My Life:How Time Flies

Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?  Seems like you just get started with a favorite activity and it's time to quit and do something else.  Like shoveling eight inches of wet snow off the driveway and the front walk so that the company coming over for dinner tonight won't get stuck in the snow or get their feet wet.  Time is funny that way.  Years ago I was instructed that if I wanted to count accurately in seconds, I could say the number followed by the phrase one-thousand, as in one one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand... this is supposed to provide accuracy instead of subjectivity.  Just try it the next time you're in your dentist's customer care chair while he revs up his favorite drill and waits for the Novocaine to take effect.  Try to remember that the time is subjective.

I ran across a few old 35mm slides and had them digitized.  I was reminded about the passage of time and how things happen without any of us realizing it until too late.

Here's our driveway and home, likely taken about 1950.  The split rail fence on the left is new and will support the weight of one person climbing over into the pasture.  The area on the right hasn't been fenced in and is clear.  The house is a light gray color with red shutters and the trees around it are a modest size.

Driveway and Home, likely June of 1951

Driveway and Home, February 2012

Note that the seasons are not the same and the position is likely a little further away.  I'll try taking another photo in the middle of summer.  The flora around the place has grown considerably and the split rail fence has been replaced.

Driveway, Right Side

Although we used this area to the right of the driveway for a pasture, it didn't last - mainly because of the fencing problems.  You see, many of the people reading this are going to be city dwellers and will not understand critters and fencing.  Put a few horses inside a pasture full of grass, and they'll invariably want whatever is just outside the enclosure.  They'll lean on the fence to reach the fodder, and the fence will eventually give way to the critter.  Then it's off to the races.  These blackberry bushes are impenetrable during the summer, unless you're a small critter that is.  The wild blackberries are excellent when they're ripe and when you can reach them.

Driveway, Left Side

The last split rail fence on the place attained entropy around 1963 or so.  In 1968 my father finally bit the bullet in half and erected a board fence.  I built one third of the fence, along with two old men who were retired from the coal mines in Tennessee.  It took every bit of three months and was a real learning and growth experience.  When we built the fence we cleared the brush along the fence line.  All this growth occurred after the fence was completed.

Here's an official photo of Old Faithful.  The photo was stolen off some site on the Internet and is being used without permission.  Note the fence keeping the cattle sheeple tourists back away from the geyser.  You can just make it out if you look closely, but it's presence is evident by the uniformity of the line of people watching the geyser erupt.

Old Faithful

In 1951 my parents took a trip out West to see the sights and have a great time.  They stopped by and saw Old Faithful and naturally took a few photos of it, and I'm glad they did.

Old Faithful in 1951

Old Faithful in 1951

In 1951 everyone just stood where they thought they should.  I would suppose a park ranger might be around somewhere to explain that the water coming out of the geyser was hot, but now that I think about it I don't believe it's likely that any ranger would bother explaining anything unless asked.  Clearly the water is going to be hot, so it would behoove you to stand back a little.  How far back was up to you.

My great grandparents visited this place and camped out very near Old Faithful.  My great grandmother got hot water from Old Faithful to wash the dinner dishes in after meals, which is something I'd like to do but which I'm denied by a fence erected by a controlling, domineering government that would have been seen as a dictatorship by my great grandparents.  Who benefits from the fence built around Old Faithful?  The tourists?  Don't be foolish.  Anyone stupid enough to be scorched because they didn't have the good sense to stay away from hot water needs a keeper - small children come to mind; don't get me started on the rest.  No - the government built the fence for the same reason that it does everything else.  Because it can, and because it's pleasing to bureaucrats at all levels to deny and restrict rather than keep their hands off.  We suffer the bureaucrats that previous generations would not have suffered because most of us don't know any better, others don't care and still others actually want someone to run their lives for them.  That's frightening, but the worst of it is that this group of dependent sheeple is getting larger all the time.

I stumbled across this yesterday - an SUV with Securitas on the side.  It sounds Spanish, which is what prompted me to photograph the SUV, but it isn't.  It's a European company that bought out the infamous Pinkerton National Detective Agency.

Jeep Patriot

Securitas

The interesting thing is this: Securitas is released from liability by the Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002 (SAFETY Act) which is something I didn't know much about until today.  The way the Act is written, it would seem to pertain to technology and R&D, but perhaps not as Securitas is certified by the SAFETY Act and, according to the certification,

The Technology is provides an array of security services including armed and unarmed security officers, access control, ambulatory response, and associated security guard services.

So I'd suppose that if need be, Securitas private JBTs can carry fully automatic weapons and unload on the citizenry of the United States with impunity.  When did that happen, exactly?