The Conservative Cave
Current Events => General Discussion => Topic started by: franksolich on June 22, 2008, 06:53:15 PM
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The old man whose place I've been watching the past four weeks returned today, about a week earlier than expected. His daughter and two grandsons, from California, came with him to spend a few weeks, and already the local gossip as that the old guy is going to sell the property, and move to California.
This is the guy who sold me the automobile I had before the current one, and for an eminently reasonable price; the vehicle whose trunk was filled with busted shotguns and rifles.
Like our esteemed colleague John C. Calhoun here, the old man carefully cultivates a public image of being an old grouch, a curmudgeon, whereas really, he's a nice guy. He cultivates this image because he has a lot of money, every cent for which he had worked to get, but if he lets his real self show, people and primitives might ask him for some of it.
His wife died about five years ago, and after that, the old man sort of lost interest in things; he leased out all of his land excepting for the acreage on which the house and some outbuildings sit. His two sons and his son-in-law aren't interested in farming.
In his absence, we had some of the most violent storms in recent history, along with innumerable tornadoes and that one big flood, and things got considerably discombobulated around his place.
I had been concerned, because even though at the time it seemed I had one week more than I really did, that the town drunk, who had been hired to clear away the downed and busted trees and the brush, it seemed slow going. When I checked on Tuesday, it seemed only 10% of the job had been done, and I was getting nervous.
But then when I checked on Thursday (someone else checks the place on Wednesdays), voila! the property was as clean as a hound's tooth, cleared of all stray forestry.
I've noticed this propensity with the town drunk; he sets out to do a job, and gets a small portion of it done, and then quits, probably because of some sort of thirst. Then later he returns, under the most inhospitable of outdoors conditions (such as mowing this place in the middle of the night), and the rest of the job is magically completely done, and so quickly too.
I was also getting nervous, because when I checked on Tuesday, the destroyed pick-up truck was still there.
But by Thursday, the insurance company had towed it away.
The grass was mowed, everything all clean and pristine.
The four dogs and the old cat had weathered well, despite that one four-day hiatus away from a home familiar to them.
The old man, his daughter, and his two grandsons came here today, so the old man could write me a check (and fill out a form 1099). He seemed more animated than he had when he left in late May, and said I had done my usual good job of taking care of things.
I suspect he's going to sell, something that takes a year, a year and a half, usually.
After his wife had died, he had cleared out all the sentimentalities, giving them to the sons and daughter, and the place basically became some sort of near-empty cabin; a comfortable and modern one, yes, but more of a cabin than a home. The only things of his wife still there are her luxury motor-vehicle, which to him is just another car, and the old cat and the old mastiff.
Now, he's rather attached to his livestock, but really, the old cat and the old mastiff probably don't have more than a year, a year and a half, of life left in them.
California's no place for pets, but he does like the collie, and would probably take the collie with him.
Once the old man announces for public consumption that he's moving, I think I'll lay claims on the two black laboradors (which are actually brown in color). Law-enforcement and local people (including the old man himself) are always harping on me, alleging that "watch-cats" are not enough for a deaf person out in the middle of nowhere with no standard means of communication.
Well, I think I do fine, perfectly fine, but if it alleviates concern, sure, I'll take the two dogs, and train them to "hear" for me, no problem at all. But remember, as things take time, this isn't anything likely to happen until winter or next spring.
We'll see how it goes.
The old man reads the same sorts of things I do, and it's likely he's been reading of the evolution of land-use here in this part of Nebraska (generally, basically, the northeastern one-fourth of the state).
At one time, Nebraska was the third-largest dairy-producing state in the union, after only Wisconsin and New York. But the administration of the Incompetent One, which brought many other woes to rural and small-town America, changed that, as the area was looted of dairy livestock and relocated to, of all places, California.
And so now Nebraska's only 31st in the country, in dairy products.
Well, those people who moved all the cows out to California have apparently since learned California is no place to raise dairy cattle, and are slowly shifting them back here.
They should have never left in the first place--this place is a paradise for dairy, even better than Wisconsin and New York. It has always been obvious, since the Beginning of Time, that this place was specifically designed and intended by God and by Nature, that it raise dairy cattle.
Of course, most dairy operations are big business, and we all know how the primitives loathe big business and entertain a fondness, a nostalgia, for the old family farm.
One CAN go back to the Good Old Days--in this case the Good Old Days of the family farm--but ONLY if one at the same time goes back to the taxes assessed in those Good Old Days.
Taxes kill; a reality Democrats, liberals, and primitives fail to grasp.
Confiscatory inheritance taxes killed the beloved family farm of yore.