Homemade Dutch Oven Table and Bean Pot Tripod

My husband constructed this Dutch Oven Cooking Stand out of an old aluminum  truck toolbox using an old bed frame to attach legs purchased from Home Depot for less than $30.  All other materials were from his shop.  It is light, folds up well for travel and storage and shows no signs of heat damage or wear despite several years of use.  The wind screen latches in place with small holes at corner.  I put my coals directly on table and use it for hours.  You can see it is very heavily loaded.  I bake bread and desserts in Dutch oven as well, using a cast iron trivet to avoid burning the bottoms.

He also built this fine tripod from scrap using the hollow legs of a rack from a truck.  The actual tripod connector is made of 5/8″ cold roll heated in his forge and bent into shape.  I love this thing!

I have a nice collection of cast iron, though not nearly enough, of course.  I bought a few pieces new and picked up a lot at flea markets.  I don’t shy away from a piece without a lid.  You can get a good deal on them and pick up a lid some other time.  When I am looking for a lid, I measure the inside diameter of inside rim and keep a tape measure in my pocket. I picked up my !4″ Lodge Dutch Oven for $37 without a lid and ordered lid from Amazon (No shipping) for around $20.  Bought new, the Dutch Oven would have been over $100.

A flat bottom Dutch Oven works beautifully placed on top of pot lifter.

 

Puppy Love

My dog is cheating on me.  He begs to go out then only stands in the drive and looks longingly at the neighbor’s house.  I do believe, if I allowed it, he’d  howl a serenade under the lady’s window.  A few times, she’s stopped to visit and pet him.  You’d think think she’d invited him into her life.  Puffing out his chest,  he peed impressively, then kicked up a huge cloud of dust. to show what a mighty fellow he is.  In all honesty, his bladder capacity is astounding since he’s a mastiff, but I don’t think it makes her want him more., nor does his habit of making a beeline to sniff her nether portions.

Worse yet, if he gets more than twenty feet ahead of me, he goes stone deaf.  Buzzy, my other dog, suffers the same malady.  Though we have a two-acre yard with plenty of poop room, they are both desperate to leave surprises for the neighbors.  Early on, I made sure they knew the perimeter of our yard.  Since then, they’ve both try not to go inside its boundaries.  If they got their heart’s desire, we’d be surrounded by a poop fence on all four sides ten feet just outside our property lines.  Buzzy’s deposits are offensive enough, but Croc’s leavings are mountainous.and would soon obscure the view if left to lie.  We’d be run out of the neighborhood if they got their wish.

How to Navigate Directions: A Guide for the Directionally Challenged

            I’m not good with directions.  In fact, I’d have to improve considerably to even be bad.  Useless terms like left, right, North, South, East, and West annoy me.  If people actually expect me to get somewhere, they need to be more specific.  “Turn off the interstate at exit 5.  Go the opposite direction you’ve been going and go three streets past Brookshire’s.   Drive just a minute or so and you’ll see a restaurant with the big cow in the parking lot.  Don’t turn there.  Drive to the next red light and turn on the street that turns between the WaWa and that hardware store with the inflatable lumberjack.  Watch for the ugly house with the silk flowers in the bucket of that tacky wishing well.  Pass it up, but now you need to start driving pretty slow.  You’ll see a big, old white house with a deep porch and all those ferns, kind of like the one Grandma lived in at Houston, the one where the woman living upstairs tossed her dirty mop water out on my head when I was sitting on the sidewalk playing. Boy, did Grandma have something to say to her!  Remember, it was just across the street from that big, old funeral home.   I just love those old houses, but I’ll bet they are expensive to heat.  About six houses down on the other side, there’s a little, blue house. I believe it used to be gray. If you look hard, you’ll see an old rusted out 1950 GMC like Aunt Ada and Uncle Junior used to drive, up on blocks way off to the side of the shed.  Remember how they used to toodle around with all those mean boys bouncing like popcorn in the back?  Anyway, our house is the yellow one with the big shade trees just across from it.  You can’t miss it. There’s a bottle tree out front.”

            Now I can’t miss with those directions.

Afternoon Funny

 

 

lawXmas-cart-2lawyer-cat A divorce court judge said to the husband,”Mr Geraghty,I have reviewed this case very carefully and I’ve decided to give your wife $800 a week.”
“That’s very fair,your honour,” he replied. “And every now and then I’ll try to send her a few bucks myself.”

A physician, an engineer, and an attorney were discussing who among them belonged to the oldest of the three professions represented.

The physician said, “Remember, on the sixth day God took a rib from Adam and fashioned Eve, making him the first surgeon. Therefore, medicine is the oldest profession.”

The engineer replied, “But, before that, God created the heavens and earth from chaos and confusion, and thus he was the first engineer. Therefore, engineering is an older profession than medicine.”

Then, the lawyer spoke up. “Yes,” he said, “But who do you think created all of the chaos and confusion?”

“You seem to be in some distress,” said the kindly judge to the witness. “Is anything the matter?”
“Well, your Honour,” said the witness, “I swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but every time I try, some lawyer objects.”

To help someone before they commit a crime means you are their
accomplice.
To help someone after they commit a crime means you are their attorney.

 

A lawyer died and was standing in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. St. Peter said, “you can’t come in here… you have to go to the other place”. But the lawyer was really good and pleaded his case to the point where St. Peter said, “OK… here’s what I’ll do. You will spend the same amount of time in hell as you did on earth, and then you can spend the rest of eternity up here.” The lawyer figured this wasn’t too bad of a deal, so he said “OK”. St. Peter said, “Great… I’ll see you in 350 years.”. The lawyer said, “But, how is that possible… I’m only 65 years old!”. St Peter said, “We go by billing hours”.

 

A plumber went to the attorneys house to unstop the sink. When he finished he said to the attorney “that will be $400.00.” The attorney became irate “What do you mean $400.00, you were only here 20 minutes, that’s ridiculous!!” The plumber replied, “I thought the same thing when I was an attorney”.

My Future Travel Plans

This one is easy. My immediate plans include a trip to Baton Rouge this weekend. There is a large estate sale we want to attend.

https://www.estatesales.net/LA/Denham-Springs/70726/4121676

It is a pleasant for hour trip, only two bathroom stops. I have two Akita granddogs waiting to see me. They will be at the door, tails wagging, “What did you bring me?”

My own dogs will be at home with a sitter they love, so they’ll have to manage. We’ll get a good sniffing when we get home.

Familyisms

Like all families we employ time-honored phrases that seem nonsense to others:

“Don’t go crazy, Sue!” My cousin’s husband, a real doofus, employed this when he really messed up, intending to temper her reaction. example: He backed over the dog after she’d told him it had slipped out. It didn’t calm her down a bit.

“I don’t like what I wanted.” My three year-old-niece had a quarter. She’d been hounding her mom all morning to take her to the store. Finally, the time came. Chelsea ran up to the vending machine outside the store , popping her quarter in before Mom could stop her. Out popped a tacky little plastic car. Furious with disappointment , smashed it to the ground. Mom chided her. “I thought you wanted a prize out of the machine!”

Chelsea spouted back, “I don’t LIKE what I wanted.”

That phrase is perfect for so many of our choices in life!

“It couldn’t be helped.” Mother is a ditz, scatterbrained and chronically behind in whatever she had to do. When the beans burned, she forgot to pick a kid up at basketball practice, forgot to stub a check, or messed up in any way, she justified it by saying, “It couldn’t be helped.”. This was rarely true.

“It’s starting to get some better.”. Daddy was a hypochondriac.  When he managed a malady, he clung to it tenaciously. About two weeks after wasps stings, Mother facetiously asked how it was.  Mistaking her sarcasm for concern, he replied, “It’s starting to get some better.”

“The head’s as dangerous as the rest of it!”. My sister was warning us to stay away from a decapitated snake.  “Stay away from that snake head!  It’s as dangerous as the rest of it!” Duh!

“Only fools f___s with snakes.”. A guy Bud worked with coined this wisdom.  Since we had little kids at the time we had to amend it.

” I salted it, but not enough.”. Mother was the master of confusion.  Putting a plates of eggs on the table one morning, she advised us, ” I salted them, but not enough.”. Where do you go from there?  Salt or don’t salt.  By the time you decide, your egg’s half gone.

Horror Movie, Really

image courtesy of Wikipedia

We NEVER went to the movies.  I don’t mean rarely.  I mean never.  Sadly, the night in question didn’t do much to change that, except to let me know that the inside of the theater was dark and smelled like popcorn, a fact that didn’t change my feeling much, since I didn’t get popcorn.

Oh, well.  On with the story.  Mother decided we were due a treat. One fine August night, we were going to see a movie!   She’d saved up her pennies, dropped Daddy off at work at three, and took us to the ten cent movie at the Spring Theatre in Springhill that night.  If they planned to recoup low attendance with popcorn and drink sales to us that night, it was a bad business plan.  Mother smuggled peanut butter sandwiches and a communal jug of water for us to share after leaving no doubt she wouldn’t be buying snacks.

Any, we trooped in like a line of big dumb ducks, clattering about three-quarters down the aisle where Mother thought we could see best.  It was quite a parade.  Mother directed us toward the center of the row, sending Phyllis and Connie to be seated first.  Phyllis was a good sister and could soothe the restless toddler as well as Mother.  I followed.  Mother and Marion, a baby in arms, and Billy were next.  Billy and I couldn’t be trusted to behave in church, so she always sat between us.  I don’t know why Mother thought I couldn’t behave in a movie.  It would have to be way better than church.

Back the, there was no multiple choice in small-town movie.  Movies were rotated out once a week.  You got what you got.  As soon as the cartoons went off,  that night’s feature rolled: “The Interns.

I could see right off there would be no cowboys, Wonder Horses, ghosts, or monsters.  I was disappointed, but still, I was “at the movies.”  Sure enough, in about ten minutes, my ears perked up.  The scene opened on an obstetrics ward.  I was very interested in finding out all I could about sex.  Mother had always reacted with outrage when anything came on TV about pregnancy or to raise questions she didn’t want to answer.  It didn’t matter if thousands of Indians were about to scalp Custer, any indication that a woman might be in dramatic labor jolted her into action.  I was delighted when I heard the line, …”and I better not catch any of you young interns messing with my young mothers!”  I snapped to attention!  There was no way Mother could turn the movie off.  I was finally going to find out what happened when “my pains were two minutes apart.”

Mother was incensed! She’d led us right into the belly of the beast. Not only had she brought us to a “dirty movie,” now she was going to have to put with with questions. She was mad! For someone who went around having babies Willy Nilly, she sure was touchy!

She grabbed Billy out of his seat and pushed him to the aisle, sputtering all the way. He was all set to see a movie and now Mother was dragging him out.of corse he protested. I slid into the aisle, right behind Mother. Phyllis, a “good Christian,” mirrored Mother’s attitude.  All us kids were disappointed.  We didn’t even get to go to the “bathroom of sin.”  Mother wasn’t rising any backward peeks.

I don’t remember my parents having a good car.  The model Mother was driving that night was at least ten-years-old. The kids piled furiously in the car, having been deprived of a wondrous treat.  Furious herself, Mother threatened.  She wasn’t putting up with any hateful backtalk.  Mother has always been a doofus of a driver and hates parallel parking and backing up. Simply said,  she couldn’t drive nail in a fat hog’s rear. See, I’m getting mad again just remembering!  She can’t get out of average spots, much less, tight spots.  She had parked as near as she could to the corner, really close to the high curb, so as not to have to reverse.   In fact, she was so close we all had to slide out on the passenger side.  Remember, she was scared of backing up.   Sadly, she’d miscalculated and left just enough room for a car to back in front of her, boxing her in.  She’d also failed to notice a power pole left back bumper.    She was hopelessly locked in till that car’s happy owner finished watching the move we’d just been dragged out of. We finished the peanut butter sandwiches and jug of water  in record time?  It was hotter than a cowboy’s whorehouse on payday as we waited that hot August night.  I only wish I’d known these phrases while we sat in the hot car.  A good beating for a filthy mouth would set the evening off to perfection.

Does this sound dirty?  I pulled this straight from Wikipedia.

The Interns is a 1962 American drama film that starred Michael Callan and Cliff Robertson.[2] This film is a medical melodrama that presages many similar TV programs to follow. It centers on the personal and professional conflicts of young medical interns under the tutelage of senior surgeons, Telly Savalas and Buddy Ebsen. The film was followed by a 1964 sequel, The New Interns, and a 1970–1971 television medical drama series, The Interns, that was based on the films. The Interns was directed by David Swift.[2]

The Interns
Poster of the movie The Interns.jpg

Directed by David Swift
Produced by Robert Cohn
Written by Walter Newman
Based on The Interns
1960 novel
by Richard Frede
Starring Michael Callan
Cliff Robertson
Music by Leith Stevens
Cinematography Russell Metty
Edited by Al Clark
Jerome Thoms
Production
company
Robert Cohn Productions
Distributed by Columbia Pictures
Release date
  • August 8, 1962
Running time
120 minutes
Country United States
Language English
Box office $9,230,769[1]

Contents

PlotEdit

A class of interns arrives for their first year in training at a public city hospital, which serves patients from many different ethnic and socioeconomic groups. Close friends and classmates John Paul Otis (Robertson) and Lew Worship (James MacArthur) plan to become surgeons and open their own clinic together. They are less than thrilled about their assignment to obstetrics, feeling that delivering babies is not very difficult.

Lew becomes romantically involved with student nurse Gloria (Stefanie Powers), while John becomes infatuated with fashion model Lisa Cardigan (Suzy Parker). Lisa dislikes the idea of dating a relatively impoverished young doctor, and is pregnant out of wedlock by another man. Although John offers to solve her problem by marrying her, she pressures him to illegally obtain pills for her in hopes of ending the pregnancy. He finally does so, and is caught and reported by Lew, ending their friendship and John’s medical career.

Sid Lackland (Nick Adams) aspires to serve wealthy patients so he can make a lot of money. Then he becomes attached to Loara (Ellen Davalos), a girl from a poor village in Southeast Asia, who is one of his patients. She has a rare medical condition and is scheduled for a serious operation. Loara resists his friendly overtures because she is sure she will die in the hospital. Sid is heartbroken when Loara dies during her surgery.

Alec Considine (Callan) wants a residency under eminent psychiatrist Dr. Bonney, and secretly cheats on his wealthy fiancee Mildred (Anne Helm) with Dr. Bonney’s longtime nurse Vicky Flynn in hopes of being introduced to the doctor. To keep up his medical duties and spend time with both women, Alec takes Dexedrine to stay awake. Although he does meet Dr. Bonney, who offers him a residency, Mildred discovers his affair and leaves him.

Madolyn Bruckner (Haya Harareet) aspires to become a surgeon under abrasive Dr. Domenic Riccio (Savalas). Despite her skills as an intern, Riccio discourages her because he is prejudiced against female doctors, assuming they will abandon their medical careers to get married and have children. Riccio later finds out Madolyn has already been married and has a child, yet is still pursuing her medical career as a single working mother.

At the end of the year, Alec, Lew, and several other interns come under suspicion when a terminally ill, immobile patient who has been begging to die is found dead of a barbiturateoverdose. None of the involved interns can accept their residencies until the source of the drugs is found, creating a risk that the residency offers will be withdrawn. Alec, strung out on Dexedrine, has a nervous breakdown at the thought of losing his residency with Dr. Bonney. Lew and the other interns visit the patient’s wife and find out that she gave him the drugs after being worn down by his constant pleas that if she really loved him, she would help him die. As a result, the interns are no longer under suspicion and can accept their offers.

Lew, having developed an interest in obstetrics after delivering a baby, accepts a residency at the same hospital, and convinces Gloria, who had planned to travel and see the world, to marry him, instead. Sid gets an offer from a wealthy hospital, but inspired by Loara, he goes to practice in impoverished Southeast Asia, instead. Riccio hires Madolyn as his resident assistant. John, now engaged to Lisa, visits his former classmates and tells Lew he respects him for his sense of ethics. A new class of interns arrives and Lew shows them the way to their dormitory, just as a doctor did for him the previous year.

 

Doggonit, Give Me Some Directions that Make Sense

            I’m not good with directions.  In fact, I’d have to improve considerably to even be bad.  Useless terms like left, right, North, South, East, and West annoy me.  If people actually expect me to get somewhere, they need to be more specific.  “Turn off the interstate at exit 5.  Go the opposite direction you’ve been going and go three streets past Brookshire’s.   Drive just a minute or so and you’ll see a restaurant with the big cow in the parking lot.  Don’t turn there.  Drive to the next red light and turn on the street that turns between the WaWa and that hardware store with the inflatable lumberjack.  Watch for the ugly house with the silk flowers in the bucket of that tacky wishing well.  Pass it up, but now you need to start driving pretty slow.  You’ll see a big, old white house with a deep porch and all those ferns, kind of like the one Grandma lived in at Houston, the one where the woman living upstairs tossed her dirty mop water out on my head when I was sitting on the sidewalk playing. Boy, did Grandma have something to say to her!  Remember, it was just across the street from that big, old funeral home.   I just love those old houses, but I’ll bet they are expensive to heat.  About six houses down on the other side, there’s a little, blue house. I believe it used to be gray. If you look hard, you’ll see an old rusted out 1950 GMC like Aunt Ada and Uncle Junior used to drive, up on blocks way off to the side of the shed.  Remember how they used to toodle around with all those mean boys bouncing like popcorn in the back?  Anyway, our house is the yellow one with the big shade trees just across from it.  You can’t miss it. There’s a bottle tree out front.”

            Now I can’t miss with those directions.

New World Every Day

img_1719img_1731
Road trips are always a thrill, more so when I travel without my hubby.
  Born with no sense of direction whatsoever, fortunately I have a great sense of adventure and discovery.  Navigation devices help a little, but one does have to plug in all the right addresses and poor typing skills and dyslexia can make that a challenge.  Now that I think on it, I should get a medal whenever I arrive.

This past week, we ventured far afield.  While we visited relatives in Kansas, I took an afternoon off to visit an acquaintance.  Bud didn’t really want me to go off alone, but what can happen in twenty-five miles in rural Kansas.  Just so he’d be shamed, I drove straight to my destination and sent him a smug text.  I had a lovely visit and sent him a text to let him know I’d be arriving back in forty minutes.  A quasar must have hit the GPS.  While the trip over had been mostly via interstate, only one wrong turn confused the GPS.  You’d think they’d have gotten the bugs out of those things by now.  After a few turns and considerable dirt-road sight-seeing, I decided to check my progress.  Thinking maybe the devices was defective, I decided to try to put the address in again, forgetting the house number.   That didn’t worry me too much.  Surely there couldn’t be too man Lone Star Roads.  I drove and drove.  Finally, Bud fired a text at me, wanting to know when I’d get back.  “It shouldn’t be too long.  I am on Lonestar Road and just saw a sign saying I am back in Linn County.”

He whacked out.  “You dingbat!  Linn County is forty miles from here.  You are an hour in the wrong direction.  Pull over at the next crossroads and call back and tell me where you are.  By the way, how much gas do you have?”

“Uh oh.  The orange light is on and it says I have a range of forty miles.  Why did you let the truck get so low?”

“You had a half-a-tank when you left!  Where the Hell have you been?”

“I told you I was on Lone Star Road for a long time!”  I didn’t mention all the other places.  I hate to worry him about stuff like that.  He gets excited.

“Pull over and park!  Pull over and park and call me back.  I’ll come find you!”

“Okay, but maybe you should bring some gas!”  Now I was worried.

A few country miles later, I parked in front of the Cadmus Grange Building.  They were having a meeting at six-thirty, so I might make some new friends if he didn’t get there in a couple of hours, but hoped I wouldn’t have to wait that long.  It’s amazing how cold fourteen degrees can be, even if it’s a sunny day.  I decided to take some pictures.  I am glad I did since I may never get lost again.

Bud conferred with his relatives and as fate would have it, one of them had to pass that way on the way to visit us at Aunt Beulah’s.  He was kind enough to bring a can of gas and guide me there.  True enough, I was forty miles from my goal.  Who would have thought Lone Star Road extended across two or three counties?