The Useful Duck!

Contribute to my Vacation, please...

Friday, August 10, 2012

We visited Fort Stevens on the Oregon Coast and I bite off more than I can chew, so to speak

Here are photos from a couple weeks ago. I just got around to down loading them from my camera.
The family and I went to Astoria (up at the extreme northwest end of Oregon) and we stopped at Fort Stevens.
Fort Stevens is one of the few places in the USA that took incoming fire during WWII. It is a historic fort guarding the mouth of the Columbia river.

What is really cool about the fort is that all the gun emplacements are still there and are in a wonderful state of disrepair with crumbling concrete and broken locks on the doors. So you literally can hide in the "powder room," and it is a real powder room. There are no lights in the underground bunkers and there are horrible creaky doors and rusty hinges and stairs that go nowhere.
There is only one gun for display purposes but very few safety railings. The gun has a range finder and elevation wheels to turn. (They don't do anything)

In short, it is a paradise for kids!
There is a museum with uniforms and a working model of the giant guns. The guns would pop up to shoot and then the recoil would push them back down.
They were shelled by a Japanese submarine in WWII but the sub was too far away to hit with the guns so the big guns at the fort never fired back!
The daughter and I spent several hours running around in the ruins.
Here she is a the command post.


We were on our way out, (my wife puts up with a lot) when we found one more set of bunkers with no locks on the doors. We made a mad dash through the dark with only my cell phone for light. This did not eliminate my daughters fear of the dark. That night she could not got to sleep. I should not have done that maniacal laugh and slammed the steel doors. Now that was creepy.
In once section of the crumbling ruin I spied an old book. I pulled it out of the crack in the wall where it had been hidden. It was, "The History of Tom Jones," by Henry Fielding (1707-1754) probably from the Harvard Shelf of Fiction put out in 1917.
How did it get there? Why was it left there? What relevance to the crumbling ruin of Fort Stevens does a satirical tale from centuries past bring us?
Curious minds want to know...
In other news I have repaired the baler and I have sold 10 semi loads of wheat straw. Ironically those loads of wheat straw are not to be made with the 3 tie baler I just repaired. Rather, they are to be baled with a small two-string baler of which I do not have... Well, actually we have two of them but I really don't think they are capable of baling 8,000 bales after setting in the pasture for the past decade.
The specifications are, 14" x 18" x 46" long and from 55-60lbs or 16" x 18" x 46" and 65-80lbs per bale of clean and bright wheat straw. There is a fellow who I have done a lot of work for and never charged as he is just starting out in baling. Favors will be called in...
This all seemed a good idea when  I was talking to the buyer over the phone last night. However, in the cold hard light of dawn 8 a.m. I am starting to question my sanity.
8000 bales? No real baler? Hmmmm....

5 comments:

  1. It almost sounds like you are writing a resume to work for the federal government with that last part.

    The first part sounds like fun and reminds me of the places we frequented when my kids were small and willing to exercise.

    Grace and peace

    ReplyDelete
  2. Good to see you have time for fun as well as work . The Fort would have been great to see.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sounds interesting, including the part where you promise things that will require some scrambling!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Nice young ladies who came out from Portland might know that a good, tight, well stacked rack is about a hundred and twelve bales on a flatbed wagon. Did the farm lady with the flashlight check for bale hooks under the seat? Maybe they were itinerant bale hookers looking for honest work. 8,000 bales to go? Sign them on, say I.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Ralph, I spent all week catching up. But it was a good time.

    Gorges, I have no idea how I will get this done. I've been adding up my commitments and I think I am "over subscribed..."

    Collieguy, are there many itinerant bale hookers these days? Perhaps itinerant bale hookers escaping the drought of the Midwest and heading to Oregon for a happy finish. I wonder if they can play the banjo?
    8000 bales, plus the other 200 acres I'm baling. What was I thinking...

    ReplyDelete

Tell me what you think

Please leave comments! It is really easy!

You just type your comment in the text box below the post. You can be anyone you want.
And...Would the joker who keeps clicking "offensive" please leave an explanation ?!