SNAGLEY snagley SNAGLEY or (TRI SNAG)

Yesterday I was out feeding the chickens when the guy next door came riding over with his kid on horses. My kids went crazy wanting to see the horses. So the guy invited them to come over to his barn and ride the horses. My wife and the boys were really excited so we hopped in to the minivan and headed over.

We put Boy number 2 onto an old horse that sort of plodded along. #2 was ecstatic he is 5 and went around making up songs about his horse riding exploits. My wife and boy number 1 loaded up on a younger more able horse and quietly walked around the pasture. I took #2 on a long walk leading the horse. I looked up and the wife and #1 were on the horse and it was running. It took a turn and both fell off. I walked the horse with #2 back to the barn to see my wife lying on her back not moving. When I got to her she was incoherent Boy1 was fine a little scraped up but ok.

Jo could not stand she had a bump the size of a golf ball on her head was bleeding from her right arm and her right shin. I got her loaded up and took her to the hospital.

At the hospital there was no wheelchair at the door. I had to go in and ask for one and wait 11 minutes. (I have a stopwatch on my watch). They get us into a room and this old woman who seemed to be a 63-year-old candy striper said they were short handed and she was helping out. Nurses seem to be of two types. The ones who are stoic and emotionless and come in do their job and walk out. And then there are the ones who are way to happy and talkative. They come in talking baby talk to my 32 year old wife and tell me that they have to take my wife’s pants off and could I give her some privacy. Jo said “he has seen me give birth to 3 kids and was present for all three conceptions so privacy is not much of an issue to her”.

The x-ray techs accidentally pulled her off the bed and made her cry. I have always made it a policy of mine to freak out when my wife is already hurt and then is pulled off of a bed by x-ray techs, so I then went a little nuts and ended up with the president of hospital administration coming down and assuring me that this would not happen again yada yada yada, and could he please kiss my rosy red rectum.

They did give her a beautiful pain shot that had her giggling hysterically in the lobby as I paid my co-payment.

Luckily she ended up with only a badly sprained ankle. She is profoundly sore this morning and cannot get out of the bed without assistance from all the bruising. Its always something.

When I was a kid we had cows. Milk cows and meat cows. We also had chickens, pigs, ducks, guineas, and assorted dogs and cats. As you know if you have lots of animals you also have logs of poop. It is everywhere on a farm. If you are at a farm you know it can be disastrous to walk in a straight line. We had boot cleaners at the entrance to every house. You have to build an entire house procedure regarding clean boots.
The worst is the cows. Cows view the entire world as a bathroom. They can lay a minefield in a pasture that cannot be rivaled. Nothing is worse that to be walking through a pasture in the early morning darkens, slip and fall into one of these craftily laid mines.

My cousin Erwin, who has been mentioned here before, came each summer to spend a week with us. He was from the city and his mom thought it was good for him to see how farm kids lived. I assume to convince him to study hard and go to college and escape a life of farming.

This particular visit was during my 13th year in late July. The forth of July was over and my firework supply was running low. I had blown up everything that an M80 could blow up. Back in those days you could still buy M80 fireworks. An M80 is ¼ of a stick of dynamite. Explosives were a great toy for a kid like me; I still wonder why they illegalized them shortly after the Erwin incident. Erwin arrived and my mom told him to go out in the yard, I was out there playing. For reference I viewed Erwin as a large fat tick embedded on my backside for one week per year. I had to take him everywhere. That being said Erwin was a great target.

On the farm I grew up on we had many fruit trees. We had three large pear trees that provided a large amount of ammunition, rotten pears. When you hit someone with a rotten pear they explode all over them. Erwin for all his shortcomings provided me with one of the best moving targets a kid like me could ask for. Erwin, also being larger than I, provided me with plenty of beatings on the odd chance that he could catch me.

On this particular day I was in the pasture, Erwin walked up and I said “hey” he said “hey”.
He asked me what I had in my hand.
I said “a rotten pear”.
Erwin said, “What are you doing to it”.
I said “putting a M80 in it”.
He said, “why and then said OH and started running,
I lit the fuse and threw it. At the same moment he slipped in a huge cow pie and began hovering horizontally above it as the rotten pear slipped from my hand and landed in the cow pie. Then Erwin landed on top of the pear and the M80 in the huge cow pie.
Erwin’s mom came out of our house at that moment and said “Erwin come say goodbye”.
Erwin said *#@*&%#
The M80 went off with a loud WHUMP. Erwin bounced up 2 feet in the air covered with poop some of which was cow.
He had a hole in his pants and a murderous look on his face. It was a long rest of the day for young Bo Snagley.
Needless to say I received several beatings for that stunt, but it was worth it.

Uncle Fred lived at the base of a mountain on the other side of the creek across from the dairy farm. As you know he detested work in any form. The only way this worked for him is because he inherited a bunch of money from his parents when they were killed. Uncle Fred never spoke to me about the accident even though it happened 20 years or more before I was born. He used the money to buy the land and the house he lived on and put the rest aside to insure that he would not have to work again unless the mood hit him, and it never did.

The Great thing about uncle Fred was because he did not work he had tons of time for the kid across the way, me. Parents are great but they can only give a kid a pinch of a day here and there, a bum can give you all of his time because he is not consumed with making a living. He took me fishing and taught me to hunt for deer, which brings us to today’s story.

Uncle Fred decided it was about time that I learned to hunt deer, so he invited me to his land for preseason scouting, mostly a long walk in the woods in the rain. I was 11 years old and loved to meander through the woods. Fred would point out different tracks and their origin. He would point at the ground and say fox and there would be a fox track he would then take a few more steps and point and say rabbit, then he would start looking this way and that and show me some rabbit fur and say that fox had a rabbit dinner. Then latter we would see a pile of fox poop containing fur. He told me that while interesting poop was not a matter of great concern. In hunting circles it is referred to as “Sign”. You can’t eat sign he said. What he meant, of course, is that deer poop all over the place and while it is interesting to find, he did not believe that it helped him find deer, which he could eat. This is in large debate in some circles and please I don’t want to here any conflicting views. But I digress; He lived to eat those words.

As we walked along to his favorite deer woods we started seeing lots of deer tracks. It was neat. He could tell buck tracks from doe tracks. He could approximate the age of the deer the size. I would point out a pile of deer poop and he would look at me in disgust and say. Dang it Snagley how many times do I have to tell you, you cant eat sign. I would always point it out to him whenever “sign” was present, mostly to get him all riled up and say ”boy you cant eat sign”. I never knew why he always did that, it seemed odd but he seemed to have a serious aversion to deer poop.

I setup a plan to trick him. My 11-year-old mind was at work. I had some chocolate covered raisins in my pocket. If you did not know chocolate covered raisins are exact replicas for deer sign. While Uncle Fred was looking at some tracks I sprinkled some on the ground and said. Look Uncle Fred deer sign, he looked at me with that look of disgust, spit tobacco juice on the ground and said, “boy how many times do I have to tell you, you cant eat sign”. I said, “oh I don’t know about that”, and then I reached down and flicked a raisin into the air and caught it in my mouth. Uncle Fred’s lower jaw fell open and his lips began to quiver and he deposited his lunch on my boot.

It was a long time before Uncle Fred forgave me for that little trick. Once he realized what had happened he chased me most of the way home, pausing only to gag. And, it was even longer before Fred could eat a chocolate covered raisin without gagging. And I offered them to him quite regularly.

1. Alias First name? Bonapart

2. Were you named after anyone? No

3. Do you wish on stars? Not since life beat me down

4. When did you last cry? When I though my wife had cancer

5. What is your favorite lunchmeat? Turkey

6. What is your birth date? July 9

7. What’s your most embarrassing CD? Whales and dolphins

8. If you were another person, would you be friends with you? Probably

9. Do you use sarcasm a lot? Only when speaking

10. What are your nicknames? Snagley

11. Would you bungee jump? Without a thought

12. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off? No

13. Do you think that you are strong? Yes

14. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Rum Raisin

15. Shoe Size? 11

16. Red or pink? Red

17. What is your least favorite thing about yourself? Unable to give my family the “stuff” I think they want

18. Who do you miss most? My grandmother

19. What color pants and shoes are you wearing? Khaki pants and brown shoes

20. What are you listening to right now? The air conditioner and the sales staff yakking on the phone.

21. What did you eat for breakfast? A granola bar

22. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Green

23. What is the weather like right now? High 89 low 90s not as humid as normal

24. Last person you talked to on the phone? My father

25.The first things you notice about the opposite sex? Eyes then chest

26. Do you like the person who sent this to you? I stole it from Chuck, Yeah he is ok

27. Favorite Drink? Red Wine

28. Hair Color? What hair is left is brown and grey

29. Do you wear contacts? No

30. Favorite Food? Grilled Tuna

31. Last Movie You Watched? Christmas vacation on DVD

32. Favorite Day Of The Year? Christmas

33. Scary Movies Or Happy Endings? Happy endings

34. Summer Or Winter? Spring and fall I hate summer and winter

35. Hugs OR Kisses? Kisses

36. What Is Your Favorite Dessert? Banana pudding

37. Living Arrangements? Home with wife 3 kids 3 cats 1 dog 1 fish and 21 chickens

38. What Books Are You Reading? Last tails of the Yukon

39. What's On Your Mouse Pad? Ink and coffee stains

40.What Did You Watch Last night on TV? CSI, The Simpson’s

41. Favorite Smells? Gardenias

42. Favorite junk food? Sunflower seeds

43. Rolling Stones or Beatles? The stones

44. What's the farthest you've been from home? Tokyo and Kazakhstan

Whenever you see the US Navy launch a new ship, you always see a bunch of high level officers and the President all standing around in their absolute best uniforms and clothes. Now I know why. It is the “I am wearing my good pants” rule. They are not getting on that ship either. Let this be a lesson to you.

I decided we needed to christen our raft like the Navy does, so I told Sven to bust his bottle of Pepsi on the raft. Sven said no so we drank his Pepsi and bashed the crap out of the raft, we busted several of the fence posts loose before we decided we better stop or there would be no raft left.

I climbed upon the Raft and shoved off. The raft began to sink. The “water” was more of sludge, so I decided to try to ride it out rather than swim for it. The raft sank to the point just beneath my ankles and stopped. I floated down the crick and into the swamp. All along the way cows would run the other way. There were reports after this episode were that, not only would the cattle refuse to drink but they also refused to be driven to water. The image of young Snagley walking on water was too much for them to handle. Reports got back to my Mom that I was seen walking down the middle of Sven’s Creek with bundles of fence posts under each arm. Mom told these busy bodies to stop making up crazy stories about me, that I had enough problems as it is without a bunch of old gossips making up outlandish stories about me.

When Sven’s Dad found out about his fence posts he made us bring them back to his barn. During the many long walks that it took, carrying fence posts through the muck of the swamp, while fighting off swarms of Mosquitoes that had been crossbred with hawks. Sven and I decided that maybe we would abandon our boat building for a while. Heck, it was probably for the best, I couldn’t swim anyway.

When I was a kid I had great nautical ambitions. I wanted to be an admiral at the very least a captain. So at age seven a young friend of mine named Sven and I decided to build a raft and float down “Sven’s Crick”. The Crick was known as Sven’s crick it slugged through a cow pasture and forming a rather lazy swamp, it then meandered across a dairy farm and into the woods. Before it made it into the cow pasture it was a creek known as yellow leaf creek. The creek was turned into a crick by the mere presence of cows or rather the byproduct of cows, poop.
We searched for timber to fell in order to build the raft but since neither of our parents trusted us with axes we settled for some fence posts hidden behind Mr. Johansson’s barn. We used hay-bailing twine to bind the fence posts together. We used about 50 posts, three layers thick to build our raft. After building the raft we tried to move the raft.

Sven said “Dang it Snagley pull”
Me “I am pulling this thing must weigh 1000 pounds”

And it did weigh 1000 pounds. We disassembled the raft and reassembled it on the bank of Sven’s Crick. It was a beautiful day. The birds were singing the sky was blue; there was a slight breeze. We looked at the raft with abject pride. I said this raft should float us all the way to the Mississippi. We should put a tent on top of it.

Sven said “Snagley I think it might only hold one of us”. “Maybe you should take the maiden voyage”.
I said “Sven maybe you should take the first ride that way I can throw you this rope if you need it”.
Sven said I can’t do it Snagley I am wearing my good pants”.
He had me there. I did not have any good pants so I had no argument.

(to be continued)

Well the petting zoo quickly moved to freak show
The attractions are as follows

1. Chuck will be the hairy ape-man with smoothly shaven genitals we will charge .03 cents for viewing.
2. Trick will provide an ass. Reportedly a large, experienced one. Unsure of how we will bill this one or the charge. Trick what do you think would be appropriate?
3. Murf will lie on her back and allow people to pet her breasts, at which time she will coo melodically and uncontrollably. This one may make us loose our license and require certain zoning restrictions. A touchy subject that will require quiet negotiations with city officials. Possibly free passes to the Murf attraction. a high dollar attraction at any rate.
4. Chickie will be our chicken woman. We will dress her in feathers and let her crow like a rooster. We will charge by the cock-a doodle-do.
5. Rosie will stand at the door dressed like Winnie the Pooh with Breasts and collect the money.
6. Sandy will stand at the exit selling big hugs for $1.00 each.

This has potential folks, we are gonna be rich.

Murf has made a generous offer to be a petee in my new petting zoo. My assumption at this point is that Chuck will stop waxing his back and become the Hairy ape-man, and now Murf will be another feature attraction. Does anyone else wish to take part as attractions in my petting zoo. To avoid any confusion I need for Murf, and any applicants to include in their resume any talents they possess.
Murf included her two breasts and age in her resume. Murf , do you have any further talents or special abilities that will add credibility to the Snagley Petting Zoo.

Remember applicants; dependent upon your talents it may move from zoo to freak show.

On other news my right hand rear view mirror is being held on by duct tape, a gift of a tree limb that fell off of an oak tree in my yard. Anyone got a 5-gallon bucket of super glue?

I have decided to open a petting zoo at my house.
Please help me to convince Chuck stop waxing his back and come work for me as Olaf The Harry Ape Man.

In other news I have a staff meeting today and did not shave this morning so that should go well. The Queen of Pink The Chuckster and I got together on a web cam she was curious about the looks of Snagley. I am glad to report the view was that “you are not as quite ugly as I envisioned”.

This weekend I plan to take down the bean wires from the garden, start target practice with my bow, and roll in the new fallen dew.
I am contemplating going all out and running naked at the local civic center where a production of the Lion King is going on and screaming “SO WHOS THE KING”. When I was in college it would have been a no brainer but now the thought of the local Cub Scout leader arrested for indecent exposure gives me a bad case of hives.

I don’t have cable television at my house. If you want to watch something light and entertaining you are out of luck. Sure you can watch CSI 7 nights a week, but they as are most show so dark that they can depress the hell out of you. Most of the actors went to the William Shatner School of overacting. Horatio Kane aside from being able to dramatically put on his sunglasses, tires me by his overacting. And how often do crime scene investigators actually lead a swat team raid on multinational terrorists. But, having said that I don’t think I have missed an episode. I watch it like those guys on Mystery Science Theater 2000 sort of looking for Abraham Lincoln’s image in the clouds and waiting for the hot blond girl who runs balistics on the guns to come on.
The following are my favorite shows and what I like and dislike about them.

1. Scrubs: This show is hilarious; Dr. Cox and the Janitor guy crack me up. They have some excellent writers. The problem with that show is you never know when it will come on. They show it consistently for a few weeks then stop for 2 months and then all of a sudden it is on again. Pick a day and stick with it . ***

2. 2 ½ Men This one cracks me up too. It is like the odd couple all over again except with a kid in the mix. They are consistent with showing it on the same night. And it comes on after my kids are in bed so I don’t have to explain why all the women are constantly in their bedrooms. ***
3. Numbers Corny beyond belief, but since I have an interest in math and physics I find some of it interesting. I wonder how long they can come up with new ideas for a show that has to be built around someone solving the crimes with a scientific calculator.**

4. The Office Best show on television. I hate the boss. But, I know people like each one of the idiots on the screen. My main complaint is that there were only 6 episodes the first season. I know successful offices that are run by complete idiots like this guy. Their success is mainly due to competent people under them and a sound business model above them. ****

5. Xiaolin Showdown My new favorite cartoon. Who can believe that Omi has been turned into a cat after having his good and evil sides split by the Ying/Yang Yo-Yo? Lets hope that he can turn back into a Xiaolin apprentice and defeat the evil Chase Young. ****

This is another old picture. the woman on the far left is my cousin who died last month at 110. My mother is on the porch. she is 80. I think the woman on the far right is my great grandmother not sure.

The QUeen of pink had a post about people loosing their virginity.
Chuck left quite a series of comments so i left the following.
it is not my normal post but it cracks me up here it is

I was 22 years old. My service in the French foreign legion was up. I was a free man again. I began wondering the streets in search of a job and fulfillment. My first stop was Ethel’s garage. I walked in the door and there stood Ethel. She was an attractive 41-year-old woman she was wearing a black leather sleeveless jumpsuit. She had a born to wrestle mules tattoo on her forearm. I was wearing my Legionnaires uniform with my discharge pen on my chest. She asked me “what the hell do you want”; I answered “a job and fulfillment”.She gave me a job in the oil pit, changing the oil in the cars and trucks that came for service.One night I was in the oil pit and she came down there with me. She had a can of 10W40 in one hand and the gearshift from a 71 nova in the other. She stripped down to her rubber thong and slathered herself with the motor oil then she made me strip and she poured the motor all over my body. She took my manhood in her hand and said. Dang boy, this is what I was born for. She worked me we made love beneath the oil drain pit in Ethel’s garage. I gave her my innocence; she gave me a job, fulfillment and a gearshift from a 71 nova.

Well I am back

I had a fair vacation. I got a lot done. I did not get the hen house built. I did get the pavers down for a walk to my parent’s apartment. I cut a lot of grass and planted some greens in the garden. Cleaned out my workshop, a major undertaking. I did not get much rest.

In college my first year I had a bout of insomnia, I went to doctors and they told me “yeah you cant sleep”. I seem to be going through it again. If I take Sleeping pills I will sleep, but I wake up feeling as if I did not, actually I wake up feeling worse that if I did not sleep at all. If you have ever been a true insomniac you know that you are awake at night but you are tired. I used to go about 4 nights with maybe 2 hours per night then I would crash hard and sleep for 7 or 8 hours then right back at it. I don’t know if I was struggling with this when Chuck and I roomed together in college but my freshman year was horrible. But I digress.
I can’t sleep again. Red wine will do wonders, but it just ain’t cutting the mustard now. If I go to anything stronger or drink more I just wake up hung over which is worse than being tired. If history is any indicator it will pass.

I did do lots of physical labor, which did get my testosterone levels way up. Time will tell if my wife made through my vacation unimpregnated. I would like another kid so I hope she is good and knocked up.
Snagley Out.

I am taking a couple of days off.
I have only taken one day off since January 1 so I am due.
I plan on building a hen house. Laying some pavers for a walk. Cultivating the garden, burning some stumps, etc etc…..So I will be a new man on Monday.
Nothing gets the testosterone pumping like some manual labor. When I am working hard like that I don’t even shake hands with my wife without wearing gloves. She could get pregnant just from close association. That is just how viral and potent I am.
Might have some new stories to tell upon my return.
Once again any requests are greatly appreciated.
See you monday.
Snagley out.

After my recent posting of the recipe for Cub Scout hotdogs. I have been inundated with requests for the proper recipe for Cub Scout smores. For those of you who are uneducated about smores they consist of toasted marshmallow, and Hershey chocolate sandwiched between gram crackers. The normal dosage for the Cub Scout leader to bring on unconsciousness is one. Cub Scouts can eat smores until they physically cannot stuff any more down their throats.
The proper recipe is as follows.

. One Den of Cub Scouts. At the meeting I refer to them as a din.
. One fire, burned down to coals, at scenic and historic Snagley Acres.
. Marshmallows
. Hershey’s chocolate candy bars
. Gram Crackers.
. Willow stick

Have the fire started before they arrive and ready for them when they arrive. This prevents the cubs from helping in building the fire, and shaves 3 hours off of the time required to build a fire.

Let them use the same sticks they used for the hot dog roast. This prevents the azaleas and fruit trees from taking another beating.

Break out the marshmallows. Give one to each Cub Scout. Have them impale the marshmallow on their willow stick.

The cub will then turn and run to the fire with the reckless abandon know only to cub scouts with marshmallows in need of roasting, thus running into Cub Leader Snagley impaling his hind end on the end of the willow stick. Mr. Snagley removes the marshmallow from his pants and sets the Cub up with another marshmallow.

The cub makes it to the fire and instantly ignites the marshmallow. He jerks it out of the fire sending the flaming projectile onto the back of Patsy Snagley the family beagle. Patsy rushes to Cub Leader Snagley and tries to rub the fire out on his bare legs. Little Johnny asks his mother the meaning of the words Mr. Snagley is yelling. She tells him they are Indian words used to ward off evil spirits.

After the fire is out, the evil sprits are for the moment at bay. The cub now has his third marshmallow and under the close supervision of his mother is roasting the marshmallow to perfection. The cub will decide that this marshmallow needs eating immediately and would not work for his smore. He reaches up and pulls the outer layer off of the marshmallow with his hand and eats it. “Yum yum” he says then reaches up and pulls the rest of the marshmallow off with his fingers coating them with a layer of white goo that will take 6 months to wear off. He then falls into the dirt coating his fingers, not only with goo but a layer of dirt, which he wipes onto his Cub Scout shirt and then Patsy the Beagle.

His father looks at the Cub with a look of disgust, and asks whose kid is this anyway. The Cub Scout is in heaven. He grabs another Marshmallow, and is quickly abandoned by his father, who joins the other fathers in a game of “That isn’t my kid”.

The cub ignites another marshmallow and blows it out, then heads for the smore table.
He pulls the marshmallow off the stick with fingers that resemble something found in a landfill, and places it on the table. Then he opens up the box of gram crackers, spilling them onto the ground. He then begins a fight with Patsy over the ownership of the crackers. Finally Mr.Snagley takes Patsy to her pen. Thus in victory, the cub opens up the chocolate candy and breaks off two squares off of the candy bar. He eats both then looks up as if to say who took my chocolate. He gets two other squares and puts them on the cracker then puts the cold marshmallow onto the chocolate. He proudly shows the crowd his accomplishment. The cub then eats the smore and repeats the process 72 more times until he resembles a marshmallow and dirt covered crack addict. The Cub is so sugar high he can’t even stand still.

Do not deviate from this process or you will be stuck with smores so boring that you can’t give them away. And no one wants to be stuck with that.

As some of you know I moved about a year ago.
My mother is 80 and my father is 85 they are not in the worst of health but not able to be on their own completely.

We moved into their house all 5 of us and they moved into the apartment beside the house. My previous home was in a fair to bad neighborhood, and was our first house. Prior to that we lived in apartments. We moved at the request of my parents. And since we have moved I realize that if we had not they would have had to move into some form of assisted living. This way my Mother and Father get to live at home, and I do what they cannot. They love it. They like having the grandkids here and the kids love it. They respect my wife’s privacy and try to leave her alone as much as they can. They cook their meals we cook ours, at least for now.

Anyway having the bills at the old house and at the new house were killing us. I was hesitant about selling the old house till I saw how things went, so I rented it. The renters trashed the carpet and left the whole house smelling like cat poop. So it has set idle for about 7 months. I could not afford to fix the house up to sell and it took all of my resources to pay the bills.

I called a friend of mine whose wife is undergoing chemotherapy to check on them, I did not mention any of this to him.
He asked about it and I confided that I don’t have enough money to fix it up.
He called his crew and had them clean out the yard pressure wash the outside do the flower gardens, rip up the carpet and replace, and paint the entire inside. He then put an add in the paper for me advertising the house. He did all of this without me asking him to do it.
Recent medical bills for my wife’s hospitalization and my daughter’s ambulance bills in addition to the cost of moving wiped out any savings we had. We are not behind on any bills but we could only make our monthly commitments.

Then we suddenly needed some money for the kid’s school. He found out about this and sent us a check for the fees. I told him that I could not repay him anytime soon and that I could not repay him for the work on the house until the house sells. He said no problem. He even took steps to make sure that I did not feel guilty about it.

Well folks I was in tears. Old Snagley is not known for tears.

I wish all of you had a friend like mine. I wish all of you could have a friend like this. I hope I can be this type of friend when I find folks in need.

Happy HNT
I give you my left thumb.
you might notice a small cresent scar on my knuckle a gift of my first pocket knife at age 9.
Snagley out