Tired of Farm Equipment yet?

No? Good, because TC and I went over to where they're going to have the sale Saturday to see what-all was there.

First off, I have a couple of views of some of the odds and ends in the third row.


NH268 and a #12 Massey...


a NH 269 and I think a Ford 530.

Nothing that I'm particularly interested in, unless they are damn near giveaways. I'd like to find a newer square baler than these. Unfortunately, the best looking square baler there is a Ford 532 (it was back down the row and I didn't take a picture). New Idea built them for Ford, but they were never real popular around here and parts may be an issue. I'm thinking I'd best stick with New Holland.

Then we have a couple of things I am interested in, provided my banker is in a good mood.

An M&W roller. I don't know anyone who has one, but from what I understand, there is less crap on 'em to tear up. Advantage is that it'll bale anything, even corn stalks, but it is a fixed chamber, soft core baler. I'm stuck with whatever size bale it makes. On the other hand...


there is also this Gehl 1400, which is the same baler I am accustomed to, with different paint. Advantage to this is I have many spare parts laying around. A balers worth in fact. Disadvantage is that it is a closed throat baler, so it's harder to start a bale with, but at least I do know what I'd be getting into with this one.

An old McCormick (IH) drill that TC and I are thinking about going in together on. It has a small seed box, so it can be used for clover as well as Ryegrass, Rye, Fescue or whatever else we want to plant.


And finally, a couple of "DuPont" restorations.


A 4020 Deere and


an Allis 180. Both machines are good workhorses, but I believe the Deere is the better tractor of the two. The Allis tractors from that era had transmission issues. I would have liked to have seen them not repainted, rather than dressed in their going-to-town finery.

We stopped by a dealer on the way out who just happened to have a decent looking NH273 sitting out back. Again, this is what I am used to, but they're a mite steep on it. They're asking $1500. I told 'em that was a bit much for a 30 year old baler that had sat outside all winter with hay still in the bale chamber and offered 'em $700. For a minute there, I was afraid he was going to take it... then he threatened to throw rocks at me. I told him I'd be by Saturday to talk to him again. He was in a huddle with his partner when we left... I'm thinking I may be able to bring it home for a thousand dollars. We'll see. I'm still hoping to talk WB into selling me the NH275 I used last year.

Speaking of

Mad Dogs and Englishmen. I was told several years agone that there was a song by that title. Anybody ever heard of it? Or was someone just pulling my leg. I 'spose I could use the magic of google to look for myself, but I'm too lazy.

Saturday

I am going to a big equipment auction. Hopefully to find a couple of things I am in desperate need of.

There will probably be much wailing, knashing of teeth and rending of garments here come Saturday night.

Or not. Equipment sales are worse than Ebay. You never know what something will bring when somebody gets the fever and can't keep their hands down.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen

Most of the stories I tell are about local "characters" who I've known all my life. The Englishman is an exception to that. He moved over here and took up farming (and a couple of other business ventures) after retiring from his job as some sort of corporate muckty-muck. With the exception of five or six years when he lived in Kenya back in the 50's, he'd been a city boy most of his life.

He was very interested in history and I would often go visit with him and we would sit on his deck and talk about everything under the sun for hours on end. He would also repair to the deck in the Summertime with a cooler full of beers and a bug zapper... He said "When in Rome..." He called that his "redneck entertainment."

He was the only person I've ever met who named his critters that were freezer-bound. Of course he named 'em things like Sir Loin and Lamb Chops and so on... I tried to explain to him that we don't name 'em if we're going to eat 'em over here, but it never fazed him.

He'd starting wearing shorts as soon as it got the least bit warm. Nothing unusual in that, except he had some truly hideous scars on his legs from an accident with a 9N Ford and a sicklemower when he lived in Kenya. The men working with him carried him to town on the tractor after the accident. The town was like thirty miles away. I'm amazed he survived that.

He absolutely hated Germans. He was old enough to remember the Blitz and having to move along with all the other children, away to the countryside to avoid the air raids. He once told me that he and his friends were walking to school one morning and found an HE-111 that the RAF had shot down the night before. They got to rooting around in the wreckage and found the severed finger of one of the crewmen. So, boys being boys, they took it to school with 'em. And got their asses busted for their trouble. More for playing in the plane wreckage than bringing the finger to school. For some reason that story always made me think of the scene with the severed tongue in The Wind and the Lion.

He was as parsimonious as any sterotypical Scotsman. I often accused him of being a Scot, which never failed to get him riled. "Bluidy Jocks!" He would say "That's who we get to fight our wars y'know." More than a bit of truth to that. He was an old school imperialist and was not the least bit ashamed of it.

He passed away several years ago. I miss the old goat. He was fun to talk with and even more fun to argue with. He and his wife introduced me to Billy Connelly, Steptoe & Son, Scotch Eggs, HP sauce and Colemans mustard.

Shortly after he died, his wife called me one day and said she was moving back home (she was never crazy about living here, she was very much a city girl) and asked if I were interested in his books. Of course I jumped at that. Doubled my library in one day. Even though many of the books were on subjects I wasn't particularly interested in, I was glad to get 'em, just because they belonged to Eric. So I guess you could say I still have a piece of him around, even though I don't have him around to argue with anymore.

I'm thinking

of buying some generic Cheerios and selling them on Ebay packaged as "Donut Seeds."

Think I'll make any money?

In other news

For those of you who were keeping up with the saga of DR's love life and lack thereof he let slip over the weekend the real reason he finally ran his ex-wife off. You could say that this was indeed the straw what broke the camels back.

The last time she was living with him, he found a half empty trash bag mixed in with the stuff to go to the dump one day. Something possesed him to see what she was throwing away and in it he found his hat.

Now, this isn't just any hat. He's had it for nearly twenty years. His mother gave it to him when he was sixteen and it's as much a part of him as his nose and ears.

That's why he finaly sent her packing. Not the drugs, the screwing around, the stealing or the fact that she'd ran off and left him four or five times (carrying off everything she could lay hands on each time), but the fact that she was trying throw away a part of him.

DR called me tonight, he brought a dog home from the pound today. A little Sheltie female that was scheduled to be put down today. He sounded kind of down in the dumps about it.

I think he feels like he's betrayed Bingo by bringing home another dog.

I have found

A 7610 4wd. Close enough to drive home. For around 12k, which ain't bad. The guy that has it doesn't need it anymore and wants a smaller machine. I am in a conundrum now. I am on the verge of having a credit card and my truck paid for. I don't know if I want to pile on more debt when I'm close to seeing daylight for the first time in a couple of years.

Time to go have a heart-heart with my banker so we can have the good debt vs. bad debt discussion again. I'm pretty sure this would come under the "Good Debt" heading. I just don't know if it's wise right now.

Maybe I should go buy lottery tickets?

Further proving what an idiot I can be

I noticed back in the Fall that the Ferguson had a minor coolant leak. When I replaced the radiator last spring, I replaced the bottom hose but not the top one (I'd actually bought one, but it was, of course, the wrong size). Since the upper radiator hose was original equipment I assumed it had a pinhole in it and didn't think much about it since I wasn't using the tractor that much. I figured that, come Spring I'd take care of it when I do all mine little maintenance chores.

Well, I pulled the hood off Thursday evening to see where my leak was coming from and it wasn't the hose... The last time I had the hood off of it (last summer) I didn't pay any attention to what I was doing when I put the muffler back on. I put it on backwards, which over time wore two lovely 1/2 inch holes in the top of my-brand-new-shipped-all-the-way-from-Ireland-by-way-of-California radiator.

Waaaaaaay too beeg to use the wondrous JB weld on. I'm just glad the holes were in the top so bigger brother could braze it without me having to pull the damn thing. I hate pulling the radiator on that thing, it's a freaking nightmare. I think the engineer who designed it had issues... Like maybe his wife had ran off with a tractor mechanic.

But at least it is fixed now, without too much of a problem. Now if I can just get the Deutz to crank without rolling it down a steep hill...

Egad!

Fraser has a new Flashman book coming out. The first complete Flashman novel in 11 years! Apparently available now in the UK (there are about four or five signed copies on Ebay right now) it won't be available for we poor benighted hicks here in the colonies until November.

I 'spose I could order one from Amazon.uk, but for the time being I'm watching one of the signed ones on Ebay.

Parts

Well, my knuckle/gearbox housing for the tedder is going to run me about $350. Not as bad as I thought, although I do have two more quotes, one for $407 and one for $550. Luckily it's broken on the right side. The left side is no longer available.

I'm going to wait a week or so before ordering anything. There are two auctions coming up where I may get lucky and find another tedder to rob parts off of, or use this one for parts.

Speaking of that option, the Agco dealer down the road has one, same model, field-ready (he claims) that he'll take $800 for (Had I known that before Saturday, I probably wouldn't have bought this one, but the last one I priced was $1800). That may be what I end up doing. Park this one in the weeds somewhere out of the way and rob parts off of it as I need them.

Shrinking Leather?

I decided to wear my leather bomber to work today. I haven't worn it in about three years...

Dogged if it ain't shrunk! Who'd have thought leather could shrink like that? 'cause y'know it's not because I've grown any. Nope, couldn't be that.

Gladiator

I watched the movie for the first time a couple of weeks ago and thought it was pretty fair, except for some of the typical Hollywood monkeying with history. This morning I found an excellent article on History Today (registration required, but it's well worth it) that covers most of the things that bothered me about the movie.

The whole premise of Rome going back to a Republic after being an Empire for a couple hundred years? I'm not that big a student of Ancient Rome, but I knew that was horseshit just from the standpoint of human nature.

Still a good movie, but like nearly every "historical" epic ever made, don't trust it for facts.

Drat!

Two of the wheels on the David Bradley are rusted out around the valve stem. I've got to come up with six rims now. It could be worse, at least I don't have to find eight rims.

Just to get sweetie riled up

I came dragging home even more rusty broken junk today...

I went by a local equipment place looking for a four dollar sprayer part and ended up buying an old Deutz Fahr 17' hay tedder. I've been wanting a bigger tedder for several years now, but it was never in the budget. I looked at this particular little diamond in the rough last year and they were asking about four hundred for it. It is missing the driveshaft and has a broken gearbox housing that will have to be replaced or welded, I'd much prefer replacing it.

Not that don't trust bigger brothers welding, because I do trust his handiwork. But I'm not for sure how much good it'll do beings how the gearbox is cast rather than milled. Cast iron/steel tends to become even more brittle after you hit with heat. Something about altering the molecules or some such. Metalworking class was a loooong time ago.

Anyhow, today I saw it was still sitting there with the weeds grown up taller that it was and played dumb and asked what they'd take for it.

He called the owner (this was one of those consignment deals) and asked him what he'd take. The guy kept saying "make me an offer" which is something I hate to do, because it usually gets somebody pissed off.

He got off the phone and said "How's a hunnert dollars sound?"

"Will you take a check?"

I didn't exactly yank his arm off, but I came close. The last one I priced that was field ready was $1800. It will cost me about a hundred to build a driveshaft and I figure the housing will run me about another four, unless I can find one in a boneyard. So theoretically I will have about five hundred and some time in it. Not that much if bigger brother welds it up.

I also found some sheet metal for TC's 165 Ferguson too. Got him a hood and a nosecone for $25. That's about 600 bucks worth of sheetmetal. Needless to say, he was very happy with me today.

They also had a Ford that I would have been very content to bring home. Similar to this one, sans cab.



Unfortunately he's asking 15K for it, which isn't a bad price, it's just about 12 more than I can afford right now. 'sides, I'd druther have a 10 series. They've got a little more metal in 'em.

The Dukes of North Georgia

I mentioned recently that CMT was running the Dukes of Hazzard five days a week now. Surely that must be a sign of impending doom. I heard a tale the other day that is related to the Dukes, albeit in a bizarre fashion.

We have a local attorney who occasionally pops up on the national radar screen who I shan't name, so we'll call him Atticus Finch. Now, he's a pretty good guy (even for a lawyer), often taking cases no one else will touch, knowing that he isn't going to make much, if any money out of it. He handled something for a local fellow a couple of years ago who paid him with two goats... He had also handled a case for a guy who couldn't pay and in lieu of cash had given Atticus a car. More specifically, a replica of the General Lee. He left it parked outside his office until he could figure out what to do with it.

At this particular time, he had one of those cases that had him on TV quite a bit. He was defending a kind of loopy client in a capital case. We'll call the client Carl Childers. Now, as I've said, Carl was a loopy hermit and he was just a wee little bit paranoid.

One morning Carl calls Atticus at his office and tells him that there were a bunch of people with TV cameras up at his place and he wanted Atticus to come run 'em off.

Naturally Atticus wanted 'em gone too because the trial was still going on, so he grabbed his jacket and headed for the door, only to realize that his wife had came by earlier and borrowed his car.

So as you can see, he didn't have much choice... He hopped in the General Lee and drove over to Carl's to run the media off.

I wonder what in the world was going through the minds of the media folks when they saw that car coming up the driveway? Here they are at the home of a guy who is looked upon as something of a local nutcase and here comes his lawyer driving up in the General Lee...

I wonder if they had cameras rolling when he arrived? And I wonder if he blew the horn coming up the driveway? You've got to admit it would be hilarious to see a lawyer come rolling up in that car... Come to think of it, I wonder if the car had the doors welded closed, like the TV version? I can picture him trying to crawl out of this car to run these people off... crawling out of a car can't do much for your dignity when you're trying to speak from a position of authority.

Oh well, only in Georgia...

More wagon information

I've found out that it is a David Bradley running gear. From the time period that it was purchased the paint should be red for the frame and light green (about the same color as Deutz green) for the rims. There is some evidence of stenciling on the frame, but it's doubtful I'll be able to recreate that.

My biggest fear is that the rims are rusted out. here is no way of knowing until I get the old tires off. Unfortunately the rims are an old oddball 5-lug implement type that is hard to find. I'm needing four for the JD wagon. I hate to think what eight will cost me.

Of course he'll take it

especially if it's rusty old junk that needs work!

These words from my bride concerning my newest project.


This is a running gear for a hay wagon that my neighbor Larry gave me over the weekend. His daddy bought it new from Sears and Roebuck in 1951-52 (he doesn't remember exactly). He gave it to me because he knew that I will fix it up and use it.


I do wish I had a picture of it before we loaded it on the trailer... there were about four trees growing through the bed. The bed pretty much disintergrated when he pulled it out of the briar patch. It needs a considerable amount of work, but there is no such thing as too many wagons or trailers when it's time to move hay. If I can get this one and my John Deere wagon rebuilt, that will give me four wagons for this season. I guess I'm on my way to having a collection. One Massey, a Gehl, a John Deere and now this critter. I'm not sure who made these things for Sears, but as you can see in the photo, the tag with the SN# is still intact.

It may not look like much, but a little torch work, sandblasting, paint and new tires will make a world of difference. I will put up photos of the finished wagon if I don't forget.

He said Daddy tried to buy it from him back when I was just a little feller. So that kind of tickled me that he thought to ask me if I wanted it.

Speaking of dogs

I stopped to get gas Saturday at the little StopNRob up by the interstate and noticed a small crowd around a lady standing in the doorway holding a puppy. A really, really cute brown and white, round bellied, blue eyed puppy. She was trying to talk someone into taking the puppy, so I didn't pay much attention to her at first. We don't need any more dogs, three is quite enough.

I stopped short when I heard her say "dead." I drifted a little closer and heard the whole story. She was driving up the interstate and saw this puppy crawling out of a box.

Beside the interstate.

She pulled over and ran back to grab the dog before it could get into traffic. She opened the box and found two puppies in the box that were already dead.

The little fellow that was still alive seems to be ok. She said she'd like to find it a home, but if she couldn't, she would keep it herself. She said something along the lines of "after surviving being thrown out on the interstate it deserves a chance to live." That made me feel a lot better about the little guys prospects. After hearing her story, I would have brought him home with me, no matter how many dogs and cats we already have.

My question is, what kind of sorry low-life piece-of-shit bastard throws a box full of puppies out on the interstate?

Ok fine, you don't want your dogs... Take them to the pound. Leave them on some deserted backroad somewhere... not beside I-75. Give them at least a slim chance at life. There is simply no excuse for this.

And of course it could have been avoided completely by getting their dog fixed. It doesn't cost that much to get it done.

Wonder how they'd like being put in a cardboard box and thrown out by the interstate? I'd be more than happy to help 'em find out how it feels.

Bingo

This is Bingo, DR's dog that came to live with him a few months ago.



Sadly, Bingo is missing. DR has become a fixture at the pound. He's been going over there every morning after work in hopes of finding him. He even neglected to pay his power bill last week in order to have the money at hand to bail Bingo out of doggie jail.

That should tell you a lot about how much he loves that dog. He went without power for three days so that he would have the extra cash to rescue Bingo from the pound. I would have spotted him the money for it, but he doesn't like to ask for help.

Anyway, we've drove around and checked all the nearby roads, so I am fairly confident that he wasn't hit by a car. I tend to think someone has picked him up (he'll get in a truck with just about anybody).

As Bigger Brother pointed out, this has hurt DR worse than his wife leaving him. Mostly because, unlike his ex-wife, the dog actually loved him.

I might

have told this tale before, if so, my apologies.

There was this city feller that moved out into the sticks what raised dogs. Ain't sure what kind of dogs, but they was some kind of sure-nuff fancy-smancy show dogs.

Well, the old man that lived next door to the city feller had himself a pack of old coon dogs, so the two of 'em would occasionally talk dogs together.

One day the city feller asked the old man "What do you feed your hounds? I feed my dogs Purina super-duper pro* dog food."

The old man said "Wayull, I mostly feed 'em turnip greens."

The city feller was aghast! "Turnip Greens! Oh, my dogs wouldn't eat that!"

The old farmer just grinned and said "Mine wouldn't either... the first month."

*Not a real product

Sears and Roebuck

No longer carries mens clothes made by Omar the Tentmaker. Now where in the hell am supposed to find my shirts?

Sad News

I heard by way of Rob Smith that Chris LeDoux has passed away.

Unlike the "Black Hat Brigade" who seem to dominate Country Music these days. He was the real deal.

'nother good one gone.

Go eat a steak today

It's the third annual Eat an Animal for PETA day.

Sorry, but I'm too lazy to do any links.

Bulls, Ropes and Georgia Cowboys

This story is more or less true, but it happened several years ago and the events have gotten cloudy with time and embellishment. I've heard about 20 different versions of it over the years, but most of the facts stay the same, so it's most likely somewhere in the vicinity of the truth, or at least what passes for the truth nowadays.

There's a fellow down the road a ways that used to rodeo in a serious manner. He's still involved in it, but not so much a participant as a promoter these days. Bigger Brother, back when he was younger and more foolish, used to run around with this fellow. That's where I heard this story the first time.

When CL retired from competing in rodeos, he got into another aspect of the sport. Raising roughstock to sell to the companies that put on rodeos.

Primarily bulls. And not just any bulls either. He had some cows that were a Charolais/Brahama cross. I'm talking some mean-ass critters... the kind you don't go into the brush after without a horse, a dog and gun.

Dadgum Braymer's is mean anyway. And just 'cause they're crossbred don't always help their disposition none either.

One day one of his neighbors called him up raising sand because one of his bulls had got out was playing hob with this neighbors fences and garden.

Here's where all the stories conflict. I've heard many different tales about who exactly was with CL when he saddled up his horse and went to retrieve his wayward bovine, but whoever it was, he was in over his head at the cowboying business.

The two of 'em saddled up and went after the bull, found him without too much trouble and started trying to work him out in the open to where they could try to run him home.

Well, he didn't want to go home. CL finally got disgusted and shook out a loop and roped him. Just as pretty as you please.

The bull took umbrage at this. Seems he didn't like having that rope wrapped around his horns. After shaking his head a few times to try and lose the rope, he got mad.

I mean really, really mad. As in crazy as hell Brammer Bull mad.

He went after CL. Now, CL is a pretty good cowboy. He'd handled cows all his life and he'd won some serious money as a roper back in his younger days. So he could pretty well take care of himself when it comes to dealing with outraged bovines.

And it probably helped that he was on the hurricane deck of a pretty good cowhorse.

He played tag with that bull for a few minutes before he decided that either him or the horse was about to get hurt. He started hollering at the fellow that had rode out there with him to "heel him!"

"Heel him!" Heeling, in roper parlance, means to get a rope around the critters back legs. That's pretty much the only way to get a big one down on the ground. And this bull was a big 'un.

I'd say CL probably needed some clean underwear about then, because the boy that was helping him shouted back "I don't know how!"

"Well now'd be a good time to learn!"

After several misses, the other fellow finally managed to get a rope around one back leg. They brought the bull down, which stunned him long enough for CL to make a couple of passes around a convenient telephone pole.

They left him there until they could come back with a stock trailer and a tranquilizer gun.

Well, I pretty well figured as much anyway

I am 16% Idiot.

I am not annoying at all. In fact most people come to me for advice. Of course they annoy the hell out of me. But what can I do? I am smarter than most people.

Take the
Idiot Test
@ FualiDotCom

Although there are many, many people who would disagree.

Thanks to Acidman for the link.

I'm playing with fire here

or possibly my very life...

Street tires + mud + city girl driver =


It may not look like it, but the front axle is bottomed out. This was almost as bad as the time I buried the 933 in a sinkhole. Luckily it didn't take a D-7 Cat to pull her truck out. The trusty rusty 285 Ferguson did the trick, but it did have to grunt and spin the tires a little bit.


She stuck it good. Ordinarily I wouldn't make fun of her for this, except for the fact she's about twenty feet away from where she's buried it before.

Airplanes

Baxter Black tells a story about a friend of his, an older gentleman who is a rancher out in Montana. This feller has a bit of a problem with coyotes, so periodically he would hire a local pilot to carry him around in his plane while he would hang out the door of the plane and shoot 'em.

Well, it seems there was this one time the rancher got a little over anxious and shot the tip off one of the propeller blades. They had to make an emergency landing out in the middle of nowhere, twenty miles from the nearest house. Just as the pilot was getting ready to start the long walk back to town he heard BOOM, BOOM, BOOM from the other side of the plane and goes running around to find the rancher standing there with smoking gun saying "come on sonny, I evened 'em up fer you." He'd shot the tip off the other propeller blade!

Whereupon they climded in and flew back home. Said it was a bumpy ride, but they made it in one piece.

A couple of weeks ago I repeated this tale to DR and Bigger Brother when we were working on the barn. They laughed about it of course, but then brother said "I've got one better than that... you remember JS?" I told that yes I did, then brother proceeded to tell me this tale.

JS had an airplane, I don't recall what kind, but it was a nice 'un. Even had the retractable landing gear. Now JS, like Bigger Brother, was a Millwright. I've been around enough Millwrights, Ironworkers and Boilermakers to know that all them boys has got a screw loose. I reckon it just comes with the job.

JS had a friend, what was a fellow Millwright, who'd never been flying before, so he offered to take him for a ride. The friend agreed so off they went. Everything went smooth and JS's buddy enjoyed the flight.

Til it came time to land.

One of the wheels wouldn't come down and lock. Now, you can land a plane on one wheel, but it plays hob with the paint job... and the wings and the engine and, well you get the picture. So JS commenced to doing all kinds of acrobatics to try shake that wheel enough to make it come on down and lock.

They flew around for thirty minutes and was on the verge of running out of gas when JS's buddy got to rooting around behind the seat and found a set of jumper cables. He opened up the door and started swinging them jumper cables around like he was trying to catch a calf at the National Rodeo finals. He finally got it wrapped around the landing gear strut and commenced to yanking on it. Somehow or another he was able to pull the gear on down and it locked in place. They landed, no worse for wear other than some seriously frayed nerves.

JS put the plane up for sale the next day.

Bought himself a camper when he finally sold it. Said he was done with airplanes.

Words

Big Daddy Possum mentioned Southern speech today in passing, so I thought this would be a could time to throw out a few examples of the local idiom. That's idiom, not idiot. There is a fine distinction there somewhere...

Somewhere. That's a good place to start. Most of the old folks around here say sommers as a sort of shorthand for somewhere.

Example: "I cain't play cards with you boys tonight 'cause I gotta to be sommers else."

Interested. Inn'r-stid. As in "I believe that ole boy is inn'rstid in buyin' them cows from you."

Like. Lack. "How much you like being done with that?"

Like. Almost. "I like t'shot my finger off with that danged ole .44."

Harrow. Hi-arrr, Hire or Harrr (y'gotta roll that "r" a bit). A harrow is a farm implement. I hesitate to call it a plow, because it's really not, nor is it a cultivator. It performs some of the functions of a plow and some of the functions of a cultivator. There are three distinct varieties of harrows. There are Spring-Tooth harrows, Drag harrows and Disk harrows (of which there are subtypes, such as Bog harrows, Offset harrows and Smoothing harrows). The most common type around here is the Disk harrow, which is known far and wide as a Cuttin' Hi-arrr.

"I believe you need to put some new pans (disks) on that cuttin' hi-arrr."

That one used to drive the Englishman crazy. I don't think I've ever mentioned the Englishman. He was a good friend of mine who passed away several years ago. He'd lived in London most of his life, retired from some sort of muckety-muck position at a corporation and moved over here to become a farmer. No kidding. He bought an old Fordson Dexta and planted sweet corn out the wazoo. He loved to sit by the side of the road and sell it. Said he couldn't do that in England, that they'd run him him out of town. I think he mostly did it so he could talk to folks. I seem to be digressing just a bit. I will throw out something else that drove him batty and leave this topic for the time being.

"Here while back." A while ago. "I plumb buried mah truck in t'creek here while back."

He really hated that phrase, mostly because it took him two years to figure out that it could mean last week, or it could mean ten years ago. To someone who isn't a native, I can see where this could be maddening.

And yes I still talk like this, or more properly, I still speak this way. I can (and do) speak proper English when I choose to, but I will admit it takes a conscious effort to do so.