Time Properly Wasted

Let me begin by quickly summing up our status in the struggle to remain housed. We have all but eliminated the rentals. As I said to Mother, the decent ones (such as the one we're being asked to leave) are unaffordable; and the affordable ones are indecent.

Recently we both got the feeling that we ought to try buying. This would be utterly impossible for us but for the fact that the same spirit that is nudging us periodically now is an old friend whom I recall giving me a shove back in 1973 to join Uncle Sam's Flying Circus. Because I followed that powerful prompting, look at the blessings that I've received:

Shayne

Joseph ($15)

Autumn ($25)

Hyrum ($11.50)

The Old GI Bill which helped us through school after I left the service.

A VA home loan which helped us buy the house on College Ave.

We're waiting now for the VA to tell us whether we've qualified again for such a loan, and, if so, how much we can expect. Until we know these things, all we can do is look at an occasional house and hope that we'll have the bucks to get it. One house which seems very attractive to us is in St. Anthony. We were looking at pictures of it just yesterday on the computer. I don't yet know whether it was one of the houses that Len told me about recently on the phone. We hope to go up to see it soon.

Now to my muttons, as Twain would say. I killed a couple of hours with Aric Armell and his son from Colorado, AJ yesterday morning. We had 15 eggs that were way out of date. We drove to "the Cedars" a place where we've done lots of shooting before. We spread the eggs around on the hillside.

Now it had been my presupposition that, since my Savage Mako .22 LR is zeroed to strike dead on at 50 yards, we would probably set up the rifles at some distance between that and 100. But I was forgetting that, to Aric, all rifles are sniping rifles. He drove the truck back to 225 yards. I sighed. If we'd been shooting .22 Centerfires, that would have been fine. But plain old .22s have a little trouble at such distances. We had used them on gongs out to 500 yards before, and they had so little energy left by the time they got that far out that the "ding!" was almost inaudible when it came strolling back to us at about the speed the bullet had started out with.

But the gongs were about 15" wide and 2 feet tall. We could paint them bright colors so that they were easy to see. These grade AAA Large eggs weren't all that large, especially at 225 yards. We could almost always hit within inches of them, but in two hours, only Aric had hit one. The dust we'd kicked up on the others made them more and more difficult to see. Someone had tied up a frying pan at about 200 yards, and when you hit it, it would ring a little and spin around. I hit it a few times and felt a little better. But I still felt bad about hitting no eggs at all.

One might say that this was a waste of time and a disappointing one at that. But any day out shooting is better than any day when you don't. It is either time wisely used or time properly wasted.

The 2009 Fort Hall Invitational Pow Wow

They say that the invitational Pow Wow down in Albuquerque is about 4 times the size of this one. That's hard to believe. There were thousands here and only a few were curious whites. I saw enough Lamanites last night to give Gen'l. Custer permanent incontinence. And, to wax scriptural about them, remember the promises in the Book of Mormon about them becoming a "delightsome people?" What could be more delightsome than this young lady, a friend of Zannita Armell?

Zannita's gorgeous niece holds her baby brother.

I was given the honor of marching with these guys.

Personally, I'm glad we don't have to fight anybody who looks like this any more.

With all those stripes, I couldn't tell whether he was a retired Marine NCO or a zebra.

A lovely target of opportunity strolls through the grounds.

Zannita's cousin, Sammy, clowns around as the Crazy Horse Monument.

Akira on my lap, Arica with her arm around my shoulders, and their cousins.

Since it was an invitational Pow Wow, this family could be from anywhere in the US or Canada.

One dance competitor helps another prepare.

Zannita with baby Akira (who is 2 now!)

I took some of these pictures with the Armell's camera. This was one of many that I enjoyed editing.

This 74 year old veteran of two wars was a delightful companion.

Zannita's cousin, Sammy.

Another very pleasant aging veteran.

58 Year Olds Can Have Fun!

I don't know how old Tibbs Ridley is. He might be my age. He might be a year or two younger or older. He's an old Bannock fellow who lives on Fort Hall and occasionally goes down to Utah to work on a farm there. He's a nice fellow, very soft spoken, and seems to enjoy just watching others enjoy life.

Today was the third time I've been out shooting with him. He's Aric Armell's uncle by marriage. This time we went out to the public range here in Pocatello. It's very near the Sheriff's shooting facility out in the hilly desert, not far from I-15. Tibbs had given Aric an old AR-15 on long-term loan. Aric provided a scope that fit the carrying handle and got it loosely sighted in last time I shot with him about a week ago. I provided all the loads, since 5.56mm NATO (.223 Remington) is a cartridge I used to load a lot of before I went broke and had to sell everything. I'm pleased to be able to say that all my old handloads cycled the action of the aging Vietnam-era firearm quite well and also gave reasonably good accuracy, even though the bullet weights ranged from 40 through 60 grains! Most were about 55 grains. All water-filled containers hit by these loads exploded with gusto and satisfied our little crowd of three very deeply.


We were only shooting at about 50 yards today. The range was crowded, and the 100 yard alleys were all spoken for. But this didn't reduce our fun-factor one little bit. Someone had left some chunks of asphalt out there which I reduced to smaller and smaller chunks with my Savage Mako in .22 LR. The Savage is a thumbhole-stocked rifle with a heavy barrel and little weight-saving cut-outs along the forearm in the shape of shark teeth. We put about 80 rounds through it today and it gave us nothing but joy and success.


Now, at 58, I'm beginning to get a little deaf. I have to turn up the TV quite a lot these days, and I'm constantly irritating someone by asking them repeat themselves. My eyes are also in need of work, or at least of new corrective lenses. Imagine my pleasure, then, when I didn't miss a single thing I shot at today with my 1896 Swedish Mauser which was built in 1900. True, the distance was a modest 50 yards or so, but some of the little containers were so minuscule that they'd have been hard to see even at that distance if they hadn't been brightly colored. It may have been only half the distance I'm used to shooting, but the satisfaction didn't seem to be reduced even a little bit. Even now, at 12:34 a.m., I'm smiling just thinking about all the fun we had out there today.