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So far it had been a quiet morning. After a cool evening and night, the sun was warming things nicely. The forcast was for a high of seventy nine. There was a heavy dew during the night, and the morning mist was beginning to clear, helped by a light, mild breeze.
Thinking the grass would be dry shortly, I lingered over email and paying a couple of bills. A third cup of coffee was in order as I dawdled over getting stamps put on a couple of envelopes.
Yep, a quiet, laid back day off was looming over the horizon, and I was going to soak it all up.
Sugar the Rat Terrier squirrel dog had spent the night in the house. A rare treat for her. She was ready to go outside when I opened the door, flipping the coffee pot on as we went by. I left the door ajar a bit so Sugar could come in when she was ready. Computer on and email checked, breakfast finished and Sugar forgotten. She didn't come back in. Which is a bit unusual. Her habit was to come back in with her shiney coat all wet from hunting in the dew, wanting to be dried off with a old coarse textured deer camp towell. She didn't show up for that, and I forgot. I was engrossed in bill paying.
With a cup of coffee in one hand and the stack of bills in the other, I headed up the driveway to the mailbox, opening the kennels of the other squirrel dogs. Barking, yipping and bounding ran rampant as the pack was released into the fresh morning air.
Continuing up the drive to the mail box, the dogs raced ahead. Each of them choose a special fence post or flower by the mail box to hike a leg on. I was just a few steps short of being at the mail box.
Movement coming fast towards me up the county road caught my eye. It was Sugar. She was running as fast as she could. Low to the ground. Ears pinned back. Not making a sound. At first I thought something was after her, but she wasn't running quite like that.
All of the other dogs were focused on their flower watering project, and hadn't seen Sugar, yet. When I finaly realized what was actually happening it was almost too late for me to do anything about it.
A grey Squirrel wasn't visible to me because of a fence post, until it was very close ! Sugar had catching it on her mind and was totaly focused on that ! The squirrel was within ten feet of me before I saw it. And I was between it and the large red oak tree at the end of the driveway. That squirrel was going to have to climb me in order to escape Sugar !
Instantly pandemoneium broke out. The other squirrel dogs cut their water off and leaped to intercept the fleeing grey squirrel, and I was at the intercept point !
It was a whole lot like when some GI would throw a beer can into the rapidly whirling ceiling fan of a Saigon bar, hollering loudly, "IN COMING" ! Everyone would try to uproot the tables and chairs attempting to get under them. The same type of drill here !
Coffee going one way, mail the other, I hit the ground. The squirrel had nothing to climb, so it bounded over me, to the red oak. The dogs all in pursuit, jumped over me in their rush to the tree.
It was loud and exciting to the dogs. And there I sat. In the middle of the driveway. Astonished that neither the dogs or the squirrel had scratched my eyes out in their frenzied chase.
Unhurt, I began to laugh loudly over the scene we presented to the world, and no one was there to enjoy it but us.
The squirrel was safe in the tree, the coffee stained bills were in the mailbox, and the dogs and I were on our way back down the driveway, when I remembered the song about the day that the Mississppi squirrel went to church, and got up the guys pants leg.
The dogs kept looking at me as I laughed. It was as though they were saying, " what are you laughing about ? The squirrel got away !"

FALLING

Clang !I nearly jumped out of my skin ! The Squirels have been working all up in the giant Oak trees around the house and I should have been expecting it. Clang, Clang ! Still I jumped. By then I had figured it out. The Squirels were agitated by my being under their tree ! Sugar, our Rat Terrier and Squirrel Dog was with me as I went into the Oliver shed. It is a large carport type cover for our travel trailer. Origonaly made large enough to accomidate a 34' Motor Home, it now "swallows' up our much smaller Oliver Travel Trailer. The sound of the acorns hitting on the sheet steel roof just echoed on the inside where we were. Sugar had figured it out before I had, and was already outside peering intently up into the large white oak tree.
First one, then another of the red squirels began to chatter and fuss at Sugar. She challenged them with a few choice barks. Clearly her message was, "if I get a chance, I'll get you !"
An older, heavier, grayer, boar squirel took the challenge up. Coming part way down the tree, twitching his tail provacatively and scolding Sugar loudly, he responded. Sugar closed up to the trunk of the tree, stretching her front paws as high up on the bark as she could, snapping and barking her wrath at the cheeky interloper.
I slipped away long enough to get a lawn chair and a cup of coffee.
It was a grand old time that these two veteran's were having. They weren't going to get too close to each other. I had seen them at it before.
A younger red squirel began to cut loose acorns and twigs, dropping them near to Sugar, heaping more agitation into the furious contest over the dominion of the territory.
Sipping the coffee, I went over my "getting ready for winter" chore list, while enjoying the ancient test of wills between rivals.
Harm's Weigh had been Winterized, with the bilge checked and dry. Engine drained. Mooring cover in place, under the boat shed. Firewood put up. And on and on with the list. The next on the list was bagging the roof turbines on the attic of the house.
Suddenly the old red squirel had enough, he also had Winter chores to finish. Back up the tree he went.
Sugar followed me as I went to get the ladder to go up on the roof. It was time for us to get back on the job also.
The leaves are falling some, and the acorns are beginning to also. Winter will be here before we know it in the Ouachita Mountains.

COIN

It was a rainy part of the day, at RVER II, ( River Valley Egg Rally ) in VanBuren Arkansas. The rain wasn't blowing, and the barbeque grills were a' smokin' under the awnings. Some had started a domino game of chicken train in the meeting hall, some were involved in needle work and chatting. Some were just napping.
I had other plans, however. Before leaving for the rally, I had loaded several nearby geocaches into our Magellan GPS. Though we had been very near to one of the geocaches while eating a meal at Rick's Ribs barbeque place, we had not had a chance to look for the cache. I was going to look for the cache in the rain. Everyone seemed to be busy and I had just checked email on the laptop, the time seemed right.
Sitting at the small dinette in our Oliver travel trailer, I turned on the GPS.
When the GPS had "found it's self", it indicated that we were within a foutrh of a mile of the geocache.
Though it was raining, it was a gentle rain and wasn't too chilly. I grabbed the Jeep keys and pocketed the GPS. Dressed lightly wasn't a problem, I didn't even take a rain jacket.
Placing the GPS on the dashboard so I could monitor it, I noted that I was within one eighth of a mile of the cache when crossing the Fayetteville Highway.
Navigating in towards the geocache, I turned in by the barbeque place. The name of the cache was pass the barbeque. And I did. Soon I was as close as the Jeep could get me to the cache. I waited for a bit of a heavy shower to pass. The GPS began averageing over and over, becoming more and more accurate about the location of the cache. Stepping out of the Jeep with the GPS in hand as the shower let up, I noted that the 100 foot proximity alarm went off. Getting close now !
The geocache was a .30 calliber ammunition can and it was full of geoswag. The log book was in a ziplock baggie and was clean and dry. Geocachers from all over the United States had visited the cache. The log book was a good read by it's self. Spreading the swag out inside the jeep so I could sign the log in the dry, I found a rare thing. A PATHTAG, loose in the wild. At first I couldn't believe my eyes ! But there it was. Pathtags are highly sought after trading coins that usually are not found loose in the wild !
Though we had only time for one geocache at VanBuren, it was a sure nuff' deuzzie'

The PathTag belonged to a Retired Army Airborne Ranger that was Artic trained. The PathTag wasn't logged in the log book. It had just simply been dropped in the cache amongst the geoswag. Later I talked to a couple of the cachers that had been there just before me. Somehow they had overlooked the articabn pathtag.

Breeze

A cool breeze blew in overnight and about 0300 hours Dillon gave me a punch. He flipped the covers up with his nose and jabbed me in the ribs, with his cold nose. I was snuggled up under the comforter with every window in the house open. Betty is over at her folks house taking care of them. Dillon's whine told me that there was something that needed my attention. As I slipped on my sandals I could hear Nada also. He was in the kennel in the living room. He has had surgery and is wearing a cone to keep him from pulling stitches. Nada is recovering well and was also vocalizing that something was going on outside. I could hear nothing, but the kennel dogs could, and they were also talking about it.
Picking up the million candle power rechargeable flashlight, I released the door and the dogs boiled out of the door, challenging what ever was out there. Within seconds Dillon gave his "catch sound", then yelped in pain. Pandemoneum broke out as the kennel dogs chimed in with Dillon and Nada who had began to bark up. Coming around the corner of the house, I could tell the dogs had treed something and I turned the light on.
Dillon was in his alert signal sit, and Nada had his feet up on a large white oak tree in the yard by the West pasture. They were challenging a marauding Raccoon to come down and fight like a man !
I figgured that the coon had been silently raiding the bird feeders when the breeze had shifted bringing his scent to the dogs.
The breeze had a cold bite to it, telling of a front that was arriving. With the light off and the goose bumps standing out on my bare legs, I slipped back into the warmth of the house, with the now empty bladdered dogs at my heels.
With Nada re kenneled, the fan in the window now turned off, I snuggled back under the covers. The last thing I remember before dozing off was Dillon curling up by the bed in his guard position.
The morning's coffee brought with it a list of things to do before the first hard freeze arrived. I remembered those goose bumps from the night before.
At the top of the list, winterize Harm's Weigh.

OFFSHORE

(PCP)
Confident, tanned and polite, the outdoors man answered my query in a quiet but firm voice. The question had been why would a Ouachita Mountain boy choose to go to sea and work so far from home ? His response was measured, when he said, good wages is a factor, but it is somehow more than that. If I am working at home I spend about half of my time away and on the job, so it is not much different, working off shore. I spend two weeks out on the drilling rig and am off for two weeks, spending that time with my family.Because our family's lifestyle is so heavily related to the out of doors, it was just a natural that I would want to also work outdoors.My work schedule will nearly always give me a full half of deer season to hunt.
My next question was how he started to work for an off shore drilling company. Grinning, he responded, "the internet, of course !" That is where the initial contact information came from, then there was about a three month process of physical, psychological and aptitude tests, along with a physical examination. After all of that, there is an intensive week of twelve hour days in Morgan City Louisiana. It is about half class room study and half practical exercises on a training drilling rig that is part of the international oil rig museum, on the banks of the Atchafalaya river. Passing the written exam and the practical exercises, at that drilling rig, named Mr. Charlie, qualifies you to go to the next phase, which is conducted at the U.S. Coastguard facility in Morgan City. "What does the Coastguard instruct you in at that site", I asked. The answer was direct and to the point, as is Richard Saddler's way. "Water Survival." "You have to demonstrate that you can swim ?", I asked. "For one thing, he replied, but it is again, about safety, learning the use and proper wearing of flotation and survival gear that is used at sea. It is more than learning how to tread water, it is also about quickly making emergency flotation devices and utilizing even the clothes that you are wearing. Since we fly by helicopter out to the drilling rig, one of the training exercises is how to exit a heilo that has to be ditched in open water". Really!, I said, how do they train you for that ? You are seat belted in a training aid and put in a swimming pool and have to successfully extricate your self from the training vehicle. There are scuba divers in the pool as you submerge, just incase there is a complication".
Wow, what happens next ?, I said. "That is actually the graduation training exercise, at that point you have already passed the written exam on that part".
Serving to help meet America's energy needs, Richard Saddler, Wickes, Arkansas.

FLIGHT

(PCP)
This coming September it will have been thirty four years since the Texas International Airways flight number 655 disappeared in a violent thunder storm that it was trying to go around. As some may recall, the aircraft, a convair 600, was en route from Memphis Tennessee to Dallas Texas, with stops in Eldorado and Texarkana Arkansas. Aboard the aircraft was two pilots and nine passengers.
At the stop in Eldorado the air crew decided to continue on to Texarkana though there was a massive cold front approaching from the North West, that was pushing a violent thunderstorm across the State.
Did the aircrew know something that led them to believe they could beat the storm to Texarkana ?
We will likely never know, for the aircraft was forced North to try to find a way around the storm.
Thirty years later an Aviation Archeological Team, accompanied by a news crew from channel 3 KTBS, arrives in the Ouachitas to revisit the scene of the crash and to interview Mena locals that may have knowledge of the incident.
Long time Aircraft Technician Marty Caldwell, who has been involved in many air searches over the years, was one of those that were interviewed out at the airport.
The Ouachita Mountains are clearly marked on the Aviation map of Arkansas. There is a large purple rectangle on the map that defines our area as a "high Crash Incidence" area. The Ouachita Mountains jut up from the earth in a twenty five hundred feet high leap above the surrounding terrain, causing pilots that are used to flying in flatter Southern Regions to miscalculate clearance.
During the search for the missing airliner a Army National Guard Helicopter also crashed, losing all personnel aboard, amplifying the magnitude of the tragedy. Local pilots who are knowledgeable of the
Ouachitas are always sought out for some of these dangerous search missions, with the Mena Airport as the base of operations for such searches. The search for the Texas International flight lasted for three days before it was located many miles from the original search area.
During these days of unbridled media attention, you might think that these valiant and expensive, often volunteer, search and Rescue operations would garner much applause. Yet recognition seems to be sparse. How is it that so little attention has been given to the many massive search and rescue operations that are spearheaded by local pilots gets so little attention ? The budgets of local Law Enforcement agencies, Fire Departments and the Office of Emergency Management are devastated by these efforts. These local agency's always are the first to get the call for help, yet seem to be the last to get much recognition.
During the course of your daily activities, as you encounter these dedicated and professional public servants, let them know how you appreciate their efforts on behalf of the public.
Should you have missed the original airing of the broadcast, or would just like to revisit it, the article is chock full of details with a on site view of the crash scene, it is available on the internet at:

RAIN

The weather forecast had been for a 20% possibility of measurable rain fall happening. The forecast had been that way for so long that no one seemed to believe it could even remotely happen. During the fourth week of August , the memory of the last rain fall was dim indeed. The leaves on the giant oak trees around the yard were turning browner by the day. Each step on the lawn gave a dry crisp crackling sound as it compressed the dead brown grass. Mowing the grass was not an issue this August ! The morning air was very still and dust rose slowly up to fill his nostrils with each step.
The trip to the end of the driveway had been postponed from the day before. The mailman had waved as he accelerated away from the rural route mail box and the heat waves shimmering up off of the driveway had made his image somewhat blurry. Retreating to the cool of the house, he thought, I'll hike to the mailbox when the sun is a little bit lower.
The telephone rang as he stepped into the deep shade and conditioned air of the house. It was good/bad news. A friend that was deployed to the middle East with the Army had been injured and was in the hospital at Fort Carson. The bad news was that a friend was suffering from his service to our country. The good news was that he had made it back and would likely recover well. More phone calls followed and the trip to the mailbox was never made.
While sipping on his second cup of coffee the next day, the forecast that he heard was a 20% chance of rain. He snorted as he sipped coffee from the cup, ha ! He thought, fat chance of that ! But, I will go get that mail, while it is cool !
The early light of day revealed, as he stepped outside for the first time, that a cloud bank was building to the North West. As he removed the letters from the mailbox he heard it for the first time. Deep low and almost ominous sounding , it was obvious that the distant rumble of thunder had traveled considerable distance.
Walking slowly as he sorted his way through the mail, he felt the first gust of wind. It was heavy and smelt of impending rain. The mail lost it's interest for him, as he peered into the gathering clouds. In the distance across the pasture he began to see the rain shower as it quickly approached.
He didn't hurry to the house, but instead continued to amble down the driveway at a leisurely pace. By the time he entered the house and announced, "honey, I went after the mail", his shirt was wet and his smile was broad. What a pleasant surprise in the last week of August.