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Motorcycle Pilgrimage chapter 4

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment




Bruce left a week or so after we arrived in Berkeley. He had enough adventure after our ride out. I am not certain how he got back. He stayed over in town at Earl Crabb’s (Humbeads Map of the world creator) place for a while and in Hollywood at John Braheny’s. After that, we lost touch. I stayed on at the mansion on Shasta Road in Berkeley.

I got a good job at the local art theater as a projectionist. We showed odd films like ‘The Apu Trilogy’ and it was fun. I knew carbon Arc’s as that was what we used on our ships to signal night or day. They were bigger than the movie projectors. Bright.

I Showed a picture about a crazed sniper that had a scene where he was shooting a movie projectionist just as he was peeking through a small window to see the next switchover to the second projector. It’s old tech. There are small white dots in the upper frame of the movie, on the third dot I would pull the lever to turn one on and the other one off. In the movie, the sniper was drawing his bead at that changeover time. Exactly. I started crouching down and getting weirded out. Post production staff humor.

    I had to clean up all the popcorn boxes after the show and it took a toll on my back. I was most in a front bend from all the riding and bouncing about as well. I got some doctoring and workman’s comp for a while. I had to lie on a window seat bench at the mansion until Charlie moved out. I got his room and things were doing OK. An interesting German pilot was in another room down the hall and he had a fireplace.

    There were other tenants. An English professor that taught at the college and an odd girl that had emotional fits now and then. She would throw herself down the stairway on occasion and sob at the bottom. I went over and held her until she calmed down once or twice. I knew what she needed as I can be like that. Self esteem and frustration in communication for sure. The other tenements were lase and used to it. I was used to the feeling from childhood. I am worthless, unloved.

    The owners were overseas acquiring art work of some sort and life there was working out for me. It seemed to fit as I was another art fixture in the house as were we all. Musicians, Professors, An ex Fighter pilot from WWII and the like. Nice place, fireplaces everywhere and you could see the San Francisco bay from the western windows. 5 Million dollars plus even then. Rent was affordable!

    I fell in with a crowd of Jaguar owners at the local coffee shop (Mr. Peets first one on the Northside) and they, of course, were as crazy as the rest of the Bay Area people were. Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the holding company, Grace Slick and Jimi Hendrix. Sly stone was somehow connected with the fighter pilot.

    It was gloriously crazy in 1968 and I was finally where I wanted to be. Living with people that were on the same path of Timothy Leary’s dreams of “Smash your brains, Crack Em’” LSD, pot and other drugs flowed down Lombard street to Haight Ashbury and then across the bay bridge to Berkeley. Mario Stavio and the free speech movement and my new friend that played Boogie Woogie piano, crazy Mike. A Chinese Jag mechanic in the mix and I fit right in with my Martin D-28.

    Joan Baez played a parlor Martin and she was . Bob Zimmerman was still back in Minneapolis at the 10 o’clock scholar getting warmed up for world fame. It was pretty good.

    One night, crazy mike had us jumping with his piano. It was an upstairs apartment and there came a knock on his door. It was the police. They told him after 10 he had to stop making ‘noise’ as the neighborhood was not on board with bold rhythm. Oscar Peterson stuff with swing extraordinary skill.

    The next night, at precisely ten o’clock, mike blasted out the window with a big battery bullhorn. “You may have noticed that I have stopped playing” He did and we loved it.

    Joan Baez played a parlor Martin and she was the musical ballerina of folk. Bob Zimmerman (Dylan) was still back in Minneapolis at the 10 o’clock scholar getting warmed up for world fame with Joan and other class acts. They all had National Enquirer possibilities but Rolling Stone was rolling of off the press along with Mad Magazine. Hipsters and hucksters abounded in the bay area and I got entwined with Sly Stone after a little more adventure. Any musician that was riding the surf roaring under the golden gate was there.

    Music was on the move in the bay area and we were riding that wave. We thought we were pretty neat and inside the sine wave of progress and coolness. Rebels with a cause. Obnoxious with charisma.

    It was pretty good. Jack Gator Scribe

    photo of Bruce Berglund and his guitar.

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    Motorcycle Pilgrimage chapter 3

    / Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

    .. After the dust- bowl town with the Angel and the woodruff key, we were on Route 66 and westward bound. Gas was cheap back then our slim wallets still had enough to get to ‘the city’ in California.

    The bar up ahead looked promising after all that desert in Nevada. It appeared to have just been dropped into place. A small parking lot with two cars, one of them with California plates. There was literally, nothing visible from horizon to horizon. Just the endless highway. A few dust devils and actual sagebrush.

    Out of the saddles and into the bar we strode, awkwardly as riding can do things to your body that doesn’t relate to standing and walking. It’s just the odd feeling from all that vibration that your hands are on opposite arms. Weird. Akin to my illusions at sea when land would not be visible. After a few weeks in the ‘middle’ if the ocean, it seems the ship is standing still and the water is flowing by!

    Any way, most motorcycle riders get the upside down hands thing after 100 miles or so, no one talks about it. Our bikes were a little rougher on the road than today’s huge highway cruisers. Bruce’s BMW was a little smoother than the Indian Tomahawk/Enfield. I shudder even now thinking how it would have been on the 600cc Matchless single.

    So after we shook off the muscle memories and went in, the bar had two women patrons and the barkeep. The two women were older and looked at those two young men like coyotes gazing upon a nice jack rabbit nearby. Smiles and almost instantly, an offer to cool down with a few cold ones. ‘Sure’! After a few (the women were drinking hard stuff) it was revealed that one of them was a California Senator and the other woman was the Senator’s aide.

    Betty Fiorina was the Senators name, I never forgot it. It pops up now and then in the news and in my mind.

    Lots of laughs and some mild flirtation ensued and it was time for the gals to hop into their Buick convertible and us to kick start the bikes and weave down the highway. Blood alcohol content, who cares? Not a car in sight and road hazards were an occasional sign and a few lizards or ruckchucks. 1. If you noticed, motorcycles now do not have kick starters. You have seen them in movies where you heave your body up in the saddle and push hard on the way down onto a pedal on the right side of the machine. It usually started on one kick.

    Class act meets Brando and Lee Marvin and no one knew what to do except drink and laugh. Much later, a decade or two, I caught a name on some senate bill and it’s the same last name of the Senator they met. Family business. There was a photo and she looked very trim and self assured. Splitting image of mom.

    Onward to Northern California and the back entrance to Berkeley on Shasta Road. Bruce was confident, I was just stunned. The place we wheeled up to had several chimneys, a tile roof and a pretty good view of the San Francisco bay . More class and style than either of us had ever experienced.

    An old friend of Bruce’s, Charlie Jirousek, lived there with about six other people. He was a luthier and built guitars out of Brazilian Rosewood. So he was broke too. He also had a massive Malamute, North, that shed hair at a bodacious rate. A month later, Charlie covered the C.F. Martin logo on the tuning head with one of his, a mother of pearl arrow. His guitar business was called ‘Arrowhead’ I was concerned that even at this time, the Martin logo would encourage theft. It works. To this day musicians that hear of play it remark on it’s tone and beauty. “what is it?” I tell them to look inside the sound hole. Martin D-28.

    Charlie had a big sack full of the hair and stated someday he would make a shirt out of it. 4 decades went by until the shirt appeared. It had an odd smell and dogs seemed attracted to Charlie. So The three of them spent a lot of time around the main living room fireplace playing guitars and eating peanut butter from Charlie’s jar. A half gallon jar. White bread used now and then. It was enjoyable for me to meet another person as pleasant and eccentric as we were.

    To this day, I still enjoy a peanut butter sandwich with heavy butter on both slabs of bread. Add the thick crunchy style peanut butter. Those sandwich’s were free and the music was excellent and heart felt. A lot of joy around that fireplace.

    We all knew what our lives were like as we played the same music. Leadbelly, Blind Blake, Willy McDowell. It’s called country blues music. There was one tune, Old Country Rock that just hit the spot. We played it a lot. It was pretty good. Norman Peterson / Jack Gator

    1. Ruckchuck . An animal nearby in the weeds that makes a lot of noise. Scared away by an aluminum cooking pot swinging in front of our headlamps.

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    Motorcycle Pilgrimage The beginning chapter 1

    / Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment


    The trip was instantly planned with my new friend Bruce, just back from ‘Nam’ and anxious for safer adventures. I was fairly fresh from overseas as well, with Comservron 6 and several tours in the Mediterranean and the six day war with Russia and Egypt. We were on the Israeli side. It was dicey over there too. Lot’s of military muscle being deployed. Older Navy people know the nomenclature. It seemed our nation was muddled up in several wars. Fubar was the term. Bruce and I knew the score, or we thought we did. I was better off at sea. Bruce had just recovered from the Jungle and I had just recovered from a shipmate trying to kill me. We were both suffering from PTSD and it felt so good to just go on our own. It was the summer of love and we needed some of that whatever it was, it sounded good to us.

    Older motorcycles and younger riders seemed just the solution of affordable transportation.

    We had an easy itinerary: Route 66 to California. Just head south and take a right. Back in the days of paper maps and freedom to improvise and walk the line between a long trip and danger. I sold my Austin Healey Sprite and Bruce had his Chevy Bel-Aire to trade for the bikes. I was offered a Matchless 500 single cylinder. I chose an Indian-Enfield 500 twin instead. Bruce got a BMW 500. The offer to me was a Matchless single cylinder. I declined that one for a long trip. It was like riding a vibrating pogo stick.



    Off they went, both bikes with ‘sissy bars’ and their guitars strapped on behind us upright and some luggage and a camping tent. Money and a hunger for vistas unseen.

    Good weather and full tanks and some spare parts, we left to head south first and catch 66 down by the Oklahoma panhandle. Camping was first choice and other than that, we didn’t have a clue about what was ahead. Just in our early twenties and now free to make our own travel choices.

    Bruce had made some friends when he got back from China Beach. Those friends of his lived in ‘the city’ out west and that was good enough a destination as any. Money was tight. First adventure was in Omaha. Somehow we met a group of hippies, and were embraced as sojourners to the headquarters of the love movement; San Francisco.

    The hippies took us to their home, right across the street from the big race track, Aksarben, (that odd name is Nebraska backwards). Beds available and very starry eyed girls seemed a pretty good place to stop over. Schedule? There wasn’t any and that allowed leeway. Waking up the next morning, both of us were greeted with a breakfast treat of a small pill. Guaranteed to be an interesting experience. The only thing I remember was being taken to Arby’s and trying to order food. The colorful mushrooms growing out of the counter mans chef’s hat got in the way of comprehending things. ‘Have you ever been experienced?’ went the song of the times.
    A quick goodbye and we were back on the road for adventures that seemed to be working out pretty good, so far.

    On down the road to Kansas and an uneventful ride until we stopped in Liberal. Foolishly, but with great enjoyment, we gave rides to more starry eyed and bored young girls on our bikes; exotic transportation. the young men on the sidewalk gave squinty eyed stares, the Clint Eastwood trouble for you look. We thought as veterans of two different wars, we deserved good attentions from everyone. We were not wearing our old uniforms.

    It was great fun until the town’s police chief approached us and asked if we would like to stay overnight in the town jail! At first thought we wondered what we did wrong that would incur incarceration. The chief stated: “ It would be safer in my jail for you both.”


    The doors to the cells only open one way and we declined the offer. that single officer in town told them: “Them boys is a comin’ for you tonight at your camp site”. “Oh. Well, we’ll take our chances chief , thanks for the offer.” was our reply.

    The local young toughs came after them later that night.. (to be continued in Motorcycle pilgrimage series)

    Quotes That Allow Me to Write The Truth

    / Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

    I think good preachers should be like bad kids. They ought to be naughty enough to tiptoe up on dozing congregations, steal their bottles of religion pills, and morality pills, and flush them all down the drain. The church, by and large, has drugged itself into thinking that proper human behavior is the key to its relationship to God. What preachers need to do is force it to go cold turkey with nothing but the word of the cross—and then be brave enough to stick around while it goes through the inevitable withdrawal symptoms. … Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013),

    Genuine controversy, fair cut and thrust before a common audience, has become in our special epoch very rare. For the sincere conversationalist is above all things a good listener. The really burning enthusiast never interrupts; he listens to the enemy’s arguments as eagerly as a spy would listen to the enemy’s arrangements. If you attempt an actual argument with a modern paper of opposite politics, you will find that no medium is admitted between violence and evasion. You will have no answer except slandering or silence. …G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936), 

    Was there a moment known only to God, when all the stars held their breath, when the galaxies paused in their dance for a fraction of a second, and the Word, who had called it all into being, went with all his love into the womb of a young girl, and the universe started to breathe again, and the ancient harmonies resumed their song, and the angels clapped for joy?

    …Madeleine L’Engle (1918-2007)

    O be calm and quiet all by yourself is hardly the same as sleeping. In fact, it means being fully awake and following with close attention every move going on inside you. It involves a self-discipline where the urge to get up and go is recognized as a temptation to look elsewhere for what is really close at hand. It is the freedom to stroll in your own yard, to rake up the leaves and clear the paths so you can easily find your way.

    …Henri J. M. Nouwen (1932-1996)

     Here is my examination at the beginning of Advent, at the beginning of a new year. Lack of charity, criticism of superiors, of neighbors, of friends and enemies. Idle talk, impatience, lack of self-control and mortification towards self, and of love towards others. Pride and presumption. (It is good to have visitors – one’s faults stand out in the company of others.) Self-will, desire not to be corrected, to have one’s own way. The desire in turn to correct others, impatience in thought and speech.The remedy is recollection and silence Dorothy Day (1897-1980),

    Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ (a term, incidentally, which is not found in the Bible) and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise.. A. W. Tozer (1879-1963)

    It must be admitted that a few clergymen glory in the contrast between their status and that of ordinary Christians. They accept obeisance as a natural right; they monopolize public praying; they learn how to keep themselves in the limelight. There is something about the pastoral office which makes the temptation to egocentricity especially powerful. This is partly because the successful preacher is regularly praised to his face. His mood seems a far cry from that of Christ when He girded Himself with a towel and washed the feet of His followers.

    … Elton Trueblood (1900-1994)

    Discovering Friends

    / Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

    It would seem like a natural event. Developing a friendship with someone that attracts your attention. Usual things. “It is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste” A. As usual, these things occur as a chosen event.

    Examining friends of my past, I wonder about these things. What was it about Bruce for example that brought us together? Being the only veterans at an after hours beer joint?

    It seemed so at the beginning when I offered him a shabby room to ‘crash’ where I lived in the other shabby room. A run down neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks. A dump really. Bruce drove a really nice Austin Healy and I had my grandfathers old Buick. Ah yes, it was that both of us played guitar! You would think so, I did.

    We both had things to teach one another and that was not obvious to either of us. It seems to me he had more to teach me but that isn’t the point at all. Neither of us had a clue about what to do with our lives and how to do it. Wine, women and song had been tried and found wanting.

    Laughing a lot with the ‘Park Lanes” he smuggled in from Viet Nam in his stereo. We played music and found jobs with a third rate mobster that knew we had nothing to loose and had made our bones in the military. He spent six months at China Beach recovering from a near miss and I spent six months at hard labor paying for another near miss in Spain. Blown out of the military and we were brothers almost instantly. “you too! I thought I was the only one” B.

    We traded the two cars for motorcycles and headed out on the highway, lookin’ for adventure. The song by Steppenwolf fit perfectly. We indeed, were born to be wild. We listened to that record along with Cream and other early metal music. Those songs were the ones that Bruce played while he drove through the ‘viles’ in Vietnam. Top volume on a loudspeaker on the roof of his 6×6. He would stop and show movies as part of the Psyops program while I was across the world in a top secret room getting messages from the CNO about our little war.

    It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Big guns and missiles, or automatic weapons and people that were the unfriendly kind. Take your pick, no choice really.

    My columns ‘motorcycle pilgrimage’ have the details but what is more amazing is the arranged coincidences that enabled Bruce and I to meet and listen to one another.

    We had adventure, whatever came and that was at the same time that Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper acted in Easy Rider. 1968. Bikes with kick starters and sleeping bags. Our guitars strapped on ‘sissy bars’. Not custom choppers like the movie, just an old Enfield and a BMW.

    Death threats, lost highways off of route 66, Angels appearing and a Senator in the desert. Adventure we went on willingly, not the adventures we had in the military. We were in control and that is another great illusion of life.As music itself touches us in the deep parts, timeless music that goes beyond the spoken word or even the words of a song, the arrangement of the eternal music draws us closer to life.

    All of our lives are parts in the everlasting orchestra and the conductor has set us for His pleasure in the first chair. Chosen by Him.

    Bruce was and is my closest friend. And still is as time streams by so fast. He died years ago and I did not even know he was ill. That happens a lot to me. There is so much I do not know about these things. Why am I the survivor? It would seem many wondrous things have since come about, and I write about the blessings and struggles of life that we all know.

    The conductor and author of the grand symphony has the score and we watch and pray as he once again, raises His baton and puts life before us. We indeed, are His instruments of the beauty we get a view of now and then. The love and hatred, losses and treasures. Pain and health all allowed and known on that narrow, beautiful road we all walk. It’s pretty good. Norm

    A.& B. C.S. Lewis The problem of Pain

    Bruce and his wife Cindy with me at their home in Minneapolis

    Sudden Treasure

    / Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

    I was just sitting on the couch, thinking of my morning swim. Driving 20 miles in the early morning at 5:45 in the old ford with well over 20000 miles on it. Heated garage and a pleasant drive to the school where there is a nice 25 meter pool.

    The on line pool registration for this morning had a small amount of swimmers signed up and it was easy to think of getting in before the second lap time and finishing early before the buses and children arrive.

    The pool was full with 8 swimmers which was 5 more than were registered on line. I waited to get in by the edge of my favorite lane. The older woman in that lane said she would gladly share. I did so and she soon got out and I had the lane all to myself. I got in a good half an hour swim and then more swimmers started crowding in at the end of the pool. There were only three signed up on line for the second session and there were over six in already. The pool has six lap lanes with floating lane markers.

    A man standing at the end my lane was a pool friend I had not seen in some time and I stopped there and told him I would get out as I had done enough laps and would forgo my usual number. I felt good about that and we talked for a minute about my upcoming cataract surgery. He is retired doctor and reassured me of the great results and ease it was. A pleasant way to get out early.

    I got into the locker room and saw three times the usual piles of towels and clothing. After showering and dressing I got out earlier than usual. The school was empty and I drove out of the quiet parking lot and motored home. A little black ice on the way back, but traffic was light and it was a casual drive home.

    The parlor stove was still warm and I made a cup of coffee and put away my swim bag.

    I sat on the couch with Julie and our Brittany spaniel and one of the cats curled up in my lap. I relaxed and Julie went off after a nice chat to ride her stationary bike.

    I suddenly had a vision of a man offering me the contents of a small basket. Three kernels of popcorn told him, “well, I’ll take one and you can give the two to Julie”. He turned around quickly and now the basket had a Butterfingers candy bar and a Hershey dark chocolate one in it. These are our favorites. And the vision ended.

    I began looking at our home from the couch and saw treasures. The big Hummels on top of the cabinet grand. The rubber tree extending up to the second floor library and the half circle window there where I can see Orion in the clear winter morning.

    Two Stained glass windows at each end of four in a row with bluebirds flying towards one another below the second floor library. My 1921 Gibson A model mandolin in its case and the photos on the wall of the staircase of our children. The menorah and scroll work of our youngest son’s wood shop. A string of Himalayan bells next to my desk. On and on I gazed at treasures and I was overcome with those things being shown to me.

    The sun was shining and the morning snow was dripping from the roof. Now the pooch was lying in the sunshine that is making bars of warmth on the living room floor. Treasure in the vault of a rich man’s castle.

    Set in a valley of 30 acres of trees, fields and gardens visible from all the windows. A castle indeed. I think I earned all of this but it just came and we are blessed beyond my words.

    Julie and I spoke of what heaven is like just before the vision. C.S. Lewis’ The great divorce came to mind and that fell short. Jesus’ words of paradise and his eternal beauty and romance for us was next in our chat. The garden where lions purr when you pet them. The banquet table with the best wine of Cana to toast the wedding feast to come.

    ‘Visions of that book that no one on earth has ever read. Our lives here are just the cover and table of contents of that book in which every chapter is better that the one before.’ A.

    A . G.K. Chesterton

    It’s pretty good. Jack

    Junk Drawer

    / Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

    It is a missed opportunity for a Game Show! “ I am a plumber, what’s in my junk drawer in the kitchen?” Easy one to start with rubber drain plugs, Teflon pipe tape on a roll, Monkey wrench etc.

    “I am a philosophy professor and writer, what’s in my junk drawer?” Used dialectic cliff’s notes, puns to cause groans during a debate. Disarming platitudes, Names of noted Greek philosophers, half full glasses of water.

    “ I am an atheist and my wife is a deist, what’s in our junk drawer? Slightly tarnished valuable shelf gods of antiquity, pocket tracts of Richard Dawkins, various colors of silly putty for repairs to the idols and a small bible with “don’t panic” taped on the cover.

    Our junk drawer is good to use as a collectible at the Smithsonian as Americana sculpture. The Norman Rockwell of junk drawers. It would be a hands-on installation starting out with a drawer that was sticky and had a screwdriver at the top that prevents it from opening.

    Compartments that have several paper clips and stamps on a roll intertwined. Small flashlights that don’t and are empty of AAAA batteries.

    I can give you an absurd compendium but I tire of trying open it and then find a small set of pliers that I wanted last week. There is a small Phillips screwdriver in there that I needed to disassemble a worthless scanner in there that we inherited. Being a ham operator it was irresistible to try and get it to work. The junk drawer revealed it on the bottom in the back of course. Stuck under a large pencil sharpener.

    I recycled the old scanner because the batteries in it came from a pyramid excavation and I recycled it before the charger caused a melt down. There is a gap in King Tuts hand which the ancient scanner would fit. I saw that in Washington’s Smithsonian where his body is on show. Who can refute that? Another conspiracy story akin to the fake moon landings. I have made an offer for the used Moon rover but the shipping was out of this world.

    Collectibles are an American tradition along with second hand stores. I can do away with the humorous and self sarcasm but there is a collectible that is often found in many homes and it is bound with old leather sometimes and dates back to the family for generations. A book written in 1611. The originals are priceless and can still be read! The King James Bible. The only thing in my junk drawer is an old Yad from Israel for reading such books. A pointer used to read scrolls of the words of wise antiquity.

    If I just dig it out of the drawer, I know it has to be in there! I did find an old 5 shekel coin once and gave it away but I don’t think I gave away the Yad, Or did I?

    I know it’s old and most of those sorts of things are pretty good. Jack Gator Scribe.

    I need a break from hauling firewood up to the porch.

    / Norman Eric Peterson / 1 Comment

    I like the results when the wood rack is full and lately, two wheelbarrows are next to it. The rack can hold plenty for a few days IF the night temperatures stay mild. The low single digits or below need more choice opportunities. Our vocabulary has evolved over the decades of burning wood , the big round logs are called ‘all nighters’.

    It really is an established science to setting a fire in the beautiful wood stove. All firebrick sides, top and bottom. Heavy steel and a glass front door. Brass around the door. It is right in the middle of the house and has been on it’s hearth for over 30 years. It’s predecessor did not have firebrick nor thick steel. Julie was on her way to the bathroom when she saw a red glow from a hole in the firebox.

    Quickly the research was done, a trip to the cities and the stove we have now was delivered and we even got a brass dragon that is filled with water in the winter and breaths steam out of it’s nostrils. With wood heat any humidity is welcome. Leave the bathroom door open during showers and lastly, buy a really good humidifier and use the special fluid!

    How many tons of oak, birch, maple and box elder have we gone through? Some elm too (it splits stringy and tough) The woodshed is about 50 feet away down a small hill from the porch. It’s got a metal roof and plywood sides. We go through about 4 full cords a year, depending on below zero nights (or days too) Simple calculations come to 120 to 150 cords. Simple guesses really. 340 tons of wood.

    That’s a few chain saws, a lot of chains and mix gas. Now we have a hydraulic splitter and that helps. It saves splitting maul handles replacement. By the way, I replaced a lot of spike mall and sledge hammer handles when I was a track worker for the railroad (gandy dancer) and after removing the stump and punching it out, you put the new handle in as tight as you can by hand and then hold it with the business end down and hit the end of the handle with another hammer! Momentum does the job. The hammer blow is faster than the heavy tool can move.

    Stoking the stove is an art and Julie is an artist of renown around here. I just do the daytime fires and burn all the weird pieces length wise. I also clean out the ashes and learned not to dump them until a few days sitting in the sealed ash bucket. Fires in the brush back of the parking lot bring excitement to life.

    Cleaning the chimney is a family operation. I take down the stove pipe that goes to the chimney and Soren goes up on the roof to run the chimney brush. Cleaning the creosote that comes down is fun and cleaning the pipes are too. I pull the brush back out sitting on the shop floor and hold the pipe end with my feet braced with a short 2×4 across the end to get the brush out.

    You can see how much work and danger is involved. I used to do the roof job before I hit 80 and since I play the fiddle, the inevitable Teve in ‘fiddler on the roof’ joke came with the job.

    Daily writing prompt
    Do you need a break? From what?
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    Politics and Religion

    / Norman Eric Peterson / 1 Comment

    A famous author from England was known as the Apostle of common sense. I would earnestly recommend reading anything he wrote! In our most recent times the term common sense has been said by our current president and so I delved into that phrase and it’s origin.

    Many dialectic courses use the phrase ‘common sense’ but as a consequence there is always a position in the discourse that does not seem very sensible. The way of discovering truth in any topic was handed down to us from the Greek philosophers and they were pretty wise guys.

    This type of truth seeking was very commonly taught in school “back in the days” of education. Redire to the English primary schools and these sorts of things were absolutely a foundation of logical thinking and debate. In a forensic class? Scientific discovery which in Latin thousands of years ago was referred to as ‘Ache’ finding beginnings of all things.

    Echoed in the TV series ‘all things great and small’ with James Herriot? Darwin had his day with his dialectics that he believed explained evolutionary theory. This is also taught in schools throughout our country. It is a vary controversial topic, Ache or origin. It delves into a political stance in the hierarchy of our education system and is not taught as a dialectics course.

    This is not common sense and is a recent phenomenon of indoctrination in education. Have you had enough large words for a while? Do you take notes when these topics or opinions are presented in this type of dialectic? Lets talk! It’s good to exchange ideas and stances on important things like this.

    The writer I was referring to at the beginning was G.K. Chesterton and when told he was not to write his newspaper columns about Religion or politics he responded: “There is nothing else to write about” That was The Illustrated London News, a very famous London newspaper.

    As a side note, I have had the same thing happen to me and I found great comfort in this common issue throughout our country. Every discussion, every controversy, is about religion and politics. Religion is about our relationship with God and politics is about our relationship with our neighbors.

    As Chesterton again stated: “We are told to love our neighbors and also to love our enemies: probably because usually they are the same people”

    A great thank you to Dale Ahlquist and G.K. Chesterton Norm Peterson aka Jack Gator