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Busy-Busy

We are still as busy as we can be trying to make a dream come true. With the dream it is as it has been for some time. A way to sale my art and our first book. On the book we published it and made a lot of mistakes according to a woman that runs a bookstore and sells books. We stopped pushing it with it needing work. We are working on a revised addition, and we hope with what we have learned it will sell now. I’m not going to republish it till I feel it’s ready. They have an art show coming up this week near here in the little town of Russel, Kansas. We haven’t had time to paint anything special for the show, so we decided to just choose two painting we have and maybe keep my name out there.

One of the paintings we entered in the art show.

As for what we are doing that is keeping us so busy. It seems anywhere we look there is something we need to work on. With my art we need away to take my art pieces to art shows. We have our old 1972 Chevy pickup truck. But how do you pile your artwork in the back without messing up something? Then there is, the rain and the wind out here. Art galleries want fifty or more pieces to work a show. We thought we had a quick fix when we bought our old 1951 Chevy truck, we are fixing up to haul my art. Got it out of a junk yard headed to be crushed for scrap metal. Got an abandonment title. Took two months for that. Had to be processed. Had a 1975 tag on it so maybe it has been setting that long. This truck has been full of surprises. The motor seems to be in good shape. We haven’t stared it yet. Took it completely apart and miced, everything. Back together now. Found out the rear end has floating axle. Easy to take an axle out and one is missing. Called a junk that sales antique car and truck parts and they have one. Problem! They want $800 for it and $2500 for a complete rear end. As it turns out I have a rear end that will fit with a split, in an old junk truck given to us. The means with the split we can use 8 gears instead of just 4 so maybe this will be better but don’t really need them with hauling this light of a load. Problem with this saving money that we don’t have is with the time and how hard this is. This is a big truck. One of the problems with this truck is after setting 50 years bolts just don’t want to come lose but what a dream driving this old truck to art shows or where we need to go with a box van so we can keep things dry.

Work in progress on the 1951 Chevy.

Another problem we have is needing more room in a building we built out back of our little house out on the prairie. A few years back we tore down a building for a farmer to get the lumber. Someone had written his name and the date 1911 on it and the lumber is old growth fir. Our son out here was working on a job and has most of the metal we need so it just time we need for this. This is another reason we are so busy. Maybe with me being creative being out here I found some old augers to make post. They came out of the tubes used to move grain. I think this will add a personal touch to the building.

Augers for post. Some of the have pipe welded to them in stress areas.

One thing is Kansas storms. There is no way to prepare for a tornado, but the sun can create havoc on the interior of our old 72 Chevy we just upholstery and a hailstorm can destroy an antique car or truck in just minutes. We need this building to park out old 72 truck in. So how do we find the time? What an adventure this has become as old as we are. Taking my red headed wife that has been with me the last 61 years in an old red antique truck to an art show. Win or lose what an adventure that can be.

                                     The Adventures of Our Life Goes On

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Paint & Body Work

Good news for us with this. We finally got our old 1951 Chevy truck painted red. It needs two more coats but most of the dents are gone and all that priming and sanding is over.

First coat of red paint on our 1951 Chevy truck. We have decided to name her, Penny.

New glass for the windshield and doors has been ordered. The motor has been taking apart and everything miced, checks and it seems the motor had been replaced maybe with a factory rebuilt motor sometime maybe 50 years ago. Last tag was 1975. Back in the time this old truck was parked you could still get factory rebuilt motors a lot of places even Sears Roebucks had car and trucks motors. Still a long way to go before we can drive this old truck. I’m an old man now but I have always had patience. My first car I bought when I was 14 was a 1929 A-model Ford that had been cut down to hall peaches. Later I found a body and when was 15 I drove my car to a teenage party. It was summertime and it looked good with other teenagers there saying it did. I was dressed up and there they played spend the bottle and a girl won the spend and she kissed me. I mean this was not a little pick it was a kiss. It being summertime as a teenager driving a car I put together from junk to a party and being kissed by a pretty girl talking about my bedroom blue eyes will put a memory in your brain you never forget. When Pam and I ran away and got married I had a supped-up car. A, 1958 Golden Commander Plymouth with two 4-barrel carburetor and 150MPH on the speedometer. Not long after we married at 15 and 17 we had a cop after us and doing something stupid with him behind us I ran a stop sign at a cross road by cutting my light off looking for other lights and back on at over 150 mile per hour and then turning up another road the cop at least slowed down at the stop sign and we watched him going on down the road light still flashing with us setting there with our light off watching. Like I said, “Young and stupid.” A year and 4 mouth later we had a baby. A little boy. We decided to get rid of the hot rod. It always took money with this car, and we had a car payment. We bought a junked 1952 Chevrolet car from and old women and put it back together. With Pam polishing and waxing this old car, it looked brand new. As for how I got the hot rod car I quit school a 16 lied about my age and got a job in a cotton mill. As how we got married a 15 and 17 we lied again saying we were both 21. As for Pam reaction to us getting away from that cop. Let’s just say one kiss wasn’t enough and that squeal she made I can still remember. Why was the cop chasing us? I may have got on it a little hard leaving town. Nothing bad. Looking back I don’t think anything we did back then was really bad. We are still married now 61 years later but it, is, harder to make her squeal like she did back then. Looking back, I do believe our life has had some adventure to it. We are going back soon, to our sailboat we designed and built we left, in the Western Caribbean for the winter.

                                                         The Adventure of Life Goes On.

Pamela Ann Hauled out waiting for our return

 

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Labor Day Weekend

What a week this has been. We are starting to miss our sailboat we live on most of the time back in the Caribbean as it is getting closer to the end of summer and we will be going back to the Western Caribbean and be on it for the winter. Labor Day has passed and is a big event near here in the small town of Hoisington. About 18 miles from our little house out on the prairie where we have been for the summer. They have been having trouble blocking off the town all day with highway 281 going through it so this time they shot the fireworks off at the go-cart racetrack on Saturday night. The car show was there too and not so good. Maybe it was the weather. It looked like it was going to rain all afternoon. As far as the fireworks we drove our old truck out to the go cart racetrack and parked just inside the road going to the pits near where they had parked the fire trucks. We had been told not to go into the pits. I don’t think we were doing anything wrong parking there on the road to the pits. The fireworks were schedule for 9:30 but about 10 minutes till 9 it stared to rain just a few drops, but you could see lightening all around. We heard the little race go-carts stopping and the fireworks stared. The fireworks show is always good but this time it was like they needed to get them all shot before it started to rain hard. I don’t think we could have chosen a better place to watch. I know with us old now and still together I can’t make Pam squeal like I use to, but those fireworks had her squealing. Watching the fireworks that close setting in the back of our old antique Chevy pickup truck we drive out here with-it sprinkling rain with lightening lighting up the sky all around us. I guess that is about as country redneck as it gets. On Monday it was the Labor Day parade. There were 104 different units in the parade. Eight marching bands, dance schools, fire trucks from four different towns, several ball teams from different schools, and two of the crazy Shrines groups. Motorcycle clubs and cars of all eras.

Tesla in the parade

T-Model Ford

They had one of the biggest tractors I have ever seen there. The weather was nice and there was a big crowd there to see the parade. When I was coming up on our farm we had a B-Allies-Chamber tractor with 12 total horsepower to the draw bar. That meant it was like having 12 horses pulling together. The tractor in the parade had 600 total horsepower so that means it can pull like 600 horses pulling at the same time. And old man behind us said., “With the price of everything we will be going back to mules any day now.” Made me think about a man we know that is working with a group that is working on a machine that can kill everything in the field so if the grass won’t come up until, grass seed finds its way back in the field. This way no need to plow and what you want to grow there has nothing to compete with. Less fertilizer. With 8 billion people to feed there is no going back. On the farmland I was raised on back in South Carolina they just grow houses now it looks like. Only thing constant is change and there is no going back. Out here they do feed the world. Being out here is part of our life we love. Being here is like an adventure. Living in town I get boarded quick, and we have never lived in a city. You’re probably wondering why we bought a little house in this town. It’s a ghost town with only 35 people living here and as I said 18 miles to buy a soft drink. I don’t think there has been a house built here in 50 years. The streets are still dirt, so this is not a normal town. To say it’s peaceful here. That is not always the case. Sometimes there is a truck going by going to the grain silo out on the highway and the mailman can break the peace once a day as he goes by. The adventure goes on. After traveling like we do the food out here is great. Home grown tomatoes in the back yard and Kansas steak on the grill. Summer is about over, and cold weather is coming, and we will just read about is as we sail around on our sailboat this winter. To our friends in the Caribbean, we will be coming back in a month or so.

                                    The Adventure of Life Goes On

We are just about done with the new upholstery in the 1972 green truck, that we drive most of the time when we are in Kansas.

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Date Night

Working hard planning big but never getting it done fast enough. We thought we would have our old 1951 Chevy truck painted this week. All week it was one thing after another. Our other old truck we love and drive out here we upholstered six years ago when we got it out of the junk yard and we have been leaving it out in the sun when we go back to our sailboat for months at a time was looking bad so we are doing it again. It’s not so easy working with old stuff with the foam and padding giving up. The worst part of upholstering this old truck someone else had upholstered it before we got it. It came from the factory with a padded dash. It was all wrinkled up with the mess someone made working on it, and for years I was going to fix it. It was I will get around to it later thing. Now in doing this the whole dash had to come apart to take it off. Even the fragile dash pocket had to come out. It came out in pieces. This old 1972 Chevy truck setting out here in the Kansas sun it being made out of pressed pasteboard, it fell apart. With computers and the after market we ordered a new one. A few Saturdays ago we were working hard not wanting to go shopping during the day so after supper we went to Walmart. Forty miles away. Pam calling it date night. I guess we are really getting old calling going on Saturday night to Walmart “date night” but it was nice with Pam setting close beside me as I was driving along on my side of the seat in our old truck real close like we did when we stared dating back in 1963. Married in 1964. No seat belts back then. No seat belts going there or coming back this time ether. Some times the pleasure is worth the risk or maybe old as we are now it’s realizing how much making your own chooses in your own life are gone and over with. This is rural country where we are and very few cops are out looking for two old people acting like teenagers on Saturday night. With things that were slowing our progress on getting our old 1951 Chevy painted this week our son is working hard out here and had a fairly large trailer of trash he needed hauled to the dump. We had some trash to add to it. So we went this week with Pam saying we were on an afternoon date going to the trash dump. Not very romantic or anyway you could say this was a real date but it had Pam laughing and happy saying it. Setting close to me on my side of the seat again with her head on my shoulder laughing as we went along about how crazy our life can get. Working on an antique truck that we plan on driving out here taking my art to shows that was bought new the year I started to school in the first grade at 5 years old and driving the one we drive all the time out here that was new when we were young and had been married eight years and no way we could afforded a new 1972 Chevy truck back then. I guess we are antiques ourselves now old as we are. I guess one thing hasn’t changed in our long life together. We really got a deal when we bought this house out here six years ago. It’s small with four full size normal rooms up stars with a full basement and a enclosed garage. It needed some work then like what we usually buy but today it’s worth more with repairs done.

Our little house. We painted it white and added shutters on the windows. That’s our old antique motorcycle setting in front of the garage.

But with what a new truck cost today we could buy 4 or 5 houses like ours before interest, insurance or taxes on a new truck cost. When Pam and I had been married about two years people were on us all the time about us being so young married, not finishing school with a baby already. One night after several people that day close to her family had been bothering us really bad about us being so young doing what we did and how bad we had messed up our lives Pam was crying about it a little. She said if we are not grown yet maybe we are all growing up together along with our baby. What do you think our life is going to be like as we get older? I said, “ Maybe we don’t fit in the normal slot people think we should fit in and I know I never have but we are doing okay. We are living in a little house with rent we can afford. We have what we need and even have a little saved. We are not living pay check to pay check like most young people do.” The problem we had with people that day was our car. I bought two junk cars and made one.

Picture of 1952 Chevy like the one we once owned.

A 1952 Chevy car we now had that was paid for. It ran good and Pam took the baby out with her and worked on it while I slept with me working nights. It looked brand new. It wasn’t how it ran or how good it looked it was because it was old and we were realizing, what we could do with junk with how we lived. Here we are six decades later still putting junk back together. With all the criticism we have had to put up with most of our life looking back, what an adventure our life has been. If you like our blog share it with some one you think would like it too. Working hard on how to get our art and our book out there. Thinking about it maybe I will put a picture on our blog each week now so people can see my work.

                                        The Adventure of Life Goes On

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Busy With Life

In the last few blogs I said we were really busy and maybe more busy that anyone we know at our age. Doctors tell me staying busy with a ( purpose in life )will add to your life span. Last time I was with a doctor he said, “You got another ten years ahead of you.” Some how maybe that sounded good to him but it took us ten years to build our sailboat we have lived and traveled on for years now before we bought our little house on the prairie in Kansas near our son and where we only stay a few months a year. We will be going back to our sailboat in October. Our sailboat we have been traveling and living on for over twenty years and it’s not our first boat. We been living on boats almost forty years now. Living life with a purpose. I have been working on how to have a career as an artist and a writer. Have had some small success with that but not enough to live and travel like we like to. Now we’re trying to make a push with that with having a box van to store and transport my art. This is one of reasons, why we are restoring our old 1951 farm truck to put a box van on. In away that old truck will be an advertisement. Maybe our crazy life will someday get people to buy my art and read my books. I guess at my age it needs to be soon. Working this hard we need more in life and Pam and I have always tried to stop and smell the roses. The Lead Sled Convention car show was coming up and we wanted to go. I told Pam to dress up and let’s go. She went online and bought a dress that looked like the 1950’s then she got sick. Doctor ran blood test said, it was a viral infection and would be over in two weeks. She is okay now but we missed the Lead Sled Convention. It’s not just the show up there it’s what people drive to the event and sometimes what they wear. Pony tails, poodle skirts and bobby socks. We had a small but good car show coming up about 30 miles from here in a small town of Victoria, Kansas and I knew there would be some old cars there. We went with Pam in her 1950s dress with her hair like girls wore back then.

Pam in her 1950’s dress ready to go to the old car shows.

Sorry to say but Pam is not a girl anymore and we’re considered old now I guess. We have been married 61 years now but still have the spirit for living. Our son was with us and would shake his head when people would come up as we walked around talking to Pam. Later that day we were in a store  and a girl not a full grown woman yet but maybe soon would be, walked up to Pam and said, “You’re a really pretty woman.” She stopped before she said for your age. I hate that, for your age. We left the car show headed back to our little house eat a bite and headed on south another 40 miles to Great Bend to another car show. Lots of riding but what a day. Dealing with the reality of getting old and time running out is hard but no time to go set on the porch and wait on it. Maybe this week is a turning point on our 1951 Chevy truck. The motor is back together and has been checked out. The truck is almost ready to paint but there are other things to fix first but the trill of driving this old truck may be coming up soon. With us this is apart of the adventure of life for us. Maybe for some signing a paper and driving a new truck home is the same but with our money we know we will never know.

                                         The Adventure of Life Goes On

A dream car. A 1957 hardtop.

Enjoying the day at the old cars show in Victoria, Kansas

 

This is a 1950 six cylinder Chevy factory motor with a dual exhaust. I wish I had one for our six cylinder. 

Maybe this is something you can use next week to compare to see what we are doing.

 

 

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Different Plans

I know I said last week I would try to get a blog out on Sunday from now on so our followers would know what we are doing but it’s the story of our live I guess. We call it plans we make before breakfast and how it all changes after breakfast. We were sure we would have our old 1951 Chevy truck painted we are working on and would have pictures to put on our blog this week. Our best laid plans went off the rails with our other truck we drive out here. Our 1972 Chevy truck we breathed life into a few years ago back when we bought our little house out on the prairie that was in our son’s private junk yard. That is another thing out here in Kansas farm land. Most farms out here have some (great junk) setting some where on the farms. We love driving our old 1972 Chevy truck we have running really good now but it is old. Going to Walmart shopping can run a day working here but sometimes it’s best to shop there. Pam has her rounds shopping with where to find what she wants cheap when we go. One stop shopping has never been in her world. Knowing it would mess up our working on our old 1951 farm truck we are trying to get painted and going again. We needed to go so we went on to Walmart some 40 miles away. This is farm country out here and it’s a drive to get anything out here. I had heard a noise in our old Chevy truck when I put on the brakes for sometimes. Driving in town we were in what we call heavy traffic that would make most people laugh with us calling this heavy traffic. I hit the brakes at a traffic light turning red and had no brakes. I thought at first, I stood up on the brakes and the truck started slowing down. The brake booster had quit. We were there so went on to Walmart with me standing on the brakes and went shopping. The drive back we made it out in the country and back home driving very carefully. Now to fix it. First, I had to take the booster off. Then had to take it to a auto parts place we use 22 miles away in our son’s truck then had to wait another day as they ordered the right one with us taking it in so they could see what to order. Then had to go back and get the right part and then it took time to put it back on. To our surprise we really have brakes now and this had been a problem for some time and we didn’t know it.

The old 1972 Chevy is ready to go and stop again.

Along with the time we lost working on our other old truck we took Sunday off and went to a gun show. First time Pam and I had ever been to one. What a surprise. The biggest surprise was what guns cost now.

My 22 caliber Colt.

I bought a Colt 22 pistol when I was in my early twenties to take hunting with me and have had it all my life since then. There I saw one like it and the man wanted $1200 for it and said it was cheap. We of course didn’t buy anything but what a surprise it was going to a gun show and how many guns were there. This may surprise most people reading this. I still like to hunt but only what we like to eat. Mostly rabbit and quail. Doves now and then is nice eating. Here is the surprise most people won’t believe. I mostly hunt now and have for years with a 800 feet per second 177 pellet gun and a 22 pellet gun that shoots at 1200 feet per seconds. The 22 pellet gun at 1200 feet per seconds is a heavy hitter. I heard a game warden say he had a poacher using one killing deer out of season by shooting them under his deer stand. Shooting them just behind there ear. Out here you can walk for miles across open fields and see nothing. Game we like to eat is found in places were they can find food but mostly in places they can find cover. Big guns don’t interest me. Another surprise rabbits and quail love junk yards where they can slip around and have plenty of cover. If you know how and where to look and how to wait. Just take what you can eat that day and to me a really good pellet gun in the hands of some one that knows how to hunt with it is a survival gun to eat well. Do you really think you need a cannon to kill a rabbit? I spent a lot of my time back on the farm growing up watching and learning the ways of wild things. It’s been part of my life. A lot in our lives is some what the same as wild things. Food shelter and maybe even our love life. Ducks and a lot of things mate for life. If you wondering how I can take quail with a pellet gun. They are very predictable where they will be when and easy to ambush. With a pellet gun and the noise it makes if you’re hidden well enough, when you hit the first bird the other birds will run to it to see what’s happening and you may get a second bird. As for doves they like cedar trees even if it’s the ones in our yard.

                                        The Adventure of Life Goes On

This is Pam’s pocket gun. A 22 magnum. I gave it to her when she turned 21. She carries it with her when she thinks she might need it.

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Busy in Kansas

We have been so busy I haven’t taking time to do a blog. Sorry about that. Getting back here to our little house on the prairie 3 weeks ago leaving our sailboat in Guatemala our garden was a mess. We went to borrower a neighbor’s rotary digger to find in was gone. It was usually in a storage building near here but now they it had been loaned out to someone else. Another neighbor said he had one we could just have if we would get it out of his storage building. Now this has been the story of our life most of our life. Getting something we need fixing it and not trying to find a way to buy what we need then worry about making payments because we never have extra money. Trying to breathe life into something we need and get it running can sometimes be a challenge. This time it’s a rear-thine rotary digger bought new in 1968. A little old but a good machine when it was new. Looking online a tune up package with a new carburetor, spark plug and air filter cost $11 and free shipping. Maybe we will give it a paint job later.

Our New/Old Tiller

This changes things in our life doing this and most people don’t know how old most of what we have is. Our riding lawn mower is a 1974 snapper. Parts online and a good paint job no one seems to know how old it is.

Our riding mower

Now as I have already put in our blog the big project right now is our 1951 farm truck we are putting back together. Last time it had a tag was 1975 setting junked for over 52 years and now we have it. Why would we need another truck with us driving a 1972 Chevy utility truck we have running good now after reworking it and Pam has it looking good? We need something with a box van on it to work out of out here to go to these farms and sew. Making sails on boats is how we have made a living for years but out here there is almost no sailboats and none like we work on in the Caribbean. Out here its upholstering these giant farm tractors. There is a country song about, My Girlfriend Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy. When we get through with upholstering one it’s sexy. Another thing we do is fix these truck covers. They’re big and heavy and hard to get to the house and in the basement where Pam had a shop so we set up a table in the back yard to work on them it’s so much easier if we could repair them on the farm if we take a table with us. This truck is beginning to be a mystery. Why did they park it in 1975? What did they use it for?

Motor Out!

We have the motor out of it and this week we plan to take it completely apart. Our son is helping us and he is good at rebuilding motors and has all the tool to check all the parts in a motor to see if it can be made reliable. So far, we just have the head off and it seems there is nothing wrong so far almost like this is a factory rebuilt motor. Back in the day, Sears sold rebuilt motors that were rebuilt to new motor specks. We will break it all down and mike everything to see what we have. They cut the frame and took whatever bed was on the truck off, so I found some metal used to lift a grain bed on an old truck. Cut it apart and made what we are calling a bumper. This way we can put modern tails light on it. This has turned out to be harder than I thought it would be working on this old truck with the bolts that hold ever thing together. They won’t come loose. After 74 years covered in mud and Kansas dust it just won’t come apart. Maybe this week is the turning point with the motor out and we start the paint job this week. Most of it has been sanded and is close to where we start priming. We will try to give updates every week now that we will have more time. This truck has turned out to be quite a adventure, in itself.

                                        The Adventure of Life Goes On

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Another Kansas Project

I have been doing a blog lately after some people ask me to, about doing one on us building our sailboat and I have been trying but I feel, I need to do this to let people that follow our blog what we are doing today. We are back at our little house on the prairie. We plan to spend our summer here. It’s so hot in the Caribbean in the summer time. We have had some major repairs to do to our boat. It’s setting in a boat yard with the sun over head and the heat coming up from the payment the boat is setting on, is just too much to deal with. It can get hot out here in Kansas but it’s not the same and it cools off at night so you can sleep. We will get back to building our sailboat in the near future. If you are keeping the blog as a story as how we got our boat. Out here we have a lot going on. We can’t live on just Social Security, so we have work a little. But how out here? On our boat it’s hard to find work with us with no place to work in a boat yard working on sails. Out here there are no sailboats to work on so we have been getting a little work doing upholstery on these big farm tractors. This bring us to a project maybe some of you out there maybe interested in.

Our new project. 1951 Chevy 

We bought a farm truck to work out of that is just us and how we like to live. It has been setting for 50 years on a farm and a junk yard was going to crush it as scrap metal. We are getting it ready to paint. Maybe I’m getting ahead of my self first we had to get a title. This took lots of paper work to get and abandonment title. After all that 6 weeks before the title came and we were not here so our son got it out of the mail box. This is not all we have to do. When we get it road worthy we have to have it inspected to, make sure it can be driven on the road. We will give you pictures as we work on it but here is our project truck as we brought it to the house. As you can see it needs, everything. Like everything in our life with living most of our life with no money Pam wanted to get stared on the upholstery. At Hobby Lobby we were looking at vinyl and needing a yard of snow white for another project. On the roll there was a little blue line down the middle. The women there called her boss and he said we took it all he would let us have it at $4 a yard. We bought ten years for $40. That is 30 feet at 54 inches wide. Now the truck is getting a  white interior. We are painting it red the way is was bought new. The interior want be the same. Stay tuned if you want to see how this turns out.

                                            The Adventure of Life Goes On

We had to put the new seat in the truck to make sure it fit.

We added door panel with pockets.

Pam says, “Yes this will work. Now we have got to get busy with the new paint job.” 

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Part Four

                                  Building the Schooner “Pamela Ann”

                                                       Part Four

As I said in building the Schooner Pamela Ann, there was a lot more going on than just building the boat. Now looking back it was an adventure. There was much more going on building the boat it was just a small part of the adventure. As I have said before we wanted our boat we designed so bad. We still had our other modern sail boat. Worried about the officials coming after us if some one told them we were living out at the boat we were building somehow but we wanted to spend the night on the boat one night with most of he deck now on. We had a small truck by then but we road our rickshaws out there and covered it up so no one would maybe see us out there at night being there not working spending the night. We had a grill out there. We cooked us a steak mostly in the dark. Setting on the rusty cabin top with no cockpit yet with just a little ladder I built going down inside. Setting there eating it in the dark with just a candle between us dreaming some I guess about the adventures ahead of us if somehow if, we could ever get this built. As I have said before in our blogs about what most people miss a lot in life. The adventure was already there and going on and we didn’t realize it. Later after we ate our steaks we slipped inside and crawled in our make shift bed where we hoped our bed would some day be, with a flashed light near by. No floor of any kind made it hard to get around. I need a scale to compare thing to but what scale can you use for how happy you are at times like this. All I can say we were happy enough but still didn’t realize the adventure we were on. After midnight we heard load talking with a lot of cursing some where really close to the boat. Then it turned to yelling and gun shot rang out. Pam said, “What do we do?” I rolled over her to get between her and the gun shots to keep her safe as I could and said, “Nothing just stay here and stay quiet. Maybe this metal hull is thick enough to stop a bullet. We don’t need any one to know we’re here.” Minutes later the sound of a car leaving burning rubber. No ambulance coming or cops so we went back to sleep. We had already said if cops showed we are not going out there and let any one know we were there. This was poor neighbor hood back then on Jabbertown road and it is always best where ever you are to just mind your own business. Something we had to deal with most of the time building the boat. Someone always telling us what we were doing wrong. Asking us why we were even building a boat like this. Why, why, why, most of the time. I complain a lot about this but if you are paying attention to any of this, if you know someone building a space ship or a time travel machine do, you really needed to give them your opinion every time you see them and why would go where they are working to let them know what you think. This has been going on most of my life now I guess. Bought my first car, junk of coarse, and put it together at 14 years old. Working for neighbors hiding my money from my mother. I bought it with my own money. Got it running and was so proud of it but I soon found out not everyone in the community was. It was, “What you think you are going to with that?” It was a 1929 A model Ford that had been cut up to be used on a farm. We lived way out on a farm so I could drive it around out there an not worry about cops. It has never stopped even today. Ran away as people say and married Pam at 17 with her only 15 and this week a women heard about that. She came to me, remember that, came to me, to ask me if that was legal and me being me I said, “ I don’t care how we did it we went through the ceremony holding hands saying our vows to each other. Till death do we part. In a court house before a Justice of the Peace and that is all, we needed.” We lied about our age to make it happen and anyway you look at it trying to find fault with it now with us been married 61 years is just the way people are. I’ll say that again. The way people are. Things change in life with how you handle things sometimes too. In our early twenties Pam an I gave up on what we were being told we had to do and how to live. Quit our good jobs. Sold every thing we had like our nice house and ten acres of land bought a lot on Lake Greenwood and built us a log cabin. Living on the lake building our cabin people would come by to tell us what we were doing wrong. Remember we built our log cabin this meant being creative getting the logs to our place that we cut ourselves. What was different with this than building our boat and people coming by to tell us what we were doing wrong I still liked to drink beer at that time and Pam a little wine when we were building our log cabin. If someone came down the drive way I would say if you come to talk go get beer and they would. By the time we were building the boat we had quit drinking so this would not work with people coming out there to tell us what we were doing wrong. I guess we still felt like building the boat as hard as it turned out to be and slow as it was with all this talk we needed to keep our sailboat to live on that we came to Southport on, just in case we couldn’t do this. This meant we were still making a boat payment and a slip fee. At this time we still were living mostly on our sailboat. This changed with us building the cockpit. A man we knew was building a boat from Robert Bruce plans and had changed it some. He had a crew and with in a few weeks they had it all tacked up and over a weekend they welded it up. He was bragging about having six welders working at one time and was promising a bonus to the man that burnt the most rods. When I saw it I couldn’t believe it. Everything was warped up. It looked like they built it from metal that was wrinkled up to start with with all the heat from welding it up this fast. I looked at the cockpit and the seats were made by splitting a pipe to make the round parts. I said nothing to anybody about what I thought about what it look like. None of my business. The diver that delivered metal from Queensbour Steel told me to go look at it. I told him I had. He said, “You know they can bend the metal for the seat in your cock pit back in our shop and it doesn’t cost that much. All you need is a drawing to scale and you may have to pay for a whole sheet of metal. Going to Queensbour Steel with the drawing and Pam in the office with the good looking blond headed women arguing, about the price. Back at the boat I was working on the seat that would be behind the steering wheel. In the old days the steering wheel was something boat builders took pride in building. By this time in life, I had been on lots of boats and to me where you set steering the boat was important. A lot of boats there is not really a seat just to set in so being our boat I built a seat just for steering the boat. Working in that tin shop early in my life I learned to bend metal to look like roll and pelleted upholstery. You bend it in equal spaces then try to straighten it back out. When the driver delivered our bent metal for the seats in the cockpit the driver helped get them to the boat with us dragging them. Before dark I had them tacked in place and and now most of the metal was tacked in place on the whole boat. The boat hull now looked like a boat. We decided to sale our boat we came to Southport on, and was mostly living on. Somehow now we felt we could and would finish the hull somehow and somehow live on it if we had to. I now was welding up all the seams. Now welding only two inches at a time and going some where else to weld so the heat of welding wouldn’t warp up the hull. Slow but so far not a wrinkle in the hull. I ask Mr. Harper that owned the news paper and the lot we built the boat on to put an add the the paper for us to sale our boat we were living on. With in minutes of the paper coming out we got a call. It was a boat broker on the beach road telling us we could not sale our boat ourselves. We needed help and he was it. By the time the call ended I was telling him to leave us alone. He would call every day and say, “You sold it yet. I know you can’t with out help.” After about a month a man showed up looking at the boat and said. “I have one problem with buying this boat. I needed it delivered to Florida.” He said he own a trucking company so we made a deal if he bought the boat we would delivered it to Florida if he would move our boat we were building to where it could be put in the water if and when we got it ready to move. With him buying the boat I called the broker and told him stop calling us every day, “Ass hole, and leave us alone. We made a better deal that you could ever make.” What a deal it was to us making another trip down the ICW and him paying our expenses. On the way we did the varnish with out telling him and there we left the boat clean and looking good. There at the bus station waiting on the bus back we saw four antique bronze winches in the window of an antique, store that, was not open. Back in Southport he called thanking us for getting the boat there in good shape and Pam ask him to check on the winches we were looking at there. A few days later UPS delivered the winches to the little house we were living in now. Not a word from him. This was not just a surprise it was just what we wanted for our boat. Antique winches. This was where a lot of criticism came from. Why would you install a wench that is not modern self-telling. This would have been just right for a boat a hundred years ago. This was closes to the the biggest problem with this boat the way the people giving us the most problem saw it. Why would you even build a boat that went out of style with horses and buggies but the biggest problem was me designing all this. But now thing were happening. People were now bring us stuff they thought we may need. Some was just junk but some was just a treasure to us. This meant now just see what they wanted or was bringing and not just tell people showing up to leave and just leave us the hell alone like Pam wanted. Some one showing up she would just go some where and find something to do somewhere else.

                                          The Adventure of Life Goes On

Our cockpit seats

The seat at the steering wheel

Our antique winches one each side of the steering seat.

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Part Three

                                  Building the Schooner Pamela Ann

                                                     Part Three

After the frame’s some people call ribs we up and welded to the keel and the chime bars were in place now I felt it was time to start laying up the metal for the bottom and the sides. Building the hull but before the metal was to go on the next step was lay up the pier-lines so the metal would lay up and keep the metal smoother as it came around the hull. Problem with this is laid up in one inch flat bar. Easy to bend flat bar from the wide side almost impossible bending it to the other side. When I was young starting to work most people had just a heater in there houses and furnaces were just starting to be built in new houses. I worked for sometime in what they called back then a ten shop. These shops were starting to make duck work but were still making things like caps for chimneys are something out of ten. Maybe a chute for something down on the farm for loading a truck. There I watched and learned all I could. There I learned how to make a homemade flat bar bender. Slow but it works. The bender keeps the metal from bending side ways with metal on both side and you push it down over a round surface with something in the back to hold it so you can bend it. The problem is you need to mark your flat bar and bend it just a little every two inches as it comes around. Then you check how much more you bend it as you run it back through your bender. This is slow but a hydraulic one for a shop is lot of money, money we never have. With this in place the hull had a frame. With me not being a professional welder I had worked with metal and could weld okay maybe. I talked to about anyone that did welding. I had bought Tom Covlin book on boat building in steel. It seemed like all the plans for all, his boats” were to keep old design boats alive and a lot of his designs were like talking to old time wooden boat builders. Talking to some of these old time boat builders you start hearing they think modern boats are all designed wrong. Asking them to give me the math they were using as to why these modern boat were designed wrong I understood it was just their way of building. No math to it. Just their way they had been doing it. Remember I wanted a fully rigged top mast schooner. A traditional boat but in designing it myself I wanted some math to work with in what I thought would work for us. Like the keel I knew being on a traditional schooner a wing keel was out. Maybe a wedged kill would be best not if but when I ran her aground. Maybe I could manage to back her off and not damage the kill. Now with her framed up nothing to do but try to lay the metal up from the bottom up. Maybe get some experience starting with working the metal that would be under water. By now it had been over a year and this was all I had done. Had no idea it would take this long working with no money to start with. No real tools I needed that I had now. Working as hard as we could taking all the money left after what it took to live. Them working as much as we could building the boat. Always dealing with the criticism that I didn’t know what I was doing. Pam was back dealing with the pretty blond headed woman at Queensbour Steel. When the first metal was delivered the driver and I slid it off best we could on the side of the road. Cheep beer and commercial fishermen that after noon it was where I needed it in the yard. Now to fit it. I made a jig to jack the long metal pieces up to the frame and the kill where I could scribe it. With the help of men I knew like cheep beer helping me getting the metal on the jig. The first piece was cut and tacked in place. One of the old wooden boat builder I like to talk to was always saying building a boat always show her the same love. Don’t do for one side with out showing her other side the same love. So now I had one peace of metal on each side. As I have been saying the criticism was all way there. I was working out at the boat when a man road up on a bicycle telling me he was a boat builder and people at the bar down town had sent him out there. You could tell from the way he was talking he had come from a bar. He looked around at what I was doing and said. You know how to make a spider template. I didn’t say anything. He said, “Can I use some of that old plywood over there?” I shock my head and he went at it. Went in my little shop and stared running plywood on my old table saw I got running cutting out strips plywood. Stared hunting clamps and screws. Went over and clamped a piece of plywood the the chime bar and scribbled it with a block of wood. Back in the shop to the band saw a woman gave me cleaning out her garage that was broke that I fixed, Cut the wood complaining about needed another beer. Came back and clamped it to the frame at the chime bar. Back to get a straight piece and camped it the the metal I had tacked up. I was just watching wondering if I needed to just tell him to leave. He put strips between the two pieces and two pieces like an X. Me still just watching he said, “Help me take this down.” We did and he placed on the metal l had laying on the ground. Got some soap stone and market it telling me no matter how much bend you have when you lay this on your metal it will bend back in place. Still complaining about needed a beer we cut it and when we put it in place it fit. I told him we needed to go back to Provision Company Restaurant and I would buy him a beer. We didn’t need to go get beer and him set out and drink that even riding a bicycle if the law stop him he could be charged with DUI there in Southport. Then, he told me he had been building metal boats for years working in a boat yard in Florida and designed to try commercial fishing. Designed him self a sailing fishing boat. Hadn’t worked out that well. This had stared in Jimmy Carter days with getting away from burning oil. Going back to sailing ships and bicycles. What he showed me was a big help but how do you know what the next fool coming out there is going to be doing. Never living in a town with all these people it was a never ending thing with how people think. When I say the metal was going on slow was now the the talk around town how slow I was. No one considered we had to make the money to buy what we needed and live. This was not a hard time living like this with us living on our sail boat we came there on and staying at the little house some time one house back from the river there in Southport we had fixed up. Watching ships coming in. On foggy night hearing the horns as they past slowly by out there some where in the fog. Before I knew it several years had past by. The hull was taking shape but no where near finished. Being raised on a farm and always living out in the country even on the jobs we had worked I stayed away from other people lives as far I could but here other people lives was just there and you had to deal with it. There in the little house next to our boat the man moved out and a family moved in. They had a little boy maybe four years old that cried a lot. I stared buying little toys and taking him with me some. Now I was in a relationship with this kid taking care of him a lot. He was a cute kid. Really smart and all boy. Impossible to just mind my on business with this kid there. Even though we still had our sailboat and the little house down town it was just too much always dreaming about sailing away. When the deck frames were mostly there we would throw a tarp over the bow, make us a bed on a sheet of plywood and a piece of foam and slip out there and sleep on our boat and dream. Dream about how she would handle and where we could go. Dream and worry how we could just get her in the water. With us slipping out there we were worried that someone that was against us would find out we was sleeping out there some and get the law involved. As the deck went on it was finely looking like a boat. I climbed the tree beside the boat are on top of the building to look every day. It was taking so long to build the boat that boat builder that showed me how to make a spider template told me let her rust . The rust will take the mill scale of but when it get a little rust on her paint it with cheap oil base paint. This will stop the rust long enough to work on her. Doing all this I had a couple of people that wanted to weld some to keep there hand in to it. This was great but hard to get them to weld it the way the boat builder said it had to be welded. No weld over two inches and move to another place preferably on the other side of the boat. They said this was crazy. Several other welders said this was to keep the metal from warping. I told them I needed help but my way are the high way. I finely won and she was slowly taking shape as time was passing by. Taking care of the kid next door buying him his first bicycle. Arguing with me he needed training wheel. Me saying, no you can set on the seat and hold it up. With in a few days he us cranking away. Always telling his grandmother I was messing with him with me having him feeling to see if he was growing a tail he like to climb trees so much and he would feel himself before he thought about it to see. One of the cute thing about this kid, and if I was taking care of him and needed to go the the marina to look at a job or do something, I would get a small jar of latex paint and a small brush and there tell him go find you a rock. He would sat there and paint a rock till I was through. There may still be painted rocks there with, people wondering why anyone would want to paint a rock. I’m sure they never think about it being a Cute kid that loved doing things.

                                       The Adventure of Life Goes On

This is when the hull was beginning to look like a boat.