Gesehen bei Sprungdorf

I'm hopeful that the forecasts are correct, and we'll get some rain Sunday through Tuesday.

But I don't have this kind of faith:

On a sort of related note, I saw a large (32-36') cabin cruiser eastbound toward Mineral Wells by the hospital yesterday.  The kind that takes a three or four axle trailer and barely clears the overhead traffic lights.

It was a nice ship, but it had a mud line about 18-24" up the hull, where it'd been resting on the lake bottom.  Makes me glad I don't own a boat.

Charley might not like it

...but he'd still be welcome to attend.


Summer Series - Red & Yellow, Black & White from Keystone Church on Vimeo.

I don't know about the crying at a Tyler Perry movie.  But a dog movie, like, say, My Dog Skip - well, let's just say that's a different animal.  A man who don't cry at a dog movie ain't got no heart.

Past Blast

So I'm driving along MLK Boulevard in...Mineral Wells, when I notice this church.

Wow - I don't think I'd seen that name on a building in almost 35 years.

Sure, I'd been baptized Presbyterian at six weeks, dragged to Episcopal Church a couple handfuls of times, and attended Catholic school, but the Church of God of Prophecy was something altogether different.

[Unison] "It was something different!"

The reason for my going to this denomination, as you might surmise, was a woman.  Well, at the time, said woman was 16 and I was 15, but you get the picture.  The church was in the Poly or Stop Six area of Fort Worth, a neighborhood with which this prep-school boy was totally unfamiliar.  (Yes, she was a white girl.)   It was the first time I'd seen folks a-layin' on hands, rollin' on the floor, and speaking in tongues - it kind of weirded me out, but, you know...the girl.  Anyway, we ended up going to Summer Camp together in East Texas, but scarcely saw each other that week - on account of the eeevil thoughts that teenagers might get in them piney woods after dark¹.

After a year or so, I lost track of her.  Then, in the mid-'80s, she called me, out of the blue.  She'd been shacking up with a doper in Ohio, but had gotten free from him and moved back to Texas.  We went out for drinks, a Ray Charles concert in the Botanic Gardens, and to her new church home: Word of Faith Family Church, in Farmer's Branch/Carrollton.  Yep, Pastor Bob's church.

We went to WOF a couple of times together.  This was when the church was trending and Pastor Bob hadn't yet been exposed as a charlatan.  Then, we drifted apart, much as we had seven years earlier.  I started taking being a Methodist more seriously.  I've not seen or heard from her since.

I like the church I attend now, though it's nothing I would've imagined attending ten or twenty years ago.

I just hope they don't start handling snakes...


¹ Although at one time I was crazy about this girl, I was raised well, and did not know her.

Z-max for Old West Zombies!

Surely the last post is sufficient evidence of the coming Zombie Apocalypse, if you haven't already been roped in by all the Guns & Ammo articles.

Over the weekend, I was treated to a recipe for cylinder-sealing plugs for blackpowder percussion revolvers (to keep the cylinder gap flash from igniting adjacent chambers - generally regarded as a bad thing).  My host showed me some of his DIY creations that he uses in his [repro] Colt Walker and 1860 revolvers.  They were a dull red or pink, due to a crayon being part of the recipe.

Well, last night I put together a trial batch, and made a cutting die from a [Wolf] steel .45 ACP  case with an oval cutout in the sidewall.  In use, they're pressed over the top of the seated round ball or conical projectile, prior to priming the nipples.  The small batch I made just about filled an Altoids tin:

So, I may have used a lime green crayon in my recipe, just in case James Denton & Chris Kattan and that kinda hot Indian chick need some help with the next old west ghost town zombie outbreak.

I'll be their Huckleberry...

You want a 'to-go' box with that?

He's gonna need one.  Or some friends to help share the feast.

Must've been fresh - he hadn't started dining yet.

As Jar-bert says: Carrion!

 

Ain't Nobody Feelin' No Pain

Featuring old time religion and hymns, train songs, Hank Williams pain songs, and Blue Eyes Cryin' in the Rain.

Happy Independence Day!

There are doubtless some nit-wits today who believe these United States achieved independence from King George by tweeting, occupying, and giving free food, housing and healthcare to everyone, but the fact is that serious-minded people took stock of the human condition, and discerned the inalienable rights that we possess.  And then they asserted said rights.  Fourscore and five years later, there commenced a test to see if such a nation could survive.

Over the weekend, we were guests of some fine folks who know something about freedom.  In part, they celebrated by firing this replica 1861 field cannon.

Two hundred thirty-six years after the birth of our nation, there are voices calling for a Revolution. But instead of throwing off the shackles of tyranny, taxation without representation, and slavery, they seek a government monolith with unfettered powers and unlimited taxation which will enslave spirited, hard working Americans to support those who will not.

There is debate today about whether our forefathers were or were not Christians, Deists, Agnostic or Atheist. It is less important to me what each Declaration signer's creed or faith was, than to recognize that their collaborative work product was, even if not divinely inspired, in alignment with our Creator's design for us. Today, our legislators create laws not only unaligned with God's purpose, but often in direct contravention.

Tomorrow I will remember my Creator God, the founding men and women of this country, and the generations of brave Americans who have upheld the unique proposition, as Lincoln said, "...that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

It's the same mindset I'll take to the polling place in November.


"Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people. We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should."- Ronald Wilson Reagan¹


¹ h/t The Survival Blog