Memory Lane

While not owning a television for several years, I do enjoy offerings on YouTube.  For whatever reason, I enjoy watching tow trucks, especially off road recoveries. One channel I watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShwQHSU0S34&ab_channel=CaseyLaDelle

This one was different and involved gold dredges. That stirred a memory. In the aftermath of WWII returning veterans found scarce jobs, as much hadn’t changed from the Great Depression. My Dad found a job in Breckenridge, CO operating a gold dredge. One day while trying to put cable back on pulleys, his coworker took up slack while my Dad’s fingers and thumbs were wrapped around the cable. All his finders and thumbs were broken. The local doctor used metal splints to fix his broken fingers. My Dad had his brother bend each splint until my Dad’s hands were in a claw shape so he could still grasp the dredge controls and continue to work. His main complaint was not being able to button his Levis.

Along that same time I, at age four, fell out of the back of an old Ford sedan doing 40 mph or so on a dirt road landing on my head. The scars remain to this day. My Dad and uncle held me down on the floor while the “doctor” stitched my scalp together. The “doctor” was a former service medic/corpsman and what was available in what was then a remote Colorado mountain town.

For many years I was teased about having, “rocks in my head”.

So, WSF, is there a point to this? Yes, woke breath, generations in this country survived by doing what was necessary to survive. The solutions weren’t elegant. You survived or didn’t but nobody seemed to be appalled and nobody looked to the “government” for help or even expected help.

We have lost that expectation and are poorer as a people and  a nation, IMO. As always, YMMV.

Changes

Banner

I miss having a dog. The past years have required many motel stays and, being “unattached”, not having a home for a dog. Settled now, I’ve been looking. Introducing “Banner” (from Bruce Banner aka  The Incredible Hulk). He is a 7 year old lab mix living in a bad situation. A loving home but conflicts with another dog lead to them seeking an option. I responded to a Craigslist ad and now have a dog.

Shuttle Bus Driver

Saturday was my last day. Sunday a storm hit. Great timing? Took the job to replenish my savings. Mission accomplished. I will miss the trash talking water truck drivers and the decidedly incorrect remarks and opinions but not 60+miles of narrow roads with no shoulders, the Close Encounters of A Bambi Kind, and High Plains winter. This is only the 2^nd storm this year. Great for people working outside. Maybe not so great for dry land farmers.

Opportunity

A few years ago I was doing insurance inspections. Not claims, just simple measurements, photos, and a condition report. The company recently contacted me and I may start those next month.

Blasted Trump

With this improved economy, people are paying their mortgages and my part time job bugging the laggards is drying up. Didn’t happen under Obama, just saying.

Fucking VA

Those lazy shits just don’t code third party billings properly, if they even bother. The nearby office “doesn’t handle billing”. No, I need to drive to Cheyenne for that. Can you say, “Road Trip”?

Constant

Breathing air and taking nourishment. Got that going, and, I am grateful. Nothing like living in a building where many residents are walking around with oxygen, walkers, and wheelchairs to make you appreciate what you have.

Jobs

This is something I posted on FB a few days ago hoping to change a few (P)regressive minds.

Reflections on the Trump presidency. Eight years ago people I care about couldn't find work. Now all are working. Is there anything more important, on a personal level, than a job?

As I travel around, I see many signs offering work. Three years ago such signs were rare. Some of those signs have been up long enough to become faded and torn.

While I can’t prove it, I doubt many (P)regressives have suffered want, reposed cars, evictions, hungry children and rejection after rejection when seeking jobs.  Many have government jobs and think they are immune from layoffs.

Remember when the Lightbringer told us, “Those manufacturing jobs will never come back”? Subliminal message was you are now government chattel, the fate of many from the War on Poverty.

If people vote their pocketbooks, President Trump will be picking up former Democrat voters, IMO.

Different subject. Why you should avoid flying into Denver International in the afternoon. That is sitting directly over the airport.

As always, YMMV.

Frack This

Did a post called “Risky Business” 12/16/13 about fracking

https://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=5926528617816553064#editor/target=post;postID=3217552040043574204;onPublishedMenu=allposts;onClosedMenu=allposts;postNum=0;src=postname

This is more a “Yeah for Fracking”. The usual suspects are against it; the same crowd behind gun control laws, the “Colorado Model” and Common Core. Yepper, the (p)regressives.

http://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2014/11/26/touch-fractivist-calls-booming-economy-bad/

Add, “not in my backyard”.

http://coloradopeakpolitics.com/2013/07/26/melodramatic-millionaire-jared-polis-cries-his-family-are-fracking-refugees-from-vacation-home/

Why am I for it? JOBS, damnit. Lots and lots of good paying blue collar jobs in the $15 to $40 an hour range with lots of overtime. Young people able to stay in the area instead of moving to Denver to find a job.  Money is being pumped into the local economy creating more jobs. Tax revenues up and school funding up.

The picture below is a wind generator factory owned by a Danish company. Opened with great fanfare. Major tax breaks. Special classes by the local community college to train workers. The place is on financial life support.

Due West is this building going up with no special treatment, no public funds, required by the owners. Surprise, oilfield business.

This is happening all over the area. Did I mention jobs? This is just one street.

Growth brings problems. It has taken me several weeks to find the apartment I’m moving into after the first of the year (the test driver job fell through). The area has an acute housing shortage. Driving on the local roads can be a challenge. I’ll live with it, even though I’ve no patience, and not complain. Every one of those beasts means another job.

To those who want to shut all this down, want to dictate how others should live, etc., I offer these words. Go fuck yourself.

My late father years ago said an environmentalist was, "A guy who bought his five acres last year". One time, when the smoke from a local sawmill drifted into town (older times when they burned sawdust and scraps), someone spoke to my father, "Bob, isn't this smoke terrible"?

My father, sniffing the air,said, "I smell a $100,000 a year payroll".

One of my sons has been unemployed or underemployed, caught in the Temp agency bog, for a long time. Recently, he has started a decent paying job. So good to have my smiling son back instead of the disgruntled one. Perhaps, only those who have been unemployed for a long period can appreciate what having a job means. That is why I get enraged by those special snowflakes who are willing to see others suffer for their defined "greater good".

One last note. This growth is coming from technology applied, mainly, to existing oil wells. Very little wildcatting is involved. The resource has always been there.

And a final opinion. Every dollar being spent isn't going to some foreign enemy.

Jobs Rant - Long, Skip if You Want

A sawmill operated upwind of the town containing my high school. Sawdust was burned and often smoke drifted into town. One citizen complained to my father, "Bob, isn't this smoke terrible"? My father loudly sniffed and replied, "I smell a $100,000 payroll." My father was in the middle birth order of twelve children. At one time, he and his brothers slept in a dirt floored hillside dugout near the small family cabin on a dry land homestead in Northwest Colorado. He was always working, or looking for work. Sometimes he worked two or three jobs. His siblings, his children, his nieces and nephews and his grandchildren have the same values. We may all be pulling a plow for the man but it is our plow and we pull it for whom we please. We own our pride and dignity. My great fortune is to have this heritage on both sides of my family.

Job destruction seems to be our national policy. About the time someone achieves a certain level of comfort and security or, worse, inherits it, they start campaigning to "save" something. My father defined an environmentalist as, "someone who bought his five acres last year." Everything has a cost. Basic economics describe the multiplier effect. Every dollar spent is multiplied by the number of times it changes hands (what that dollar is worth is another subject).
The multiplier works both positive and negative. Take that dollar out of circulation, by loss of jobs or remitting it to another country, and the economy shrinks. For proof, look no further than small farm towns or small to medium cities in the "rust belt". Today, tax revenues at all levels are falling caused by loss of jobs.

What drives job loss is corruption. Corruption in the unions, corruption in the banking sector, corruption in the board rooms. Our USA corporation aren't; they are registered offshore so they can use our services, infrastructure, and military to protect their assets without paying for their use. The top of this smelly heap is the past and present corrupt leadership in Washington, D.C.

I don't have all the answers but I do have two tools, my vote, and my wallet. I will no longer vote for the lesser of two evils. I will research where I spend money and not patronize corrupted businesses if I can avoid them. Great tool, the Internet, for find information.

A job is essential for dignity and self respect. As for those who won't work, my parents referred to what they called, "the belly flapping principle". Great motivator!

The question becomes; will any of this make a difference? Yes it will, to me.