The war with the bushy-tailed critters has ceased momentarily. There are bits and pieces of styrofoam scattered around the ground below the tower. Evidently, the foam did not taste good, and there was too much of it to consume in one attempt. There is no telling how long this ceasefire will last, but my guess is that it will end when the critters find a new way to attack. In past battles, the enemy defeated me by using their athletic abilities and jumped the gap between the feeder and the house roof. Thankfully, they have not yet learned the pathway to the house, and I’m not going to show them.
This is GrumpaJoe, War Correspondent, signing off for now.
My war without ordnance proceeds quietly. For the past week, my hobby has been watching to see if the bushy-tailed critters were feasting on sunflower seeds. Not only were they feasting they were sating themselves. Luckily, I saw exactly how they were breaking through my defenses. As suspected, the squirmy critters were wiggling their bodies between and around all the barriers I had put in place. Today, I stuffed the opening between the stove pipe and the wooden post with styrofoam. Luckily, I found a sheet of the stuff in my shop that was over an inch thick. I cut off two inch wide strips and stuffed it into the pipe as a block. Now, I go back into surveillance mode again.
Notice the enemy on the ground under the feeder cleaning up spillage
We choose not to use rockets with explosive warheads, but the battles are just as nasty. This time, the odds are four to one, with me being the one. The front was quiet for the past two years, and there has been no conflict. My problem was loneliness, which can be overwhelming at times. The multitude of friendships I had established has abandoned me. Is that the price I paid for ending the war? Why can’t we all be friends and not make living together dependent on feeding all of you? Why can’t you bushy tailed bullies who overeat my generous food supply understand that it is intended exclusively for the avian crowd? Life would be so much more tolerable if you did. Instead, you continue to impress me with your wily intelligence and unending effort to outwit every barrier I place in front of you. I accept the challenge. The war is on.
Taylor Downing’s “The Army That Never Was” is a well-written book about how the British used deception to defeat Hitler’s army. By creating a fake army and then releasing information about it to double agents, Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Montgomery were able to pull a series of fast ones on Hitler and his boys. I found this story interesting, and it kept me reading. Maybe it is because I remember so much about WWII from newspaper accounts and Pathe newsreels. The facts seemed to be revealing. I was only six years old at the time and could barely read anything beyond Dick and Jane primers, but somehow I began following the war through the pictures posted in our daily newspaper the Sun Times.
Back in the day, many of us got our information by going to the Saturday Matinees and saw episodes of battles shown in the newsreels. The featured Western films did little to inform us of the wars. They did, however, show us many shooting matches between the good guys and the bad guys of the open range. Compared to today’s you tube videos of battle the nineteen forties newsreel’s were tame. They were, however, effective in communicating messages about war. When I began reading this book, it triggered flashbacks of my childhood memories.
A new piece of history that I learned was that Eisenhower had to fire Patton several times during the war. Evidently, Patton had issues with soldiers who he thought did not fight. While visiting injured troops in hospitals he encountered soldiers who were not physically injured and wound up slapping them and accused them of being cowards. Another time he exhibited his hatred for jews while fighting against the Nazis who were slaughtering jews. Eisenhower regretted disciplining him, but had to do so. The commander also regarded Patton as one of the best generals in the army. After firing him the first time, Eisenhower put Patton in charge of the army that never was and Patton performed admirably.
I just had a fantastic idea for a post and lost the idea as I sat down in front of my keyboard. Has that ever happened to you? It is definitely related to age. In the last few months, I have found myself losing many things, ideas being one of them. Another thing I am losing is motivation. I seem too content watching videos endlessly. Writing is becoming a chore, and reading is also becoming a drag. However, reading may be eye-related. And the idea I lost in the first sentence just returned to me. Trains. I love watching videos of model trains running endlessly through some beautifully detailed man made scenery. The detail in some of these layouts is amazing. Another thing I am astonished by is the many new scales that are being adopted by the hobbiests. New models are getting smaller and smaller by the day. The challenge of course is to build train layouts with buildings and scenery to match the scale. It is not unknown to see modelers making layouts on a coffee table platform or smaller.
The model train hobby is growing. I had previously thought it was limited to old men who worked for railroads as careers. I have put building a model train diorama on my bucket list. The idea of making an utterly realistic layout on a desktop fascinates me. That, and the idea of spending my retirement nest egg on man toys, seems fun. About thirty years ago, I had a similar urge, which I acted upon and built a model railroad in my garden. The job was challenging but thoroughly satisfying. I selected G-gauge as the medium because the trains were rather large and very detailed. As with all of my brainstorms the project got out of hand because I over thought it. The larger the scale the closer to reality things have to be modeled. The first impasse I reached was that I needed a large space in order to navigate the grade changes in my yard. Trains don’t like to go uphill. When the wheels are steel and the rails are steel, the coefficient of friction is not very suitable and the tracks have to be very level to keep things running. Have you ever seen a train running up a hill? If you did, the hill was very gradual at about 1-2% grade.
This is not my garden. I lost all of my original photos.
I decided to change the paradigm to make a very long story shorter. Instead of making a yard that looked like a miniature city with a railroad running through it, I decided to make a garden with a railroad to add some drama to the plants. The effort paid off because I had enough of a project to keep me interested in gardening and model railroading. The garden involved my wife Barbara who chose all of the plant life, and me who laid the track, built a trestle bridge that crossed alive stream, a tunnel that ran under a waterfall, and a trestle to climb up the hill.
Barb and I belonged to a garden club that held a yearly garden walk to raise money. My train project deadline was debuting the PA&GRR (Prestwick Area and Garden Railroad). Of course, I finished in time, and the railroad was a hit. Many visitors told us others had told them to see this garden.
As a side story, on the morning of the Garden Walk, about an hour before the first visitors arrived, I was sprinkling water on select plants when I saw something that horrified me. A large garter snake was poking his head up vertically out of the ground cover next to the tracks. Oh my God! All I could think of was the hysteria that this critter would cause if he appeared to the many people visiting during the show. I went after him with a spade in hand ready for decapitation, but he disappeared and I never saw him again.
I cried when I sold that house, garden, and the railroad with it.
