other dog

Hey Red, nice to hear from you!

If you did I don't remember, you should probably tell us again.

Yeah, US Steel had plants all over, all were bad. Homestead was actually one of the better ones I loaded at, but I only loaded there once. Gary, In. was the worst, and Fairless Works was a close second, of the ones I loaded at. I think a requirement to work at US Steel was that you had to be an asshole, but that seems to be the case at a lot of steel mills. Armco, now AK Steel, was just about as bad.

I wondered how bad my luck was going to get, but... I had the gout so bad this week that I could hardly walk, I believe because of getting too hot on several occasions last week and almost melting. I couldn't work all week. Went to the Dr. in Appomattox Tuesday and had to use my left foot on the brake in the car because my foot hurt so bad. If you've never had the gout, the pain is excruciating. I'd only had it a couple of times before, and never anywhere near this bad, or that lasted this long. She gave me a prescription for some medicine, some pills that you took 2 of, then waited an hour and took one more. Then you had to wait 3 days before you could do it again. My insurance would not cover it, so I paid $20 cash for one dose, 3 pills. Took them, they did nothing. So I called the doctor back on Wednesday, told her it did nothing, so she said she would call in something else. Went back to Altavista, picked up the prescription, this time for 21 pills. Insurance covered it this time too. I had to take 6 pills the first day, 5 the next, then 4 and so on. You have to stop taking it gradually like that, or bad things will happen. By Thursday morning my foot was still sore, still had the big red spot where the big toe bone connects to the foot bone, but the pain had eased enough so I thought I could go to work. So I called headquarters, and they had a load going to Salinas, Kansas that delivered Monday. That was great. I would stay home Thursday, go load yesterday, then hit the road, try to get over around Charleston, W.V, then have all day today and tomorrow to get to Salinas, plenty of time. But as I was getting ready to leave yesterday- almost ready to walk out the door in fact- I went to get a pair of lace-up boots out of the closet because I thought it wouldn't hurt my foot as bad getting them on and off as my pull on boots did. And I noticed that the laces were wet. So I turned the light on in the closet and saw water all over the floor. The hot water tank was leaking- of all the rotten luck, and on top of everything else! So I had to call headquarters, put off loading until Monday, go to Lowes, get a water heater, got the wrong one- the water lines needed to connect on the side of it, but they went in the top- so I go all the way back to Lowe's, which is in Madison Heights, to get some longer connector hoses so I can hook the water lines up. And they don't make longer lines than what I had, 2 feets. I needed one about 6 feet long. So I got another tank instead, with the connections on the side this time. Brought it home, and it's just enough bigger than the old one that it wouldn't fit in the little space. I could hook everything up, but instead of being back in the little corner it would be sitting out in the closet. That was unacceptable, so I put both heaters back in the boxes. Or I should say what was left of the box the first one was in, because I pretty much destroyed it getting it open. This time I measured, researched, looked on the interweb, and found the heater I needed. It said 5 were available at the Madison Heights store. So I loaded both heaters on the pickup, went back to Lowe's again. Got my money back for the two wrong ones, but they did not have the right one. They checked the Lynchburg store and said they had 6 available. So I said "I looked on the internet before I left home and it said that you had 5 available, but you don't have any." So they called the Lynchburg store, and they did have one, so I drove over there and grabbed it, came back home and put it in and hooked everything back up and turned the water back on. After I was satisfied that there were no leaks, I had to put the panel back in place and put all the stuff back in the closet. After all this running around it was after midnight by the time I got to bed. And I was thinking, man, I sure had some rotten luck this week. And then I got to thinking, about how lucky I was. If I had not decided to get those other shoes, and walked out of the door, I would have been gone until the end of next week- with water leaking in the floor the whole time. That would have been a real disaster, probably costing me thousands of dollars. I was sure lucky!

Especially that Superbird, you'd be set for life if you just had that one.

And pickup trucks. I wanted a newer truck than my 2002 Ranger, but not brand new, like in the 2008 to 2012 range, with enough power to cruise up 81 200mph, so I could keep up with the rest of the traffic, but they're all just crazy high, even with well over 100,000 miles on them.

It also said that two of the giant Macks were sold to a coal mine in Alaska, but nothing about the rest. I wonder if any of them still exist?

I agree. Union greed put many trucking companies out of business, steel mills out of business, and are the reason what should be a $10,000 car costs $30,000. What ever happened to an honest days pay for an honest day's work?

Montana is a beautiful place. When I win the lottery...

Happy birthday!..i'm trying to catch up on BMT.

Happy birthday, sorry i'm late.

I like the one that has Obama's picture on the back, with the hose coming right out of his mouth.

Did you say Winfall?..I saw a City of Winfall maintenance worker doing some work on the Winfall sign the other day.

Happy birthday!..sorry, i'm a little late too.

The fighting reminded me of a place near here on rt. 501, a few miles south of Lynchburg, just called "The 501 Club". It was just a redneck beer-joint place, been closed for years, but there's some kind of business still there. I was only there one time, in the early 80's, but the running joke about the place was that they asked you at the door if you had a knife or a gun, and if you didn't they would loan you one.