Mail

The Bowling Green Kentucky Railroad Museum has the neatest old mail cars on it’s lot.

It used to be quite a sight to see one of these fast mail carriers grab the mail bag from a station’s bracket and leave the arriving mail while on the fly.

Usually blowing and going at full speed, it was over in the blink of an eye. Yet this was such an important thing in the Ouachita mountains, that when we heard when the last train mail drop would be made, we drove to town to watch. As we sat in the parked Rambler automobile, just across the street for a better view, we could hear the train blowing for the crossing, just South of town. The engineer was still blowing for the crossing by the station when, as always, slam, bang, and it was over, it was a thing of the past. The Station master picked up the bag of incoming mail, kind of nervously looked around to see if any one besides him was there for the last mail delivery by train. Seeing us, he waved then went into the station.

We had sat there quietly, and witnessed the passing of an era.

HUDDLE

One of life’s simple pleasures for us is to sleep in on a day off, while working here at Amazon, then go to the Huddle House for breakfast. With one week left on our assignment here, we are both beginning to feel the fatigue that many hours on our feet brings.

In this photo Betty studies the menu carefully, looking for that special item to reward her self with.

We are counting the days until it’s over. We will work an extra half day on Tuesday, three full days on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, then Saturday will be our last day.

We will likely rest up a bit on Sunday then leave for Arkansas on Monday.

Post script:

Windows live writer is such a cool thing ! It lets us capture these special moments while they are fresh on our mind and save them until we have time to upload them to the blog.

Note the glare off of the several inches of snow that is coming through the windows, and the fatigue on Betty’s face. This was our last days off before the completion of our job at Amazon.

As we post this entry, we are getting ready to move on over to Vandervoort .

CHRISTmas

After completing our Amazon job in Campbellsville Kentucky, we rounded up our plunder for a day or so, then started towards Arkansas. Though we had it in mind to make it a quick trip, somehow that just didn't happen for us. We have laid up in Norman for a couple of days to recouperate from the rigors of the Amazon CHRISTmas rush season. Merry CHRISTmas !

It is great being in a room packed full of loved ones where the excited buzz of conversation is accented by the occasional shrieks of hyper active children. The re telling of shared good times and the planning of future family adventures absolutely saturates the atmosphere !

Betty and I hope that your CHRISTmas is giving you as much pleasure as ours is !

 

Our tiny little tree, sits on the desk in the office slide out.

CASUAL

Early this evening we will have a casual family get together at a local family style restaurant that has a wonder full buffet.  The main idea is to relish in each other’s company without the worry of food preparation or any kind of dress code. Tables will be slid together in the banquette hall and we will be a little loud. Yeh, it will be extra cool for us since we have been out on the road for many months.

I expect that I will be called out on some of my controversial and possibly questionable moves and atrocious behavior during last evening’s Mexican Train domino match, the one that I won. Oh well, I guess that it is time for me to take my lumps ! You may have heard the “big Boy’s” talking about what goes around comes around ? Well, I was certainly “dishin’ it out” last night, so, I expect that it will come home to roost for me tonight. He, he, what can I say, after all, I earned it didn’t I ?

In honor of the occasion, I will be wearing my prized   Indianapolis Motor Speedway, official logo, less than half price, extra discounted, XXL size, tee shirt for the occasion. See the above photo.

It had the coolest hologram tag on it:

He, he, it don’t take much to entertain a red neck does it ? Well,the dinner is over now. And as expected the domino game came up a number of times. All in good natured family “joshing”.

It was a good time with great folks ! Here are some photos to show the setting and the gathering:

JITTER

Being a tow dolly newbie, I had asked a lot of questions, around the campfire, of tow dolly owners. One thing that I wondered about was, on the first tow, on the way home from the factory, would the fully inflated tires cause the dolly to bounce or jitterbug. I had seen one being towed empty out on the interstate, with sand bags strapped down on each side. Campfire wisdom was that if it did, I could simply deflate the tires from 50 PSI to 20 Psi when jitterbugging happens while towing empty, sand bags wouldn’t be needed. The first tow proved that the dolly just didn’t bounce or jitter at any speed when empty. That is good news, for when our completion date is reached reached, we will immediately leave out to be home for the holidays, towing the  empty dolly behind the fifth wheel.

The campground owner told us that we could park the dolly in front of a rental cabin that is usually unused this time of the year, giving us more room on our campsite. Here is a look:

We are counting the days until we head home for CHRISTmas.

Update: Our stint at Amazon has been completed and after a day of rounding up our stuff and getting ready, we departed the Indian Ridge Campground .

We are now in Norman Arkansas for a couple of days catching up on visiting with home folks.

We pulled the tow dolly with fully inflated tires and no extra weight on the dolly for about six hundred miles. This photo was taken after overnighting at Gander Mountain in Jackson Tennessee as we prepared to get underway.

 

  Here,  we are beside the kin folk’s driveway with the tow dolly still attached.

So, over the six hundred miles, how did the dolly tow ? Good. But there were times when interstate 40 was just plain old rough, that it did jitterbug, but not real badly. I would expect that with the small Nissan 4x4 on the dolly, it will be just fine.

EMERSON

We worked the inbound receive dock’s RAMBO,  for manager Emerson. Talk about a real motivator ! Emerson was a pleasure to work for. The last night there, someone put a bug in his ear  that it was my birthday, and he sang Happy Birthday to me in Portuguese at our stand up meeting after lunch.

There was lots of motivation in the form of incentives, that I know always meant extra work for Emerson and his staffers.

He was always on top of the flow of the product and moved along the lines handing out the gold coins for performance. Our last night there Betty had several that she used in the vending machines.

I lost track of how many hot spots we reached our goal on, and were in a drawing for discount cards, gift certificates and so forth. One night Betty and I each received a $25 dollar Kroger gift card. There were many times when we would go out to eat on our day off and we would have a $5. discount certificate to pay on our meals, that we had received at work.

So, how was our over all experience here at Amazon’s Campbellsville Kentucky fulfillment center ? It has been great ! It is like, Toto, we ain’t in Kansas any more !

During our exit interview, various managers all the way up to the Plant manager, sang our praises for our part in breaking many records for performance. Ashley remembered that it was my birthday, which was quite a feat because there are over four hundred workampers here. Gifts were passed out, then the next night we turned in our ID cards and the peak season was over for us. Even the security officers were shaking the hands of the departing workampers and welcoming us back for next year.

We made so many good friends while here, that saying good by was hard on us. As focused on numbers as Amazon is, I hope they realize what a valuable asset their wonder full team members are. Each day we were at Amazon, it was readily apparent that it was the PEOPLE that made the difference in our time there.

Next year they hope to be able to employ one thousand workampers !

CHOP

While here in Campbellsville Kentucky we have both been going to a Barber Shop called DISCO’S CHOP SHOP. Located in the front end of the Domino’s Pizza building, the chop shop has the coolest, wildest, décor, with an automotive theme !

Here is a look:

The address and telephone number.

Betty’s chop is up next. That’s Disco himself getting ready to do the honor’s.

Hub caps, license plates and auto emblems are everywhere. 

VW hub cap and tire coffee table.

Van seats for customer waiting or Bull sessions.

A good place to park.

Cool stickers everywhere.

Tire and wheel clock. It even has a disc brake rotor behind it !

Large screen TV on concrete blocks. Please note that the television is set on the History channel.

Disco’s neat auto shop style uniform shirt.

License plate.

The office wall.

If you are in C’ville, be sure to stop in and say hello. Don’t be caught by surprise, if the well read Disco is heavily involved in a serious discussion, involving world affairs, or if the flow of conversation is intriguing enough to drag you deeply into it  ! Or he may researching some topic on the internet, that is being discussed animatedly among the patrons !

The CHOP SHOP, a cool place to get a cut !