10 Pound Bag Ch. 046-050

The day wound down and I went to do chores, Holder was supposed to tell us his life story tonight and I was looking forward to that.

**** Chapter Forty-Nine -- Back Home in old Kentucky ****

It's odd how once routine sets in you can spend a good chunk of your day simply doing chores necessary to keep you alive. You spend that time aware and focused but a certain part of your mind is off working on other things, I've had some of my best and most creative ideas come to me while focusing on something completely unrelated. I suppose it's a human trait and my guess is that it's brought on by the left brain/right brain thing; but what do I know? That's just my guess.

Today I was fussing over winter in the back of my mind. I grew up in cold country and I knew that the onset of spring simply meant that winter was coming and coming sooner than you wanted. I also needed to get to a trading post and figure out how this new world of mine worked. I had a list of items we'd need building in my head and I knew that without overland roads we'd have to figure how to move things up and down the river. Basically light-hearted thoughts all "butterfly's and sunshine".

As we sat down to supper I made a point of mentioning that we need to build a new table pretty soon as we couldn't all sit together to eat. Holder mentioned that he'd watched people do that and all you really needed was a good planer. Well the problem was I didn't have any planers the closest thing I had was a draw knife, but if he could get us to that stage we could take turns until we got a semi-smooth table top. I immediately added a good planer to my mental shopping list. The list was growing out of control and the problem was I'd have to be the one to go to the trading post as soon as the spring waters started to recede.

Holder was about to tell his tale, I offered him a glass of whiskey which he accepted and gave him the speakers seat at the fire. The speakers seat was the place where the story teller got to sit, it wasn't overly special but it was on the opposite end of the fire from me and had become a place of honor for the story teller to sit.

Everyone was gathered around in their respective seats. Both kids flanked Matilda on my right and Michelle and then Sonya sat on my left, that's just how it developed. I had a whiskey and a beer and everyone else had hot chocolate Sonya had made on that chilly spring evening. Everyone settled down finally and I lit a cigarette wondering how much longer until I had to switch to the pipe.

Holder started his story.

Holder started, "I lived up in hills from a town called Harrodsburg over in Kentucky.

"It was a place my grandaddy had laid stake to just after the war, his name was Thomas O'Connell. We had a pretty good homestead built with five different houses and three barns, twasn't too far from the Kentucky river and the nearest town was Harrodsburg. Although we only called it a town because it had a trading store and a church, we used to go down to church once a month when we did our shopping.

"I had four brothers and three sisters and me being the middle boy I decided once I came 17 it was time to leave. I hired on to a river boat running supplies up and down the Kentucky, it didn't pay much but they fed me and got me all the way to Louisville. In Louisville I signed on to a boat heading down to New Orleans and finally got to see me a big city.

"I worked the docks in New Orleans for a spell but that turned out bad, the crew I was with from the boat got me hired on at the docks and the gangs were really dangerous. So I found a river boat heading north and worked my way up to St. Louis; eventually I wound up here.

"I really didn't have a place I was aiming to go but I heard stories about the Oregon trail so I thought I might give that a try. I was just off adventuring you see. My Pappy had told me to go out and get all that craziness out of my system so I could settle down and make them proud."

Everyone was quiet for a while after he finished, I walked over and poured him another small helping of bourbon and thanked him for the tale. He commented on how good the bourbon was but it did lack a bit of flavor, that made me chuckle. If this guy can make better bourbon than Max did I was going to try extra hard to keep him around.

**** ****

Morning. Coffee, chores and the rest of the morning routine. Today was the day to finish fencing the pasture and so afencing we did go, fencing is a toilsome and time consuming task and I've not met a person yet who got excited about it.

Off we went the three of us with Brin happily toting our tools and supplies behind him on the cart. We managed to finish the job by the end of the day. It wasn't much to look at just a single strand nailed up to some posts but it would keep our animals honest. It connected to the corral we could let them in and out of the corral directly into the pasture as needed. There were two gates still out on the old fence line and we'd install those eventually.

Michelle came out and approved our temporary setup and we let her put the animals out in the field. Matilda, bless her evil soul, even brought out some of her brightly color yarn which she and Esther went around tieing to the wire so the horses could see it easier. Now all we needed was some sort of shed or barn before winter arrived.

We had venison stew for supper with veggies and a salad made from early spring greens that they had gathered, good food was not a problem we suffered from.

After supper on a whim I went through Matilda's survival seed bucket and I got lucky and found a packet of the seeds I wanted. I felt like the heavens had opened and shined a divine light upon me, I even did a little victory dance holding my prize aloft.

Some kind soul had included hops seeds in the survival bucket.

**** Chapter Fifty -- Saturday Night ****

Saturday is supposed to be a fun day. For some reason that never happens; too many chores to do, too much maintenance to catch up on and far too much cleaning for my taste.

We cleaned the camp.

The women took over and we were simply slave labor at their beck and call while every single tent, camper, stall, and anything else they could think of was thoroughly cleaned. Poor Holder got stuck on washing detail, he spent the day at the wash bin scrubbing things they had us bring to him. It started with all of the clothing, Michelle supervised and helped him. Everything was hung out until the lines were full. I was then told to run more lines, so I did.

We moved everything out of tents and swept them and then moved everything back in. All of the windows were opened and every domicile was allowed to air out.

We brought up a load of gravel from the stream and spread it where we told to keep down the mud around the camp. We scythed back fast growing spring weeds from the edges of the camp and even trimmed a few aggressive tree limbs.

Lunch was a quick meal of pickle sandwiches with fruit and some of our remaining potato chips; we then we quickly got back to it.

By 2pm I'd had enough and put my foot down. There were Saturday chores the guys needed to do also, they got their one-time burst out of us and it was time for us guys to move on.

We turned to maintenance, I had both Amos and Holder carefully cleaning the solar panels while I check and ran the sewage dumping the tank into our pit. I then ran some water down the line to pick up odd bits left behind.

I ran maintenance on all the vehicles and filled any fluids that needed topping off; no real leaks so far but that wouldn't last forever. Full operational checks were run on everything, we even ran maintenance on the dog cart.

I showed Amos and Holder where the fresh water intake was and we cleaned out any debis that had caught in the filters. We checked our bridge for impending problems and walked the creek to spot any looming issues there. That was it, time to do evening chores.

The camp did look much better when we got back although I did see a suspicious pile or two of things that I was quite sure we'd be tasked with handling later on. Somethings just never change forwards or backwards in time.

Supper was almost ready and the night was surprisingly warm portending rain on the horizon for later tonight or tomorrow. I put on a disney movie and we enjoyed BBQ chicken with roaste bok-choi and roasted onions for supper. I guess we were cleaning out the last of our store bought veggies, better now than letting them go bad.

I brought out Ice Cream for the second half of the movie, that was a big hit as well. One of the things about store bought Ice Cream is once you open that container you have to eat it all, trying to save Ice Cream never really worked. So I picked one of our remaining ice creams at random, it didn't really matter what flavor it was. I told them it all had to be eaten tonight, that wasn't really a problem with the young people around.

I slept well that night; good food and good sex seem to make sleeping so much easier.

**** ****

Finally Sunday, a day of rest.

Well the rooster didn't know that and the chores still needed to be done so up I got dreams still running through the back of my head.

Fires, coffee, chores.

Praying the entire while that breakfast would be ready soon.

Sonya had a sermon prepared, my exact thought was "Fucking Hell".

I told her she had ten minutes and of course that pissed her off; honestly I didn't care. We all sat there while she read some words from the bible and of course she went well past ten minutes.

I got a bottle out of storage, stood there and took a hit directly from the bottle to make my point and Sonya packed it in.

Breakfast cleanup done so I set everyone lose for the morning; I had decided that all of us needed a day to unwind. I told them I'd honk the horn when dinner was almost ready.

Michelle took Amos and Holder down to the stream to start teaching them fly fishing. Sonya had put some music on and Matilda was holding class on some sort of creative domestic art; she could have been making witches brews for all I knew.

I decided to find a trail to the Nemaha river. I started by using the drone, it was getting harder to see with the drone at that point as the leaves were coming in fast. I thought I saw one or two workable trails so I saddled up Lunch and Brin and I went exploring.

I checked out both game trails leading down to the Nemaha, both were usable with some work I just need to decide which one would make a better road. I need a boat launch down on the Nemaha so we could start to trade up and down the Missouri River, I knew this area would experience explosive growth starting very soon. I needed to be clearly established when the US Government started coming around.

I made the river from both trails and noted the state of the path and possible boat landing areas, that took up most of my morning and I felt it was time well spent. I managed to bag three rabbits along the way with Lunch only flinching the first time I shot, he was learning. Brin was happy as he had already figured out that hunting meant fresh meat for him tonight. Still, "fetch" was not a concept that every crossed his mind, Lunch refused to fectch also; I fetched my own damn rabbits.

I made up Macaronni Salad and Hot Dogs for lunch. I had the condiments for every style of hot dog sandwich you could name, the only thing I didn't put out was chili. Once everything was prepped I blew the horn on my truck and threw the dogs on to cook.

As people showed up I assembled the sandwiches and cut them into thirds so people could try each flavor and style. It was quite a feast. In the end we were all stuffed and we still had two plates of dogs left; Amos and Holder commenced to having an eating contest. I almost got sick watching them.

Needless to say school time was replaced by nap time, not a soul could keep their eyes open; I made sure to set an alarm.