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Good morning

Good morning Mossberg Owners.

The weather cleared up enough for me to go for a nice bicycle ride today. Lots of flags and decorations for vet’s day here.

The rain is over and the humidity is gone, and it’s also warming up enough to where I can paint inside the garage.

I am just hanging out in the garage, polishing metal. The frame is almost ready to polish and paint, but right now it’s in coarse scotchbrite format.

I was just going to shoot it with clearcoat, But I think I wanna try a sort of foggy two-tone effect. I need some tinted clear paint.

More shopping to do then, so maybe I will paint tomorrow.
 
After the wall came down in Berlin, and the Soviet union fell apart, we started to do some business with Russia. It wasn’t publicized. People were just talking about the end of communism all the time.

Then it all fell apart and we started buying everything from China.

But back in 1990 we were going in the other direction for a while. Back then, America bought lots of clothing at Sears. David Taylor was their house label.

It distressed me at the time, when I got this golf jacket home and realized it was made in Russia. D0E1D3DE-5463-4402-B558-E899CA6A4320.jpeg
BUT…The quality was very good, and 35 years later I am finally throwing it into the rags. It’s been my light shop coat for 10 years.

Meanwhile, all that business went to China and Sears is gone.

I wonder that we chose to do business with a nation that was quite pagan in their beliefs compared to Russian citizens. The truth is that they are more religious than most Americans. Because people tried to take their belief they held onto it. Because ours was devalued, we gave it away.

I think that our acceptance of Chinese communism led to big problems with the Russians and it wound up giving us Putin.

Somehow we took glasnost and detente and turned them into world war 2.5.
 
Good morning Mossberg Owners. I hope it’s nice where you are, but today here, it is cold, and foggy. The tule fog is rising.

True to form, I am working on another bicycle. Here I’m using a brake hone to clean out the seat post tube.
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This old extension from my dad’s toolbox came in handy. I remember when he bought that in the 70s, so we could drill holes to put up a TV antenna and run wire.

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I have almost all of my dad’s old tools. I certainly have all the most important ones, although lots of wrenches and sockets went missing after his death.

Some of my first memories of my father were working in the house and garage with him.

Sharpening a grass cutter so he could whack down the big weeds in the back of our house in Cayucos California.

Putting seatbelts in the 59 Plymouth wagon. I was four years old. (Moses Lake Washington.)

Building a utility trailer from a kit.

Rebuilding a bicycle from the thrift store for my mother.

Watching him put up a TV antenna and explain what guy wires were for.

Making the wooden Sun visors that are in the Scout. They were an optional accessory, and Dad thought the OEMs were too small. He called them, “my Mickey Mouse sunvisors”, and he made them from parts of sunvisors he got from a junkyard car.

Building the bumper and hitch that is still on his old scout. (Glendale Arizona)

Building a lightweight aluminum shed on the patio and then filling the bottom channel with lead weights so it wouldn’t move. (Outskirts of Luke AFB in the Arizona desert.) I still have the pop rivet tool he used.

Rebuilding a swamp cooler so it would blow sideways instead of down, and mounting it on the side of our trailer out in the desert.

Building a pinewood derby car for the Cub Scouts. All that stuff happened before he went to Vietnam in 1964. I was 9.

I didn’t spend a lot of time thinking about him on Veterans Day, though he was a veteran of three wars, and so what? I’m just not big on scheduled events. I do things in my time at my age, and that’s the best way.

I’m starting to think about a motorcycle trip back to Nevada next year because the dropping waters have uncovered Indian petroglyphs and other things that I would like to go see.

That’s how my mind works. When it’s cold out I think about going to the desert in the summer. Lol

Have a nice one guys!
 
Cadd, this was the way so many of us were raised back in the day. Learned skills and lessons of life from our Dad.

Great memories of spending time with my father. The other thing I treasure was the two of us listening to baseball games on the radio.

Thanks for the memories!

Regards
 
My dad took me to wrestling and judo lessons and to play Little League baseball when we lived in Moses Lake, but after one year we moved, and it didn’t exist where we moved to. That was life with the Air Force.

Instead, Living out in the desert, I had a Schwinn bicycle and a pellet gun and a BB pistol. I learned to shoot and hunt and track a little bit, and we went exploring out in the desert which was great fun. For one thing, the military had been dumping their garbage out in that desert for years.

Remnants of corrugated insulation board and half empty buckets of paint were a joy to a kid of nine years old. We built a three level treehouse in a tree growing out of the dry, sandy Agua Fria River bed.

Then one night there was a big storm, and as we drove by in the school bus next day we saw the treehouse was completely gone, and the river was so full that water it was running over the roadway and bending big trees half over.

My parents bought a piece of property out there north of Phoenix, and moved our spartan mobile home there with the hazardous duty pay money, when dad came back from Vietnam.

My folks intended to retire there from the military, but the Air Force offered my dad a promotion, and IBM school in Biloxi, and a better job in SAC. He stayed in another seven years, and then the Pentagon forced him (& thousands of other NCOs) out when they closed up all the ranks.

It was all the military cutbacks after they chased Nixon out of office.
 
Cadd, I spent two decades plus in the military during the Vietnam / post Vietnam era. I was an operational guy who spent the vast majority deployed and away from my family. However, many families faced moving every 12 to 18 months to "meet the needs of the military" . Some of that was related to the draft and rapid turnover of younger personnel. Many draftees only spent 2 - 4 years in the military plus we had many losses during the war including middle and senior grade enlisted and officers.

But immediately after the Vietnam war ended there was a great reshuffling of units and missions. Most units suffered greatly reduced funding. And then the military had the great purge you spoke of!

It was a tough life for families and especially for kids growing up during this era. Kids were changing schools every year or two and on a moments notice.

The other factor, that many don't want to discuss, was the lack of support by the public for the returning Vietnam vets. There were times when we didn't wear our uniforms off base or post. Plus the VA support for guys suffering from Agent Orange and other related war injuries was basically non existent!

I know there are others here that were in the service during these times and experienced the turmoil. But luckily most of us survived because the families were tight!

Regards
 
We moved a lot. I attended 12 schools to get to kindergarten through college.

2 in Washington, 2 in Arizona, New York, Kentucky, 4 in Minnesota, Utah and California.
 
Cadd, the moving experience you saw was very typical during these times. Kids, wifes and husbands never ever settled into the surrounding community nor made longterm friends. Plus some families had two service members (husband & wife) which further complicated moves and operational deployments. In many cases it was here today, gone tomorrow and on some occasions the member got no more than 2-3 weeks notice of a move. Plus operational units deployed over night leaving families basically to fend for themselves.

But people took care of each other. When someone needed help the military community offered a helping hand and everyone became brothers & sisters!

Many in American don't understand the sacrifices military families made!

Regards
 
Good evening. I am late to the party, but find the reading interesting. I was one of those that got my draft notice, so I joined the Air Force. I had an easy 4 years. Basic at Lackland in San Antonio, then off to Keesler in Biloxi to electronics school. I had been there 3 weeks when hurricane Camille blew through. After 10 months at Keesler I was sent to Offutt AFB just south of Omaha, NE. I spent the rest of my time there and got out after 4 years.

My job description, if memory serves me it was called AFCS, 307XX. Anyway after 4 years one could look forward to lots of tdy to various communication sites. Usually resort areas like Thule, Greenland or a mountain top site in Turkey. Back then most communications were line of sight (microwave), or cables. Satellite comm was just coming into its own. Anyways, most of those sites did not appeal to me so I got out when my time was up.

I am proud to have served. If I had it to do over I would have stayed in for 20.

Anyways, you guys have a great night .
 
In 1953, my dad was at the station on Snow Mountain in Kentucky. He got in trouble drinking with guys in the motor pool, at Fort Knox, so the army took him out of the motor pool and put him on top of an isolated air corps radar post.

In the end, it turned into a congressional commendation. Before they kicked him out in ‘74. My dad was in the war zone twice in his life, but he never won a medal for that. It was for computer programming.

He didn’t lose the habit of working on his own car all the time until after he left the Air Force and became a programmer for Fresno County in ‘75. It’s because of that I grew up to be such an amateur grease monkey. But those lessons cost me. I ended up fixing his lawn tractor for 25 years for free.
 
BTW my draft no. was only 186 of 365.

I remember that I felt very lucky at the time that it wasn’t lower, even though I knew that I could never allow myself to be drafted. I certainly would’ve enlisted first. With my DOD test results I would’ve drawn OCS or computer school immediately.
 
Good morning Mossberg guys.

I had to go get my truck a smog inspection today, so I can pay the license fees.

My truck qualifies for the easy inspection, so it was “only” 60 bucks and 281 for the renewal, so I am out $341.

But with only 53,000 miles on it it was guaranteed to pass. I won’t have to deal with this for another two years. That’s assuming that I don’t buy a different truck, move out of California, or convert it to hybrid electric powered by a windmill lol.
 
CaddmannQ said:
BTW my draft no. was only 186 of 365.
Click to expand...
I guess my number got down to 1 because they sent me "Greetings" just before my 21st BD.
I went to a doctor for a "pre-report" physical.
I told him, "Doc. Maybe you can find something wrong with me that's bad enuff to keep me out of the Army, but not so bad to keep me out of the Air Force."

The Army it was. But eventually I assigned myself to an Army Aviation unit, which I give credit to launching my career.
 
Good Mornig MO's!!!

Trump has officially thrown in his hat for the 2024 election.

Really not sure how I feel this time around. Going to be hard for him to overcome the Trump Hate vote. Many in the midterms still fell victim to it...as well as other things.

I guess we will see. Two years is a long long time in politics. A lot can happen in that period.

Kind of worried about my own state as everything went back to blue. Can't wait to see what new gun legislation is coming down the pipe.

Getting new tires on the truck this weekend. Old ones still have some tread but arent good at all in the winter. For AT tires they really suck. Going with the BFG AT KO2's this time.
 
I did not see all of Trump’s speech, but I did see a few brief minutes of it, and it looks like he is going to tone it down a little bit this year.

I’m glad to see that Nancy Pelosi is no longer speaker. But I’m not that happy about Kevin McCarthy.

I was pretty amazed to see the reports in the Bankman-fried story.

When this guy was selling crypto, everybody thought he was great. And then they found out their money was gone & the crypto coins were worthless.

Evidently that money was laundered in a complex Ukrainian kickback scheme that promoted democratic congressman to approve the guy’s trading business.

Whoever approved this guy needs to be hauled up on charges.
 
CaddmannQ said:
Whoever approved this guy needs to be hauled up on charges.
Click to expand...
I whole-heartedly agree! (insert "thumbs-up" here) :)

EVERYONE with a (R) US Representative NEEDS to contact them and INSIST they (1) IMPEACH BIDET!!!, (2) do not pass any legislation sponsored by the (D)s, (3) get the border closed, (4) get the US into energy production again, (5) investigate and prosecute the "president's" son, (6) revamp voting procedures (ie: no more illegitimate enclosures {drop-boxes} and/or ALL votes must be VERIFIED), (7) grow a set of farking balls!, (8) etc...
 
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