in the dark, (Lots of shuffling).
I let the intruders get within 100' feet of where I was, then I squeezed off 2 quick rounds at the ground right beside me, just as a stern warning.
Their immediate reply was, "DON'T SHOOT, IT'S THE CHEROKEE MARSHAL SERVICE!"
Knowing they were also armed, I yelled back, "OKAY! CEASE FIRE!"
I'm sure glad I was taught never to point a firearm at anyone for any reason. I might have smoked the wrong guys that night.
We met in the woods and exchanged information. I told them I worked for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and they told me they were following the trail of the guy who had jumped out the window. I showed them where I had fired the two rounds in the dirt and they were okay with that.
That was several years ago. We haven't had any more trouble since, but I still keep a handgun and a rifle posted within easy reach of both doors. I keep a rifle leaning against the wall beside my bed, so all I have to do is reach out and grab it. I've never had to use them since that first year here nearly 20 years ago, except to run off stray dogs or to shoot a possum or a coon in the henhouse.
A gun is a great deterrent, but once you've pulled the trigger you can never take it back, so be very careful about where you point a weapon. Always make sure you know where the bullet will stop. Aim at a tree or aim down at soft ground, don't take any chances at letting a stray round hit a neighbor.
Don't let the movies fool you, a deer rifle will put a hole clean through the wall of a brick house. Contrary to what you might see on Hawaii 50, The tailgate of a pickup truck will not stop a bullet. Don't take the chance.
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Post by macmex on Nov 29, 2023 12:31:15 GMT -6
Ron, those are good points. Years ago we had a lot of nocturnal problems here and I had no results when calling the Sheriff's dept. I asked a police friend at work what to do and he simply said, "Get armed and get trained. When you need the police in seconds, they're usually minutes (or hours) away. We took his advice and went through at least 5 or 6 NRA pistol courses. Yet, to this day, I struggle to carry. I know I should but I just don't like it. Like you said, you can't take back a bullet.
Still, in a dire emergency, one can't call a time out in order to go get armed.
The livestock guardian dogs really help. They generally seem to be able to "smell" a bad guy. I've had them tell me when not to trust a person. They disliked one fellow so much that he couldn't get out of his car unless I came out and escorted him. Others, the dogs simply wag their tails and say "hi."
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Dec 21, 2023 16:50:51 GMT -6
Dug up the last of the small tree trunks today. I still have many large sandstone blocks to move. The remaining trees require a real chain saw. Nothing precarious. I’ve decided to take them all out. I could have used the winch of the red Dodge on the small tree trunks after the lateral roots were cut, but that truck went down (almost falling apart at the axles) and on the same day, the GMC truck went down, permanently melting a head. They both went down on a permanent basis on the same day. But no worries. My son had been saving for a vehicle and we had been saving a bit and we jumped and bought another used truck to save Bill’s job. My son has much integrity at work and all the employees will do everything they can to help him get back and forth until we get the red Dodge limping again. About a week or so and during that time, his work will be closed because of Christmas, so he won’t need to haggle too much. I think the most High is pushing us for what will become upgrades on many things and I don’t think the spiritual adversaries are very happy about the changes I”m making to move us from dark to light.
When I’m digging the dirt around the tree stumps and roots, I just want to garden, plant seeds or propagate plants. It’s heartbreaking to me. Maybe when I’m done I’ll plant a cover crop seeds along that drive, just for fun.
Last week was the x-mas party for all the employees at Ozark Steel. It was at the Hard Rock Cafe in Tulsa. Interesting place. I can honestly admit I have never seen so many blue collar workers gathered in one spot before. That’s it for my involvement in Christmas festivities, but I wanted to wish all those who celebrate it a warm, loving, safe and cheerful Christmas.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Dec 21, 2023 23:31:38 GMT -6
Frosty,
It sure is good to hear you guys are still perking along out there. Sounds like you're making great progress on the tree removal. That's a lot of hard work!
I just got the last of that big hickory top that fell beside our house loaded up and hauled off this week. There was close to a rick of good firewood there. I've been working off and on cutting that thing up and hauling it off bit by bit since mid-October. I gave it to an old guy that we go to Church with. He's in his eighties and had been cutting firewood with a battery-powered chainsaw. That hickory top ought to help him out. It sure did feel good to finally get that mess cleaned up. Plus, it felt really good to help a neighbor. God knew what he was doing when he timed that out. (God knew what he was doing when he planted that hickory nut).
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Dec 22, 2023 0:17:14 GMT -6
He knew exactly. Glad you were a willing participant.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Feb 3, 2024 13:42:08 GMT -6
I don’t know how else to put this, but as I had been cutting trees and cleaning, I just let the LORD move me where He sees fit. Next move was to pull of the subfloors in the bedroom and see what was going on with its failure. In the interim, I saw the construction damage to our home that we are living in. Okay. It’s really bad, folks.
We’ve been putting out fires over transportation issues, teetering with 2 boys’ jobs in the meanwhile. Highly stressful as what vehicles we had left were actually very dangerous.
Bought a car. Still have #2 and #2 to repair, but one solid car was enough to off load stress.
______
And before I can even begin to enjoy that stress, we felt that quake. I couldn’t tell if my house was falling down or there was a quake because IT’S BOTH.
My house is so weak. It’s a really bad situation. I need to rip up some subfloors, dig in mock foundations and add supportive load bearing Timbers.
I located a structural engineer a month passed to agree to come in should I need, but I cannot afford him. He suggests I’ll do okay, tho, and that was encouraging after a bit of shop talk. The shop talk put my mind back into working gear and, suddenly, I didn’t need David to tell me where the structural issues were. I saw them. What a blessing a simple conversation can be. My biggest problem is water. The crawlspace is seeping and flooding on occasion. Has been for a while.
The foundation issues is no mountain, but there are a few mole hills. I can handle them by myself, actually.
The right way to handle this would be to hire a framing contractor to make repairs quickly, but we’ve been dumping everything we got into vehicles. I cannot even afford to buy the smallest Timbers right now. Sill plates, floor framing, ceiling joists, pointing the rock foundations, removal of existing concrete slabs. *(Ideally, addition of piers and crawlspace beams.) It’s so bad, the roof leaks but it won’t hold the weight of a new roof until these repairs are made. Foundations have shifted, but it’s not any mountains, just a bunch of mole hills.
I wanted to wait until the end of winter so I won’t freeze my family out during construction, but
the quakes just made a mountain of this situation. It’s not at the “light a match” stage, but not too far off.
LORD help me. I just want to grow plants and save seeds. Ha
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Post by amyinowasso on Feb 4, 2024 11:35:04 GMT -6
Im so sorry Bon! Praying for you.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Feb 4, 2024 13:12:07 GMT -6
Well, I should be grateful I know what to do but I’ve NO experience in carpentry. I can learn, tho. Just got estimates on repairs. Way outta my league.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 4, 2024 16:19:56 GMT -6
Bon,
A word of encouragement: Before I built that summer kitchen behind our house, the closest thing I had ever done to carpentry work was to hammer a fence steeple into a wooden fence post.
None of us are born knowing how to do anything. Fortunately, God made us to be taught, so we can learn. It's amazing what a person can figure out with paper and pencil. I'd get an idea, draw it out to scale on paper, then take my drawing and go outside and attempt to build it. It took me three years to complete the kitchen from scratch. (it's just a small building, 14' x 26')
Three years might seem like a long time, but I only did it a few boards at a time as I could afford to buy more materials, mostly by selling tomatoes and okra at the Farmer's Market. Doing that, I could only afford about $200 per month, so it took a long time to complete my kitchen project.
That was a really good learning experience.
Now, since they've invented Youtube, that learning process could be done a lot easier. I'm a visual and tactile learner. Reading books does little for me, but seeing, and doing, works pretty well. I'm so glad they make YouTube videos that pretty much explain how to do almost anything.
Yesterday I saw a really cool video about two guys (a father and son) building a log cabin together from start to finish. I think I counted four years' worth of seasons passing while they were filming that process. I think in my own head, the reality that things take more time to accomplish than I think they will, might be my biggest enemy.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Feb 4, 2024 20:14:16 GMT -6
Ron, Thanks for the encouragement and I mean that. I’m so grateful to be attempting this in the digital age. But more grateful for friends’ encouragements. The last 20 years has been abysmal. Time to mend the after math.
You know, I have this smart teenage girl . . .
Time to break out the T square and teach her the trade. We can learn everything together.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Feb 19, 2024 2:35:57 GMT -6
Stress relief! Vehicle #3 is solid for gentle trips. Whew! He replaced the springs that put it down and then, suddenly, the CV joints were popping. I mean, it is literally falling apart around a solid engine.
Next up is a remann for vehicle #3.
Sir Thor never lost his job. His manager and co-workers have been carting him back and forth to work, not a short trip. “One of the best employees we’ve ever had.”
Bill never lost his job.
So proud of muh boys!
A structural engineer is in the wings, got estimates on the house from the grader, the tree guy and a drunken framer. The foundation guy is coming on Friday for that estimate. I even have a sober framer in another town that wants to camp out in my back yard to help me reframe this bad boy. We all work together and it’ll be faster. I like that idea.
Can’t afford any of them right now, but I’m holding out in faith! KEH
Job interview this Thursday.
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Post by FrostyTurnip on Mar 21, 2024 8:52:23 GMT -6
It rained as you locals know. Before that, Lil Miss and I spent 4 days cutting and burning tree debris. I used the chopsaw and cut everything that fit within it to about 15” strips while little miss offloaded the debris into one of TWO burn barrels sitting atop an ash pit surrounded by stone. The smaller particles are tedious, but the greater surface area causes them to incinerate or burn faster.
In the first barrel I ground small rectangles into the sides of the barrels, but too many coals would fall out. On the 2nd barrel I cut 4” slits - three slits each - in three places along its circumference. The slits are sufficient air flow. The barrels burn faster than I can cut! We have so much tree trash, that we break to allow it to burn down before continuing. We could easily use 3 barrels. It has been so nice to be able to walk away from the barrels and take a break without too much worry about burning down the neighborhood.
We completed a 10’ diameter and 5’ tall pile of brush yesterday, save the tree fines and leaves. I probably have about a ton, literally, of thick tree trunks remaining that we’ll haul to the transfer station (transfer to the dump) at about $20 a truck load.
We have about two or three more piles to burn, most of which hasn’t been piled yet. And there are more trees to cut down and debris to be cleaned up as well as old construction timber lying around. The “pole” of my pole saw is almost spent and I need to replace it. Likewise, I need to be swinging a regular chainsaw instead. The learning curve in cutting was worth the expense of the pole on the pole saw. Unfortunately, it is also my electric weed eater. When the power house goes out, all the tools are down. Something to consider with these electric work horses. But they are powerful.
I received estimates on ginormous tree removal and it will be upwards of about 8 grand and that was only to top them and we do the clean up. Two of them require a bucket truck.
The fire department is across the street and we must be doing okay, because they haven’t complained about the burning but they have complained about the chickens being in the road.
Funny: The street is full of large diesel trucks running to and fro from Ahrberg Milling as well as other feed customers with their trailers, full truck loads and regular traffic. They know the danger of each type of vehicle. They are, literally, trolling the firemen. I told the guy “If you stop, they’re training you. Slow down, but understand they know the danger and will run off. They’re just trolling you. If something happens to them, that’s on me.”
He didn’t see the humor in this. LOL
Anyway, I have one more existing pile that needs cleared from this yard and after that, I may be able to relegate the other materials to intermittent burning. I’m anxious to get the garden cleared, tilled and rebuilt. But I really need a coop and run for the girls, obviously.
From a conversation with the neighbor the other day, I gather that everyone misses the gardens.
This stuff seems futile at the moment, but I know it will end. The garden I built was beautiful, but I spent so much time cleaning up the yard that I couldn’t tend to the garden. My hope is to end that futility with all this tree removal. ____ All this while my house is falling down. One of the stem walls is buckling. A 2 foot stem wall! Broken floor framing and moving foundation stones, dry rot, termite damage and who knows what else. The roof needs to be replaced, but the support walls would not hold its weight. Crazy.
Out of all this, the biggest priority (aside from stabilization) is aesthetics. I gotta move on the aesthetics to make the city happy. Crazy, isn’t it? I plan on putting in temp foundations and support walls inside while I underpin and change out some of the foundations, but not to engineering specifications. I cannot do it right fast enough. Absolutely bonkers.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Mar 22, 2024 8:04:04 GMT -6
Bon,
I totally understand your dilemma. When we bought this house it had been on the market for 5 years and had become so dilapidated that the Bank wouldn't even loan us their $30,000 asking price to buy it. Though, through Rural Development funding they would be able to loan us $40,000 if we remodeled it before we moved in.
The terms of that loan only applied if the remodel was complete within 30 days. The extra $10,000 they were loaning us wouldn't pay for any labor, it would only pay for materials. It was called, "Sweat Equity". The fact that we closed the deal on the 2nd day of July made the deal even sweatier.
It was a 3 bedroom brick house along with an acre of land, so it was well worth the time and effort to take them up on that offer, but within that time, we had to tear off the roof, spray for termites, insulate the attic, re-deck the roof, re-shingle it, re-side the entire house, re-wire it, re-plumb it, re-tile the floors, re-sheetrock, put in new doors and windows and re-paint it.
We worked all hours of the days and nights for weeks on end. On the 30th day, we worked all night long and were still working at 8:00 am when the bank showed up to inspect it.
When they drove up, they saw a piece of Romex hanging out of a hole where the porch light was to be, and drove off without even getting out of the car. (We had failed their inspection).
Fortunately, we were both still here at 8:00 a.m. that morning, after pulling an all-nighter, frantically trying to lay the last few tiles in the bathroom floor when the inspectors drove up, so we knew for a fact that they never stepped foot out of their car.
When the Bank told us we had failed the inspection, we contested that, because they never inspected anything!
When they told us the reason we had failed (because of a piece of Romex) I was furious and demanded they drive back out to see that it was in fact completely finished.
As they were on their way back, I hurriedly ran out the front door and slapped a porch light over the hole in the brand new, freshly painted siding and ran two screws in place. I didn't even have time to wire it, all I had time to do was jam the Romex down in the hole and literally slap a porch light over it.
Fortunately, no one had a lightbulb handy, and they never thought of unscrewing one from somewhere else, so they were none the wiser that the wires were not actually hooked up yet.
In the end, we passed their inspection and secured the "Sweat Equity" loan by the skin of our teeth, but because of the way they had rushed us to do an almost impossible amount of work in that short a time frame, nothing we did was done right. It still perturbs us to this day (Twenty years later) to see crooked light switches or hastily placed tiles because we had no time to make sure everything was true and square before installing it.
In the end, what would it matter if it took 30 days to do a job hap-hazard or 60 days to do it right? Their stupid Corporate rules are not based in reality.
If I was a guessing man, I'd be guessing they hoped to get 30 days of free labor out of us, then renege on the deal and keep their remodeled house.
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Post by macmex on Mar 22, 2024 8:37:20 GMT -6
Ron, that is quite the account! I think such stupid type of "corporate rules," as you call them is a large part of what's causing the downfall of Western society. Form matters more than essence. in other words, it only matters that things appear to be done, not that they are. It only mattered that they make the trip and find a pretext to say no, not that they actually inspect. We see this in education these days. It only matters that one gets a passing grade, not that they learn. It happens in all areas of life. What's scary is when this delusional approach to life collides with hard reality. Think about national security. With the "corporate idea" it only matters that those charged with the various parts of national defense appear to be doing their job, not that they actually do it. I run into this mentality at work all the time!
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