9

9-12-09
End of summer?

I was invited to come out to Nick Golden’s ranch by Brad Sauer. Brad and Nick have been running cows together there. Brad has been doing a lot of work putting up hay bales with this very cool machine. It is a Farmhand mounted on an old truck frame with the rear end flipped over and fitted with traction tires. You used to see a lot of these old rigs working out here in Montana but the round balers and now the Big bales have pretty much made them obsolete. They use this one to pick up the little triangle stacks of small bales and transport them to the stack.

I really liked this little old open top horse trailer. I think it was homemade and it is another thing that you used to see in use. Now all horses ride in covered trailers. I wonder if horses were tougher back when?

I sure liked this old barn sticking up in that big overhead space.

Cow hides on the fence. They eat meat on this ranch………. Good eating too……

I have never noticed a trailer like this before and had to go over and check it out. It turns out it is made of fiberglass.

Back in the 50’s they said there was a serious grasshopper infestation. The government came out and set up an airstrip and spread poison bran for the hoppers to eat and kill themselves. One of the planes caught fire and this is the remains of that old fabric covered plane. I thought it was interesting that the frame was made of steel pipe and rod.

Brad took me and some other friends out for a ride around the ranch. I forgot to bring my camera, so all you get to see of the ranch is the background of these pictures.

I stopped in to see a friend of mine on the way home. His son was in school but I was invited down to his room to check out his homemade gun collection. I was amazed by the inventiveness of this kid. He has made all of these guns mostly from plywood and tape. I guess it is really hard to keep a piece of plywood around the shop and better watch the tape too…..

The inventiveness of the kid ia as I say amazing. From using screen door latches for bolt actions to pipe for folding stocks, almost everything that is laying around can get built into some sort of rifle or pistol.

This pistol has a clip feed.

Wow, how about this one?

Here is my buddy Mark Weeding with his new Plastic Wonder that he picked up down in Rapid City, SD a couple of weeks ago. He has been down to the Horizons Unlimited meeting down in Colorado with some folks that travel around the world on motorcycles. I guess he met some nice folks down there and maybe got the ‘itch’ to GO…….. it will be interesting to see where he ends up.

He was able to get the first scratch on it, or was that done by the previous owner? He aint saying…..

It looks like he has a redhead, and we all know how redheads can be eh? Have fun amigo…..

I got Fred, my 1956 GMC running again. Actually there wasn’t much to it other than putting a battery in it. I had rebuilt the engine in it several years ago after a couple of years of gathering parts for it. When I put it together I didn’t like the pistons that I was supplied for it. It turns out that they were not the correct pistons and I need to replace them with the correct ones. I finally rounded up a set along with rings and will have a guy in town swap them out for me as I just cant do it out here in the open.

Fred is really a classic pickup with the large wraparound rear window and the deluxe chrome trim. They didn’t make many of these GMC trucks and even fewer of the deluxe ones with the high speed rear end. Most of the pickups of this year went about 45-50 mph but this cruises at 65-70 with ease. It has the famous 270 cubic inch engine, which is a straight six.

There is nothing like a simple six cylinder engine and so simple that almost anyone can identify all the parts and take them apart and fix them. Things are much different with the new pickups. Ask me about my Dodge truck that didn’t start…… damn thing cost me mucho dinero to get it back on the road. I should have spent the money on Fred, but then Fred didn’t need that much….. heck most of the original paint is still on it so it doesn’t need paint. Maybe a little wax.

The car show was held in the city park today and it was a nice cool cloudy day. Every year there are more cars and trucks in the show. This 1941 command car was sure looking good.

This little Ford jeep has a gun mounted on it. Bob said it is not a machine gun anymore but it still does shoot and is a semi auto. It sure would surprise your enemies eh?

The guy in the blue shirt bought this car when he was a kid to drive back and forth to school. His first car!!! He has been driving it in parades for years and I see that this year he has restored it. I liked it a lot better as an original. I suppose this looks better to most people but to me it has taken all the caricature out of the car. Something can be original only once, but restored many times.