Wondering why I count things

I count things, like the number of gun shots I hear or the number of seconds from a flash of lightning until the thunder is head. I suppose I would like to count money, too, if I had any. But the first two listed are my favorite and almost do it automatically. I don’t know why, except that numbers have been a big thing in my life and in the work I do.



Let’s start with the number of gun shots heard. When I was young teenager, I loved to go dear hunting with my Dad and Uncles. Since at that time I was living in Pennsylvania, you went into the woods and hunted along with over half the population of that state. There was only a two week season and no hunting on Sundays, so you only had 12 days to go buck hunting. You had to pay attention to where the other hunters were located and where the action was.


The number and rhythm of the gun shots told a story. A single shot could either be a kill or a miss without another chance of shooting. A single shot and then another after a long pause usually meant the first one put the deer down and the second one finished it off. A buck running through thick woods is a very hard shot to make. When you hear 4 to 6 shots in one direction and then 4 to 6 shots just a little to the side of the last and the same or similar thing repeated a few more time, you know that a buck is running through the woods and inexperienced (I will not call them dumb) hunters are just wasting ammo. If they would happen to get in a lucky shot, it would just wound the animal and that is inhumane. A hunting partner would ask if I had heard the 4 or 6 shots a while ago and of course I would have to correct him and tell him there were exactly 5 shots fired.


I also count seconds between a flash of lightning and the thunder. That way I know how far away the lightning was and after a few flashes I have a good idea if the storm is heading my way or not. The speed of sound is around 760 mph down here close to sea level. So it takes roughly 5 seconds for the sound to reach me after I see the flash of lightning. So you see, counting things can be helpful.


Let’s hope I get a chance real soon to count seconds after lightning flashes. That would mean that just possibly rain would be headed this way, or not.


You all have a good day now you hear? The weekend is coming up.

Wandering to the dentist

I have an early morning appointment with the dentist. It has been years since I have been to a dentist and when I told them that, they said I had to first come in for an appraisal. Actually, they used the word “exam”, but it is really an appraisal.


Got to get ready, take the garbage down to the road, and head out for town, so this will be a short blog.

Have a good day now, you hear?
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UPDATE



OK, I just got back from the dentist. Glad I went, he found that the reason I was having some trouble was that most of the tooth that was under a cap was eaten away and he said the only thing to do with it was to pull it. Since the X-ray revealed that one root was detached from the main tooth because of decay under the cap, it was going to come out in pieces and would take more time than usual. (In doctor’s language, that means “more money”, right?) I got a prescription and will take an antibiotic and then get it out in a week. (I hate to take antibiotics so asked if I could take a pro-biotic with them and he said it was OK.)


When I first went in, they wanted to take a complete X-ray of my mouth. Had a machine that did a panoramic X-ray picture of your whole mouth. I declined but allowed a one tooth X-ray, only. I am just a stubborn old man!!!


Now I got to go pick up my prescriptions from Wal*Mart. They have one of them on their $4.00 generic list. Better than paying full price for both.

Wondering about my page views

I have a counter on my blog. It is supposed to tell me how many hits I have had. As of this morning, it shows 17,577. If I remember correctly, I put it on back at or very near the creation of my blog. Now about the wondering part. When I check my STATS, it tells me that I have had 47844 hits. That is 30267 more than my counter has registered or about two and three quarter times as many as the counter shows. Does the counter only count a selected few? Are you one of those special few?



If the discrepancy was within reason, I wouldn’t even think about it, but the discrepancy is huge. Ben from “An Older Texan Remembers” holds the record for the most hits on my site. Thanks Ben. Hermit Jim and Billy Bob are closely tied for second place and David and Gypsy come in third. If you haven’t in the past, go now and check out their blog sites.

I appreciate all of your page views and especially appreciate all of your comments. The comments are what keep me blogging. I consider you all my friends. Thank you for taking your precious time to read the junk I write.



You all have a good day now, you hear?

Wandering up to Huntsville State Park

My wife and I took the Jeep and the youngest dog and drove up to Huntsville State Park yesterday afternoon.  I needed to renew my pass.  Don’t know if it is my memory, but I thought that it was $50.00 last time, but this time it was $70.00.  Oh well, the State Park System can use the money.  We then drove in and parked at the northwest end of the road system and took a walk on one of the trails.  This one, if we had the time and energy, would take have taken us around Raven Lake, a lot further than we planned to go.  While driving to where we planned to park, I noticed what looked like signs of past fire.  Our walk confirmed I was correct, but the first thing we noticed was how low the lake was.  Here are a few pictures:

The sight of water lilies growing where there was no water and standing up without the aid of water amazed me.  Have you ever seen anything like this:

This is the beginning of the well maintained trail:

And signs of fire on the trees:

I kept seeing these holes in the ground with the tell-tell signs that something had burned in them.

At first I thought that someone had dug something out, but this next picture shows I was wrong:

It was stumps that had burned up and left holes.

I also spotted a lumpy tree:

The weather was great and we enjoyed our short visit back to the park. To see what it looked like the last couple of times we were there, you can click on the following links to some of my older blogs.

http://dizzydick.blogspot.com/2011/04/wandering-to-huntsville-state-park.html
or
http://dizzydick.blogspot.com/2010/10/wandering-to-huntsville-state-park.html#comments

You all have a great day now, you hear?

Wondering about a small flower and an old poll.

I found the first wild flower that I have seen since last winter and early spring.  It was in a place up where my covered rear porch meets the house, so any rain or dew that came off the roof would hit that area.  Now this is by no means a huge flower, in fact you would hardly notice it if you didn’t look close.  First I will show you a close up view of a flower with a dime in the picture to give you a sense of scale:

And now the full plant:

A little sign that life still exists.

Now let us jump back in time to between 1935 and 1939. In 1939 it was twenty two years after The World War. No it wasn’t called the first world war back then, since there was not a second WW, it was the only World War. There was trouble brewing in Europe and in the April 17, 1939 issue of LIFE magazine, they printed the results of a poll that reflects the changing mood of Americans between 1935 and 1939. I thought that it was very interesting, having the advantage to know what did happen a short time later.

The first couple of questions were “Will America Get Into the Next War?” Yes or No. And “Should America Send Troops to Help Britain and France Fight Germany and Italy?” Yes or No.

The next question was about economic aid to Britain and France.

The last question concerned Americans’ feeling about Germany.

I found this poll rather interesting.  You may have to enlarge the view to read it.  You all have a great day now you hear?

Finding flea-market treasures and John Wells?

OK, it wasn’t really John Wells but I had to take a second look to be sure.  You just never know what or who you will find at a Texas flea market.  He actually looked more like John Wells when seen face on.

I did, however, find a real treasure; binders of old Life magazines.

Life back then was a weekly magazine.

This issue was April 3^rd of 1939 and it cost only ten cents.

We purchased two binders from 1939 and I had to get one from 1943, since that was the year that I was born.

I spent most of last night reading three of those magazines. Wow, they are great and I will learn more history through them than I ever did at school. Of course I will share some of it with you all.

You all have a good day and we will be going back to the flea market this morning. Maybe we can get some more of those bundles magazines, if there are any left. They are expensive, but well worth it.

Pond Update, etc.

A few weeks ago a commenter on my blog requested an update on my swamp, pond, lake, or what ever you call it.  So, about 18:30 last evening, I took a walk around the place noting a bunch of dead oaks and pines and also walked down to the bottom of the deepest part of what use to be five acres of water.  I took a picture of the bottom and here it is:

The only clue that it had rained at all was down deep in the cracks. If you look real close, you can see damp soil or should I be so bold as to say mud? Also, some grass has started to grow there. As you can see, it is going to take a lot of rain just to get the earth wet enough to hold water.

I can just imagine after it first does get some water in it how bad the mosquitoes will be. Why? Because there will be no fish to eat the larva and few frogs. Life as my swamp once knew it is gone and will not return for a long, long time.


We took a sick dog to the Vet’s yesterday. Go out of there with almost three hundred dollars less to our name than when we went in there. Seems they are getting more expensive than people doctors, of course I trust Veterinarians more than I do people doctors.


Hey, you all have a good weekend now, you here? It is actually cold here this morning. It is now only 51 degrees, brrrrrrr, but I love it.