misguidedute

Darkest Days

My Mother considers these days a failure, I think they are a triumph for her and my Father. I might have killed myself after a year like this for them they both survived and were still together when it was over.
We lived in an old farmhouse in the town of Root. It was cold and drafty. We had no phone because it was disconnected. My Father was between jobs. We eventually were asked to leave because the rent wasn’t paid for months. Things happen, yes they do. My parents church stepped in and cleaned up the rent payments at that house.
It wasn’t all bad, I remember a lot of kids in this house including the five of us and friends coming over. We made root beer and a few of the jars exploded from the pressure, what a mess all over the ceiling and walls. It was the 1980’s and I listened to John Cougar Mellencamp singing Jack & Diane.
One night after dark we saw a State Police cruiser going up and down the road shining a spotlight on the houses looking for house numbers. He was looking for our house, Dad was out working or looking for work or something. It turned out the hospital sent the trooper because we had no phone. My sister had been in for some tests related to why she wasn’t feeling well and her epilepsy medication didn’t seem to be working. The trooper didn’t say what was going on but the hospital wanted my sister in Cooperstown immediately. My mom was home with us four kids, no car, and no phone. I think she went to the neighbors and borrowed the phone reached my father and somehow made arrangements with a family friend to get a ride.
My sister was diagnosed with Leukemia, and along with my parents she went off to Syracuse for treatment. Mom and Dad stayed in the Ronald McDonald House there while she spent some time in the hospital. Eventually my parents had care transferred to Albany Medical Center and Dr Aronson.
There were more stays at the Ronald McDonald house in NYC and Albany, while she underwent more treatments. Things didn’t go well and the doctors were talking about doing a bone marrow transplant.
We all went in and had blood tests done to find the closest match for a donor. My youngest brother Andrew fainted from the sight of blood and my middle brother Chris turned out to be the closest match.
For a while everything spiraled out of control we moved twice more, once to Richmondville and then back to the house trailer on Mineral Springs Rd. There was a half step in between with a move over to 145 next to the Catafalmo’s, but when they found out about the rent not being paid at the last place they wouldn’t rent to us.
My Grandfather died in the spring and my Uncle on his way up from Florida to collect a few things from my Grandfather was killed in a traffic accident in August. September 10th 1984 my sister died from the Leukemia.

tractor first start

Mineral Springs Rd

The trailer on the full basement. We had some problems with water coming in sometimes at this place and would wake up in the morning with three or four inches of water across the entire basement. Dad moved the trailer furnace into the basement and set it up to blow air into a series of concrete blocks that were laid on their sides, a furnace repairman came once and he said he had never seen anything like this. A floor with linoleum was then built on top of this and we had a bedroom and living room down there with a utility room that had the furnace and washing machine.
I can remember crossing the driveway to my grand parents house for Christmas Eve with my fathers family. Everyone would bring something and we would hang out in the living room near the pot belly stove. Once when I was about eight or ten I ate so much pumpkin pie at one of these that I was sick all night and and still almost forty years later I avoid pumpkin pie.

My brother and I would ride our bicycles back in forth in the attached driveway and chase each other back and forth across the yard.
When they built I88 it took a small strip in the back yard and we had a chain link fence up there after that. I used to watch traffic on I88 sometimes and see the State Police practice making traffic stops there.
We would go up in the back yard and watch the fireworks in the Cobleskill Fairgrounds on July Forth. Aunt Anna’s husband Uncle Bob would bring his bee smoker and keep the bugs down while the kids played around the old wire spools that my grand father was saving up there. One year Uncle Victor got a bottle rocket stuck in his sweater, you’ve never seen a whale dance so light on his feet until you have seen this.
Grandpa Smith had a cannon that he made from a set of wagon wheels and a hollow post from a porch. He would take lighter fluid put it in a metal coffee can, point the cannon at the hill side across the road and light the fluid. The ensuing bang would echo back off the hill side and the kids would all holler and yell. This only made him want to do it more of course. We lived such a safe life back then.

Moving

Years ago we moved around a lot, sometimes because the rent didn’t get paid sometimes because there was a job some place that my father was chasing.
There was the trailer park in Randall and the park in Warnerville but they were both before I was old enough to remember them. There was the house near Hindsville that burned to the ground taking everything with it, I also was to young to remember this place.
The first place I do remember was Mineral Springs Road across the driveway from my Grandparents. Some sort of deal was struck and my parents had use of the land to put that trailer on. My father somehow got a full basement built and put the trailer on top of that. We had a picture window in the front of the basement that was a large 6’x6′ window from a barn. It had wires in the glass to reinforce things, not what the average family would have had. We lived here a period of seven years over two separate stays.
From there we moved to Route Twenty outside Carlisle, this place had a big walk in pantry and a dug well in the backyard that was about ten feet across and stuck up about four feet above ground level. We had two dogs there first a Sheltie that drove me nuts and eventually ran away, then a German Shepherd that walked into the yard one day and stayed. The shepherd was a great dog that would protect us kids from anyone it thought might try to hurt us.
We moved to Esperance next in the house next to Jim Gage’s law office and lived there until Dad got a job down near Hudson.
Next was a rented place outside Valatie with a big porch all the way across the front of the house. The back of the house had a seven room addition that was removed with a bulldozer and when we moved in there were still spots where you could look out through the wall and see daylight. There was a furnace that had been converted from coal to oil and my father converted it to wood with a grate and we burned scrap wood and trees to keep the place warm. There were five bedrooms and a bathroom on the second floor, as well as a door that opened to where the addition had been but was just a big step down to nowhere now. On the first floor we had a large kitchen and dining room with a breakfast nook. In the entrance way was a large metal grate that sat on top of the furnace and the heat gravity fed up from there to the entire house. There was also a living room with a fireplace in it and nice wood working throughout. Down front near the road was a set of slate steps and hitching posts for horses.
The next move was rented farm house, near Carlisle. We lived here for a couple of months and then moved again. The rent didn’t get paid and I think my parents church stepped in to help out, those were dark days.
Next was a house in Richmondville we stayed here for about three months, my mother still is upset about losing the deposit on this one because the oil tank was empty when we left, it was also empty when we moved in but they never checked it.
This time back to Mineral Springs Road, this was the shorter of the two stays here and we eventually moved one last time.
Dad talked a good friend into selling him an acre of land over by Carlisle. He then found a used double wide with three bedrooms and two baths. It was hauled up from Pennsylvania and some where along the way it changed to two bedrooms and a single bath. A slight conversion by Dad and it was three bedrooms again and we moved in. by this time i graduated school and moved out. My mom still lives in this house and it has become a very nice spot with flower gardens, a garage and a few sheds around for storage.

Weather Station Updates

I upgraded my NSLU2 from Lenny to Squeeze the other day and WVIEW stopped updating the html pages after the reboot.

Feb 8 20:57:55 link htmlgend[2456]: : generating to /usr/local/var/wview/img
Feb 8 20:57:55 link htmlgend[2456]: : templates at /usr/local/etc/wview/html
Feb 8 20:57:56 link htmlgend[2456]: : received station info from wviewd: 20130208 20:45:00

Everything seemed to work but the files were not written to the directory /usr/local/etc/wview/html.

I fiddled with it a little bit but then just re installed WVIEW using APT. I used the information here to add repositories and then just a simple apt-get install wview.

Tractor Reassembly begins

8n 12v conversion diagram for one wire, with a front distributor

I got the diagram from My Ford Tractor.

2013 Garden

It’s winter and I’m starting to gear up on the garden already.

Qty Ordered	Item Number	Item Description
2	08489	BLUEBERRY JERSEY JUMBO planted 4/7
4	13323	BUTTERNUT 1- 1 1/2′ planted 4/5
2	79728	HONEYBERRY ‘WILD HONEY’ planted 4/7
2	79729	HONEYBERRY ‘HONEY SWEET’ planted 4/7
4	08501	NANKING BUSH CHERRY 18-24″ planted 4/5
4	08509	HANSEN’S BUSH CHERRY 12-18″ planted 4/5
4	08517	CURRANT RED LAKE #1 planted 4/5
1	83409	CUCUMBER PICKLING SASSY HYB. PKT.
1	14513	CUCUMBER HYBRID BUSH PICKLE

20 Colorado Blue Spruce
20 Frasier Fir
20 Lilacs

Then I went into Big Lots and they had the seeds out already. I blew about ten bucks in there on tomatoes and herbs.

I already planted a bed of garlic here on October 20th.
Watermelon

Dad and the VAWT

Vertical Axis Wind Turbine VAWT, when I was a kid my father assembled some parts and built his own VAWT. Below is what this must have looked like in Dad’s head. Sadly I am unable to find a picture of it all assembled. Here is a link to something similar to what dad envisioned.

“That flywheel was from a bigger baler I think a NH 76 or 77 which was much heavier. I think the wheels were from some kind of hay rake the whole thing was mounted on a Ford Falcon chassis. I towed it from Mineral Springs to Carlisle behind my truck, I forgot how we got it to the farm from there I carried it with the bucket loader to his house because the frame had buckled it was so heavy the rear wheels on the tractor just barely touched the ground.”

Howard Crosby

And here is a parts list DC motor to work as the generator. The motor would be mounted to the axle where the drive shaft would have been and making the ninety degree turn. The picture is an AC motor but the picture gives you the idea.

Flywheel and frame from the hay baler that his cousin Davy had lost his leg in. I never understood how the wind would get this flywheel moving.

Steel wheels about three feet tall from some sort of wagon. These were turned on end and mounted on top of the truck axle with panels placed between the wheels to catch the wind.

A truck rear end with needle roller bearings in it. The axle was welded to the baler frame with one end down the other pointing to the sky with the metal wagon wheels on top of it.

Along with other scraps of metal. As far as I know this never turned in the wind or made any power ever, but what a great concept.

My mother called this Fulton’s Folly, and the thorn in her side. She said dad dragged that thing around from place to place when we moved and stored it at friends houses for years, until it was sold off for scrap, probably along with the retirement camper.

Carrot Apple Nut Muffin

Mother Earth News Carrot Apple Nut Muffin Recipe

Ingredients:

1/2 cup walnuts or pecans, chopped
2 cups raw carrots (about 2 or 3 carrots)
1 large apple
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar (brown, white or a combination)
3/4 tsp baking soda
11⁄2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
3 large eggs
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 tsp fresh ginger, grated
1 tsp pure vanilla extract

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease muffin cups or insert liners, if using. Peel and finely grate the carrots and apple, setting aside for later.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt and ground cinnamon. Stir in the nuts. Set aside.

In a separate bowl, whisk together the eggs, oil, ginger and vanilla extract. Fold the wet ingredients and the grated carrot and apple into the flour mixture, stirring just until moistened. Divide the batter evenly between the prepared muffin cups and bake for 20 to 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Remove from oven and let cool on a wire rack. Makes 9 standard-size muffins or 12 small ones.