Chomp, chomp, chomp

This week once again found Miss Trixie and Ol’ Dutch in the throes of gathering the harvest for future meals and, let me tell you, it was an effort of monumental proportions.

Most of my readers who follow along willingly -- or not so willingly -- each week probably know that Ol’ Dutch is a hunter who is getting close to surpassing even Nimrod of Biblical fame. Well, I have been lucky of late and someone once said “better to be lucky than good.” To which all fishermen, hunters, divorcees and lottery winners give a rousing “Amen.”

So far the lottery has eluded me, but I am working on that after my recent run of luck in the hunting and gathering department so surely I’ll soon be sporting one of those oversized checks with lots of zeros.

Archeologists tell us that we all come from a long line of ancestors who traversed the land and hunted or gathered plants for food as they traveled. Civilization has reduced that effort to now only needing a weeklong trip to the Piggly Wiggly Food Center to sack up our groceries. (That Piggly Wiggly trip may not take a week, but to a male member of the tribe, any stop for shopping seems to stretch into a week.)

Miss Trixie and I have been on a kick the last five years or so of only eating what we harvest. Well that's a stretch as far as vegetables go but at least what meat we do eat Ol’ Dutch, the epitome of Elmer Fudd, has been on a roll and our freezers are full to overflowing.

In the fall I was fortunate enough to talk an elk, bear and pronghorn into going home with me but little did I know that our journey to almost being a full-time butcher shop had begun.

A trip into Kansas in December also proved to be either lucky of fortuitous but either way we came home with two fat grain fed Kansas deer for the larder.

After that it finally seemed that Ol’ Dutch would get a break from non-stop cutting and grinding and stuffing of good tasting vittles, but Miss Trixie had other plans on her mind and this week proved to be a plethora of blessings once again food wise. She found meat: black angus pure-fed beef to boot.

One of the neighbors had a black angus heifer with a bad case of constipation. Even though the area vet theorized it was a plastic bag and administered mineral oil in copious quantities, the poor cow could not pass that obstruction. So in the end she had to be relieved of her misery and we became the recipient of 500 pounds of great tasting steaks, burgers and ribs.

You might think that was just plain lucky on our part or unlucky on the farmers part. Since this all happened on New Year's Day and no butcher shops were open, the cow needed to go to a team of first rate (and readily available) at-home butchers. And, that is how Ol’ Dutch and Miss Trixie got to enjoy the fruits of the farmer’s labors.

After the deed was done Ol’ Dutch dug into the innards of the great beast and found a plastic bag and I think it may have been one from a local grocery, thereby completing the cycle of getting our food from the store just like most of America. Well sort of.

Long a hunter I was able to dissect said abomasum without retching as some of you may be doing as you read this. I felt just like The Incredible Doctor Pol who is a veterinarian on television and does this kind of thing for his viewers’ pleasure.

The farmer was relieved to know the cause as he didn’t want it to be a problem with the herd and I was duly impressed that the vet could diagnose that so readily without a 9th grade anatomy lesson in the field.

Number one son Bubs and the two grandkids #1 and #2 came out and they pitched in to get the protein in the freezer. It was a great day of family working together for food.

Miss Trixie promised Bubs meat as payment and he is already planning a steak cook-out for all of his friends with my beef. Now, there is the ultimate hunter and gatherer for you

Texting is toxic

Most of my readers can recall a time before cell phones were invented and we all longed for a mobile phone like Maxwell Smart had in his shoe in the sitcom Get Smart.

 In that show, he was a spy of sorts who along with his pretty (and smarter) assistant caught criminals amid zany antics. The one thing he did have that we all wanted was a shoe phone.

 The magazines Popular Mechanics and Popular Science long proliferated those ideas to us as they advertise a George Jetson type of future for us and we faunched at the bit for that kind of technology.

 Other television shows like Star Trek, Buck Rogers, and the old Orsen Wells stories served to whet our appetite for the day we too could carry such devices on our person and call whomever we please when we pleased. 

 Ol’ Dutch was one of the first to get a pager and that freed me from having to baby-sit the phone when on 24-hour on call. Suddenly I could go to church, out to dinner or mow the grass without worrying about missing a call and losing my job. It was not too long after that when the first mobile phones came out and carrying a huge battery pack around had you looking like you had made a trip to Browns Shoe Store. 

 But technology caught up with us and we soon had a flip phone like Captain Kirk and could call almost with abandon albeit with limited minutes or excessive costs for those minutes. Not a few people learned the hard just how much those minutes cost. 

 Texting came along sometime in there and it was difficult at best as each key had three or more letters assigned to it and that made it hard to navigate and beside, who would want to text when you could talk. So much easier. 

 Fast forward to today and even Ol’ Dutch has become a wizard of texting and unlimited messaging and data has addicted me to that confounded device in the worst sort of way. Along with that came auto correction of words typed and suddenly the tiny chip decided that it knew best what you wanted to say and started inserting all sorts of wrong words in the most inappropriate places and times. 

 Thanks to autocorrect, people have sent texts that says they are looking forward to “sleeping” with a job interviewer instead of “speaking.” Or “I am stuck on the toilet and will be late to work” when the texter meant to say stuck on the “tollway.” Another classic was someone texting “how does sex sound for tomorrow?” When they meant to say “six.” Awkward at the very least. 

 Ol’ Dutch is not immune to these and other faux pas and just the other day pocket poked some keys and was recording a live video which was including bathroom time. Miss Trixie burst in on me screaming some unintelligible words about fart sounds or other and finally I was able to shut that all down. 

 Trixie’s uncle texted me the other day about finding someone’s final ashes in a storage locker and that they were in a “urinal.” I think he meant “urn” but who knows as maybe the deceased really was just going down the toilet in their last days. Or Uncle Mel just typed “urinal” as a mistake or is laughing all the way to the local morgue to deposit said ashes. 

 We all are guilty of the mistakes texting as none of us actually read what we text before we send it and that causes a lot of misunderstandings and hurt feelings at the least. 

I used to work in an office situation and we always tried to sit on emails for a day or two before sending them to prevent any kind of typos or misquoted things which seemed to help. So for my new year's resolutions I think I will start reviewing each text before I send it. Well, then again, maybe not.

The Russians are coming

Way back in 1966 amid the fears of a Russian-induced nuclear war and certain death, a movie came out named “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.”

It was a hilarious montage of great actors including Carl Reiner, Brian Keith, Jonathan Winters, and Eva Marie Saint among others. Every year Ol’ Dutch tries to watch it at least once as the hilarity of this small island people’s fears are realized when a Russian submarine runs aground on their coast.

To fully understand their fears, you have to realize that ever since WWII the rise of the Russians as a world power has been held up before us as something to fear and loath and that they may one day attack us in some way or another.

We hid under our school desks in the 1960’s in nuclear bomb drills as if the flimsy metal and wood desk would somehow insulate us from a blast as hot as 1000 suns. I can recall hiding under there from Ms. Quigley, my fourth grade teacher, and that darned desk didn't even protect me from her let alone an atom bomb.

Watching the news we can see that the Russians are once again interfering in everything from elections, the economy, international spying, the price of milk and our neighbor’s lawn issues. America always needs a scapegoat to take the blame for what the politicians and others are actually doing behind the scenes and so the dirty Ruskies have become our bully of choice.

I have to assume they do the same blaming the U.S.A. when things go wrong over there so it's an even trade of sorts kind of like trading wheat or soybeans for rubles and dollars.

Two weeks ago the pesky Kremlin gremlins finally found Ol’ Dutch and Miss Trixie and began interfering in our lives too. And I can understand that as we are an imminent threat in general. I am not sure what I did to stir them up but they sure are after me now and here is what is going on.

I had submitted my weekly column for publication and when it went through there were a lot of “tweets” about politics embedded in the text.

Also the headline was something political and had nothing to do with the content. Many readers wrote to me and asked what that title had to do with anything at all. And I had to agree but it's not too far from my normal blather and I also now understand a lot more about international intrigue and spying.

I long had doubts about Russian interference in our everyday lives until now but it seems that I have struck a nerve with them by writing about Ol’ Dutch and Miss Trixie and they are out to silence free speech at the very least.

Who knew that my column about hunting and fishing, nonsense and some sense would be a danger to a super power? But I do understand their fears as once you let the proverbial cat out of the bag you are in for real trouble in paradise as they see it.

Having opened up this can of worms of influence I now am expecting new interference from the Chinese as they have been suspected in everything from soup to nuts and the short life laptop computers they manufacture are just a start of that conspiracy. Their use of fortune cookies to influence the everyday lives of us normal Americans is proof positive of their intentions even though the cookies now say “made in Cincinnati.”

So if you see anything political in these columns please note that Ol’ Dutch has been hacked -- and is hacked off too -- all the while eating Russian caviar and typing away on his Beijing laptop special.

The fat goose

Way back in the late 16th century, the Brits beat the Spanish Armada. And, in doing so, old Queen Liz the First ordered her subjects to eat goose for their Christmas dinner that year.

And, that’s how goose became the traditional meal for our cousins across the seas and gave us the ever popular:

Christmas is coming, The goose is getting fat; Please put a penny In the old man’s hat. If you haven’t got a penny, A ha’penny will do; If you haven’t got a ha’penny God bless you.

While you know that Ol’ Dutch doesn’t really take to anything that isn’t an American tradition, there is something soothing about wassailing (which is a fancy way of saying caroling while drinking booze.)

Some years back Miss Trixie and I got talked into helping with a Christmas performance in small town Kansas that included a play, food and music from the bygone era of old timey England. We were caroling inside, not wassailing, by the way, because in Kansas there’s no booze -- at least not at this function.

This event was held in an old rock church and everyone who was anyone showed up including the preachers, teachers and pumpkin pie eaters.

Well the entire community was pretty well represented anyway as the town of 211 proud Jayhawkers were just glad to get out of the house during the long cold winter.

The local Post Mistress wrote a corny play about 12th century Kings and such with a twist somehow tied into the local goings on. I never did understand it all as I am not from the small town and thus not quite in the loop on local jokes.

Ol’ Dutch seems to always be enlisted to sing and entertain at such celebratory gatherings. Although I may not be good entertainment, my form of entertainment is copious and free which is what most people are looking for anyway.

All of the entertainers and servers had to dress up in period costumes and it was hokey at the least but raised money for the local women’s organization so you do what you must to help those in need.

Those of you who know me know that Ol’ Dutch is a soft touch for charitable causes and especially those run by women folk as they smell good and smile which breaks my normal resisting resolve to not help out. I have thus been talked into many events appearing as a South Pacific chieftain, goat herder from the Sound of Music, Buck Dynasty, Astronaut, Elvis, Kenny Rogers and others all for a good cause.

I got to thinking the other day -- here we go again --- that with such a rich selection of costumes now in my closet that Ol’ Dutch is the perfect candidate to take over for the soon to retire 007 spy of intrigue.

Now think about it. I have all the qualities necessary for such a gig as I am handsome, brave, shoot straight, honest, a sure lady killer, immaculate dresser, singer, songwriter, poet, world traveler and cause wrecks wherever I go. Miss Trixie is rolling her eyes as she reads this over my shoulder which is always a good sign of certain agreement on her part. And while some of those may be a stretch I have been to Mexico and drive like Mr. Magoo so wrecks follow me.

Speaking of good causes, around Dallas on the free TV stations, the airways are full of St. Jude’s commercials and kids at the Shriner Hospital reminding us that there is more to this season than putting presents under a tree and talking to a bearded fat man.

So this Christmas season Miss Trixie and I encourage you to find those around you in need whether close or far and be a blessing to them in giving of your time, love or monetary gifts. For in our giving to others is a true blessing seen and the impact of your actions will live on long after you are gone from this temporal plane.

God bless you all this Christmas season and may you find peace and joy as you celebrate with friends and family wherever you may be. And if you cannot find anything to be thankful for always remember this: you could be married to Ol’ Dutch.

Natural selection

Most of us can recall the hubbub that occurred when schools started to teach about evolution and how horrified our parents were about that.

And to their credit, they had taught us about a God who watched over the affairs of men and the knowledge that He was watching kept more than a few of us out of jail at the least. 

But it really turned out to be a bunch of halloo about nothing as people still believed in God and the world didn't come to an end over that as predicted. 

One of the tenets of evolution is that any species will adapt through time and the smarter ones will live and by doing so, will also pass their intelligence on to their progeny as well. 

This past week found Miss Trixie and myself -- the ever handsome Ol’ Dutch -- back in my old stompin grounds in Kansas. This was a twofold trip to see my dad Fast Freddy plus do some deer hunting for that good corn fed venison. 

The former is pretty good and the latter, well, the hunting has been better which got me to thinking. Looking up now I see Trixie rolling her eyes about that last sentence and that poor girl must suffer terribly from dry eye. Well she does suffer terribly but more likely from dry humor on my part. 

But anyways, the deer hunting has not been as good as in years past as Ol’ Dutch was often able to convince more than a few of those delicious deer to go home with me. This year they just are not to be found and I am beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, I shot all the dumb ones down through the years and now I am left to hunt the braniacs of the deer world.

Kansas has long been known for a great whitetail deer population and Ol’ Dutch never had a problem filling his tags until last year. Which makes me believe that all that are left are the smart deer of this planet.

So sitting out on a hillside like some wise old Sage of yonder year, I pondered about how maybe the same kind of thing is happening in the human race. Maybe the smarter ones survive better and just maybe that means there is hope for eternal for our planet?

I was just starting to really feel good about that idea when I reflect back on the past weeks police reports from a county in Texas.

During the week we had a woman attack another with a spatula, a bee fly up a kid’s nose, someone using hairspray like a blowtorch to harm another and last but not least, someone shot himself in the south end of their northbound body. That was an accident of course as no one purposefully shoots themself in their sitting down parts. 

Though I don’t know any of these interesting folks, this all disturbed me because I realize that centuries of this kind of behavior has not thinned out the lame brains from amongst us one iota. Because if that worked, we would not have the nonsense that goes on every day around us.

Why just the other day I was telling Miss Trixie – well, actually I told her  nothing as she already knows it all. 

I guess the most important thing a person needs to be sure in selecting is a good soulmate for a companion. We have all seen or been a part of just the opposite and that's not good at all and the resulting sheet splitting is nasty. 

I think most likely the best place to find a good mate is the local farm supply store. For it is there that a man can find a woman that can tote a sack full of cattle pellets, open a gate and vaccinate a calf, all which come in more handy than one that can put on fake eyelashes. 

Even Ol’ Dutch came to his senses after several near dalliances with high maintenance women and luckily found me a gal that can fish and cook and even led an expedition to Mount Everest. 

And let me tell you folks something here. That's some kind of natural selection and you can't get even at the local big box store. 

Having to peed the figs

My father, Fast Freddy, turned 89 years old in October and, as some of you know, he has been a pastor since he was about 19 years old. A long run for anyone in any job for sure.

He and another man named Charles from Dodge City, Kansas, attended the same bible college and got to be friends and many an adventure resulted from that affiliation as Charley was a hoot and a half.

My mother, who went to the same bible college, often told the story about Charles preaching about the prodigal son and got all mixed up and instead of saying the son had to “feed the pigs,” Charley said, “peed the figs.”

This resulted in a complete meltdown from my mother in church and the entire congregation but ole Charley never missed a beat. He was also famous for saying that God put the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit in his six shooter. Standing in the pulpit, Charley then would re-enact shooting a pistol, a certain fall back to his days in Dodge City and too many Western movies on television for sure.

Old Charley crossed my mind then other day when I saw pigs for sale on Craigslist. To those of you not familiar with it, Craigslist is an online page that lets people sell everything from soup to nuts and too much in between.

There is nothing you cannot buy including boats and boas, furniture and farm equipment, clothes and collectibles, beauty aids and bikes and baby items and even a place to barter for things. It's best if you try and avoid bartering for the babies if all possible but that's another column.

Ol’ Dutch is a peruser of such pages wherever he goes and I often find things that I “need” like farm supplies, equipment, lumber and livestock for my small spread the “Oleo Ranch.”

This past week found me looking online for a pig to fill the freezer with the winter supply for both me and Bubs, my son. While Ol’ Dutch has enough elk, bear, antelope and deer on hand to feed a small army, those granddaughters are about to eat me out of house and home.

While I complain and sometimes quite loudly about that fact, it does give me an excuse to get out and hunt even more which is exactly what I want to do.

A nice fat hog is always appreciated by Miss Trixie and the rest of the family and several pro-spects were found but fell through at the last minute which made me go “hog wild.” Well, not really but it's fun to say that phrase.

The one thing I did find a lot of was pet pigs. Now I knew that people had such things and in fact, one lady I know had them in her house and kitchen which is more than even this old mountain man can take.

They are cute when they are little just like most animals but soon grow into, well...pigs. Of course the granddaughters want one to add to their collection of cats, dogs and chickens, but they have more than enough to take care of already.

The thing about getting a pet pig is they are just like a husband; sounded good at the time but soon they are soiling your kitchen and bathroom, using the guest towels and eating all the foods you made for the office party.

And the funniest thing about that is even if you get rid of your pig it appears that women run right out and get another one as if they can change the spots on a Yorkshire hog.

Ol’ Dutch knows that some people find both pigs and men fun and attractive but mostly what I notice is that they are for sale or trade once they grow past the “cute” stage. The pigs are not the eating kind of pig so that makes getting someone to take them off your hands even more difficult.

That’s kind of the same with a piggish husband so if you can pawn him off on some unsuspect-ing woman wanting a pet around the house, best to do so ASAP before she catches on that he too has spots. And certainly before you become so frustrated you try and “peed the fig.”

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Antique or vintage?

Most of you know that Ol’ Dutch is a peruser of the online garage sale, want ads, Craigslist and Marketplace pages. I even did sojourn in the Personals pages of Match.com for a season but those days are long gone with the addition of Miss Trixie to my stringer.

But I do find the “for sale” pages to be fascinating and informative not only as to what people have purchased and no longer need but as a source of good “stuff” to fill my barn.

Splitting the sheets with the ex-wife caused no small loss of important items like a tractor, dump truck, trailers, boats, equipment and tools -- you know, the important stuff.

So ever since then I have been on a mission to replenish those long lost items. With the purchase of a farm with a barn whose gaping emptiness beckons me to buy, buy, buy Ol’ Dutch is able to fulfill every man's dream and have “stuff.”

I also seem to be drawn to older items which can translate into “cheaper” and since I am a Scotsman that is music to my ears.

However I have found that older isn't necessarily cheaper when it comes to most things. Take women for instance. I don't actually have a comment to make here. I just suggest you “take them.” (And for some reason that passage caused some massive eye-rolling from Miss Trixie.)

Speaking of Miss Trixie, she is a connoisseur of fine wine and for some reason the older the sour grape gets the more expensive it becomes. A sure marketing scam hoisted on the population by a certain winemaker trying to get rid of some old stock.

She will examine a bottle and say “that is a good vintage year.” All Ol’ Dutch knows is that whether you are talking about a wine vintage or “vintage” clothes or “vintage” whatever, it all becomes more expensive.

Now I do appreciate antiques except in my women but I had to go to the great Google in the sky to see what exactly qualifies something as vintage.

There I found out that to be an antique something had to be over 100 years old which means that a good share of the things folks market as “antique” really aren’t.

One person suggests that Vintage is anything over 20 years old which seems kinda silly since that would make a 1999 item valuable. There is nothing that young worth much – including alas, some people.

Another source said it has to be over 50 years old and that is probably more believable because anything that has survived our throwaway society for 50 years probably is pretty rare to find.

But the thing that is true no matter how old the item in question is, if it’s older than the milk in your refrigerator, someone will try and market it as “Vintage.”

The main reason for this of course is to increase the value in the buyers eyes and hopefully sway them to part with some of that money that is probably truly “vintage” from their pockets as its been in there for a long time.

Ol’ Dutch has found vintage about everything you can imagine from tools to autos and furniture to trailer houses. But what I mostly have found out about anything labeled as such it really translates into “junk.”

Now I am not saying that I don't find value in old items and in fact I am drawn to them coming from a long line of antique collectors. And the proof is in the pudding with Ol’ Dutch as Miss Trixie is “vintage” and I still see value in her, too.

So I guess we can all take some consolation in that we ourselves are not antiques but simply “vintage” with increasing value by the year. The problem is getting someone to pay you for that or fooling your spouse into keeping you around for future payoff.

Christian landscaping

Ol’ Dutch has long been a proponent of making a token effort at all times to do the right thing in life – or at least try to do the right thing. I did pretty good most of the time and being the son of a pastor, Fast Freddy, certainly helped that process along somewhat.

He and, consequently I, are direct descendants from a founder of the famous Dodge City, Kansas, which set us on a possible course of being associated with Wyatt Earp and his clan, which earned the in-fun-only name “Fast Freddy” for my dad. However, our ancestor chose the other side of the docket and my great-grandfather was a well-known judge and the first attorney in Dodge beginning in about 1880.

And I said all that to lead into the part about growing up in a church and what that meant to me.

Back in the day (which is what you say when you talk about a better time or at least perceived better time in life,) you could pretty much guarantee that church people were honest and good folk. So when a person said they were church material, you could expect them to act the part and be honest and hard working. And that, my friends, was a great time in history.

Of late we have seen a lot of those good intentions, brotherly love and love your neighbor as yourself go lacking even in the top circles of the religious folks.

Ol’ Dutch was perusing the online ads the other day and came across an interesting advertise-ment for a Christian Landscaper Service. That got me to thinking -- a dangerous proposition on any given day according to Miss Trixie -- that I am not sure what hiring a Christian or any other religious person to mow my grass really gets me.

I mean, do they show up with a choir and robes, sing “When The Saints Go Marching In” while mowing, or make payment for the work to be more of a collection effort like at church? Maybe they plant a menorah on the lawn or erect a statue of Buddha I don’t know.

Now Ol’ Dutch realizes that advertising that way is supposed to give me some assurance of a good job done or honesty at the least but I think there are better qualifiers when it comes to har-vesting my grass.

I am more inclined to maybe hire a guy who advertises that he is dependable. Now that is some-thing I need when it comes to clipping the greenery. Or maybe experienced or fast or maybe even cheap.

Because when I am paying someone to take care of the greens I like it done on time, a good job and take the least amount of time. Now that is a good sod trimmer.

After thinking about this a little bit I came to realize that there are places where just the opposite is what a guy wants. And although I want an experienced pastor or church leader I really don't need one that is fast or cheap. Although there have been more than one Sunday that I wish speed would come into play during the sermon.

Which reminds me of the pastor’s wife who was seen blowing him kisses during the service. A parishioner remarked how sweet that was and the pastor's wife said that K.I.S.S. is short for Keep It Short Stupid.

I think my mom did that a lot as I recall