On October 24, 1912, Teddy Roosevelt was shot in the chest just before he was scheduled to deliver a speech. Coughing into his hand and determining he was not lung shot, he carried on with the speech. He spoke for 84 minutes, refusing all attempts to administer him care.
They were unable to remove the bullet that was lodged deep in his chest.
Whatever else he may have been, for sure and certain he was, as he described himself, a bull moose.
Compare that man to the soy boy metrosexuals that voted for Biden, that can today be seen everywhere. The faux tattooed toughness is a disgrace. How the mighty have fallen.
My father was tough as old leather boots, a child of the Dustbowl. He would at times give me some horrifically hard task to do, like the time he told me to wrench a tree up by its roots as it was “too small to waste time using a shovel on”.
Having made the mistake previously of saying something or other was too hard, I tussled mightily with that redwood (a small deciduous in reality) for some time trying to rip it up. He eventually walked over and tore it out of the ground. He used force of will more than physical strength, I believe, plus he was experienced. It had been his job once – he once worked at a tree nursery where he tore trees out of the ground. Hard to believe but true story, all of it.
He never told me to do something that he himself could not do. If I dared say something was impossible, or that I could not do it, he would come do it, then give me a serious belting. The message was clear – there is little that a man cannot do if he bows his back and gets after it. And saying it was impossible was not an option.
I saved myself a hiding by fighting hell out of that tree. I gave it my all. I would have been around 15. And in the end, he helped. The lessons were hard learned, but never forgotten.
I helped a young man move house a couple of years ago, as I had a truck. He enlisted several friends of his as well. Four of them grabbed his couch to load it in the truck. I asked them “what in the hell are you doing?” They could not understand the question. I explained that no couch needs four men. That they should be ashamed. They were outraged. I told them that one guy could do it in a pinch, and that I had done so many times myself (and it is true – I would flip it onto my back and off I would go).
And I told them that they should look hard in the mirror until they figured out that being competent at physical tasks is one mark of being a man. They took it better than I should have expected, but doubt they gave it a moments thought.
Where have all the hard men, and women, gone? Will they ever return? I have watched the steel steadily disappear from young men over the decades. It is long gone, to where I do not know. But we need it back. Right now.
Llpoh – You are so right.
When I look at some of the soy-boys around me, I just have to shake my head.
Times change and people change, but I still have to wonder about it all…
What’s happened to us?
soyboy nation is not merely the product of sick culture and political bullying it is PHYSICAL. Atrizine has been proven to gender bend men and women into eunuchs and hermaphrodites. Thats why Monsanto created it as a pesticide. The fact that it works on humans too is a nice bonus because soyboys dont fight back. Monsanto has been putting atrizine in its agricultural chemical shitmix for decades and your tap water is FULL of it. When you get receipt at the grocery store it is laced with atrizine. Pizza boxes are loaded with it, along with other castrating crap. It has caused a slow motion Extinction Level Event. Look at studies by carl Ichan Medical in NY or Hebrew University Medical showing testosterone levels of males are 80 percent lower than in the 1980s. At this rate, human reproductive capacity will hit zero well before the end of the century. And no ‘media’ will mention it because their corporate sponsors are Monsanto-Bayer, Pfizer and other satanic monopolies.
Pesticide was always for humans, not a side effect.
“They’re turning the frickin’ frogs gay!!!” -crazy texan guy who is right more often then i would like to admit
Leave them soi bois alone….they need love too….
LBJ
Feminism certainly hasn’t helped:
https://antifeministpraxis.com/2017/03/31/feminism-was-never-not-rotten/
Echo chamber here. I was loading trucks with 300 lb cakes of ice in a family business at age 12. My twin brother and I could push/pull together and load 56 cakes in 20 minutes if we ran. We ran.Been like that for 70 years now. Still strong and able. My 2 sons have friends that think I am some kind of freak. Anybody can do this. Just have to learn to concentrate your will.
Word!
Hard men generally had short lives. Wild dogs live far shorter lives than their domestic counterparts (save for those unfortunate Chinese dogs) because without the benefits of ‘civilization’ life is indeed short and brutish. Women died in childbirth from issues easily avoided today, children got typhus and cholera and other diseases and died early. Often times the families were large to compensate for infant and early childhood mortality.
Life expectancy at birth was a brief 25 years during the Roman Empire, it reached 33 years by the Middle Ages and raised up to 55 years in the early 1900s. 1 In the Middle Ages, the average life span of males born in landholding families in England was 31.3 years and the biggest danger was surviving childhood. 2 Once children reached the age of 10, their life expectancy was 32.2 years, and for those who survived to 25, the remaining life expectancy was 23.3 years.
What has happened in the twentieth century is the removal of manual labor from the equation. My grandmother washed laundry outside in huge cauldrons heated over fires, my grandfather farmed with draft horses. They raised most of what they ate and used the cotton they grew to fill the quilts my grandmother made to warm their beds. My grandparents had eleven children that lived and, without exception, once they were old enough, they all left the farm because the work was so hard.
I manifest gratitude for electric washing machines and indoor plumbing, heating that doesn’t require cutting massive cords of wood and refrigeration to keep food longer than twenty four hours.
I am grateful for grandparents born in the 1800’s. Because of that I got fairly first hand accounts told directly to my grandparents and parents by my greats and great-greats and even a great-great-great or two, then passed down to me.
Nothing quite like having your grandfather explain that he left home at age 12 because his widowed mother was unable to feed eight children, and the older ones now had to fend for themselves.
He had a very productive and successful life.
My dad had to leave at age 9. Bounced around sleeping wherever he could. Horrible. Simply horrible.
My maternal grandfather left school at 9 to work in the coal mines of PA. He returned to the 3rd grade at age 23 while working at night and the kids made fun of him. He made his way to college on a scholarship and worked in business and became an executive. He died 2 months after I was born.
Doc – wonderful story of someone overcoming adversity. My own father instead cursed the gods of fate that had given him such problems and failed to take positive action. Quite a shame, as he was talented and smart. And very, very bitter.
Abraham was 50 years old when Noah died. They were 11 generations apart. Explains a lot.
The notion of an echo chamber is just bunk Jewish subversion. It is not quite the same principle of human behavior like slippery slope, but it suggest that. Shared values are the bedrock of a healthy nation. Reinforcing them together is how it is maintained rather than decayed and subverted. It may be a double edged sword, but there is nothing inherently evil about an “echo chamber”.
I am not even sure we can have this conversation about echo chambers in modern society where the majority are socialized primarily by Hollywood, but I will forge on ahead.
A healthy society is one that can have debates, even if there is an echo chamber, but not one that can be easily swayed by any new idea of pilpul or sophistry that claims a better path without evidence. People need to know why they have the values they have. That knowledge should be passed on with a proselytizing fervor, not lost in the generations as has obviously happened to our people.
Most of that knowledge is forever held for us in the Gospel, but few realize that. I still look for explanations on how all of the wisdom of our people was so thoroughly lost that only in the last couple of generations have people gone searching for it as the Bolsheviks offer nothing of spiritual substance. Just strife and conflict.
If times get as hard as I believe they may be in the near future, many will not make it but, tough men and women who survive the die off will return once more. It will be a necessity and it will once again rise to the top.
“…there is little that a man cannot do if he bows his back and gets after it.”
You nailed it.
It’s not what you say you’re going to do that counts, it’s the doing. All those acts added up give us the measure of a man.
You were lucky to have a father like that.
Thanks HSF – I had different experiences than many. Growing up around hard men is eye-opening, and is near impossible to explain to those that have not.
I joined the Marine Corps in ’66 at 19 years old … my buddy and I did it to ‘dodge the draft’ (maybe that shines a light on just how bright we were — even with our 140+ IQs).
I came home on boot leave in October, ’66 — and I remember having realized that I could do things I never imagined … tough, physical things, good things, bad things, tough things, whatever …
It came in handy in ’79 when I got out of the VA Hospital after my first bout with cancer … I was 31 years old. I reasoned that if I got into really good shape — and really good health — I’d never get cancer again (that wasn’t to be, though) … and so I began my daily regimen of proper nutrition and running and the exercise program I’d learned in The Corps years earlier.
My 1st day ‘running’ — I was able to barely do 75′ … but within 6 weeks — following my own training regimen — I was running 10+ miles at a crack — sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. I was doing between 1,000 and 1,200 Marine Corps pushups per day … 100+ squat thrusts per day … and bicycling between 35 and 50 miles per day.
I got into really great shape thanks to that lesson I’d learned in bootcamp and ITR … and, in fact, it’s been a real blessing in my life that my Drill Instructors were totally correct when they told us ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine’.
Semper Fi … and a Merry Christmas to one and all.
THAT is impressive based on the pushups alone. I salute you, sir.
spot on. just to demonstrate as a 30 something male I agreed on the couch. 2 people to lift. ohh
Sorta depends on the couch wouldn’t you say?
1970’s pull out couch. I learned early on to tie them shut, but fuck,.. those fuckers were heavy.
Couches these days are not even worth moving. Come to think of it, I haven’t owned a couch in 20 years,.. what are they for again? My last one was mostly for the dogs so they could sit and look out the window waiting to bark at the Chinese ladies rummaging through my recycling box looking for beer cans.
I sit on the steps or currently a wooden stool my grandma gave me. Maybe couches are the problem?
Next time take the mattress out first.
I realised after writing this that perhaps people might think I was trying to present my father in a totally good light. He was a very hard man, but he was very flawed. But he was a indeed very hard man, and very capable in making do with what was at hand, and very easily provoked to violence if fucked with. He was not to be messed with, and I saw the repercussions of such on more than one occasion. The world needs that now – the time for backward steps is over.
Roosevelt is thought by many to be a monumental asshole. But he was a hard, hard man. Shot in the chest, and gives an 84 minute speech? That is some world class badass right there. These young folks would abandon the pulpit if they come down with a slight hangnail.
Bernie was chased off-stage by a couple BLM bitches.
I shudder to think how my old man would have responded to that. Even, perhaps especially, as an old man he was hell on wheels. Folks thinking they were safe fucking with him because he was old or because they thought violence was not an option learned otherwise. Many people may learn the same lesson before this is over.
Sounds like Epic Beard Man…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HYZA7hPOZV8
Ok, wasn’t going to tell this one, but…
My dad and I were walking down the street minding our own business. He was around 60. Two young men walked toward us, in their mid twenties by the look of them. Turns out they were brothers. One of them pushed my old man in the chest with two hands. My father said these words “son, I would not do that”. My dad went to step around (that surprised me, as it was unlike him). The young man pushed him again.
My dad may have killed that young man. To this day I do not know whether he survived or not. I have always thought it unlikely. My dad knocked him to the ground with one punch and commenced to beat him perhaps to death. It happened in the blink of an eye. The other brother was yelling for me to stop him, that he was killing him, and stepped forward to help his brother. I told him I would not do that if I were him. He wisely chose not. I would not have needed to be involved.
When we walked away the young man was not moving.
Some people will not be pushed. And the penalty for doing so can be extreme. I have never lost any sleep over that day. The young man got fair warning, and intended to beat up what he thought was an old man and easy target. A man should have the right to walk unimpeded and safe. Those young men looked to take that right away from my father and I. They made a severe mistake, and encountered a man that would not stand for it, even as he aged, and he administered justice as he saw fit. Anyone who deprives another of his or her natural inalienable rights must accept the consequences of such.
My grandfather in his old age shot the boarding house owner dead for hitting him with a cane in 1970.
You never know who old folks are, where they have been, what they have done, and some do not give a fuck about consequences.
There were many good comments in this thread,
coming on the tail of a mighty fine post.
Your best ones IMO were stories like the one 2 comments up, and the one
about leading others and instilling teamwork and a will to succeed, by asking for cooperation and managing all inputs.
Watch? No.
Read how? No.
Listen to someone else explain how? No.
Just begin. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
That’s all I have to add to it.
L – thanks. I have had trouble many times because, although I am a very good planner, I do tend to not wait for a perfect plan. I often get things done before others have finished planning.
More than once I have had bosses come to me saying “here is the plan on how we are going to do X” only for me to tell them too late, I already did it.
Management isn’t quite like war, but you have to forge forward knowing that adjustments have to be made on the run. No plans survive an encounter with the enemy fully intact. So perfect plans have little value.
Execution is critical, the plan not always so important.
trump is a mental case, a wimp, can’t wait for 1/20/21. I would especially like to see him escorted out of the White House (forever) by the Secret Service. He will go down in history as the worst POTUS ever
Its always interesting to see how some people pretend their impressions of others have an influence on society.
You might have had some help with those moves in the past if you worked on your social skills.😡
Didn’t need help. Maybe you would not be such a smart ass today if you had run into me when I was young.
👍👍👍…👊👊👊
Barvo Llpoh – what a hero. slow clap! and as for me being a smart ass -i stood up for the weak against bullies like you my entire life – or maybe your words dont reflect who you really are? Still trying to figure ‘who’ your enemies are? you better keep an eye on that Anthro guy – he could be one of them ;}
Not a bully. just a strong person mentally. when you live a less than ideal life you develop a thick skin. bullshit niceties take a back seat to the truth. know a few like that myself even though they are hard to get along with they will always have my respect. Remember not everyone who is nice to you is your friend, and not everyone who shits on you is your enemy.
Nailed it … Nothing compares to earning the respect of a tough hombre when you know their intentions are pure.
On the flip side, when transparent and fake assholes (even if ‘powerful’) throw out a hollow ‘atta boy’ … Who fucking cares … Fuck them … Don’t give two shits … cause you know they are full of shit … Like I said fuck them
i know them by their works and i see his works. his quick ‘blow me’ or ‘if you ran into me’ responses. yeah, i know the difference from someone who is strong and someone that likes to take their strength out on the weak. I am not a large man but i have stood toe to toe with larger ones for stomping on nerds and have paid in pain, but i guarantee those men knew they were in fight. for what? because i called them out on disrespecting someone obviously below their prowess? it is funny the number of wetigoes that stick up for bullies, yes you aussie and you joey jj and the other 20 that dont know the difference between being bullied and friendly comradery. it is the folks that support that bullies that have allowed the situation we are in today, where we are being bullied by a force that the entire world has taken a knee for. had we all stood up against the ‘if i bumped into you, i’d kick your ass for disagreeing and teach you some respect’ – as heard in the comments of the ‘defenders’ (of bullies) rhetoric as well. do you see this is the same as the looters who shout down those that disagree? that your team is so willing to shoot on site? just more of ‘2 sides of the same coin’! as shown by the work…
kevx,
I’m guessing LLPOH posted this as it pertains to the social, political and financial situation America finds itself in today. Personally, I think it will take 2 kinds of men to correct our problems, badass swinging dicks and computer geniuses.
Kevx – you do not know the first thing about me. Bully is one thing I have never been. Backwards steps is not my style.
Mind your own fucking business, asshole. It was between me and Anthro, we sorted it out very happily, and are now friends as far as I am concerned.
Maybe if YOU had run into me when I was younger, or even now, you might mind your own business instead of sticking your nose where it does not belong.
Blow me, asshole.
It was humor, and I can handle myself just fine. Being an asshole doesnt make a man a man.
I apologize, didn’t mean to call you an asshole. It’s just that so many guys are “virtue bullies” who think that since they are right about something it gives them the go ahead to light someone up.
My folks walked uphill both ways back in the day too and I got plenty of the hard lessons they decided to share. I’ve worked with my hands most of my life as well and have the scars and bad joints to prove it. I guess I don’t hold it against the soys r us crew because most of them are just a product of their upbringing, single mom households and such. Our social engineers did this on purpose and we are reaping the rewards. It will only take a generation to correct it. Once the real pain begins (and I believe it will shortly) the whole cyber charade will unravel pretty quickly. I doubt bitcoin will survive long when you have to barter for food.
The part about requiring an electric grid and the internut to use it might become significant as well. “Only Gold is money.”
True dat
No need to apologize around here. And you were not an asshole. You were a smart ass. And I have the same genetic makeup a lot of times.
No problems. Thanks for posting!
I don’t know. My kid was having a hard time in high school, no friends, etc. I got him into martial arts. He became an amateur champion. His last fight before he joined up, he put some kid away in 30 seconds. The steel is still there. It just has to be tempered!
One of my kids is a black belt and was an amateur champion. It was a good life experience for them, and has paid many dividends. I am sure your son is well hardened. Mine are mentally in pretty good shape, but they were born affluent, and I had to fight against that best I could for their sake. It is much easier to develop hard when you are poor.
There was a time when the aristocracy practiced the code of “noblesse oblige” which assumed those given much should give much in return. The king or prince led the charge.
“It is much easier to develop hard when you are poor.”
Quite so. I grew up wealthy and pampered, over-protected and therefore soft until I was out in the world (aged six) and saw which way the land lay. Paradigm-change time!
Since then, I had to show the truly tough from the get-go that yeah, they could take me, but at a price. Before long, I no longer had to pay that price and was accepted as the “smartest guy in the room”, a distinction that has served me well over what became a dangerous career that lifted me out of the ranks of the servile. Now I’m old but still well-respected among the young, weaker than now I may be, but known to my neighbors as a geezer who has resources to combat even the least measure of disrespect.
Moral of the story? “Hard” matters, but it has to be demonstrated one way or another if respect is to be maintained. It’s a shame, really, but it’s a fact there’s no escaping.
“It is much easier to develop hard when you are poor.”
Tell me about it. My son in law owns a % of a family REIT. They own over 6,000 rental units, a hotel and about 1 million square feet of commercial space. Doesn’t work at all.
Weak weak man.
Sure, hard strong men get stuff done, but it’s always better to work smart not hard. Most of us aren’t blessed with great genetics or athleticism. Someone with great strength but lacking wisdom and smarts won’t achieve nearly as much a someone who has both.
Reading this I recalled my own father. A tough man who was born at the beginning of the depression. His father was unknown. At less than a year his mother could not afford to support he and his brother,and put them in a boys home. Then they were boys homes that had horrendous conditions. They had to deal with that until he was 14. He rarely spoke of it. When his mother finally remarried and could get him out. It got no better. The new husband was a severe alcoholic. On his 17th birthday he enlisted in the marines and went to Korea. He came home,met his wife and raised a family. Working the same job for 35 years. He never cried woe is me.I had it so tough. There was no counselors or psychotic drugs. There was no SSI because he had a horrific childhood. He never spoke of it or complained about it. He sucked it up and acted like a man. To this day he is one of the best men I ever had the pleasure to know.
Bilco – such as he are rare and to be honored. It is a shame that your father and mine suffered so badly. But that was the world. My father was terribly scarred by similar, and he carried those scars to the grave. Hope your father banished the demons.
My father was a dentist in a MASH unit in Korea and committed suicide at the age of 46 most likely from PTSD and the ensuing drug and alcohol abuse he used to self medicate War is bullshit
Punishment: Chopping Thistles in the pasture for a week in 95 degree heat. Sure, drink all the water you want, but get it done. They crowd out the good grass the cows need. I came to love those purple thistle flowers…. Mucking out the stalls in the spring from 100 head of cattle in there all winter with a pitchfork, not so much.
I did the thistle thing in our hay meadow not because I was told to but because I knew it meant the difference between $3 a bale and $10 a bale grass horse hay. I was in my twenties and my Dad had already shaped me. Agreed, there’s nothing good or fun about mucking stalls…but it’s character building.
Character building for sure. I did not know it at the time but as some of my fondest memories in childhood were going with my grandfather to the lumber yard to purchase lumber and supplies for one of many projects we did together. All the way back I would be excited about putting saw to wood and hammer to nail. But as soon as we got back he handed me a shovel.
I was fortunate that I recognized the importance of a strong foundation at an early age.
haha! clearing thistles in a field (now while theyre just small sprouts) is on my list of things to get done this week… much better to get them now when it’s a quick swipe of the hoe , than wait for them to grow.
$10 bale? where the fuck did you grow up? And when? Last year? I call bullshit Cow Doctor. I made GOOD horse hay, Timothy (leaf on) Orchard Grass, Brome Grass, a bit of Alfalfa and White Clover in the mix, raked, tedded and baled with perfect moisture of 8 to 12% (with the fucking clover in it!) and NEVER got more than $10/bale when I was shipping it to Florida,.. in 2014/2015. I don’t comment much anymore but I have been following your posts, cow doctor, for a while now and you just lost all credibility. Please explain,.. if you have a good source to sell hay for $20/bale I am moving back to Canada to make hay. I used to make 16-18000 bales per summer.
Round or square bales? Down here, in this drought, a round bale goes for $75 to $100. Lots of folks have sold much of their herds just to keep them from starving. My stock tanks are almost dry. I had 101/2 acres of Timothy and Coastal that I cut four years ago, got 23 round bales. This year I wasn’t going to bother but a friend said please so I had the guy bale. We got three and one half bales of hay. That was it. I wish you would go back into the hay making biz, I’d work a serious deal with you….
Saw some small bales the other day. Almost all the bales around here are the big round ones. Saw some giant rectangular ones last year on a huge farm. I am guessing they were 12 feet long or more. Guy said they weigh 800 pounds by memory. They would be tough to toss. Handle them with a big tractor and several tines.
Round bales around here are huge, up to 1,700 pounds. You need a really big tractor with a fork to lift them.
When I was a kid, we didn’t use trailers. The tractor just loaded those bales on my back. Come to think of it, we didn’t use tractors either.
😁
Damn, you were tough…bet you rolled them by hand into the barn too.
😂🤣😂🤣😂
He said HORSE hay. You never feed a large round or square bale to a horse. The dust gives them the heaves. Small squares, 45lbs are pretty much the only thing you feed to a horse you care about.
Hay that gets rained on is round baled and wrapped while still moist. When you open one of those mothers they stink to high heaven of ass, wet moist ass of a hooker who’s had 40 clients and no shower for 3 days. The cows love that stuff. Also refereed to as silage bales but I prefer skanky ho ass bales personally.
I totally agree with you on that. Though I hunt on a ranch in the North Central Mountains, that if the weather cooperates, puts up the cleanest, prettiest and sweetest Timothy round bales that is very suitable for horses. You’re right though, get it rained on and put up wet and it’s Cow Hay. A cow’s rumen is a remarkable piece of fermentation equipment that can Damn near turn shit back into energy.
In the early 2000s going forward along the Front Range of Colorado good grass horse hay put up green with no mold or rain and tested to show high protein would go for $10 for a 65 pound bale. The crazy “Horse People”, primarily women with what I’d call pasture ornaments would pay that much for it. A couple of years when we were in drought it went as high as $12 a bale. I can find and send you USDA hay reports for Colorado if you want. Just to prove to you I ain’t a F’ng liar. Cow hay yep $3 a bale. You called me, I ain’t bluffing.
As My Girl and Lloph have posted most everybody doing hay for a living have gone to either large squares or rounds. From a production stand point they’re much more economical to produce. But, to feed them you have to have the proper equipment, tractor with bale forks. Most of the people along the Colorado Front Range with horses are on less than 5 acres of land and don’t have the equipment to handle the big bales. We put up small squares which can be man handled. Niche market which had a premium price.
Most current USDA report I could find online…just sayin’
https://www.ams.usda.gov/mnreports/gl_gr310.txt
We sold the farm 3 years ago but I still have all of my records. You want copies of my feed test reports, I know I’ve have pictures of my family putting up hay as well if you want them, don’t be an asshole…asshole.
My friends call me “the perfect asshole” actually. I imagined you were in your 50’s like me and didn’t know you were from Colorado where you assholes cannot make hay. If you were selling shitty hay to princesses with lawn ornaments then good on ya but I still think you might be exaggerating a bit.
And yes, please post some pics of you “putting up hay” cow doctor. I may not be a Big Dog here, but I am an Old Dog and I can tell the difference between a 45 lb bale and a 65 lb bale in a picture AND I bet I have had my arm up more cows asses than you in the past week “Cow Doctor”.
PS I don’t even know what a feed test report is but having had 45 horses at one time, I know the price of hay. I sold hay to the Cayman Islands once for $55 a bale, wire wrapped, 120lbs per bale so if you want to get into a hay argument,..gloves of mofo!
Your a crotchety MF’er. You probably have had your arm up more cow asses in the last week than I have, I’ll give you that, I ve been doing Small Animal only for the last 22 years. However, I did Mixed Practice in Eastern Colorado for my first 8 and 1/2 years out of Vet School. Back then I think I’d have you beat at the green sleeve patrol. At my prime working feedlots in the mid 1990’s I’d preg check 300 head of heifers in 2 to 3 hours a day, several days a week while the feedlot crew was arrival processing them. My family had a small farm just outside of Longmont, CO, about 20 acres that my Dad bought shortly before I started Veterinary School. We kept our horses there and harvested the hay off of it to feed them for the first six to seven years. Trust me I put up good hay, we had 5 to 10 head of horses depending on the time of year and I made sure it went up clean, green and dry. Did it the old fashioned way with Farmall H tractor, a sickle mower, a side discharge rake and a piece of shit old International baler that I spent more time working on than I spent bailing hay with it. Those bales averaged about 45 pounds. We did put up some nice hay We did that until I graduated Vet School. My dad did not live on the place and when I moved out east to practice he had the neighbor start putting up the hay and with me gone the horses were sold or sent back to my cousin in the San Luis Valley. The neighbor had cows and didn’t give a shit about the hay, it would get rained on and wasn’t worth a shit, he’d buy it of my dad for about 3 dollars a bale. He also had some adjacent property that he’d hay for his cows, never would control the weeds, full of thistle and milk weed. When I was doing the hay in my 20’s I’d be out with a hoe or a weed scythe cutting weeds because I had no sprayer. I did just what I said, every summer for about 6 years. Then I graduated Vet School and went out east to Doctor Cows, ranch horses and dogs and cats. When I got fed up sticking my arm up cow asses, working 24 hours a day and 365 days a year in 1998 I moved home to the Front Range and started practicing small animal only. You said you’re from Canada, you ever listen to Corb Lund? His song Veterinarian Blues is my life put to song, figured out it was easier and more profitable to treat Small Animals. Well, when I moved home, I saw the screwing that my neighbor was putting to my dad on the hay and with a son, nephew and niece that were old enough to help I talked him to buying some equipment, used but serviceable and we started putting the hay back up ourselves. We had a New Holland speed rower, a rotary hay rake, a nice inline Hesston Baler, and a New Holland Stack wagon, 2 smaller John Deere tractors for the rake and baler, and a big old Oliver for the Stack Wagon. With fertilizer and multiple irrigation, we had plenty of ditch water, I’d get 2 cuts a year of a Orchard, Brome, Alfalfa, Clover mix that I put inside a large metal machine shed. I’d. Take samples every year to an ag lab in Greeley for feed analysis so I could show the buyers the protein levels, we averaged 13% over 20 years. We made money of the farm, it paid the Property taxes and the bills, paid my son, nephew and niece as a summer job every year and, the left over profits we used to pay for all of our hunting and fishing trips. A bonus was we had a goose pit that we dug next to the main lateral ditch in the middle of the field and we slaughtered the honkers every winter. Unfortunately, the City of Longmont grew out to the farm and what used to be the country was now part of town. We sold it in 2017, there building houses on it now. For the those 18 years from 1998 to 2016 we got $10 a bale for our hay and I could have sold more if I had it, we averaged 3600 to 4000 bales a year of off 2 cuts. A couple of years when we were in Drought we got $12 a bale. A couple of years when the weather sucked and it rained all summer and we had shit cow hay we got $6 a bale.
I’m not trying to be an ass, that farm was a family project and a work of love for me. I’m sorry I got testy but I tend to do that when someone calls me a liar and I’m being straight and square. Trust me I know the innards of a Cow via her rectum or a flank incision, I ain’t no BS artist. I also know how to put up good horse hay and doing it right takes a whole lot of F’ng work. Trust me I cut and sprayed weeds to keep that meadow clean.
And that Hesston in line baler spit perfect 65 pound bales out every time, that thing ran like a F’ng clock.
Nice comment cow doc. You are making a great addition to the place.
Thanks
Me and the Hay Crew.
You the one in the red?
She’s cute ain’t she? My niece, and she’s a firecracker 🧨
Cow Doctor, you have nothing to explain to anyone! We appreciate you around here!
You obviously farmed for a living. I’m a veterinarian who had a small family farm on the side. I believe you about sending hay and getting those kind of prices. Was that to the end user in the islands or did someone Jack the price up more once it got there? Who paid for the shipping? What kind of Ag inspection process was there to get it shipped there? I’ve heard that can be almost as much of a pain in the ass as writing an International Health Certificate for animals.
Work smart. Not hard.
Doing both is far better.
Lloph you are so correct, where are the men? We don’t see them yet but I believe they’re here just lost in the crowd. American History tends to show that only about 3% of the population is actually physically involved when this country is at war. The hard men are there. They crossed a semi frozen river on Christmas to attack sleeping Hessians. They held the southern end of the Union line on Little Roundtop and, when out of ammunition, they charged with bayonets. They’ve always shown up when needed at places like Belleau Wood, Tarawa, Omaha Beach, Bastogne, Chosin Reservoir, Khe Sanh, and places like Kunar and Ramadi.
We will truly see in the next couple of weeks if Trump is truly the man some of us thinks he is. The time to put up or shut up is nigh and me thinks we’re all about to really see how big his brass cojones are. He will then need men like those listed above to back his play and save what’s left of the Republic, if there is truly anything left to save. I think there is. If he doesn’t produce then those same men best be ready to defend themselves, because the Evil that will be in power is coming for us.
This is my post from yesterday regarding whether the Powder Keg will blow. It says it best IMHO…
Hard times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
And, weak men create hard times.
The cycle of life and four turnings continues unabated…
The Hard Times are nigh, The Hard Men will show when needed.
We will see how many fire the Second Shot Heard Round The World at high noon central time January 2nd. Spread the word.
Francis Marion I believe (?) asked the militia to fire just two shots and run like hell. Firing one shot in the air or ground or touching off a firework or firecracker shouldn’t be too tough.
Was Daniel Morgan at Cowpens. The beginning of the end for the Brits.
Thank you for the correction sir! So many great heroes of the Revolution. If the shitheads don’t stop stealing many new heroes will be added to our lists.
After the “Second Shot” we may ponder a new Boston Tea Party involving mass demonstrations of ire at the HQ’s of certain organizations and corporations promoting and protecting this current thievery and treason.
That Big Bang needs to go viral, I’m in, may have to go to Cheyenne for some good stuff.
I would say a 17 year old man named Kyle has shot the second shot already,along with the 3rd and 4th shot with some damned good results.
We have even just a 1000 Kyles across the country could enact some serious changes for the better.
There’s lots of men, real men, out there. Just depends on where you live. I recently had a bull calf castrated and two men came out to do the task. My job was to flail my arms and yell to move the cows around. The one man had a horse and the other a four wheeler and, as the calf busted through the (thoroughly sorta maybe latched ) gate and hit the back pasture at a full gallop, the two ran it down, roped it and had it de nutted and inoculated in no time.
They were polite, pleasant, no nonsense and efficient.
Fuck me, all you wanna be farmers. We used to do 20 steers in an hour with nothing more than an old pallet to squeeze them while the dogs waited to gobble up the prairie oysters. 3 men, the farrier on the quarter horse, me with the pallet and Jeff with the nut slicer. And I am not a hard man,.. just watch me paint my daughters toe nails. I am a big softy with dewy tear filled eyes.
Man, you were lucky. We had to run up behind them and bite ‘em off.
Maybe you could teach ol’ torpedo that trick?
You are full of shit. I didn’t need a squeeze chute, I only had one bull calf and the guys who did it did it as a favor to me. Now go wipe your dewy eyes on your dainty undies and piss off.
More like “Jimmy the Tool”, he sounds like a farmer using a pallet for a squeeze chute.
Yes, we use whatever tools are available. You want to wrangle 60 calfs to the squeeze chute a kilometre away or use what you have? Cow Doctor already said his farms were 5 acres,.. mine is 450 acres. Go eat your Stouffers macaroni and cheese microwave meal cow doctor. I will keep eating my tenderloin and silently laugh at you, as you die a slow death and take your vaccines motherfucker.
You did ONE. You do three and the other 57 start to catch on to what is going on, okay,.. “my maybe girl” .
And yes, after castrating 60 little bulls in 3 or 4 hours, I am full of shit, piss, blood, mostly mine. I stand by my statement, you are a bunch of wannabe farmers/cow doctors. I still cringe a bit when that nut sack is ripped open and the 2 veins are sliced off, nuts tossed aside,..
My dewey eyes are reserved for my daughters you ” maybe bitch”. And thank the Guys who did it for you again okay? Too bad you didn’t have the balls to be actually involved in the process.
LL – Your father, like mine, grew up in a time of great poverty. It was all around them and affected every aspect of their lives. When my dad graduated from high school, one of his graduation “gifts” was a letter from the local Selective Service Board “Greetings, you have been selected…” He married his HS sweetheart and they spent their honeymoon on a train that was taking him to boot camp. She returned home and he went off to the Pacific for a couple of years.
He was a hard man, but he was always fair. All of his friends were veterans and knew how to accomplish whatever task presented itself. I learned a lot from all of them. He passed his work ethic on to me and made sure I thought out the task to work smarter. I never experienced the hard times, as he believed it was his job to insure his family had a better life than his. I was lucky to have such a father.
Sounds just like Dad and Mom. They grew up hard during the Great Depression . His family was dirt poor but he was the first to graduate High School and was a good enough drummer to receive a full music Scholarship to CU. However, he was in the Naval Reserves, along comes Korea and his senior trip was 3 years in the Navy. TN you said…
He passed his work ethic on to me and made sure I thought out the task to work smarter. I never experienced the hard times, as he believed it was his job to insure his family had a better life than his. I was lucky to have such a father…
Damn straight, we’re brothers from different but similar fathers.
Men changed because women changed. There is a connection. And that connection has been corrupted and destroyed for the most part. The Dark Crazy Occult know how to destroy a civilization….and it starts with tainting the basics…then the rest is just a matter of time. I found this video…interesting…and very exhausting.
I only watched the first couple of minutes. My first thought was Sioux or Cheyenne War dance. Agreed that a vast majority of men have swallowed the Liberal Progressive Pablum that being masculine as God and nature intended is a bad “Toxic” thing. There’s enough of us who know that’s hog wash and have taught our heirs that’s hog wash. When the time comes we’ll be there to jump in the gap. And what are the feminists and metrosexuals going to do, fight us? Have fun with that. Hotametaneo…Dog Soldiers.
I expect ‘they’ will retreat quickly and thoroughly at any substantial response. The dog pack in Kenosha disappeared – like smoke in the wind – after Kyle defended himself. Bang! Poof! Gone. Streets empty. However that’s when they become pesky behind the scene nuisances; messing with your insurance, banking, government controlled items like driver’s licenses and home titles etc etc. Eventually ‘they’ will get doxxed and personal interaction may change things.
‘We’ sure need alternatives to services that aren’t influenced by these ‘persons’.
Haka for fallen comrade…
a personal favorite…
when people ask what we’re doing for Christmas or New Year’s I’m going to send this video out and tell him to come join us
No shifting Winnie. But if we’re stuck with what Oligarchia has served us up in the form of “Jomala” we’re all beyond F’d. Hope you can shoot your name sake well if that comes to pass. I won’t even down vote your comment. May have to play more Rap for you though. 😲
Winnie, what happened to your comment on my post?
Bad sign for Winnie. May have pushed his luck once too often. Cant say he was not warned.
Ditto my father. Tough as nails. Troubled childhood. Told to leave home at 14. Road the rails. Lived in hobo jungles. Eventually found work in the oilfield. Height of the depression. Made a career of it.
Later I came along. Was helping him overhaul the motor in his tractor. He tells me to “bring that engine block over here” (i think I was all of 13 years old.) I told him I couldn’t pick it up much less bring it to him. His words are forever etched in my mind, Hell boy, “Can’t never did nothing.” Needless to say I brought him the block. Made a career in the oilfield myself. Pretty rough life but I survived. A lot of it because of my father’s example. Damn, I miss him.
The other night I was with the family; son, DIL, and three GD’s. Looking around the pizza parlor I see all the soy-boys and ask my son, Where in the hell are you going to find “real men” for the GD’s to marry. He has the same worries.
Pardon me, but what are “GDs”?
Granddaughters most likely…
Ah. Thank you and Anonymous. I have one myself, the baby among my grandchildren, and if God willing I live to see her to maturity (she recently turned two), she will have been indoctrinated to the extent that I hope I leave her with a loving but firm legacy.
Granddaughter
Anywhere near the nw? I got a couple of great boys. Hard working and don’t buy into the bs of today !
Every time I hear someone complaining that the a/c in their car quit or their house is too small or they can’t get their kid into “that” school I think back to the settlers who walked across an entire continent to get the chance to create a better life in the untamed West.
What a bunch of marshmallows we’ve become.
Come the big shakeout the cream will rise to the top, as always.
Paul – Unfortunately, a lot of the cream will get skimmed off, as usual. Some will rise to the occasion and pay the ultimate price, but in the long run, it is better to rise and be heard than to sink to your knees and be told.
I’ll add to the chorus that there is nothing wrong with towing a hard line and my father had no problem laying out the rules. He was toughened by having 10 brothers and sisters and growing up in the Bronx. I wasn’t allowed to come home from a boyhood fight unless I had given it my all. He would say “There is no shame in losing, but there’s plenty in not trying!” He was hard, because he understood life’s cruel underbelly doesn’t care…. it will grind you up and spit you out. I learned about respect, honor and integrity because he wasn’t trying to be my friend… he was trying to prepare me to become a man. He was quick with the belt and a slap, but then all my friend’s dads were the same. We all understood that there were going to be severe consequences if we crossed the line. It wasn’t perfect, but then nothing ever is. That doesn’t mean we should throw the whole thing away about being parents or being too afraid to instill morals and beliefs in the children we’ve been entrusted to raise. I’ve lived and continue to live a life where I do what I say.
The tide, though, has shifted and I see that more with each passing day. You can’t look at your own child cross eyed without the threat of the state-sponsored teacher reporting you to CPS. Parents seem just as f@cked wanting to be liked by their children on social media than doing the hard work of actually raising them. It’s crazy and it only seems to be spiraling more out of control. Yes, there are exceptions but those seem to be fewer. Life was never promised to be easy with a gold star for just getting up in the morning. It takes grit to forge something real and I hope we don’t lose that along the way.
“he wasn’t trying to be my friend”
Parents trying to be the BFF of their children is what creates SoyBoys.
So many of the regular commentors have had hard work as a part of their youth for sure.
Clearly, hard work in one’s youth sets the stage for working through life’s obstacles whether white or blue collar.
A pampered youth leads to soy boys and fat assed teenagers. None of which I saw in my youth but are omnipresent today.
The lesson is young men need a tough physical experience. It instills confidence, builds muscle, teaches how to think through problems and promotes a can do attitude for life. Too bad it’s not seen enough anymore.
Anyone over 50 probably has similar experiences. Like many I grew up having chores and spent much of my youth on a family farm. Walked behind a stone boat at age six picking rocks from a field. Chores only got harder the older I got. Todays 40 and under would likely scream THATS ABUSE… clutch pearls and bemoan how bad parenting was then.
The fruit of the marxist infiltration is what we are seeing today. Pasty faced soys and screaming karens holed up in basements because of a deadly virus with a recovery rate of 99.97% might possibly could perhaps get them. Make no mistake, this whole thing has been decades in the making and not a secret. The communists openly advertised that the take over of the USA was going to be from the inside out, thru infiltration of key institutions.
I have very good friends who fled Bulgaria in the early 90’s. They speak the same things the video I’ll post of a young man in Serbia, who loves the USA and has never been on US soil. Time to fight my friends.
Its a war…
https://tinyurl.com/ybrkayh2
I have a couple of brick buildings and half of my house is brick. As a result, I have had to try to find stone masons or bricklayers to do maintenance or repairs over the years. In this part of the world they are a rare commodity. Anybody that does it can easily charge $75-100 per hour and never run out of customers.
Every little freaking layabout bitching about how there’s no jobs (hard to find work beating your meat and watching rap videos) has been advised by me to go become a mason and make $100 grand a year easy. Every one of them passed. Apparently the young idiot class today think they will somehow stumble into the “legal weed” business and get rich. Haven’t seen any do that either. Some days I think we need a draft, not for war but just on general principle.
Bricklaying is too hard for the young. Had to get a smallish job done recently. Finally found a 70 year old brickie to do it. He was still working every day.
I’ve found the same thing trying to land good fence builders. They weren’t interested in the small jobs I currently have. Same with rebuilding part of my retaining wall using segmental block. I was told the above jobs “were too small to be worth it.”
Fuck it. I’m doing the fence work myself and I won’t lie and say it’s easy, but I really think what the guys were saying was that they didn’t want to do it the way I wanted it done (i.e. drilling down the entire 2.5′ instead of cutting the posts and pouring concrete).
In the past couple years I have put in around 1.5 miles of 6 foot high farm fence. Mostly with a couple of neighbors, last few hundred yards just my wife and I. Good skill to learn.
I have a few interesting neighbors I’ll call the Bulgarian mafia. Bought a house from one of two older cousins who lived next door to each other. They ran the Cold War Iron Curtain together in the ’70’s and got relocated to the East Coast. They were, and still are to some extent, hard drinkers and even harder workers.
One of them got into the habit of sponsoring his hometown friends and family with work visas. My wife is a refugee and I can see another perspective, but in the intervening years, I’ve witnessed the younger generation grow progressively weaker because they have an unwillingness to bleed for what they want and believe in.
Llpoh asks,
Where have all the hard men, and women, gone? Will they ever return?
Sure they will return.
Hard times makes hard men, they just have not been made yet.
Since they loosened up the lockdown a few days ago, I went to the gym today. Out of the corner of my eye I sat this petite muscular girl with a blond ponytail doing squats. Later I saw that she was a he. I mean I think she was a he. Or he was a she. It had an athletic bra and a bare midsection. Muscular little creature. I think it was a dude trying to become a trans woman. I wouldn’t think he’d be hitting the weights so hard, but what the hell do I know?
So the question “ where have all the hard men, and women, gone?” made me think of that weirdo.
These are female bodybuilders…really
https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.3zu9A59CkcI_1B8P7LZeuAHaLI?w=203&h=306&c=7&o=5&dpr=1.1&pid=1.7
That ain’t no Shelia, it’s a guy…
Mick Dundee
Fact is the same in every civilization. It gets carved out by men. As the generations move along women seep into the cracks and weaken the foundations. Women effeminate every civilization until you have men dressing as women, women thinking they are men and that mentality being crammed into the military. At that point it shouldnt be surprising the civilization gets whooped.
Dad’s favorite saying was “tough shit”
Not sure my dad had a favorite. I do remember many times, after getting belted for something I did not do (usually done by my asshole brother) and complaining about it, only for my dad to say, “well then, it was for something you got away with I did not find out about”.
It’s nice to reminisce about the tough guy Progressive era but the author’s history is as deep as a puddle on a hot highway.
Teddy was the Trump of his day. Another actor playing the role. He was installed by the bankers who faked McKinley’s assassination, so his shooring was probably a popularity stunt. Either way, Teddy’s actions in 1912 led directly to Wilson, the Fed, and WWI. https://tinyurl.com/y8pc5xoe
Good God you’ve a lot of researching to do. I’ve never read such drivel in my life.
Comparing Trump to TR…never mind…
It sounds like a typical quote from our resident 22, but without all the GIF’s
And here I thought it was just ME being cynical, thinking the very same thing!
At least there were no pics. That is all I ask – drop the bullshit pics every time he posts.
I hope Donald is the Teddy of our day.
It comes down to need.
Back in your day, and mine, and many others on this blog, if we needed to move something, we moved it, if we needed more money to pay unexpected bills, we worked more hours, if our job didn’t pay enough we got another job before we quit the one we had, if we wanted to take time off for a vacation we saved up for it.
My wife and I paid the delivery doctor cash to deliver both our newborns.
Etc etc etc.
Now all we hear about is taking from producers and redistribution, a guaranteed basic income, student loan forgiveness, rent forgiveness, etc etc etc.
There is no need anymore………..millennial females are shrills, millennial males are not men but the shrills little bitches. America as we knew it is toast.
Card – Pretty sure my folks would have paid the delivery doctor to take me back. Word is I was a holy terror as a toddler.
Ha! And look how you turned out!
The thing is how we were raised, what we experienced and who we were in our past made us who we are today.
The worst thing any parent can do for their children is to make their lives easy, to try and protect them from any bad experience and to make all their decisions for them. That’s why 40 year olds are still living with mommy and daddy.
Darwin had (some of) the answers.
When my daddy told me to clear out a bunch of mulberry trees in a fence row 50 years ago, I went to town and bought some dynamite. Saved my back. The criminals of the “civil rights’ era made that illegal!! Peaceful was a myth….
We used to fish with that stuff.
My dad knew how to make explosives out of sugar, but never passed that knowledge onto us young’uns.
Used to clear stumps with it.
After I left home, someone wanted to buy the old (HEAVY) refrigerator we had growing up.
When he showed up, he said it was too heavy for just the two of them to lift into his pickup, so my dad showed him how it could be done by just one person.
Yes, amazing what a person can do.
In high-school wrestling we would run outside in the winters and, on real cold days, coughing up blood was pretty common. I’m not sure how smart that was, but I suppose it did contribute somewhat to mental toughness. In cold weather today, however, the kids run stairs inside.
At a pretty young age, I began martial arts. It was a Korean style and part of a satellite group where classes were held in a room above the fire-station of a nearby small town. Later they were moved to a church and eventually to the basement of a local restaurant there. One year, when I was around 11 or 12 or so I was being promoted to a higher belt. For this particular ceremony, the master attended. He was an old-school Asian immigrant and founder of that club with multiple locations throughout the state. With my parents, friends, and family watching the master removed my belt and, while tying my new belt, he asked me a question. After I mistakenly responded “yes” instead of “yes sir” he gut-punched me so hard I fell backwards several feet to the floor. It was a stupid kid mistake and I knew better, so, while gasping in pain, I got back up, assumed my stance, and said: “yes sir”.
Definitely an embarrassing lesson.
Years later, during college in a larger city, I began as a white-belt in a much more intense Japanese style. This was during the 80s and the sensei of this club was American, ex-military, and then a law-enforcement weapons and combative arts trainer. Since the early 60s he had studied under several famous masters and his club was serious business. He used to make us run for miles outside while wearing our gees and in our bare feet. After a while, our soles became calloused enough to the point the rocks on the ground didn’t hurt as much. Still, he said we had it easy in America and told me one time over beers that the karate-ka’s (students) overseas would drink their beer and then bust the bottles on their bare shins.
I advanced through that style until my work schedule forced me to quit. Many years later, after moving back to that city, I took my kid back to that same club thinking the sensei would not remember me. As my kid and I were watching through the glass of the lobby, the sensei saw me and called up another black-belt to lead the class. He then walked out and chatted me up like I had never left. By then, he was an 8th Dan and was allowed to found his own style. My kid then advanced through that style for many years and one time I asked the old master why they didn’t run outside anymore and he said because of insurance and liability.
And isn’t that way of it today? We are a coddled nation afraid of lawsuits. Today, if a karate instructor hit a child in the gut, the parents would sue.
When my kids were young there was a parable I would tell them about two cats: One cat, from the time it was a kitten, was pushed around in a wheelbarrow and fed from a bottle. The other kitten was thrown out a window into an alley. There was more to the story, but the point was for them to understand why the alley-cat became a better survivor. I also had another story about two twins – one of whom found a magic item that made them successful and the other twin who achieved academic and athletic success and eventual prosperity the hard (right) way. Both stories/parables had gruesome endings where the weaker and corner-cutting entities died in horrible ways that always completely riveted my offspring from a young age.
As a result my kids did things the hard way and became state and national competitors both academically and in sports. They are successful today – even (especially?) in the age of Covid. And they didn’t get there eating processed foods, playing video games, or through the acquisition of bad habits.
On another, but still related, note I had a thought which came to mind very early this morning when I first woke up. Then the thought was validated in reading Llpoh’s article above.
Llpoh asked:
And yet, it has been the incel’s and snowflakes who have taken to the streets in recent protests this year while patriotic conservative Americans appear to be standing down in the wake of a stolen election.
Since patriotic conservative American’s, by and large, wish to mind their own business and be left alone, perhaps they are planning to become ungovernable in ways the elites will experience as tens-of-millions of tiny cuts? While, at the same time, the incel’s and snowflakes appear to be pacified with an incoming president Biden; at least for now.
So, if martial law is the goal of the elite, would it be better achieved with Biden as President? Or with Trump (seemingly) reinstalled by his (perceived) conservatively-stacked Supreme Court or state Republican legistatures?
Anyway, that was my first thought this morning before reading this article.
Thanks for the post, Llpoh.
The incels and snowflakes were paid to run amuck. That, coupled with utter boredom and pent up energy from being locked down made for some lively times. The incels and snowflakes are generally college kids and they don’t have responsibilities and historically, it’s the college kids who stir the revolution pot.
Work smart not hard.
Both together are more effective
Seems like today we have to make real men. Doubt many boys will be made into real men by their ‘soy-boy’ fathers. Guess it depends on your definition of what a real man is?
Here’s my short story of my attempt(s). I can say it worked, and early on he got invited to the ‘future-real-man’ clique. In my observation, unfortunately these only represent about 10-20% of the ‘boys’ in his class. All his best friends are real men. It is very fun and rewarding to watch and be part of. They are so far ahead of their peers in all the good things.
My short story: I was seeing my kid go down the rabbit hole of ‘gaming’ around 10 years old. He tried all sports, cause that’s what mom and dad did, but his mild-Tourette’s was causing much social trouble. The gaming thing made sense to me. Most tourett’s kids are bright, and he was very good at gaming, and got accolades from ‘remote friends’. I watched to see what the hell was going on. “oohh my god XX, you are awesome……”
I said hell no, this is not going to end well, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
Then it hit me while I was watching a hockey game: helmets with masks, loud in the rink (he tic’ed pretty loud and had facial tics), they all face the same way on the bench, etc…
Took him to a local practice to watch, he said no way. Had the coach come over to talk to him, and he was awesome (I love the guy for what he did). He started the next week. Many, many struggles.
6-8 years later, he was captain of his HS team and lead them to their first ever county championship, tic’ing and all, although he learned how to control/mask it pretty well.
He tells me today (23 yrs old) ‘thank you so much dad for not giving up on me. I now see how it could have not gone too well’. Makes me tear up with what those 8+ years were all about.
I moved on to a farm 5 years ago knowing that coming economic depression will be one for the history books. That I would be better off working a few hours a day producing some of my own food…than being forced to take the vax. Working just 2 to 3 hours a day made me a lot fitter than people ofvsimilarvafe in cities. Thank God. Yes, this time all convenient technologies will be around us, but few will be able to afford the conveniences because money will be worthless at the rate they are printing and at the rate companies are shutting down. So much for the conveniences of technology.
I saw an example of this this summer in hauling small square hay bales. Really I had a small job by my historical standards and 20 years ago I would have done it myself but I find when I started my 6th decade I am not the man I once was.
We had 250 bales to be picked up and put in a loft. I got two of the local football stars to help me on a hot July evening. By the time we got the first loaded they said they needed to rest and cool off and they were not able to stand stacking in the loft at all. While I being plenty old enough to be their grandfather did the stacking while they took turns throwing them up. Many time it took both of them to get one up.
in full disclosure I once was sort of a professional at this. I think I was on a three man crew that hauled around 15 k the summer I graduated high school and the next summer we hauled around 20 k. All this at the enormous pay of .05 per bale. I also know how to handle the bales and use momentum to my advantage while the boys handled them like they were wrestling a bear.
Not like throwing bales to loft but as a young lad I threw bales onto a moving farm truck. The farmer was like 6’8″ early bales easy last bales to top of stacks not so much
Heh….
Its all in the knee + momentum. I could put spin on a bale of hay like english on a q-ball.
Make it go where I wanted. Bragging? Yes. My first hay-hauling job was for .03 per bale with a six way split. The last hay I put up in the barn I only found one guy to help me for .25/bale just for him. Sold the cows after that season.
Not hardly.
I read an article about the paratrooper in the picture a few months ago. I think it was in The American Rifleman. If not there, The Columbian, the magazine of the Knights of Columbus. There was an article about the true story of “Private Ryan” which wasn’t his name and who was a KC.
Great picture except for the lamentable fact there were no Harrington Richardson M1’s until Korea. This fellow had to make do with a Winchester or Springfield M1.
He was definitely no soy boy.
I think Antifa would have some difficulties in New Zealand, HAKA wise.
Your dad had secretly tunneled over and cut the taproot just before he pulled.
Plus TR can’t have been a complete bad ass — the teddy bear was named after him, after all.
Nice anecdote – but far less clear how a “hard man” makes an honest living these days.
Not much call for tree pullers or ice haulers or whatever at a living wage.
Give it time. Never know what is around the corner. May be that the Deplorables may decide to starve out the big shitties. Wouldn’t that be a shame.
The small businesses were the backbone of the economy. The politicians have worked real hard to destroy them via lockdowns. Most won’t be coming back. What happens to those employees and former business owners when the government checks and rent moratoriums cease? We are in the early days of economic destruction, think national rust belt.
There is an agenda afoot, it is a massive gaslighting and tyranny disguised as disease prevention. It is theft on a scale unimaginable, it is grifting and graft disguised as ‘relief’ and ‘stimulus.’ We wouldn’t need the stimulus but…..
We could use a shit ton of these guys…
The last time something like that happened, it was the Civil War.
It didn’t end well for the Deplorables then.
A 32 caliber pistol round, vintage 1912, directed to the thorax is not exactly the most lethal means of attack.
Still, my hat’s off to TR; it’s too bad the Bull Moose went on to lose to the first “modern democrat” Woodrow Ass-Hat Wilson, and the USA proceeded expeditiously to the Federal Reserve, the income tax, the popular election of Senators and intervention in European wars.
This article says it was a .38: https://www.businessinsider.com.au/teddy-roosevelt-assassination-attempt-2017-6?r=US&IR=T
Good grief. When are people going to stop glorifying past generations as “tough” when many of these people ended up being alcoholics with mental problems. My grandparents and great-grandparents where physically tough but it came at the expense of their psychological well being i.e. two back-to-back generations who greatly suffered from shell shock and severe financial scarcity.
They did the best they could in the face of adversity … Something most of us have never had to face.
Toughness, even with the scars, is something to be admired.
Are you familiar with the concept of a generational curse. More or less we pass on trauma from generation-to-generation? I’ve seen it played out in numerous ways. They may have survived adversity but they passed on the trauma to the next generations.
The last thing you’re going to be worrying about in 5 years is passing a generational curse onto anyone. Folks will be lucky to have enough to eat. And that right there is the point that Llpoh is trying to make.
I’m not concerned about 5 years from now when there’s a massive amount of people suffering from mental illness and addictions. I’ve had to bury numerous people over the very recent years because of both reasons. My own grandmother died addicted to meth a couple of years ago.
Mental health is a multi-generational epidemic that’s not going to go away because a guy can lift a couch by himself. There’s a reason you see more millennials looking like Pete Davidson than Ben Shapiro.
Your thinking is backwards. The weak (mentally, spiritually, physically) will be culled by what’s coming – the elderly and the Millennials for the most part. Those who are left will have earned the right to continue their lineage. Yes, some of them will create the fuckups of the future. Most will not. It’s a cycle whose curve has been forcibly flattened by government for far too long, hence the oversupply of retards today.
The guy who can lift the couch but is smart enough to do it only when absolutely necessary is a survivor.
Clam – people have to take responsibility for themselves. It is harder when there are no role models around, or their family is damaged. But there it is. Sure do not know how mankind ever survived given all the mental health issues you speak of, because hard has been the way of things forever.
There is something to be said about taking responsibility for one’s life. There is something to be said for not accepting the unacceptable or tolerating the intolerable. There is something to be said for not making excuses or placing blame other than where it belongs.
There are programs for getting sober and drug free, AA is free. Self supporting through it’s own contributions. Generally when a person gets sick and tired of being sick and tired they start making the necessary changes. Some never do get sober, they commit suicide slowly.
Not too many addicts abound when food is scarce, focus changes when the necessities of life are difficult to come by. I’ve know lots and lots of addicts, they all have one common trait…extreme selfishness.
Clam – that is certainly true. However, what problems do you think your generation will be passing on? The damage they will do to their children will be severe.
I would much rather the lessons of hard-working people with morals be passed along, even with their many flaws, than the lessons the brain-dead, indebted, poor work ethic sheep of today will be passing on.
You still don’t get it. My generation didn’t come out of a box this way. If they’re “brain-dead, indebted, poor work ethic sheep” its because of the generation that came before them. It’s called cause and effect.
A lot of people in my age group aren’t passing it onto the next generation because they’re either dying early because of overdoses or they’re choosing not to get married and/or have children.
I didn’t get married or have kids because I’m not going to pass it on. Most of my friends and relatives in the same age group only have one kid and many are choosing not to get married at all because divorce was so rampant with previous generations.
Read T4T. To a degree you are correct. The Boomers had the most abortions, highest divorce rate, and least Church attendance of any other generation in American history. Now what are you going to do about it? End your DNA, or pick up your sac and move on?
I got dealt a fucking shit hand. In certain ways I had it much better than Llpoh. In other ways I had it much worse, based on years of reading him. But you either get busy living or get busy dying. Simple as that. That’s survival. Gotta be tough as hickory where we’re headed.
Oh, I’m totally ending my DNA with me. I’m not passing on genetics of drug addictions, depression, alcoholism, and divorce. I’m completely fine with being an evolutionary dead-end.
I suggest you DO have a kid and ” raise it right”
No thanks. I’m not interested at all.
Sounds more like — Not Accepting Responsibility.
I used to blame my parents for a lot of my woes also. Then I grew up.
Stuck – exactly right.
Clam has always wanted someone else to blame. Always.
Blaming someone else for what exactly? My family is full of drug addicts, alcoholics, and everybody is divorced. That’s stating a fact.
That is their problem. Not yours. It needn’t define who you are or what you do.
So change the negative pattern. Live that change. I forced my kids to watch Les Miserables with me this weekend, partly because of our heritage and partly because Jean Valjean is the manifestation of picking yourself up off the floor. Over and over again.
My next goal is to read it with them.
I did change the pattern by not getting married and not having children. Everybody is more focused on proving me wrong you’re not getting that I’ve literally chosen NOT to continue these patterns at all.
Not saying you should have children or not. Not my place. All I’m saying is that crawling through a sewer full of shit strengthens the soul, unless you allow the stench to overwhelm you. There is no progress without pain.
I just can’t imagine what would have happened if Noah quit, or Moses, or Christ. We’ve all endured far less than them.
No, that’s where you are mistaken. I’ve endured a lot. Far, far, far more than I’ve ever discussed on this website.
A lot of us have. Stucky has had a shit hand dealt to him the last few years. I wonder how EC’s wife and children feel. Did BB die alone? My family was at the bottom of the deepest barrel three years ago, so much so that MSM were writing about it. It is what it is…not exactly what I thought I’d become known for.
You either move on and become who you were meant to be, and have total faith that God is carrying you, or you may as well just give up.
Sure. Only difference is I’m not invalidating your life experiences.
If anything I’m trying to validate it, and asking a proceeding question: Now what?
There is no now what. I already told you. There’s patterns in my family over the course of generations. I recognize those patterns and chose not to continue them. The end.
We have all endured a lot. It can make us stronger, and it can be overcome. It can leave a mark. In the end, people make their own choices. Hope you are happy with yours. I try to live such that I accept responsibility for what I have become, and do not blame others for my failings. It is a dark path otherwise.
Again, what am I not accepting responsibility for? I’m literally stating FACTS about my family. It’s a fact my family has a bunch of drug addicts. It’s a fact a lot of my family members went to jail for long periods of time. It’s a fact everybody in my family is divorced. It’s a fact numerous people in my family have mental health problems.
I really don’t understand what I’m suppose to be taking responsibility for by writing about my life experiences.
I come from a long line of alcoholics and drugs. I chose to never do either, ever. I have raised 3 children and 9 grand children and not One even drinks or wants to take actual drugs prescribed from a doctor. Genetic patterns aren’t etched in stone. You can’t even understand the joy you have given up because you didn’t take stock in yourself. Sorry.
Says the Boomer who literally has never taken responsibility for the sins of his own generation or how their lifestyle choices affected my generation.
Clam- What other Boomers do or do not do is not my responsibility. I am responsible for my own actions only. And I frequently speak of the fact that the current generations have a responsibility to the future ones. But as for me personally, I am not a burden on future generations. I entirely pay my way, owe no money whatsoever, have paid off all my student loans, paid enormous taxes, and still do.
Can you say the same? Because I know you cannot. But hey, maybe Biden will write off those defaults you have.
Are you still hiding out in Australia? Didn’t you run away when facing economic adversity during the Obama reign? Hope the money was worth it.
You remember incorrectly. Leaving had zero to do with money. It was costly in fact. I prefer to live in Australia. Even given the absurd virus response. Lots fewer people and much more space.
No, I remember correctly. You literally sold off your business, packed up your shit, and ran away to another country because of Obama’s policies. How many people lost their livelihoods because you quit fighting for them? You got yours and then left once the goose stopped laying the golden egg.
Stephanie, we can’t judge all people in any group of the same sin. It’s as bad as what Marxists do. I understand your anger but it’ll eat you alive.
OK, one exception: NO woman should be in the business of voting. 🙂
Stop projecting your own crap onto me. I’m not angry or any of the other stuff you’ve been talking about this evening.
Naw, no projection. Promise. I sincerely feel terrible you went through whatever it is you went through. It likely sucks. But I hate seeing someone quit even more.
Weren’t you the one that dudes were drooling over on here years ago? Maybe you just need a good old fashioned Stucky Spanking (TM).
Deciding not to pursue a certain path in life isn’t giving up. I have zero interest in marriage or being a parent.
As if you could find, or keep, a husband.
The money shot. The coup de grace.
Stuck, you really have to stop doing that. I snorted beer out my nose and now I gotta change shirts.
I actually can’t and that’s been my entire point. I didn’t have any health relationship models around me growing up. Hence the “everybody in my family is divorced” line I keep repeating over and over again.
Clam – I could not give two shits about people dying from overdose. They made their own bed. Ask a cop what they think about it. I have. They say every overdose death means one less thief, burglar, general scumbag out there.
It is a catastrophe for the family of the person, but a godsend for society. Not my problem.
My 22 year old cousin died of a fentanyl overdose last summer. He barely started his life and literally had no opportunities because he grew up in post-industrial East Lansing.
You really have no idea what you’re talking about.
The world gets better when an addict dies. That is the fact of the matter. For you it was a personal loss. For society, quite the contrary. I know exactly what I am talking about.
Btw – why didn’t you help him? Why didn’t his family help him? Why? Almost certainly it is because addicts are almost impossible to help.
He wasn’t an addict. He made the decision to try heroin for the first time and it turned out to be laced with fentanyl.
He fell into a deep depression after spending a year watching his father die of lung cancer in front of him.
Taking heroin has a real chance of ending in death. He was a grown man, and chose to take the risk. Unfortunate for you and the family.
My nephew died similarly. My attitude is the same – stupid has consequences. It caused enormous pain to my family. But fact is, in the end it was poor parenting and upbringing at the root of my nephew’s death. My family blissfully ignored the warning signs, and would not listen as I pointed them out.
Yes, I have some experience in this, but I choose not to succumb to emotion, rather choosing to realize that individuals make choices that have consequences. Society really does not need to protect people from their bad choices, nor should it do so.
Dude, are you not listening to me? MY FAMILY IS FILLLED WITH DRUG ADDICTS. Their kids grow up to do drugs too. My uncle died of cancer when his son was 20 years old. His son grew up watching his Dad do drugs. Literally, my first memory of my uncle is him passed out on my grandmother’s couch after being beaten up from a bad drug deal. So his son started doing drugs because that’s the only coping mechanism he knew.
What about multi-generational mental health and drug addiction are you not grasping from this discussion?
Now I understand why I gave up on this website.
Don’t give up on this website and quit giving up on everything else. Go give your testimony to a group of folks in need. I’m telling you, you have no idea who you may help.
I’m telling my testimony and I’m literally being told to take responsibility or that I’m blaming other people by stating my own life experiences.
Part of the testimonial process is stepping through one’s life like a story. Beginning, buildup, climax, denouement, and resolution. Hope is not some trite notion that Obama made a mockery of. It’s real.
Anyone who’s lifted weights for any length of time will tell you that 90% of it is mental. That last rep is all mental. I’m not invalidating or dismissing your experiences. What I’m saying is that turning it into a positive is not only possible, it’s liberating.
Clam – always with excuses with you. That man was 20. You do not have to be a product of your family.
My family were as a general rule dirt poor, illiterate, itinerant, largely drunken, low ethics types. I did not let that define me.
People can get out and do better for themselves. If they do not, they only have themselves to blame. It is of course harder, but life was never meant to be easy. People just need to pull the bootstraps harder. The US has opportunities and resources for anyone who wants to avail themselves of such.
It is not someone else’s fault.
Again, how is stating my life experiences making excuses? You literally don’t know me. You’ve never met me and I’ve barely told you anything about my life over the past 10 years. In fact, I’ve barely even commented on this website for the past 4 years. The last article I published on this site was 3 years ago. You literally have no idea what I do for a living, how old I am, where I live, or any other details about my life other than I used to work at an Olive Garden as a waitress nearly a decade ago.
Clam. – I quite remember who you are. And you have not changed one iota. Gutter rats have better ethics than you. And take more responsibility for their lot in life.
It is a shame your family was not better to you. It is more of a shame you let it define you. Hope you find peace.
Dude, you’re the fucking KING of psychologically projecting your own emotional and mental sewage onto other people.
I disagree.
She’s gotten worse. Much worse.
You, AOC, and mygirl have spent a lot of time trying to talk sense to her. It didn’t take.
LLPOH,
I got to call you out. Above, you responded to Steph with…
“But fact is, in the end it was poor parenting and upbringing at the root of my nephew’s death.”
Isn’t that what she is saying and has chosen not to procreate because of it?
GNL,
FINALLY! Someone is taking the 2 seconds to process what I’m actually writing.
I’m glad to hear you are fine with your decision. I hope you have a full and meaningful life.
I sure wish a bunch of relatives in my family had chosen not to have children also.
I have a niece whose last baby was born addicted to heroin. I literally cried when I heard that. Anyone who would do that to an innocent child…
GNL,
Llpoh and Stucky want to put all Millennials in a box labeled “lazy, stupid, vegan, wusses” so they get triggered anytime I write about my life experiences because it contradicts their stupid worldview. They want to believe a group of 80 million people are monolithic so they can dismiss them as entitled whiners.
Steph,
Everyone has their own views on life and society. I strongly believe tough times will produce tough people. I don’t, generally, include tough times to mean downright shitty parenting. That can certainly be a generational thing.
BUT, just as you have made your choice, it is up to everyone to make their choices as well and live with those choices.
I’m not countering you. I’m listening.
Well, my mom was a great but she was only one person and she who grew up with the same generational problems. I just learned a whole “what not to do” from my extended family members and other influences.
I decided I didn’t want to live the same life. I don’t like fighting or constant conflict. I value my inner peace above all.
Additionally, most of my friends aren’t married. I think my generation is opting for co-parenting arrangements and not getting married at all.
Yes, that seems to be the case…co-parenting.
Wip – my nephew was much younger. 16. Not a grown man. And it was not poor parenting by way of abuse. It was by way of no boundaries.
But poor parenting is poor parenting nonetheless, no?
Wip – Adults have responsibility for their actions. Children largely do not. Upon attaining adulthood, people must take responsibility for themselves. Prior to that, great responsibility falls to the parent. My nephew had no boundaries levied, and was too young to have been allowed to roam unsupervised, and had shown himself irresponsible. The fault lay with the parents.
A 22 year old has to be responsible for their own actions, no matter what damage was previously inflicted upon them. The fault lies with the adult.
At some point, people must become responsible for themselves. If you do not like adulthood as the point – generally 18 – then at what age do you suggest? Never? 40? 60?
Clam seems to suggest that if you have damaging parents, then you can never get past that. I know that firsthand to be bullshit. It requires force of will, a willingness to develop a strong character, and the integrity to work to continuously improve yourself.
Humans have had bad parents since day one. Somehow we have survived despite that.
Nope, you’re wrong again. You’re not a fully functioning adult until your brain finishes developing at the age of 27 years old. The brain disconnects the frontal lobes (which is responsible for decisions and impulse control) from the beginning of puberty until your late 20s.
Seems to me men younger than that (Nathan Hale, for one) weren’t putting their lives on the line to make excuses for 27 year olds acting like faggots.
I’m not disagreeing with you. I didn’t know he was only 16. Of course, all of us are responsible for ourselves at some point. I just failed to see where Steph was blaming her upbringing for failures or other such. Mental illness is a thing and I “think” Steph is saying she doesn’t want to possibly pass that on.
Yes, everyone makes their choices. I use myself as an example with my kids often…the good and the bad.
I tell them, take the good parts of your mother and the good parts of me and you’ll zoom to the moon.
Damn girl, you have your ass wedged tight in that pity pot. Using other people as excuses for what you do or don’t do is utter bullshit. My mamma put me backwards on the potty when she toilet trained me and that’s why everything is so fucked up.
I know people, lots of people who came from rough, really rough backgrounds and they survived and made something of themselves. I know people that were born with the silver spoons and they totally ruined their lives. Most drug addicts and alcoholics are selfish, immature and arrogant. His majesty, the baby.
You keep on using other people as excuses for not doing for yourself, I have alcoholics, etc. in my family tree, doesn’t mean I can’t take care of myself or do for myself or make something of myself. Their problems aren’t your problems, their karma isn’t your karma, you make your own karma.
OH, wow. Can nobody read on this website?
We read and comprehend just fine. You are telling us exactly who you are.
Tell it to the kangaroos. I’m really not interested in your hysterics.
Steph, in all seriousness: It’s difficult to read some of the above. I hate hearing some of it, mostly because addiction is a story many of us have known in our families all too well. But you basically said it yourself, you’re ending your DNA because Fate. And that is very very sad. 🙁
It is what it is. I’m just not interested.
Llpoh,
Bingo. And this is why I say that Christ was a libertarian. Societies/collectives/corporations/governments have no soul and no role to play in protecting people from themselves. Individuals do. We’re judged as individuals and we have a duty to help each other on a personal level, or not. Warning others as to their potential folly is indeed helping them.
In fact, I’d argue that societies protecting stupid people from making stupid decisions is terrible for the gene pool and terrible for r/K.
I’m coming to the idea of Christ being an anarchist. Hell, as I get older I find myself becoming seriously anarchistic, or perhaps simply misanthropic, hard to tell these days.
Read the book “Generations” by Neil Howe and William Strauss. It might help you understand your world and how to improve it. 🙂 And get off your ass and have a kid and raise it to be a good person, break the cycle.
This should be fun.
Not so much fun. But it is enlightening to see that SS is the same as she ever was. You have now seen glimpses of who she is. Despite her denials, it is quite clear, don’t you think.
I wish her nothing but the best. Although I wanna bust her balls for busting YOUR balls about Teddy.
Well, if she doesn’t want to marry or reproduce, so what? Her choice. No need to hammer that point over and over, just state whatever it you need to state and then move on. Hammering on the same topic is pointless and boring.
Spent 15 years as a prison guard. Some of those inmates had families and stories that make her’s look like a walk in the park. And some of those inmates (very few, but some) learned to own up and take responsibility for themselves instead of blaming everyone else. Those guys got out after serving their time, and did not return. So..it is possible.
Thanks Frank. Man, you must have seen some things in those 15 years that would be hard to unsee.
Yes, it is possible. It is hard, but possible. Wallowing is not the answer.
Hard to unsee is a good way to describe it. It did have moments though.
There was a motivational speaker going around US prison to give inmates a chance to make themselves better. He had served time in one of the hellhole prisons in Central America and, by the most outrageous fortune, survived.
When he was at the prison I worked at, the inmates kept interrupting him and saying “No, man. You don’t know how bad it is in here, you don’t know what it’s like”.
To quote Louis Armstrong: ‘There are some people that if they don’t know, you can’t tell ’em.’
Frank – you should post a lot more. Great stuff.
My equivalent to that quote is you can tell a person not to pick the cat up by the tail, but they will not understand until they do it.
If the most recent batch of biologically male persons will be referred to as the tough old guys once us old schoolers are goone – just thing how delicate the next batch of biologically male persons will be.
Now there is a depressing thought.
My first job was a dishwasher at a strip center steak restaurant called The Royal Court. This was a notch below busboy. At end of the night after I mopped the kitchen I had to dump two 60 gl garbage bins, and one was nearly always half filled with water glasses the damn busboys failed to empty, into one of the monster dumpsters out back. Just me. I refused to get help and figured a way up and over into dumpster. I knew if I asked for help I would be a wimp. In case you are wondering a gallon of water weighs about 8 lbs and I was just under 140 lbs at 15. Fun. But for $2 an hour I felt rich.
The artist served in WWII
, learned art, came back and became an accomplished artist. He painted some scenes of life at the college in the early 50’s.
Now they are removing it because it hurts some fragile flower feelings.
I wonder if the Draft Dodger ever lifted a couch in his life….
Honestly, that was a lot of words for, “Might makes right.” Your thesis is strong men make good decisions? Tripe. There is an almost endless list of men and women who were not physically mighty, but yet changed the world. I’m not going to waste anymore time on this nonsense, but enjoy your little testosterone festival.
It is a good story, but it makes me kind of sad. Nobody pulls out trees by force of will. Nobody reasonably asks you to do a task you are not capable of. I don’t think any services are done by that kind of deception. The lessons here learned can be taught other ways. Other ways that can be transferred to others.
Don’t give up when a task is difficult. But also don’t hold anyone on a pedestal. You can and should earn respect for being a good example. Cheap tricks are for stories and the soldiers. The lesson of not asking others to do what you cannot do is leadership 101. I learned from some of the best on my way up to Infantry Squad Leader, and who knows where I could have gone had not fortune robbed me of that future.
I hate to poo poo a heartfelt story that contains some truly good lessons learned, but I can’t help myself, because I am a perfectionist and I am still growing.
Well, one thing you should quickly learn is that force of will is a real thing. If two men equal in every way save for their force of will, the one with the stronger will will prevail. Two people of equal strength can attempt to rip out the tree, but the one who is most determined will often prevail when the other will not. Will has everything to do with it. Everything.
And what you know of leadership wouldn’t fill a fucking thimble. A squad of ten people? For fuck sake, I was in charge of more than that at fifteen. All were older than me, and all knew far more than me about the actual tasks at hand. But I, even so young, knew how to organize, plan, execute, delegate, evaluate, cajole, threaten, plead, and most importantly ask. If you take even one thing from this, take this as gospel: the best technique for leading is to ask for help. “John, I have a problem. I need to get X one by Y time, and I am unsure how to do it. Can you help me get it done? What do we need to do?” Help guide the plan they come up with, gently, and do not dictate the terms of how and when. Ask how and when. Then help them, and then hold them accountable for what they have said. Amazingly, they will often propose timeframes that are aggressive as they want to take up the challenge.
I have lead men my entire life, from a very young age. And almost all of them were capable of doing things that I cannot. Almost all of them. If I only asked them to do what I could do myself, I was fucked two ways from Sunday.
Leaders are able to get rally people to a common cause. But they do not need to be able to do what they ask others to do. That is some serious stupid right there. I do not need to be a mechanic to be in charge of a plant full of equipment and mechanics. I have run manufacturing plants all over the world, and I almost never had deep technical skills in the various fields. Leadership is about motivation. It is about getting people to rally around a plan, and take ownership of the plan. A bad plan well executed is better than a great plan poorly executed because of lack of support. Execution is most important.
I really love it when people trot in and try to make it seem they know what the fuck they are talking about.
If you are going to poo poo something, other than your shorts, you should know what the fuck you are talking about before you do it.
I am glad you are still growing. Because you have a hell of a lot to learn.
Here is one definition of leadership:
“What is the best definition of leadership?
The best definition is leadership is the act of motivating other people toward a common goal. People that have leadership skills showcase a strong personality and interpersonal skills to lead others in their direction.”
Not a damn thing about being able to do what you are asking them to do. If that were required, humans would still be in the jungle swinging from branches. Leadership and management is a skill that can be applied in almost any field, and those with those skills rarely need to know much about the field itself.
The world went soft when they put air conditioning and automatic transmissions in automobiles…downhill ever since.
They are everywhere, these pitiful, pasty soy boy freaks. Driving in their Prius’s with masks on and the window up,walking down a deserted sidewalk with a mask on. Always looking at their stupid phones. IDIOTs, worthless IDIOTS
There is a lot of truth in the old saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree”.
My bet is that 90% of the beta units, both males and females, endured helicopter/everybody gets a trophy parenting. It was not how I grew up. Both my parents worked their asses off their entire lives. My greatest success in life has been to raise two daughters and a son who understand hard work, personal responsibility, and aren’t afraid of either.
Now I just hope I can keep us all from being smashed by the Leviathan.
weak men create hard times
hard times create hard men
hard men create good times
good times create weak men
rinse and repeat
Whoops didn’t see that this had already been posted. Sorry LLPOH
What a delight to read.
Dad was born in 1896 (me in 1953). He was 1 of 12 and came from a rather well to do family for Mississippi. 2nd marriage was to a cute nurse 13 years his junior. She grew up really lower middle, as she was 1 of 8 to a B&O brakeman from Westerm MD.
Her fav bro (youngest) left at 14 to work in York PA unloading trucks. Curt was a great man, Pres of intermodal for the old Consolidated Freightways – with an 8th grade education. Made sure his son Jeff went to collitch (Drake), Special Ed Degree. Elem teachers but poor pay, quit.
His father got Jeff work as a labor negotiator for PIE Trucking. Said, “After dealing woth autistics, The Teamsters were EZ.”
He & my uncle decided to go into the trucking biz. Ranger/Inway was too cumbersome. Renamed it Landstar.
I’m afraid that such stories will never be repeated by the Soi-Boyz.
Building something is not their style.
all these comparisons of yesterday’s men to the men of today confirm why i say we need many of the illegals who come over the southern border–
go ahead & downvote me,it doesn’t change the truth–
Hi. Please help…what is a TBPer? Sorry to have to ask, but I honestly don’t know. Thank you, Leslie
TBP = The Burning Patform
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