The Old Folks Home

[dsqard]

ChickenCanoe that is funny that you actually had the stereotypical KP duty experience of peeling potatoes. By the time I did basic training at Ft. Dix in NJ, I think they were using flaked potatoes so no more peeling potatoes. The dreaded job when I was on KP duty was pots and pans and the "easy" job was cleaning the dining hall after each meal. The first time I had KP duty, I had dining room which was easy for me because I left a fast food job to join the military. The second time I had pots and pans. I really didn't mind that though because like I said, we had been in the field in tents with no showers for almost a week. I would have gladly stayed in the "rear" and done KP duty for the rest of that field work but they took us back the following morning after KP duty. We had to go into a classroom where everyone was taking off all their cold weather stuff (it was Feb/Mar in NJ so it was pretty cold). That was an interesting smell to say the least. I never did like field duty when I was in the military. I learned to use baby wipes and do "b**ch baths" out of my helmet to help keep clean and not smell too bad but you never feel clean until you can shower. I actually had to go to the field when I was about five months pregnant with my daughter. That was an experience too. Crawling out of a pup tent in the middle of the night in the middle of the woods (I was at Ft. Lewis, WA) to find a bush to use. What fun

 

[apteryx]

Sounds similar. Ours was 96 acres and now I have 1. The farm was 100 miles from my job. I could have afforded to buy it but not the farm and a place to live close to work. I knew people that lived out there and worked where I did but 60 hours a week work and 25 + hours travel time was just too much in my mind. If my math was correct, that would have given me about 2 hours a day plus Sunday to cook, eat, shower, do farm chores, etc.. And then I had Sunday free at the time. Looking back, I should have figured it out.
It was a shame to give up on nearly 20 years of work on the place.

I went from close to 200 acres and now live on about 1/3 of an acre. Our farm had been in the family for 80 years. I was in college 4 hours away and my oldest sister lived a short 2 hour flight away. The commute would have been terrible for both of us. I don't miss the cold wet winters or the brutally hot, dry summers, but I do miss the space, the freedom and the process of raising large animals and watching them improve over successive generations.

 

[tnspursfan09]

DD playing with the babies.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

Quote:
My first day in the army was September 5 and our bus got to Fort Leonard Wood at about 8 PM. After orientation they assigned us to our reception station barracks where we would spend the first week getting vaccinations, taking tests and learning things like close order drill. It gets cold in the Ozarks at night even in September. They made us keep all the windows open (I surmise to limit bacterial growth). The open window was right at my head on the top bunk. Needless to say I caught a cold that first night. With the rigorous physical activity and constant lack of sleep, I never got well. It got worse all the way through basic. To prevent malingerers, if one wants to go to the dispensary for an illness, they would harass you to the point that it was less hassle to just deal with the illness or injury. One could only request medical care at morning formation.
Every day I felt worse and worse. It got so bad that I would fall asleep in formation and once I fell asleep marching. I was at a field class on the LAW (light anti-tank weapon). The lecturer was the most monotone speaker imaginable and he put me right to sleep. Busted, I had to spend the last hour of class in the front leaning rest position. At that moment, I decided that at morning formation, I would request to go to medical. After the LAW class, we prepared to go to bivouac. As we were about to load onto the cattle cars, word came from battalion that it was our company's turn to provide soldiers for the next day's KP. The drill sergeants and officers were upset that not everyone would experience the first night of bivouac training. As luck would have it, they always went in alphabetical order and I was among the 9 guys to go back to the barracks for that and the next night since KP was from about 4 AM to 6 PM and would be too late to truck us out since we wouldn't be able to find them at night,so we were to go out the morning after.
On a side note, our company was housed in some of the very old wooden WWII era barracks. There was one platoon housed in each building. Also, as luck would have it, my building had no heat or hot water the entire time I was in basic. The furnace and hot water heater were both broken. It got quite cold at night and cold showers just made a sick person feel worse. Worse yet, we had perfectly good, brand new, long underwear neatly rolled in our lockers and we weren't allowed to wear them. We had two wool blankets but could only use one. When they woke us up every morning, everyone had to be wearing a white t-shirt and white boxers. On the coldest night, it was 28F inside the barracks when we woke up.
When we went back for KP, since we weren't closely monitored because our drill sergeants were in the field, we all decided we would sleep in another platoon's barracks. So for the first time in basic, I had 2 consecutive nights with hot showers and slept in a warm building. I drudged my way through KP, enjoyed another warm night and when we lined up for formation the next morning, I informed them that I had to go to medical. They were so mad, steam was coming out of their ears but I wouldn't back down no matter how they got in my face. It was about a 1/4 mile walk to the dispensary where they weeded out the malingerers from the truly ill. My fever was over 102 (and probably had been for a long time). They then transferred me to the hospital. Not the new brick hospital. They determined that I had an acute respiratory disease and they had several wards just for that problem in the WWII vintage wooden hospital. I was in there about 5 days. There were actually cracks in the walls to the outside with light and cold air entering. Instead of complete bed rest, we each had to do cleaning tasks like mopping the floor and cleaning the latrine.
Each morning they would put a table at the entrance to the wing. A doctor would sit on the other side of the table. We'd line up at the table and they'd take our temperature. The doctor would ask a question or 2 and then either release us or send us back into the ward. After 5 days of no improvement, the doctor's prescription was for me to take a cold shower, then lay on top of the blankets shirtless. 3 hours later, they took my temperature. It was about 97. They declared me cured and released me back to my unit. On the plus side, I did have (except for KP day) several days of much needed rest AND I had missed my unit's entire bivouac. I actually, though still quite ill, I felt stronger than I had since I went in.
The other guys told me that on the first night it rained and they all got lost in the woods.
In one's backpack, there is a shelter half. It has to be mated with another soldier's shelter half to make a whole floorless pup tent. Some of the shelter halfs had snaps, some had buttons. If you couldn't find someone with the appropriate mating half, you were out of luck and had to sleep under the stars. They said that about 2/3s of them didn't have shelter the first night. I believe a night sleeping in the cold rain would have been the last nail in my coffin.
They took me from the hospital to the site of that day's training where I would meet up with my unit returning from bivouac.
The assault phase of individual tactical training had a course on a high hill, slope and valley. There were logs, fences, trenches and other hiding places arranged in lines from the top of the hill to the bottom. We were lined from the top of the hill to the bottom behind the first obstacle. On their command we would all go over that obstacle, run and dive behind the next. This is with a full pack, rifle and steel pot. We had to run the course twice. It had been raining most of the time I was in the hospital. I noticed that the trench at the bottom of the hill was completely full of water. I was thrilled to be at the top of the hill. The thrill didn't last long. The next run through, I was lined up at the bottom of the hill. When given the command to jump from behind the log and move to the trench, I had to dive into that ice cold water and I was completely submerged. The rest of the day we were standing around on the top of that windy hill, soaking wet.
I had bronchitis for several years after getting out of the army.

 

[ChickenCanoe]

I went from close to 200 acres and now live on about 1/3 of an acre. Our farm had been in the family for 80 years. I was in college 4 hours away and my oldest sister lived a short 2 hour flight away. The commute would have been terrible for both of us. I don't miss the cold wet winters or the brutally hot, dry summers, but I do miss the space, the freedom and the process of raising large animals and watching them improve over successive generations.

I think we'll both have a nice farm again some day.

 

[dsqard]

ChickenCanoe I know we were at basic many years apart but it is so funny to see what was the same and what was different between our experiences. Different? The housing I was in during basic was newer than yours and the men's issue undergarments were brown not white. They didn't issue undergarments to women. We were given a clothing allowance at the beginning of basic to purchase five white bras and at least seven pairs of white "granny" panties. You had to have the white stuff in your drawer neatly folded or rolled for inspections. The same? No mercy for malingerers. Now I understand some people will use "sick call" to get out of doing their work but making it almost impossible to go on sick call and then following doctor's orders was interesting. I went on sick call once when I sprained my ankle mainly because running on it was very painful. I was given a no running, no marching profile for a few days. I didn't have to run but no marching apparently meant no marching in formation to my drill sergeants. So on a "ruck march" I didn't have to be in the formation but I did have to keep up with the formation to the side with my full pack on my back. I did it though because I wasn't going to be labeled a malingerer. BTW, when I went to my AIT is when I got to experience the WWII wooden open bay barracks. At least we had heat and hot water.

 

[chickisoup]

Evening everyone

we have an online "trash and treasure" auction that's run by a nice guy in the nearest town. It can be a really crazy mix of junk at times but there is often a good bargain, and occasionally a real treasure, to be had. Anyway, last week I won, for a whole $1, a box of old cookbooks. I picked them up, along with some other stuff, when we went to town today. Sitting here digging thru the box, (all but one of the old cookbooks is a paperback), were a couple that made me smile. One was entitled, no kidding, "Flavor Sparkling Recipes with Tang". Some of their "recipes" and tips for using Tang made me laugh, others made me cringe. Tang duck sauce? Yum!!!

The other is just sweet. It's one of those like we have all seen before. typed up on an old typewriter, photocopied onto manila paper and stapled together with a decorated cardstock cover. My guess is this one might have been lovingly put together for possibly a family reunion or similar gathering. Handwrittten inside the cover is the inscription "Elaine's mother and friends receipts". For those who don't already know, recipes were once called receipts many years ago. The little book is titled "grandmother's Favorite Recipes".

The first page begins, "Grandma's recipes. Out of all of the hundreds of grandma's recipes on cards and copied in books it was difficult to choose a few of the favorite ones for a book like this. First, I picked the ones I remembered she made often and some of my favorites. These are marked with an asterisk. My next choices are the dirtiest ones-the smudges must be an indication they were used often." She later goes on to list "do you remember her ----made for-----?" naming several family members and "dad" more than once. She also explains the names by some of the recipes are the people who gave that recipe to grandma. There is a typed date of 9-10-88 but I suspect the "receipts" are far older. How can I resist but to at least try a few of these?

 

[superchemicalgirl]

How can I resist but to at least try a few of these?

You can't! Please post how they go (unless it's the Tang).

 

[gryeyes]

Well, let's see..... I am now convinced I do not need goats, thank you for making THAT clear, folks. SCG is obviously a person with much more patience than I possess.

<I><*waving at the far away but happy Oz*></I>

I didn't get around to starting a veggie garden this year and probably won't. <I><*sigh*></I>

I am a fibromyalgia sufferer, pretty much due to the aggressive course of chemotherapy treatment for breast cancer 11 years ago. Two years ago, the day after I retired, I got my medical marijuana "license." (Kinda frowned upon, legal or not, working for a law enforcement agency, y'know.) Certain people around here - this IS one of those counties with that cash crop as a major industry - think I should grow my own, but that's not gonna happen.

A big, nice planter pot like the one pictured some posts ago would be great for growing water lilies. They only need 16-24 inches of water to flourish. I started some in a stock tank.

 

[bamadude]

Why would u not grow ur own? Its legal and beneficial. Its a wonderful plant