Corn Likker,  Food Prices, and Red Handed Proof

           It takes a lot of power to force anything down the throats of an industry as powerful  as the oil industry, but  with little help from a few  key senators, a few dozen congressmen, and a few million unthinking useful idiots in the environmental camp, big agriculture managed to figuratively   force big oil into bed  back in '05, and has kept forcibly  that otherwise shameless huzzy there  ever since, in spite of  all her   screaming  and crying, and  the  late "but better late  than never"  sympathy of thinking environmentalists.

         Now don't get me wrong. I'm about as far from being a fan of the oil industry as a rational person can get.The most I'm willing to say for the oil industry  is that it is a necessary evil, and that we  simply must have oil  and have it in  humongous quantities  for now and  for a hell of a long time to come because without it our entire economy will collapse about as fast as  a sand castle in a tsunami. Hopefully we will eventually figure out ways to  get by without  oil- at least without very much of it.We better, because there is inevitably a time coming  when only modest quantities of oil are available and then only at exorbitant prices. But I digress.

         The oil industry is not one situated by it's long   record of less than sterling behavior  to get much sympathy or respect when it  tries for the  high moral ground, but once in a  while even a seasoned    crook is telling the truth when he says he didn't do it.

     I have a couple of relatives who have made good solid careers out of being convicts; they like it so well that whenever they   get out thrown out of the pokey, they manage to get back in again in a matter of months - which is much  faster than most of us can find a full time  job these days, given the state of the economy and Obama care......
           One of these guys is has such a reputation as a prolific worker that I have  been seriously asked if I thought that he  really did  break into four different houses in four widely separated neighborhoods in  one day-to which inquiry I replied with  due modesty that although the family takes considerable and justified pride in his professional  accomplishments, the truth of the matter is that he simply wasn't  up to it, what with the  necessary drives from one house to another and  the  trips  he had to make to stash the loot, and stopping for  lunch and gas and dropping off  his kids at school- somebody else   burgled one of those  four houses, as was later proven in court.

       But still, three widely separated jobs of that sort in one day, along with looking after getting the kids to school, is right much of an accomplishment, and so far as we know, it's a local record. I guess an urban burglar could do four jobs in a day,  easy, if he stuck to small stuff like silver and laptop computers, but my cousin - now he goes in for more substantial goods, such as  billiard tables, and ya can't expect a man to  move  one of them heavy  suckers and still hit three more houses the same day , even if they are real close together.

      The truth of the matter is that in this particular case, that   slick and nasty oily old ole   industry is telling the truth when it says that ethanol is a bad deal for  them and the consumer.

      The consequences of this   forced relationship have proven to be serious indeed, but  the general public   has  fallen for the industry's endless false  but highly skilled  and well orchestrated protestations of innocence. Most people simply don't have a clue as to just how bad a deal  the ethanol mandate has proven itself to be  for  us as individuals and as a country.

       I'm not going to have time today  to go into detail in respect to the many ill effects  the subsidized manufacture  corn likker-moonshine- by the  millions of barrels  is having on our economy and our environment . I'm  just  going to briefly mention the worst effects for the moment  and leave it to you to look around  a little  to see for yourself  just what the facts are.

    But  I will come back to this topic some day soon and go into some depth  depth and put up some  links that will   help you develop a deeper understanding of the many  ill effects of growing so much corn and  manufacturing so much ethanol.

           The worst short term result of the ethanol mandate has been  a  substantial  across the board increase  in the  prices of basic or  staple foods   which has pushed tens of  millions of people around the world  to the very brink of starvation, and created hardships for more millions of  working class  and unemployed Americans.It's  caused every body else's  grocery bills to go up too , but  if you're reasonably well off by American standards,  food is dirt cheap anyway   and couple more bucks for a nice beef roast  is no big deal.


       Beyond  this rise in food prices- which has  put my own family   and most people I know in the position of eating  a lot less prime  ribeye than we  would like - the ethanol mandate has resulted in  many  millions of tons of fertilizers, pesticides,  diesel fuel, coal, and natural gas being used  wastefully - so wastefully  that it is highly questionable if there is even  a net gain in energy after all the production,  manufacture , and distribution costs are properly  tallied up.

       The ethanol mandate has also resulted in  millions of acres of farmland that would otherwise be idle - and resting up   for future use- being   put into  monoculture corn, which in and of itself  results in substantial harm too the soil and to the wider environment  due to loss of wildlife habitat and water pollution- a  secondary result of  using so much  fertilizers and pesticides.

     Here's the red hot proof of the connection between  ethanol and food prices I promised you in the title of this post.

http://news.yahoo.com/epa-says-nothing-final-ethanol-blend-industry-group-191732547.html

    You  might want to copy this article for later reading - it's the sort of thing that tends to disappear  sometimes.

     The ethanol industry has steadfastly maintained that  it is not responsible for  record high corn prices since the mandate took effect, and it has enough clout that not many mainstream news media have been willing to question that claim for fear of losing the advertising revenue  brought into their businesses  by companies associated with  big agriculture.

      Here are a few little  industry insider quotes from the article  that inadvertently  blow aside the  curtain  and  allow us a good look  at the  moonshine wizard.

        "Because of the dramatic economic impact on commodity markets"  translated into plain English reads  roughly :   

       ' We're pxxing in our pants because without the mandate we're noncompetitive and we know it. Ethanol prices will collapse, and  with the crash in ethanol prices, the price of corn will collapse too, because   a huge portion of the nation's corn crop is used to make ethanol. There will be a follow on effect in the  prices of  a lot of other commodities too; fertilizer and soybeans for instance will be cheaper.Chicken, pork and beef be  will be cheaper. And even though we mostly got 'em by way of govt subsidies and fire sales, and have very little of our own money tied up in them,  we're triple pxxxxd because we'll have to sell our  moonshine factories for scrap if we were to lose the mandate or if it gets  cut back very much. A whole lot of people have been making a whole hell of a lot of money out of this thing, and we ain't about to give up our  gravy train without leaving plenty of  bloody hair and   eyeballs littering  the sidewalks around  congressional offices".  

         "I believe we are competing head-to-head with Big Oil"  translates as  bullxxxx pure and simple.
    
        If  the moonshine industry were actually competing with anybody- other than all the other voracious pigs  lined up in DC hoping to   latch onto one of the  federal sow's countless tits- it wouldn't need a mandate.

      "In our opinion, they are going to be very defensive to give up any gas tank share - they are going to defend their share at all costs" translates as:
    
    "We have a huge war chest and we own a few key senators and a bunch of congressmen,  and the big time farmers who dominate  corn state politics are backing us to the hilt, because they're  making ten times as much money  these   days as they used to, before the ethanol mandate doubled the price of corn for them."

   Sometime soon I will post an extensive followup going into detail as to why mandated ethanol is such a bad deal for everybody except the people getting rich  from it.

                                                   Hybrids Compared to Pure Electric Vehicles


                This is a followup  to the longer post about "lecterc  cars" and it might make more sense if you read that one first.

       Klem and I believe that battery electric vehicles - which do not have a gasoline or diesel engine at all-will eventually own the road, inso far as personal cars are concerned , because we think that future models will   go far enough on a charge, and sell cheap enough, to take over the automobile market place.

        We aren't opposed to hybrids. are opposed  to hybrids. to the contrary, we think  a well designed and well built hybrid, and especially a plug in hybrids is a great vehicle.Hybrids in our opinion will become more popular year after  for  a long time to come.to come. We just believe that  pure electric  cars will  eventually  outsell hybrids by a wide margin.

                The purpose of this post is to explain  why we think this is so , as well as  make the case for hybrid cars-  especially  plug in hybrid cars- as opposed to conventional cars.

 Klem is going to do the talking, since he enjoys it more than I do.

      Now where wuz we last time? We left off talking about  batry only cars, what they  call bev's  for short for batry 'lecterc vehicles.So this will be the first time we have talked about hybrids more than just to mention 'em in passing.
     
         A hybrid  has two sep'rit  motors to make it go, one that  is rightly called an engine , cause it runs on gas or diesel, and the other one ah 'lecterc motor.The 'lecterc motor is there partly to help the gas motor along   when you need more power, but mainly it is  to help out with the gas mileage. It takes an extra large  extra heavy duty  batry   for the 'lecterc motior  to work, and them kind of batry's cost an arm and a leg, which is  the main reason  hybrid cars cost a lot more than reg'ler cars. Now if the car is made so you can plug her up and charge up that big ole batry, 'n drive  on'lecterc power  alone, for a pretty  good piece,  it's  ah  plug in hybrid ruther than jist a plain old hybrid.

       A plain hybrid  will run a right smart cheaper on gas than a reg'ler car the same size drove the same way. It gits better mileage for two reasons, mainly. One is that ah hybrid  car gen'rilly has a smaller motor than it would otherwise, unless it is a hot rod hybrid. Ah  smaller motor always gits better mileage unless there is sump'thin wrong with it, ever thing else equal. The 'lecterc motor kicks in when you floor it and need the extry power, which is why you kin git by with the smaller motor.

        The other big reason ah hybrid gits  real good mileage, spercially around towm is what they call regenerative braking.what this means is that  if you're going down the road at fifty five, and hit the brakes, the lecterc motor  is switched by  the computer from being a motor  to being a generator, and most of the energy you put in getting the car up to fifty five is  put back in the batry ruther than heating up the brake rotors 'n  pads, which is what happens to that fifty five to zero  energy when you hit the brakes in a reg'ler car.

         Hybrid cars have some other built in  tricks too, like the motor cutting plumb off when you stop at a light, and starting back up so smooth and quick when you let off to the brakes and touch the gas you won't even notice it hap'ning.. So you don't burn no gas idling at the light. 'N most of the newer ones will run at low speeds  for a little ways with  the gas motor not even firing up, so long as the batry is charged up good , which  saves some  gas in  slow stop and go traffic.But the batry in a plain hybrid ain't big enuf to go very far at all, and not very fast either. A mile or two and fifteen or twenty miles an hour is in the ball park for most of 'em so far.

     Now a plug in hybrid is a dif'runt story. Ah plug in has a really big batry. A Chevy  Volt is by far and away the most popular plug in hybrid  right now, so we will use a Volt for air  example. Ah  Volt is rated to go about 35 miles  on average on a charge. It  won't go that far if you run it too hard, or the weather is real hot or real cold and you  use  the heat or the ac a lot. But on the other hand if you drive it easy  at thirty or forty miles an hour on a good road it might go over fifty miles before the gas motor  ever has to kick in. So you can drive ah Volt as much as two or there thousand miles on a tank of gas if you don't go very far, say thirty miles or so,  any given trip and always plug her in and give her time too git charged all the way up  before you drive her agin.

       Lot's of people have done it.

http://www.hybridcars.com/some-chevrolet-volt-owners-hardly-use-gas-at-all/

               Of course charging her up ain't free-  but most places you can buy enuf j juice  for ah dollar to take you as far as four dollars worth of gas, 'n that adds up real fast if you  drive ah Volt ever day about as far as it will go on the batry.

      But it still don't quite add up to enuf that  most folks will save enough  money on gas  by buying a  Volt to come out ahead unless they  plan on keeping it and driving it a long time, and gas goes up some too. But if it turns out that gas goes up a whole lot, anybody that has one  could come out smelling like a rose,  and  they will will prob'ly git  a whole lot more for ah Volt at trade in time a few years down the road than they  would for a  plain gas car  if  gas  is up a dollar or two a gallon, which could  happen easy enuf.

      Now less take ah look unner the hood  'n the floorboards 'n in the trunk 'n see where the money goes  when the factry's build these kind of cars.

       Now ah Volt is ah  real good car,  but  there ain't no gitting around the fact that they sell kinda high. The single  biggest reason they cost so much is that they have to have all the parts, except a transmission ,that  a regular gas car has plus that monster batry 'n that big 'lecterc motor . Beyond that, it also has a large generator built into  that is driven by the gas motor, which in turn drives the  electric motor that drives the car- anytime that big ole batry is discharged.The rest of that high price comes from guv'mint motors  ah needing to git back some of the money they spent  designing the car  'n gitting  ah factry   converted to build  'em.

              So just to make it clear I'll say it twice; a Volt runs on it's batry if it is hot 'cause you've  charged it up; if it's discharged because you have driven her  without plugging  her up afterward, she runs on the  gas motor  which drives the generator which drives the 'lecterc motor that drives the car.

         Now our 'pinion, mine and Mac's is that  after a few more years, the price of them big old batry's is going to come down to where most  people will be satisfied with a pure 'lecterc car 'cause it will run fur enuf and cheap enuf to satisfy 'em.

              Ya got to r'member that a pure 'lecterc car  don't need no gas motor at all, an it don't need no  transmission, neither, 'n them is the two most 'spensive parts about a car  that are  apt to need fixing and servicing.

             'Lecterc motors  er dirt cheap compared to gas motors 'n all the stuff that has to be there for ah gas motors  to run, from the radiator  up at the front bumper  to the tail pipe out to the back bumper.

        Take off what you save by doing away with the gas motor 'n the transmission 'n a bev ought to sell cheap,'n it would to ' cept for two problems.That big ole batry still costs ah arm and a leg an the car kumpnies is still paying off all the  money that it costed them to    learn how to build a good batry powered  car, and paying off the money  it costed to build the factry's they need to build the batry's and the 'lecterc cars.

           If they had of just stared making  plain old gas 'n diesel motors ten or fifteen years ago,  they would  cost so much that nobody but a rich man could afford a car ah tall.But they been making  'em a over a hunnert years now, 'bn in that hunnert years  they have learnt how to make 'em  cheap  so long as they make a whole lot of 'em.
 
          This is what yer call "economies of scale" in perfesser talk. All it means in plain 'Merican  talk  fer an 'zample is like this. If you  spend ten dollars a day to lease   ah car jiist to have it a settin' there ready to go, and you don't  drive it but five miles ah day, it costs you two dollars a mile before you even put  in some gas.

            But if you drive her  fifty miles a day, and put in ten dollars worth of  gas, then your cost ah mile drops down to  to forty cents a mile. Car factry's 'n bartry factry's aint cheap, 'n  they  gotta get ah big price for what come's out of 'em till the git the volumes up, 'n that's goin' ter take a few years  yit.

    
    Batry's  are ah goin' to git cheap in ah few years as shore as shooting.  That's what always hap'ns when people starts buy'n a whole lot of anythang that comes out of a factry by the thousand n tens of thousands.

         Take fer 'zample ah double over head cam  fuel injected   turbo charged four valve motor.  Thirty  years ago a three hunnert horsepower three liter   motor like that costed twice   more than a whole car costs these days- with ah double over head cam fuel injected three liter  three hunnert horsepower motor  standard equipment!.the reason for it being so high back then is r that it was a very low volume motor for  a top end hot rod type of car.These days it's what they stuff under the hood of  most any junior sized hot rod.

      N' when them batry's git cheap enuf, an they put out twice what they do now for the same size 'n weight, most  people are going to be plumb satisfied with ah  new BEV considering how cheap it will  be to run it  'n keep it up.I can't say this often enuf or loud enuf  to hurt my case- ah pure 'lecterc car that is well made is going to be a keep it till you're plumb sick of looking at it  car.      

            But in the mean time it might pa ya to look inter gitting a car like ah Volt, cause  it will run dirt cheap  if  it suits yer driving pattern, 'n  it might easy outlast two ordinary  cars'n heres the reason why.Ask any good mechanic, or anybody fer that matter that knows a whole lot about cars, and he will tell you that  short trips and cold starts are car killers.if you havew a choice between buying two cars exactly alike   in every way except one has fifty thousand miles of  'round town short trips on it, and the other one has a hunnert thousand miles of  long  open road commuting trips on it,  the car with the hunnert thousand miles is  by a long shot the best deal- if you are going to keep it and drive it till it is wore out.
    
        Now  this don't seem reasonable until you take a good look at how a car gits wore out and starts nickeling and diming ya to death a few hunnnert bucks at a pop for repairs.

    So let's just take that look.First thing  ya do is open the door-once for a two mile trip, once for a thirty mile commute.That's fifteen times as much waer 'n tear on the guts of the door  in one trip. Then ya buckle up  'n start the motor- fifteen times as much wear an tear on the starter n the ignition switch.Ya start 'n stop 'n speed up n slow down a half a dozen times in that two miles 'n the transmission   has to change thru the gears a half a dozen times 'n ya hit the brakes the same six times. Now a long commute will still have some starts 'n stops and speeding up 'n slowing down at both ends of of it, but the  biggest part of the commute  is not putting hardly an wear 'n tear at all on the car, and the wear and tear per mile is a whole lot less.Changing gears is what wears out a transmission, not miles. Using them is what wears out brakes.Tires will last two or three times as long on the open road as they will in town.

    
          Now there ain't no real  easy way to ''xplain why short trips is so hard on gas, n diesel motors, but i'll do the best I can.The oil don't work  it's best till it gits hot.'N none of the  hunnerts of parts in a gas motor  that fit  closer together than the thickness of a hair fits exactly right till they git hot too- metal parts   git bigger when they heat up'n shrink when they cool off.When the fit ain't right, it's like a shoe that don't hit- it'll put a blister on yer foot. That bad fit  fit on the parts of a cold  motor wears  'em out real quick.Depending on who you talk to,  ah mechainic er an engineer will tell you that a cold car motor wears out from four or five times on up to ten times as  as fast as ah hot motor.

    Now ah 'pure 'lecterc car ain't got no transmission, an ah 'lecterc motor an ain't got hunnerts of parts that are fitted as close as the thickness of a hair and ah  whizzin' around an ah pounding up and down  thousand uv times a minute, all uv 'em   kept from  siezing up  by a few drops of oil spread so thin  you can't even see  it edge on with yer eyes- you can't see ah   five thousandths of an inch gap between tow parts. Ah cold start don't put no extra wear on ah'lecterc motor, 'n as i've said before, it's damn near impossible to wear out ah 'lecterc motor.

         Now if yer ketch on quick, you already seen why ahVolt might easy outlast two  reg'ler cars- 'xept for that big ole question mark  beside uv that big ole batry.  It iain't got no transmission to go bad. 'N the gas motor don't even fire up most times if you go less than thirty miles or  so  'n you keep her charged up 'tween trips.So you could easy put a hundred thousand miles, or two hunnert thousand, or even more, on a Volt, 'n still have a gas motor that ain't hardly got no miles on it at all.N' miles , specially cold miles, is what wears out a motor, not time. Yer Italian  loafers don't  wear out in yer closet when you ain't  wearing  'em , an yer Volt gas motor ain't wearing out  under yer hood  when it's jist along fer the 'lecterc ride.

         Now maybe that batry in yer Volt won't  take you but fifteen  or twenty miles  when it  is finally wore out- but  thats still fifteen er twenty gas free miles, 'n yer gas motor ain't gonna be wore out! 'N  unless me 'n Mac misses our guess real bad,  by the batry  is wore out, a new batry will be cheap enuf , n gas will be high enuf  you won't mind having to git a new bartry  put in,  knowing yer Volt will still be good fer another ten years of no  transmission   'n no  likely gas motor  motor trouble   'n near no gas bill driving.

            Now this 'bout all ah got to say fer now bout 'lecterc cars , 'xcept  for one  er two last thangs.It pxxxxd me off so bad when the guv'mint bailed out guv'mint motors I swore I'd never own anuther  guvmint motors car  er truck. I'm still mad  'bout it, but I'll probly git over it in time to buy me a second hand Volt  one of these days .

         'N I'm not  sayin ah Volt is  any better than a whole o' lot of  other plug in hybrid cars  you can buy right now, or will be able to buy pretty soon.It's jist a handy 'xample.

          Course I ain't mad about the four percent loan the guvmint gimme  to buy my farm, ner  the lake they paid for  fer me to fish in, ner the tax write off the give me  that  put that tricked out f250 in my driveway.'N it don't hurt my feelin's none that they send me a soil bank check fer not farming most uv my place neither, cause to tell ya the truce th, I'd   ruther rent some the rest  the land out 'n   drive my truck 'n  farm the place  by filling out some more applerkashins at the aggercultur dept   fer more  free money ta fix the place up right.I do like to git out there  on  the tractor  one in a while but  not ever day no more.

           'N it don't hurt my feelin's none that the county is thinking 'bout giving me a property tax''xemtptshin  if I promise not  ter subdivide the place, ,cause I'm on my own  three hunnert acres uv paradise, 'n I ain't even thinking  about livin' no where else anyway.

    Fair is fair, ain't it?  If you can't whup 'em , ya need to think about joinen' up with 'em.

                                                           Fuel Cell Cars?  

  Klem and I have  been on the phone again,  discussing  an announcement from Toyota that they expect to be able to  sell a fuel cell car  for a hundred grand  hopefully in 2015.

     http://news.yahoo.com/toyota-says-slashes-fuel-cell-costs-nearly-1-200044492--finance.html

             Now Klem and I will be the first to admit that we don't know enough about fuel cells to  say a whole lot about how well they might work, or how much they might cost--- some considerable number of years down the road.

       But it's pretty obvious that they will necessarily cost a heck of a lot  for a good long while to come for at least  one simple reason; the market for them so far is pretty small, and  just about all the ones that are being made are designed for stationary use.So if and when  Toyota , or some other company   finally  gets one    up to snuff to put it in a production car,  it seems  to be a  pretty sure thing that it will take a while for somebody else- a fuel cell company-  to build  one or more plants and train the workers to manufacture them  in quantity.

     Klem and i are convinced that   battery powered electric cars and very light trucks  are going to own the road  within the foreseeable future,  because we think battery prices are coming down fast enough, and gasoline and diesel prices are going to rise fast enough that the typical driver will find it to his advantage to own a battery electric vehicle in the not too  distant future.

            If we're right , in  five or ten years a  basic battery electric vehicle won't cost much if any any more than a similar  internal combustion engine vehicle,  most people will  be happy to   live with the limited driving range of a battery powered car in  order to save megabucks on gasoline and routine maintenance and repairs. People who  do need a long range car and can afford only one car  will most likely  buy a plug in hybrid   because  by then  plug in hybrids 's will   be  their  cost effective choice of vehicle.
     
         We don't have anything against plugin hybrids;we just think that in the end,  most people are going to prefer a bev to a hybrid to an ice car.As a matter of fact we   think plug in hybrids  will soon be a cost effective option    for anybody who can get good use out of  one - for example someone such as a commuter who can  put  a couple of hundred miles a week on a new Volt   mostly on battery power and thus use very little gasoline.The price of a Volt is coming down, and the price of gas is   going to be going up a lot faster than the price of electricity.

       But  plugin hybrids  and pure electric cars are both unfortunately still on the pricey side,  even though  the sales volumes and competition between manufacturers are now  up to the point that   prices are coming down. Our own scientific wild axx guess is that it will be  five years or  longer before buying a pure electric or plug in hybrid  is  a better option than an ordinary car  from a straight   dollars and cents point of view.

        Now if it takes the  electric and plugin  segment of the car business five more years to catch up with ice cars on a dollars and cents basis, considering the start they have already, how long is it going to take for fuel cell cars to catch up starting from scratch?

    And while it probably won't take very long to fuel up a fuel cell car - there is  the little problem of there not being any place  to fuel up to be dealt with.

     Here's Klem's take on  this question of fueling up a hydrogen powered car versus charging up a  battery powered car.

    Hidergin is hard stuff to work with cause the only way to hannel it is in pressure tanks,  just like compressed natcherul gas, ' cept it's worse, cause it will leak right thru ah steel tank er a steel pipeline,  which you will know about if you hannel hazardous materials  like a trucker does  if he hauls haz mat.

   Now the main reason that you don't see a whole lot of  trucks running on natcherul gas is that there  just ain't no hardly places ah tall   for truckers to fill up on ng.  We'ad be a burning it if we could, cause it's a lot cheaper than diesel.Putting in ng pumps costs a heck of a lot of money, and takes up space, and if a truck stop ain't right on a ng pipeline- well,    it ain't likely going to work to try to haul it  to the truck stop like diesel fuel cause its too bulky, ya can't git enough in a tanker truck  to make it work out.

           It might work money wise  to haul hidergin, or it might not, but one things for sure- there ain't no hidergin pipelines to deliver it all over the place 'n nearly all of it would have to be trucked to the places that retail's it.

     Now when ya git right down to it, there ain't hardly no place that you can go with a car that you are very fur from  reddy killerwatt 'n ah extension cord  is all you need to plug up yer 'lecterc car.Course it takes a good while to charge up, but  you can charge up anywhere you can plug in.

    You might have to wait  a while on chargin' stations  to go in at stores'n 'partment houses, but you ain't got to wait for the 'lectricity  lines  and  the power plants to get built.

 A couple of 'electricians  kin put in a charging station in a few hours most  places,'n stores 'n resterants 'n 'partments is gonna have  'em  awaiting  for you, cause they are going to be selling you some juice while you're  spending your money on  clothes 'n dinner 'n rent.

    This is why  batry cars is gonna have it all over on  fuel cell cars for a long  time for sure, and maybe for good.

              MOUNTAIN FARM HOUSES AND SUSTAINABILITY ,EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY

      
               I intended to post  this rambling little essay as a comment in the final TOD post about Randy Udall and his house, but  it would have been unduly long , and it wasn't finished in time.

               I    knew all my grandparents quite well,, and many of my   great aunts and uncles , and some of my great grand parents, and  visited most  of the homes and farms they lived in and worked on  early in the last century. Only a very few of  my relatives back then  were prosperous enough to build the sort of houses   that are often restored these days, and nearly all of that  small handful of  more elaborate houses were allowed to rot down, or deliberately   burnt,  when the younger folks  got prosperous enough  to build new houses.Remodeling such an old house to modern standards is quite a job, and  doing it right generally costs considerably more than simply building  a new modern house.

              The land held then  by my extended family still exists  very much as it did then, with the exception of there being many more houses in the neighborhood. A large portion of it is still in family hands.The cropped  farms have mostly been abandoned to go back to forest, or converted  to    industrially scaled  orchards or beef cattle operations whereas a hundred years ago   local people   lived  primarily by supplying their own needs and sold a few  crops and  few head of livestock  for cash to supplement  their own production  of food, clothing, furniture,lumber, fuel, and so forth.

          I spent my  early years in a house typical of the time and place, one of the  very last ones constructed after the old board and batten fashion in this locality.  My Dad   was glad to get a  parting gift of a hilltop  acre and a half   cut  from one corner of his own   Dad's small farm.We still live on this same hilltop  acre and a half, which  has  some  things to recommend it but all things considered, it is poorly located in terms    low cost low tech  sustainability, compared to other similar houses constructed by family members in earlier decades.... We have a  great view from the front porch, and  if the wind were steadier, we would be  well situated for wind power.The solar resource is excellent, except for  the shade trees  planted around the old house,  when it was built in 1950.When I'm able to install some pv, it will have to be  ground mounted.

     Daddy bought the lumber  for our the original board and batten green oak   house  from  a local logger and sawmill operator, who in turn    bought the standing red and white oak timber from a nearby  landowner. The logger  felled the trees with a new fangled chainsaw,  and dragged them out with a team of mules to  his little mill, which was powered by an old automobile engine . Every thing about  the mill, except the   saw itself, and the carriage that   moved the log into the blade, was  worked  by muscle power alone.When  all the good trees within  a quarter of a mile or so of the mill were  harvested, the usual solution was to move  the mill ,  although  by 1950  some larger mills were  supplied with logs hauled in by trucks  from as far as ten or twenty miles away, and some logging crews  working on   the easiest  terrain were using tractors to drag out the logs.Daddy loaded  the  rough sawn boards  by hand  on his daddy's one ton flatbed  farm truck and  hauled them directly to the home site.

     Prior to 1940, all the timber harvested locally was felled  by hand with a one or two man  cross cut saw,  trimmed by hand with an axe, and then bucked to length, again by hand,  with the cross cut saw.A crosscut saw is a  far more efficient tool than an axe for felling trees , and axes were  not  customarily  used, locally,to fell trees   during the lifetime of anybody I knew, or their parent's lifetimes. A few logs were occasionally loaded onto heavy wagons in the days before trucks became commonplace,and hauled  a few miles  to a steam powered  mill. There weren't any water powered sawmills close  enough by to  haul logs to them, although  flour mills were common.When the nearby trees were harvested, the miller just hooked his mules to the mill   and  hauled it closer to the still standing timber in order to drag the  felled  trees   more efficiently.

      One of my great grandfathers earned his living firing the boiler  of a steam  mill with the slabs left from the milling of the logs. I never knew him except as a very old man, but even at eighty, you could still see that  he must have been an incredibly strong man in his younger days, with  muscles and hands as hard as the  slabs he handled like toys  all day long . I expect that if he had been attacked by a modern day mugger, he would have  laughed and    grabbed the mugger at any spot he could have put a hand on, and clamped down  until the mugger  screamed  for his  momma, or the law, or anybody at all,  to save him. Almost any man  who worked in the woods or on a saw mill crew could have done as much, and as easily.

        There were a few  honest  to Abe Lincoln log cabins built    close by here  previous to 1900, and     a good many   log barns and sheds and split rail fences  after that, but none of the old folks I had the privilege of talking to ever built a log house for themselves , because by 1900,  lumber and nails were cheap enough to be the easiest and best  option.Building a  frame  house was far easier and far faster than building a cabin, and in most cases, there were not enough suitable trees on the small  properties where new homes were built   to construct a decent cabin anyway.Lumber is far and away easier to move  and handle than entire logs, and a good portion of the work involved in sawing it out is offset by the savings in labor involved in logging  fewer  trees.A tree too big, too small, or  too crooked  to  serve as a cabin log  can still yield a generous bounty of  good boards: and a log sawed  into boards goes at  three or four times  farther than one used intact when building a house.

     Furthermore,  by1900 a  framed house was  seen by as the  way to build and to live.Daddy probably would have found it impossible to convince his new bride  to move into a  cabin.Had he built  her a cabin, I might be younger by a matter of some  weeks or months.;-)

      S0- Daddy  hauled in a pickup load or two of big relatively flat stones from a couple of  the  piles that  lay  at the edge of  every field, and  those stones, skillfully stacked, became the piers on which his  new castle rested.The local carpenter  rattled up in his old pickup truck and he and Daddy worked from daylight until about two pm   more days than not on  the house, when Daddy  jumped in his own old truck, and headed to town to his second shift job.

         They  finished up in about  two months of intermittent work , and Daddy  moved his proud and  grateful bride into a spiffy  new two room board and batten  green oak house with a shiny "tin" (galvanized steel) roof,a "cinderblock" chimney,four windows,  and  even a front porch.Electricity arrived  just a few weeks later;Daddy  and the carpenter installed the wires inside the uninsulated sheet rocked walls  in advance.Running water  had to wait  quite a while, but since he had a pickup, a job in town, and plenty of jugs, Momma didn't have to make too many trips    to the spring  a quarter mile way down a steep hill with me tagging along and a three gallon pail in each hand.Farm women in 1950  were tough- they had to be. The purchase of some nearby land was a far higher priority than running water, and  we didn't  get our hand dug well until 1955. I  remember well  the excitement of  the digging of it.The well digger, a wiry little old Gypsy with  a perpetual grin , who was accompanied every where he went , except down the hole,by a comically friendly but awesomely  pugnacious looking (to a little boy)  bulldog, almost  drowned when a gusher of icy cold water broke thru  suddenly.
(Since then we have installed a pump at the lower spring- which is on a relatives land, not ours- and a gravity feed water system  leading from a spring on some land we bought which lies uphill from our house, even though we are on a hilltop.)



      All the other little boys in the neighborhood were temporarily  in awe of me when they saw me walk right up to that obvious man eater of a dog and  "wrassle"  while it growled happily  and pretended to chew my arm off.

        Now the whole purpose of this essay, originally, was to  comment on the sustainability and energy efficiency  of houses and farm buildings as they were constructed here  a century or so ago.So maybe I should reminisce less, and  stick more to my intended subject matter.  I don't know how long it took to  cut the trees  and   drag out the logs, but  I have some modest experience with this sort of work, and it most likely took  from  between  three and five or six man and mule  days , depending on the conditions the logger encountered.I know it took two long days and part of a third day to saw the lumber out, with three men, including my Daddy, working the mill.It took Daddy  a couple of hours more   to  unload the truck each evening.He  got off from his regular job the  week  the lumber was being cut,but he  can't remember , now, how he managed the time off. Construction of the house   took between forty and fifty man days, total.

          The site was already cleared, having been used up until then for pasture and crops.As nearly as we can guess now, so many years later, it took  about  eight  to ten months of his net wages to pay for  the hired labor  and  purchased materials,but he never spent  a dime  for  drawings, or permits, or  bookkeeping, or insurance, or real estate  agents commissions, or interest. He has never in his life  spent a dime on  rent or interest on a home mortgage.

      He did have to spend ten bucks  for a lawyer  getting his  his deed prepared and recorded.Ten dollars was a lot of money, back then, for a poor man working in a mill and trying to get established  as a farmer and family man.

     It's perfectly obvious that in terms  of the energy and materials  consumed in the building of it, under the circumstances   then prevailing,  that such a house is a bargain on the grand scale. I can't provide hard numbers, but  I can  make some in the ball park estimates for most of the job. The logger probably used  sixty  gallons of gasoline, and my grandfather's old truck another  forty  or fifty gallons  at the outside .The carpenters old pickup trick   likely took another forty gallons,  maybe less;he lived  close by. Daddy probably used   forty gallons or so    taking care of all the other shopping and hauling involved. The carpenter didn't even bring a power tool to the job.There was no power  available and it is questionable whether  he even owned a power tool anyway.

   Now you can still buy a new sawmill for ten thousand dollars, today, similar to the one  used to mill the lumber, and such a mill with due care lasted it's owner most of a lifetime, so the  use of the mill added very little to the embedded energy cost of the house. A forties vintage pickup  generally lasted ten years at least, , and the two pickups used on the job were certainly driven less than a thousand miles in the   building the house, even including the carpenters commute..My grandfather's  larger truck was  needed for a week or so  total, but it was actually driven  no more than twelve  hours  or so, including three trips to the sawmill and  two trips to a building supply store to haul in the sheetrock, metal roofing, windows,nails ,  and other materials.All the materials, excepting the lumber, were  purchased for cash on a single invoice after haggling with every   builders supply - all three of them- within  an hours drive.Daddy borrowed most of the purchase money interest free  from his own Daddy and  his proud new father in law.There can be no doubt that the energy embedded in this house was a very minor fraction of the energy in a new one of similar size.

        In terms of the portion of his income consumed in the building of it, it was a world class bargain  compared to a modern house built and financed in the usual way.Other than the ten bucks he paid "lawyer Cooley" to prepare the deed to the property,  Daddy never spent a dime on a survey, permit,  real estate  brokers commission, inspections,  loan origination fee, points, or any of the other  unfortunate  but often  times necessary foolishness that has come between people and a home of their own over the last half century.

         In our case, because of the limited  space available on the 'home place"  it was necessary to   move the old house   to make use of the precise spot it sat on for the "new" house  we still live in today.Otherwise it would have likely been added onto and modernized, and occupied today  by a family member .When the great day arrived, a truck hauled up a small  bulldozer, and Daddy ran a couple of borrowed logging chains  thru holes chopped with  considerable difficulty  thru the walls. The dozer, snorting and pawing  and puffing black smoke, dragged the house- on rollers made from small logs cut on our own land - a  hundred feet  to get it out of the way.This resulted in some cracks appearing in the sheetrock and a couple of broken window panes, and the doors jamming,but otherwise that board and batten green oak house stood the equivalent of a powerful earthquake   with no damage at all.

           We lived in it for  about three months while the new  house as going up, and used it for a barn for twenty years or so after that , and finally burned it to be rid of it- due to needing the space. It was still  rock solid  when we burnt it. (Just in case of any  confusion-Daddy did own some farm and woodland and of his  own by that time,but all of our his original farm land is located a mile or so away.Our shop and  primary storage buildings  are on  the original acre and a half we actually live on, plus the  house , lawn, pump house, pool,  grape arbor, flower beds,garden spot, chicken coop, two detached carports, some fruit trees, and various machinery sheds.The acre and a half is pretty well used up, now.)

    Now if you are wondering how long such a house can last, I must say I can only guess, but a couple of hundred years sounds reasonable to me, with some repairs along the way of course.The one Momma grew up in is still standing, after being abandoned for  fifty  years or so, and I could could put it into livable condition  in a week or two.It's worth a few electrons and a few minutes to understand why such houses are so durable.

   There's no better place to begin than the beginning, and  our old house was built on fieldstone piers stacked  without mortar.Those stones  were here millions of years ago, and they will still be here a million years from now, unless somebody grinds them up for gravel.With a totally open "crawl space", and the piers being at least two feet tall, it   generally stays   satisfactorily dry underneath such a house in a temperate climate, so long as it is  properly placed in relation to the slope of the ground, or  a shallow drainage ditch is dug  to carry away  roof runoff and  ground water.

    Termites may  get into the wood, but in most cases locally, they didn't- not so long as the house was occupied at least.Even if they do,   white oak  lumber is so much stronger than the   sorry pine used for framing these days that even a termite riddled  real  oak  two by four  is still  as strong or stronger than a so called  present day pine two by four  which is only one and a half by three and a half inches. Red and white oak were used almost exclusively for three reasons ; ready availability,   great strength, and  excellent  resistance to decay, so long as the  wood is kept reasonably dry.

       Chestnut was  even better, so far as decay went, but small landowners  were reluctant to cut their chestnut  trees  because they supplied  nuts for  the table and for market,  and for the  ever present pigs which  provided most of the meat on the  table.Chestnut was out of the question by 1950, as the last of the blight killed old dead trees had long since  been used up.

      The wood stays dry- at least dry enough- in a properly built green oak house to last indefinitely, because the eaves or overhangs are  wide enough to keep nearly all of  the rain off the walls, and the tightly nailed vertical battens    prevent  wind blown rain from soaking in  between adjacent vertical boards.  It's damp under such a house only when it is raining, and  the wood gives up any excess absorbed moisture fast when the humidity falls off, given the entirely unimpeded circulation of air.There was  seldom  any question of excessive dampness within such a house due to the fact that the water supply and associated  plumbing were minimal or non existent,and the  constant  flow or air inside and out due to the loosely fitted doors and windows and the many  crevices between the boards.. In our own case, when he once was able to pay for having  the well dug , Daddy ran a single galvanized cold water line to the kitchen sink,  which drained thru a galvanized pipe into the pig pen located as far way, down hill, from the house as he could put it. We didn't get a proper bath room and septic system until he was able to build the new  house.

    If you ever experience a  windy zero night in an old cheaply built board and batten house , you will instantly understand that  the one thing  nobody will ever complain about  is the house being stuffy.On a really windy day, you couldn't light a cigarette in one of  them without skillfully cupping your hands around the match.So long as the roof was intact, they stayed  bone dry. Ours was considerably better than most older ones, ,in terms of drafts,  due to being sheet rocked;  you only had to cup your match and cigarette  if you were  near a window or door.

      A galvanized steel roof  is more or less a lifetime investment, if it's good quality- meaning there is is plenty of zinc on the steel. Such a roof does need  a coat of paint after the first twenty years or so, and another coat every ten years or so after that, but  painting a roof is only a semiskilled skilled job of the sort any farmer or mill hand usually takes care of himself.

    Now let's take a look at the very similar house my maternal grandfather built  about 1925 or so.The lumber  in his case came from trees he logged himself, from his own land, which dragged a mile or so- a very long way   to go with a big log and a two mule team- to a steam mill set up in a nearby  tract of timber.  He hauled the lumber back on his wagon, and he built his own house with the aid of his brothers.His own Pa,  my great grandfather, was the  boiler operator and straw boss of the mill, and the sawyer too, on occasion, and it has been said with a wink that the mill was heard running on a couple of Saturdays when the owners were known to be elsewhere.The foreman  would certainly  have known about it, but he would also  likely have been  more than willing to help  out  a well liked employee  because in such a small and tight knit community, he could safely assume he and his own family would get an equally valuable returned favor.I expect he got a very good deal when he took his  corn  and and buckwheat  to be  ground into  meal and flour at the closest  mill which just happened to be owned and operated  by my  grandfathers new father in law.;-)
   
        Now some people  see this sort of thing as stealing, but the people who work on such jobs don't, necessarily; they see it as  justice obtained in the only way they can get it.Back then,they  generally left  such jobs after a few decades bent,broke, and partially crippled, while the generally absentee  owners  got older and fatter without lifting any thing heavier than a pencil.If you got seriously hurt, which was a very common occurrence, well, it was  tough luck and maybe a ten dollar severance, if you were uncommonly lucky about the severance, and don't come around here no more.

    So- my "Old Pa" , as we sometimes referred to him to distinguish him from various other Pa's,  probably spent less than six  month's cash wages (mostly earned working part time for other local farmers) building his first house.It would have been even less but wages were only a pittance around here back then.I doubt if he bought anything at all except the nails, windows, door hinges,locks, brick  for the chimney,and  a couple of hundred feet of galvanized water pipe. The pipe was used to bring gravity powered water from the spring  to the house, and my grandmother to be   enjoyed literally constantly running water  from her  first day in her new home.
     
      The tap was seldom ever turned off ; she just moved the spout from one side of the sink to the other.The drain was arranged so that the water could be directed into the  field located downhill from the house when irrigation was needed;otherwise it flowed into the hog lot adjacent to the  field, and   from there any runoff  was absorbed by the woodland located sill father downhill.

     The trees just down slope of the hog lot grew quite a  bit bigger  than those a little way to either side.Hog manure is a good fertilizer, but nobody used it to any extent  mostly because  it is so messy and troublesome  to work with.Just about every speck of  manure from the usual chickens, cows and horses or mules  was  spread in gardens and fields.
         
       Mountain folks back then  kept their milk and other perishables right in their springhouse as a general rule.My Granny could keep hers in a wooden tub full of constantly replenished cold spring water, and the overflow  made for a nice cool  hot weather mudhole for the hogs kept another couple of hundred feet down slope from the house. 

       Old Pa didn't even buy metal for his roof- he split his own shingles, which he learned to do as a boy.He hauled a lot of his  shingles on his own Pa's wagon to town , along with  the apples , corn,and  potatoes  his Pa  sold, and thereby  had saved  money in hand to buy his own land before he won my grandmother's hand.

    The only electrical   appliances my Granny had   when electricty first  made it  to her home in 1945  were a refrigerator and washing machine.The two lights in the house were used sparingly indeed  in order to preserve scarce  nickels and dimes.

         Once the juice arrived, a  single one horse power  electric motor was  put to use  driving a variety of farm   machinery by moving it  from one machine  to another ,  including a corn sheller, a homemade table saw, a grinder used to sharpen tools, and an apple grader- a machine that  polished  and shined the apples by running them thru a series of   soft bristled buffing wheels, and  sorted them   by size by  running them across   chaIn conveyers with different sized openings. The  very littlest "cider" apples fell thru the first chain's inch and a half openings; the ones that made it across the last one of four  were "three inches and up".

        Old Pa  had the luxury of  being able to pick  the best spot on his  twenty acres for his house, and settled on  putting  his original house in the second best spot  with the plan being to eventually build a better one on the  better spot.Both houses are still standing, and the newer one is  occupied by one of his grandsons.One of my uncles lived in the old house until  the mid sixties when he built a new house of his own; it's been  abandoned since then except for occasional use as a barn.

            Old Pa's  farm, which  is still intact and still in the family,  lies on the lower portion  of the  southern exposure of the mountains, which in this immediate neighborhood run  more east to west than southwest to northeast  as the Blue Ridges obviously does, if you check a map. Only about three acres of the whole place are  even close to level,  and a third of it is   steep indeed, while the rest is  moderately sloped.

            The original house sits on a sunny western facing slope,  close to but not on the nearly level southern  most part of the land.It's perfectly situated to make the best use of the winter sun.The whole place is  well sheltered  from high winds by the bulk of the mountain to the north, and substantial  ridges which extent out north to south   from the mountain itself to the east and west of the farm, a mile or so apart.It gets pleasantly  warm  there on any sunny winter afternoon if there is little or no wind, and yet there is usually a night breeze  during hot weather as warm and cold air masses  flow up and down the mountain slopes.

     If all this good fortune in respect  to the  terrain and microclimate sounds a little to good to be true as a matter of luck, it's because it  luck had only a little to do with it. One of the very first (white) men who settled here in this precise spot   was a Quaker by the name of Ralph Levering who   went exploring  looking for a place perfect for growing apples and he  found it- right here. The details of how my extended family wound up here are lost now, but there is little doubt that this fine man had something to do with it, and the rest  was just a matter of Old Pa having the money some forty years or so later  when this choice (by his standards)  land lying close by to  his own pa's farm came on the market. 

          Everything that had to be toted and hauled  , with the exception of field  crops grown  to the south of the house, was deliberately located at a higher elevation than the house, and therefore an  "easy down hill drag" to the house and barns.Old Pa  might have built the house  on the nearly level ground at the southern edge of the place  edge, but it this precious  almost level ground was reserved for field crops, and   this lower lying land is   chilly and damp on frosty nights to a noticeably  greater extent than  the spot the  house  sits   a couple of hundred feet removed  upslope.
   
    Now the  importance of that "easy down hill drag" can only be understood  by understanding that the primary means of on the farm transportation on a mountain farm  at that time was a "ground slide"- a horse or mule drawn sledge made on the place from saplings with  hand tools,  usually about  four feet across and six or seven feet long.A horse or mule  could easily drag  a ground slide up a steep slope empty or lightly laden only with a few hand tools and perhaps a dozen fence posts.
     
        Dragging such a slide  down hill even fully loaded with  a ton of pole length firewood or   crates of just picked apples  was  not a problem at all, , as it  slipped  easily along on it's slick runners over  the grass.Dragging a  fully loaded slide  up hill was a different matter altogether- a horse killing job to  to be avoided if at all possible.  Trips along more or less level ground were dealt with by hauling an appropriately sized load . It was common for such a slide to be used as many days as not. During  apple picking season, Old Pa's was kept in near constant use, and during the winter it made many a trip to the steepest upper slopes for firewood.As the trees were cut back, the pasture for the usual   two horses or mules  and the family  cow   gradually grew larger.

   Old Pa owned a sturdy wagon of course but   it  just wasn't maneuverable enough  to work his  steep mountain side orchard, and trying to haul a load down off of a steep  hillside in a heavy wagon  was  begging for a serious accident.Hence   the  wagon was little used on the farm itself, but it was indispensable for the necessary  trips to   the  nearby mill  to have the meal and flour ground, or to town to sell the produce of the farm.Granny wouldn't have missed any trips to the mill, since it belonged to her father  and was within a stones throw of her childhood home and her mom. If she  happened to be in the family way, or the weather happened to be especially nasty,  it was also used to attend church on Sundays, but most of the time the family walked that mile and back, given that the Good Lord intended the horses and mules to have their own  day of rest. Mountain farm people in those days thought no more of a two or three mile round trip walk up and down hill all the way than  most people today think of the quarter mile or less they walk  in an air conditioned supermarket buying their groceries.

    Now  even though virtually every house built close by here after 1900 or so was built  from milled lumber,  a lot of barns  and sheds were still built out of  logs  up into the thirties. A barn did not need to be as weather tight as a house, nor as well constructed in any other respect;  almost any tree close by and of a suitable size could be  incorporated into  a poor man's barn.There were many such trees to be gotten rid of by  burning them , in order to clear the land, unless  they could be used for  such a barn or for firewood on the home place.All it took to build such a shed or barn, if the trees were handy , was a lot of brute labor, plus a few dollars  for tin for the roof in most cases.Both money and jobs were scare, so the local farmers kept building them thru the thirties.Just about all of them have rotted away now-  termites and rot tend to destroy a log barn faster than one built  well  off the ground on piers using  good  rough lumber.Plenty of thirties vintage  framed barns are still in use. 

      Split rail fences were common before 1900, but by that  advanced modern  time just about every farmer could afford barbed wire, which  made a far better and far more durable fence- and a fence  which could be constructed  in a fraction of the total  time. Cedar when it was available was much preferred for fence posts  due to its extreme  resistance to decay,  with black locust being  an excellent second choice.Cedar is scarce in this locality,  but black locust is plentiful.A black locust fence post  made  out of a mature tree with a lot of heartwood will last up to fifty years; but such a tree is too large to make a  properly sized post, and so the usual solution was  to split them into halves, thirds or quarters , Abe Lincoln style.This was of course a lot of hard work, but it was off season work,  done at a time when there was not much that needed doing on an immediate basis .The labor involved in splitting the posts was mostly  offset  by   felling  fewer trees, digging smaller post holes, and  greatly eased handling of the heavy posts. 

    Now it seems unlikely we will be going back to such a simpler time    and simpler way of life  within the foreseeable future, but  other than the   long arm of the law, expressed as  building codes and zoning regulations, there's nothing to prevent anyone who  wants to live on a small mountain farm from building a green oak board and batten  house today.

         I felt like  a little rich kid living in the one my daddy built. ( I didn't know any better then of course!)   We seemed to have everything a person could ever want-  plenty to eat,  cats and hounds to play with, an endless forest to play in, a wonderful almost  red hot stove to   stand by  shivering while I got dressed after rolling out from under  four or five  hand made quilts   on  zero winter morning. 
There were  kids near enough by to have  playmates  when school was out, and we lived over such games as  playing    Tarzan on wild grape vines, although one of my cousins did  break a shoulder and a couple of ribs  when  the vine he was swinging on broke.

     There are still a few of these old houses in use. Virtually all of them in this neck of the woods   have had  modern bathrooms and septic systems added on.


      If I were in need of a new home, I would be perfectly satisfied to live in  a new green oak house , if it were   updated with modern wiring, insulation,plumbing, and windows, and I expect I could build one for not more than half the cost of a typical new house of comparable square footage.

      It would have gravity water from a spring , and a woodlot  upslope.It would be nestled in a south facing hollow where it is warmer  and less windy in the winter than  more exposed locations. It would have plenty of deciduous shade to  keep off the hot summer sun.There would be a garden spot downslope , to take advantage of the gravity water,  and fruit trees scattered about.

    And given that times have changed, it would have a solar domestic hot water system, and the biggest pv array I could afford.It would have a ground water heat pump, the ground water supplied by the ever flowing spring, to supply heat when I need to be away, and when I'm finally tool old  to cut my firewood and feed the stove.

            The excess spring water would be run thru pipes embedded in the floors and ceilings,  providing me with a somewhat cooler house during our hot summers  energy cost free, and from there it would go on into a small pond stocked with  bass and blue gill for the table.

   It would fit into the landscape gracefully, pleasing the eye better   than any vinyl clad or brick monstrosity ever could.

         I was a teacher, once, long ago. Any good teacher knows that one of the very best ways to teach a   subject or a concept  is to    relate it in the form of a story that will  capture the interest of his pupils. My job was to teach  farm kids  how to run a modern  industrially based farm- responsibly-  without  unduly harming  the environment. I told a lot of stories,  most  of them cribbed from  wbsites and books, the rest made up  as needed.

       I never told this one, but I might , if I were still teaching, because  farming is a fast changing profession, and part of the job of teaching agriculture is   teaching the inevitability of change.Teenage boys (girls too) love a rebel and a colorful character, especially one that engages in activities they think they would enjoy, or consider high status.

    If you want to   convince a   young guy who loves   his  fire snorting hot rod or his 4x4 v8  truck that   electric vehicles are   the next big thing in  transportation, or at least get him to consider the possibility, your best bet by far is to tell him a story that   entertains and informs him,   rather than lecturing him  about    his  destroying the environment by  wasting so much   gasoline and diesel.

       His own vanity can be used to lead him to actually  endorse  things he would otherwise scorn- such as a battery electric or hybrid  car or truck- simply because he wants to be "in the know"well ahead of his less well informed peers.

     Here's  a  story   "related" to me and  some friends of mine  by my cousin Klem,  while we were enjoying a few   drinks and   working on  restoring an old truck  a few days back  in my garage.Now Klem  is based mostly on a  real life  character- a formally uneducated, self trained  mechanic and independent  trucker/ businessman with a head on his shoulders.When he isn't   traveling the country delivering   heavy freight  with his eighteen wheeler, he  works  on his farm and in his shop restoring his  collection of vintage hot rods. He's the sort of guy who  latches onto an idea and    sticks with it until he  has    considered it from every possible angle.

      Some of Klem's tales and experiences are  literally true to life, such as his visiting  many automotive museums and delivering  freight to places as diverse as Alaska , Silicon Valley, and the  North Dakota oil fields.Independent truckers  really do tend to make friends with the guys they deliver to and for, as Klem does, when opportunity allows, if for no other reason than doing so is  good for repeat business.

          Some of his tale is true to life;the rest of it  is based on well established facts gathered from a wide variety of sources.The details  in the latter case are either   the product of my imagination or  ones I have cribbed from the work of other writers, in which case I have followed the honorable   ancient practice of changing names, places, and dates  so as to protect the guilty- namely me.

     There is nothing in this story that is represented as factual that isn't actually a fact, if it pertains to the technicalities of the oil industry and the electric vehicle industry.

       I  have taken the liberty of  editing  the real world Klem's grammar to some extent for clarity , and his salty vocabulary  to a much greater extent, so as to allow kids to access this blog thru school  computers. Words are spelled , approximately,as  he pronounces them.

                                                               Cousin Klem and Electric Cars

                One lazy Saturday afternoon a  few weeks  back  we were all hanging around the shop talking a lot and even working a little  on my   project truck- an old Ford f150  4x4 with the granny gear four speed  and the 300 cubic inch "big six" which if I live long enough to finish it will eventually run on stove wood rather than gasoline.If you a don't know anything about wood gasifier  trucks and cars, a really good spot to check them out is Low Tech Magazine.

      The subject of electric cars  came up, and Klem was off and running.I have reproduced his natural speech as well as I can.His story went something like this.

                  Now let me tell ya somp'en bout  them 'lecterc cars. I  run to the shaky side  onct a month  most times, 'n I done seen plenty of 'em- they're all over the place, some parts of Kalerfornyer, you see one ever  minute.   

       Twenty years ago, I wooda   bet the farm I wouldn't  never live to see er practical lecterc  car, but  Nissan is cranking out a couple of hundred of 'em , ever day, not far from muh old home place- close 'nuf I'm gonna  ride down air  an take the tour some  slow day.The big  wheels running Nissan  ain't made  no secret outa  that they  'spect  to 'ventually sell 'lecterc cars by the million. 'N all my favrit  car mags  sez that pretty  near ever body who is anybody in the car bizness is  coming out  quick with their own lecterc cars, if they ain't selling 'em already.

                     You can  love 'em or lump 'em, it,  but  they ain't goin' nowhere. The times is changing, and  "the time and tide don't wait for no man, not even the king",like Mac sez . You gonna see more of 'em ever year from here on out.

              When I asked Klem later about  putting his thoughts on the net, he asked me to insert this personal introduction.Here's as good a place as any for it :
    
             Now  jist so all you  snooty stuck up panty wearing pinko commie lib'rls  unnerrstand where ah'm coming frum, I'm  a "dictation" this here  'pinion piece, as my Cousin Mac calls it, and he's gonna make me  famous- so he sez- by  putting her out on the net. Ah ain't so sure 'bout the famous part, but   he'll  put her out there, all right, and all my buddies'll see it, cause I'll show 'em. We all  got net on our phones and  sich these days- can't git by no more without it running air bizness. So  I'll probably be  famous 'nuff to git  a few beers out of it .

                Now I'm a  Bible quoting, pistol tot'ng, Bambi murdering, republican vot'n,  flag wavin' , beer drinking American farm  boy, and I  own an honest to goodness ( pre bailout) guv'mint motor's Chivverlay   four by four with knobbies , and a  trailer hitch, and a gun rack-wif guns in it, most times..I drive it everywhere, my days off,'cluding on  logging roads  and  thru farm fields  that would  depreciate a new  truck at about  five hundred dollars a mile cause of the dents  and scrapes, but that's jist my pers'nul  truck. My work truck  has a six hunnert horse Cummins and thirteen gears an eighteen wheels and weighs  eigthy thousand pounds , loaded legal. I  git ah over weight ticket now and agin, but it pencils out ok.

                    I voted for Nixon, and I voted for Reagan too. I  got my very own sawmill back on the farm.  If  ever run across a whale  when I'm out fishing, I'm gonna put everything in the cooler on the anchor line, except the beer, for bait, and pray for a bite. So I guess  I  ain't no tree hugger  nor no whale lover neither one .And I ain't  nowhere near dumb enough to believe ever thing AlGor has to say.

                   An in case anybody is wondering-I'm proud and satisfied  with who I am.

                 Now ' bout them 'lecterc cars.

               Never would have 'blieved it a few years back , but there's  a pretty good chance   that if I live long 'nuf to get a new  pickup  it will have a batry in it as  big as two  forty gallon  ice chests,  and , it will  be  either a "plugin hybrid" or a "bev",  which is   slang fer  what they call  " batry  lecterc vehicles." . I feel  kinda like  old Rip  Van Winkle, the feller what went to sleep young and woke up old,like  I went  to sleep and woke up  old, an ever thang has gone crazy on me. Course I don't bleve in him myself. Mac does , or let's on like he does,  but then he 'bleve's  lotsa  foolishness contrary to good sense.

       

              I can't 'member a time when they  weren't trucks and  tractors on  the old home place, but I remember my Grampa's  last  horse and his  last mule.I plowed  some garden , enuf to larn how,with that mule when I was a kid. Grandpa   growed  up back when it took a  a rich man in our part of the country  to own a car and  he  never  believed  back then he would ever own one hisself.

            

                      He couldn't even 'magine   trucks and tractors  taking over farmin'..I 'member talking to him  many a time  about the days when  it took him  from 'fore daylight 'til  after dark  for him to drive his daddy's wagon twenty five miles round trip to town  to deliver a  load of apples   and bring back some  stuff needed on the farm.  He    soloed town and back  when he weren't but   twelve years old.People had to work back in them times.

        

                 As things turned out, he  had him  a car and a pickup  by the mid thirties , and he got  his own first   tractor  right after WWII. But He kept his last horse and mule , 'cause he loved 'em, and he  loved working 'em, until  all  three of  'em- him, and the horse, and the mule- wuz  too old to make it to the field anymore.The last time I  remember hitching  the mule up was to tow start his ole Jeep, ' cause the batry  went dead. That would have been maybe 1965 or so, when I 'uz   still  ten foot tall and bullet proof m'self.

                        I'm gonna to keep my ole Chivverlay truck 'til I'm too  old to drive it, mostly cause  I've had it so long it's family now.Course don't hurt  none  it's been paid for for so long I can't  even remember what I paid for it! I look after it,  an it looks after me,  and I 'spect it  to  k'llectible by the time I'm done with it.

              But  I seen  the writing on the wall, and  the wall sez  that  'lecterc is on the  way in, and gas is on the way out. Course not many  people gonna buy  lecterc cars  for a  good while  yit. This ain't no over night thang. Gas cars gonna own the road for a long time yit..

                    But the writin' is on the wall just the same. Lemme 'splain  to ya how it  used to be , and how it's gonna be.

                        Lecterc  vehicles  has been around  about  as long as "internal combustion engines"  (i-c-e, which is perfesser talk for gas 'n diesel motors) and they ain't  never really gone away. They's   millions of  lecterc vehicles running right this minute ,mainly  golf carts 'n forklifts 'n industrial trucks  used in places where exhaust fumes  is too dang'rus , like  warehouses. I  hauled  forty tons of Chinese electerc bicycles jus' las month  from Frisco  back here  to the dirty side myself- which is what has got me to   thinking so much  about these here 'lecterc cars.. 'Long with  'membering  what I paid for diesel  when I first got my own rig- thirty cents. It costizes  me almost ah grand  to fill up on the  West Coast  these days.Half uv yer used ta  used to drive yerself- you know it' costiz uperds uv ah grand ah  day these days running double jist to feed the horses..

                  Batry cars n' trucks  done real good   for a while , from round 'bout  about 1900 till 1920 er so...But lectercs back then  wouldn't go but 'bout twenty  or  thirty miles on a charge, and recharging 'em was slow.I know all bout this stuff cause I  have hit all the  big main car museums  one time or another. Seeing the country is one of  the best  things 'bout trucking. Mac, when you gonna    renew ya   CDL  and hit the road wimme for a couple months?Ah kin git us  a load  up to 'Lasker, an you ain't never been…Anyhow, them  first lecterc cars wuz a lot faster  and handier than horses- It takes a  good horse to go  even ten miles at a trot,'n pulling a buggy at a fast  trot  more'n three er four miles ul kill a horse on a hot day.Us farm boys still know  a little sum thin bout horses- course we keep 'em mainly  for fun  ruther than work these days. When the roads was good enough, an 'lectricity was 'vailable,  meaning in or  real close to the nice parts of big  towns,mainly,   lecterc cars was  a  real good deal for the doctors 'n lawyers 'n Injun chiefs what  could afford one of 'em.

                They sold high,   but the  price  was  affordable - if you had it-  cause when they warn't needed  they  just set  in the   stable  where the horse used to be. Somebody  had to see to feeding and watering a horse ever day of the year, and clean up after it, which runs inter real time and money considering  how much use it was apt to get.An horses are slow to saddle up  and to hitch  to a buggy, and they hafta  to be cooled down and curried after workin' 'em  on toppa that.An if you work a horse real hard for a day  er two, it's got to have a day  er two to rest up jis like a man. A lecterc car don't neither eat nor drink  and it don't draw flies and it don't  need  it's stall mucked out  ever little bit, an if  she  ain't broke down she ' ll go ever day long as yer plug er up ever night.Taking care of ah 'lecterc  car  'iz   a piece of cake 'pared to a horse.

                 But lecterc cars wuz  useless without  a power line, and a fairly decent road,  and gas cars  got a whole lot  cheaper real fast,  and gas could be  hauled home in cans and sold at country stores. The Model T Ford   and dirt cheap gasoline  killed   lectric cars , it's as simple as that.When Cadillac come out with  "automatic  cranking " in 1911,  the  days  of the lecterc car  was numbered, but it took a few more years for the last of the kumpnies making 'em to go broke.

             Now if cheap gas and cheap motors hadn't of run  lectric cars off of  the road,    something along the lines of the Stanley Steamer would still  have done it.    Stanleys  run on "karoseen"  and karoseen was cheap too,…. back then..Stanleys was  fast and dead reliable  and the last new  models would  go all day  without a refill of water or kerosene. You could average   thirty miles  an  hour or better, here and there, for a few miles,in a Stanley , if you run across a good enough piece of road!! But  a  Stanley was slow to git started,  and a new one costed too much, and they  used too much karoseen compared  to a gas car,, and people wuz  afraid of 'em.But the truth is that  not  nary a  Stanley ever blowed up and killed somebody.

         

              Now if it hadn't been  for gas and kerosene ,   coal or wood  fired   steam powered trucks would have  took over trucking, cause the batry's back then wuzn't able to pull a truck  more than a real short haul. They was  some  'lecterc trucks used out on the roads, but  they just couldn't go  far enough to  be good   for nothing except local deliveries  within  'bout four or five miles. They ain't yit made no  batry's good enough  to  run a truck out on the highway, but  they might, one ah these days..

                 Now let's fast forward to  the good old  fifties and sixties .Gas 'n diesel  'uz  still dirt cheap. There weren't nobody  up till then  who amounted to anything who worried much about 'em  getting to cost too much, let alone running out. The first  real oil man, who also happened to be a real college perfessor  of the oil bizness too, part of the time,  who  happened to take a good look at  oil running short - in public at least-was this feller named Marion King Hubbert. He was a big wheel at Shell , which everybody knows has always been one of the biggest oil kump'nies..

                  Now people with good sense knows that perfessrs   took altogether   are some of the dumbest people that ever lived, when it comes to plain common sense,  but cousin Mac sez I'm   painting with too big a brush when I say thangs like that, and that perfessers come mainly in  two  kinds. I guess he knows, cause he has spent God only knows how many years hanging around  them kind of people. He sez the ones workin' what he calls '' hard science' has  mostly got their ducks in a row, and generally what they say you can take it to the bank. The one main 'ception dealin' with them  kind is  is when the  perfesser  has  some skin in what he's  talking bout. Even preachers is known to tell a lot of lies when they  is money in it.The other  kind is all the rest lumped together, and Mac sez you need to  take what they say  with plenty of salt cause a good many of that sort are sure enough idiots, and more of em are just plain old shysters looking after themselves and their buddies- an most likely you ain't one  of them buddies.Of course  some of them is  good honest people  who can learn you a lot.               

              Well this feller Hubbert is wuz one of  them hard sciences kind  , and he  sez that  any perticular oil well  is gonna eventually run dry,  which is good  sense, cause I ain't never met nobody who claimed he  has seen it raining oil.  So  in '56  Hubbert sez  that oil output in the 'lower 48", which is everything except Alaska and Hawaii, , would top out in the late sixties or early seventies, and he hit it right on the button. The amount of oil coming out of American wells  set the all time record in 72, and  we ain't getting but about  half  now, out of our own wells, what we was getting then.  I know this sounds like triple x bullsxxt,  on account of all the stuff you hear on the news about  oil going crazy in  some places  like North Dakoter, but it's the honest goodness truth.I didn't 'bleve it myself  till I checked her out bumper to bumper.If ya want to check it for yerself,   just look and see what the the federal guvmint has to say about it.  If you don't trust them,  you can maybe trust BP, or the IEA, which is run by what they call the OECD,  or any ecyclopedaer so long as it's a new one.. 

               Algor ain't got nuthin on them  crooks that runs the news , an  the news ain't gonna say much agin the people that pays THEIR bills running the ads.Cousin Mac told me all bout this, an  he does know a few things  bout common sense , spite 'o  his hanging  out with all of them perfessers.

                    

                   Now our so called domestic oil production  really has been going up real good for the last two  or three years,  cause   when the price of  oil  got up  towards  a hunnnert bucks a barrel, and stayed there, it got so you could  make some money   getting out what they call  "tight oil"  by way of  what they call "fracking".The oil guys  been doing some of this here  fracking  for  a long time.There ain't nothing really  much new about it,  that's just more ignorance or lies, depending on who's talking.And they have knowed about the places getting fracked, or  maybe about to get fracked,  for a long time too. The difference is all in the price.Twenty years ago, oil sold for twenty  bucks or so, give or take. Now it sells for a hunnert  bucks er more,   'n  so fracking makes  money nowadays, at least in some places.

           

                          A good oil well inTexas  er Oklerhomer used to put out  hundreds   of barrels, or even thousands of barrels, ever day, for years on end,  maybe for as long as thirty years or more. Then it would eventually  peter out to what they call a stripper well, which makes five or ten barrels a day for  maybe  for another fifty years or maybe even  longer.  Ah well  like that costed  less than a million bucks in  todays money .

             

                 Them  new fracked wells cost ten million bucks apiece, and the    best of 'em   don't produce worth a hoot  compared to the old days. Four or five hundred  barrels  a day   out of a new fracked well is  counted a big winner. 'N after a year, that four hundred will be down to two fifty, and in another year , down to one fifty,  and it keeps getting worse. After  four or five years any particular   so called  tight oil fracked well is  most apt to be down to a stripper.

          

           And oil fields are like fishing holes- you hunt for  the best spots first, and fish 'em out first, and then you move on to the next best spot, until you don't ketch enuf to  go fishing no more. The only  real difference is that  you can come back too a fished out lake  a after ah few years  'n ketch agin most times. The way it works in an oil  field is that you drill new wells 'tween the old ones, and spend a ton of money  putting in water and chemicals to push  the last of the oil  out, and another ton of money on   pumps and 'electricity to run the pumps .'N when it gits so it costiz more to git the last of the oil out that ya kin git out  than ya kin sell it for, ya pour the well full o' cement  and hunt yerself ah new oil field.

             You learn all about this stuff  if you listen when you deliver equipment to   the oil  fields, 'specially if you are willing to buy a few beers after work  for the guys what uses yer load..An if you want another load another day, it pays to buy them some  beers.

                 Them fellers that works the  oil fields   move a whole lot,  from one place  to ah nuther, when  the old fields  git worked out, and new ones git opened up.Some of 'em have to move as much as  ever three or four years these days because  new oil fields these days don't last like they used to.

            About this point Klem had to leave  for someplace a thousand miles away in order to be there Monday morning, but we talk frequently on our cell phones, and so I got this next part that way.

                           Sorry I had to make you folks wait on me, but  I been real busy  for the last couple of days.'N any way Mac sez  you ain't got much 'tension span , any how,'n  bout five or ten minits is  'bout as long as most folks   are willing to listen  'regardless..

               So anyhow if  ya got any sense at all, ya see where this  depleshin  'n this fracking thing  is headed.  Oil's been going up all my life, 'n  any fool kin see that it's gonna keep on going up, cause  they's more people wanting it ever year, 'n ever year they is less'n less  left , 'n what's left is harder'n harder to git out of the ground or out from under the water..

         

             "N it ain't just  depleshin,  'n   more people wanting it , neither.Mac keeps talking 'bout this place called Export Land, which I ain't exactly figured out   where it's at  er who  is the boss of it, but  anyhow I git it, ' cause it's as simple as  taking candy from ah baby.

            Them countries  what has oil to sell  has   got to the point they er using a lot more of it theirself, 'n that leaves 'em with less to sell.Ever year they use mor'n more,'n ever year they got less left than they used to have,  and 'n fool kin see this  ain't  good news , but there ain't nuthin ya can do about it. Mac  sez  most of the trouble over in Egypt  right now, which is on the news a lot  if yer listen to that Nashunul  Propergander  Radio, like I do, when I git tired o Rush and Sean 'n  Patsy  Cline  'n they ain't no raceser football  on, is on account of they used to  have a lot o money coming in from selling oil, but now they er short, an gotta buy oil    'stead of selling it, 'n they're goin' broke on account  of it.Ya can't buy nuthin to eat if you ain't got no money. 'N  they is bout two  er three times as  many of 'em these days as they got land to grow them sum thin to eat on,  , count of most of the country being a desert.Mac knows all 'bout sich stuff,  cause he don't listen to nuthin but the news, hardly, 'n this  sort of thang is what blows  all them perfesser friends o his'n's  skirts up.'N  he's gonna  add on a list of all the countries what used to have  oil to sell,  which he has showed to me,   what is  short now, and having to buy oil to make up the difference.. It's plumb skeery.

 .            Now of course they is plenty of people what    sez   there is still plenty of oil left, and  some of 'em even claim that oil is gonna git cheap agin.It  makes sense that  they ain't no danger of oil running plumb out,because it's like fishin'. You go far enuf, n' spend enough  time 'n money gittin air, n you kin always ketch some fish-  but not as bigger ones as you  used to, an not as many of 'em neither.. The last   real old time good  oil hole  in   the gold ole US of A   wuz the North Slope up in Erlasker all the way back in the eighties. It come in bout two'n a half or  three million barrels  a day, and  sold for twenty bucks or thereabout.Now she's down to around about one barrel a day where she used to put out five.

               I run up to 'Lasker  17 times while they wuz laying the pipeline. Man, you talking about a pretty place, n cold- ain't no way to describe it, you gotta 'xperience it to 'bleve it.You gotta leave yer rig running in the winter time in Erlasker, cause if you let it set for  three or four hours, the only way you kin git her cranked up agin is to build a fire under her, which yer insurance kumpne   is apt to git sorter bent outta shape if you  owe mor'n she's worth, an sic the cops on ya, if she burns up. I ain't been up that way  for a long time. Course it gits cold enuf in North Dakoter to  freeze the xxxx off of a brass monkey , but it don't stay cold in Dakoter like it does in Erlasker all winter long.'N it don't git half as dark neither.The sun don't hardly even come up in the middle of the winter onct you git a good ways up in Erlasker,'n if you go far enuf, it don't even come up ah tall for a week or two right about Christmas, but I never seen it- or ruther , I never didn't see it not come up myself cause I weren't  never far enuf up at the right time o the year.                                         

             Course  this here Bakken and Eagle Ford, both of which is  which is fracked  er both coming on strong.But that's mainly because they er gitting a  hunnert  bucks a barrel these days, and they er mainly still working the honey holes.The state of North Dakoter sez  the boom times   ain't a gonna last no more'n ten years or so at the outside before  it peters out and starts downhill.

           So I figger that the people who sez there is plenty of oil left are  be telling the truth all right,on account of the fracking and what they call the tar sands up in Canada. But the ones who sez it's gonna  go down, 'n stead of up, is either ignorant , or  crooks with skin in the game, I'll bet my farm on it..Now I like the salesman what I bought my truck off of ok- for a salesman. But  I would be a sight bigger fool than I am if I 'spected  him to say anything  bad  'bout the future of the trucking' bizness. The truth of the matter is that long haul trucking is on its way out,'n trains are on the way in agin, on account o them six hunnert  horses under my hood   costin' me a close to a grand a day jist for diesel running double.I'm jist barely hanging on, and I'd be retarred already if I had any sense.But I  love the road, 'n being my own boss, 'n seeing places I ain't yit seen,'n trains is  a story for 'nuther day, this'n is  about cars, mainly.

                  Now I 'bleve I  have argerred the case for oil oil going up pretty good. Me'n Mac  has  got a cousin  that's a lawyer,  who other than that is actually  a pretty decent  feller, and he sez that when  he argers a case, he pounds on the law if the law is on his side, and he pounds on  the facts if the facts is on his side, and if  the law 'n the facts is against him , why then he pounds on the table. My 'pinion is that the people talkin' bout cheap oil is  pounding on the table. 

              So this  brangs us up halfway on yer lessons on how come  gas cars is on the way out, and lecterc cars is on the way in.We'll take up from here in the next few days,'pending on how busy  me 'n Mac git.

                 (footnote- I can't put my hands on that list right this minute, but here is something better.    http://mazamascience.com/OilExport/   Type this in to your browser, and all you have to do is scroll thru the countries. If a country has green above the  baseline at the right side , it is exporting- if  red below the line it is importing.  There is a time scale across the bottom. The year the green disappears,  and the red starts, is the year a country   went from exporting oil to importing oil. 

                 This site deals in net imports and exports of crude oil, as well as coal and gas, etc..Some countries , like the US, import SOME  crude and process it into gasoline and diesel, etc, and export SOME   processed oil. WE  USE WAY MORE THAN WE PRODUCE AND THEREFORE WE ARE NET IMPORTERS. OFM) 

                                            A few days later

      

               

              Sorry 'bout taking so long to git back to ya folks, but I been kinds busy the last few days 'n Mac sez most of yuh ain't got  patience'n brains enuf to  pay 'tension for more'n about ten minutes atta time anyway, ,'n he's busy right now too, on account it being  apple picking' time.'N on toppa that , he's bitchin cause he sez it takes three times as long to type wrong like I talk as it does to type right   to start with like ah perfesser, 'n he can't type with but two fingers no way.

             Now less  see , last time we left off  with me  telling ya why oil ain't never gonna be cheap agin, barring a miracle. Ter the contrary- it's shore to keep going up,over the long haul,  less'n I'm a fool . Now  we all have heared  about miracle  carberators,all of us old that's old enuf  to know what a carburetor is anyway, and all sorts  gadgets that's 'sposed to make yer car go   more miles to the gallon.They ain't none of 'em that works,ceptin the ones they put on at the factry, like overdrive 'n fuel injection 'n easy rollin tires.If you can't git it on the car when it's new, it ain't gonna make it burn no less gas,'n you kin take it  to the bank.All of the rest of 'em er jist   ways fer  crooks ter sep'rate   dummies  from their money.Now let me back up jist a little here-sometimes a new chip er a motor add-on will help yer gas mileage a little, but genrilly putting it on yer car  is asking fer frouble, big time.The ones that do work a little bit  work by doing things that ain't good for the motor.

         Let's put it  this way . All of us knows  plenty of fat people , and  there ain't nobody that wants to be fat, 'cepting maybe some pore souls hitting  close to dieing from cancer .  You can't turn on the idjit box nor the radio ' thout hearing ah ad  for some miracle fat pill, er some  fat busting diet or 'nuther.

         I guess I know ah  hunnert  fat people, 'n I ain't never met but  two or three   that  skinnieed down and stayed skinnied down.'N them two or three  done it by  running and lifting weights and not eating hardly anything a tall-'n not just fer a week or two neither-  they just don't hardly eat ah tall no more..If them pills 'n diets worked, all hunnert of 'em fatso's would be skinny.Me too!!!  I'd be number hunnert'n one!! 'N my Sweet Pea would be ah hunnert n two!!She used to weigh ah hunnert'n two  but now she weighs about  two hunnertn two.In air  case  the lovin' an the cookin' has both lasted!!

        Cars 'n trucks  got to have fuel, and  other than gaserlene 'n diesel, they  ain't really  nuthin  out there  but    bottled gas, moonshine, 'n lectrerc. Maybe fuel cells one of these days, but ones you can afford- not for ah long time to come.Now bottled gas- propane-which is what  yer cook with on yer  grill- works fine  to run a motor. They's plenty of forklifts  running on it right this minute, cause it burns so clean you can use it in place of  ah 'lecterc forklift on a lotta jobs.'n you kin keep a bunch of full spare cylinders  on hand in ah factory  er warehouse 'n git by with ah real  small  tank on a forklift cause it don't take but a minute to swap out a tank 'n you ain't never  far from  yer spares. 

              Now fer a car to go  far enuf on propane  to be practical, the tank ya need's got to be  pretty big, and it's gotta be  a real stout tank in case of a wreck, cause it is   ah pressure tank.If it gits even a little bitty a hole in it, all the propane is gonna come out in one hell of a hurry. 'N  it takes a long time to fill one up too.But the real killer is that there  just ain't no place at all close  by  to fill up with propane fer 99 percent of ever'body.

           Now I do 'spect that  they will put in   high speed natural gas  pumps at truck stops on  main highways  one o these day's if  there happens to be ng pipelines handy, 'cause there is   room on big trucks for the tanks, and natural gas to fill 'em up is dirt cheap compared to diesel. A conversion kit costs real money, but plenty o truckers would pay for one for their truck if they could  git any regular use out of it.An a  new truck can be easy be  built new  to run on diesel  or ng  either one, whichever  one is the cheapest  and the handiest.

           But ng trucks ain't no shore thang.The tax man might slap a big enuf tax on ng it wouldn't be worth the bother.Er  that the people what owns the ng might git sich a  good price fer it they sell so much uv it to Chiner er Germany  er Japan that what's left costs  as much as diesel. Er it may be that there ain't enuf uv it that can be got out of the ground  without too much trouble ' expense  for it to stay cheap anyhow.

          But they ain't yit figured out no way to load up 'lectricity on a ship 'n sell it  to people on the other side o the ocean, an they ain't apt to.Close as they kin git is selling the  coal n ng ya burn to make it.

           Now  you gotta unnerstand that propane 'n ng is two diff'runt animals, close kin but not the same thang.  Propane is a liquid er a vapor  which you  git by sep'rating it  out of ng n oil that comes out of the well.S'long as yer keep it under enuf  pressure in ah  tank, it stays liquid.You kin git a whole lot in a tank on account of it  changing to a liquid when you put the squeeze to it .Let the pressure off of it, and it vaporizes in ah flash.Now natcherul gas    can't be  made to change frum a vapor  to a liquid no matter how  big a compressor and how stout a tank  yuh use,  unless you   run it thru a refrigeration plant and cool her down to  about xxx below zero, like they do on them ships they  use  to haul ng across the ocean.'N thats  below  zero in good "Merican  figgers too,  n'case you're wondering.So it seems unlikely that  ng will ever be used much as a liquid fuel in trucks. It costs too much to compress it and cool it, and the kind of tank you gotta keep it in costs a fortune  on top of that.

           So to run ah truck on ng, you gotta add on some whopping big high  pressure tanks what cost ah lot of money 'n take up a right smart of space too on yer truck- but you kin find room for 'em on a truck, specially if you haul real heavy stuff  like steel  fer instance, cause a full legal load  don't take up but a fourth or less of yer space. Now if yer hauling real light stuff, like say  tater chips, which don't weigh hardly nothing , you can't git a full load  on yer truck by weight, ' n that space   matters a whole lot.

             So I could  add on the ng tanks 'n conversion kit to my motor, 'n run  the main roads on ng with my rig, and   burn  diesel  where I have to, just by flipping a switch in the cab.This would save me a lot of money. An it would make a lot of money  for the people who owns them  ng pumps  too- if they ever git built!. But they's a big difference in making the job pencil out  between a truck on the road  two or three thousand miles a week that gits five er six or maybe eight miles to the gallon at the best, and  a car on the road a couple of hunnert miles a week that  gits  twenty miles a gallon or better.Not to mention the owner of the car most likely  having to go a long way out of his way to fill up on ng.. So I have my doubts  'bout seeing a whole lot of cars burning ng  anytime soon.It  might hap'n if gaserlene gits sky high and ng stays cheap- just not real soon.

             Now as far as  moonshine is concerned-well, I'm a farmer myself, part o' the time, 'n I'm telling ya, it just ain't possible to  run all the cars 'n trucks in this country on  moonshine. They ain't land enuf to do it.'N burning moonshine  has already run the cost uv grain thru the roof.Pore people still gotta eat 'n grain is what ya   make bread 'n chicken n eggs 'n hamburger out of. Course  you over edjicated  'vironmentilst  idjiots what thought  gasohol would be a good thang never stopped to think about that, did yuh now?

              Most all the best land is farmed already, and  people  are supposed to be ahead of cars in the chow line- they ain't,  but  they ought to be, anyway.Now I'd just as soon deliver new  tractors as anythang else that'll fit on a flatbed er in a dry van  'n I got 'quanitances 'n customers   out in corn country that has got rich  on account  ah   gaserhol. They're growing corn on land left to them by their  daddies,  making two er three hunnert thousand , 'n  more,a year, free a 'n clear  on places where their daddies couldn't hardly make enuf too pay land taxes 'n git a new pickup ever ten years.They  er   driving new Porsches and Cadillacs 'n buying g their boys Viper's n Corvettes like they wuz Pinto's n Vegas,'n sending the girls off to college driving Beemers  n flying off to Colerrader  to go snow sking  'n break their fool legs,'n then on  to Florida to wait fer the broke legs to heal up.Hellfire even the hired hep is as apt as not  to be driving  ah new forty er fifty  thousand dollar pickup - that belongs to the farmer of course-  to run to town to git a  part  or fetch the groceries.

             You don't think nobody who farms for a living these days still raises what they  eat if you know anything about farming. They either ain't got the time,if they're  small timers, or else they ain't got no shortage of money to buy what they want if they're big time.Course here'n there you will run up on somebody  who does still keep a garden  n a few chickens fer a hobby 'n fer old times sake on account of life long habits, 'n ah garden  is ah hobby that pays its own way n then some, if the weather is good, n the bugs n the deer don't eat it up for yer.If yer got time  ter look after it,an ya know what's what, ah garden is ah uncommon good way to  save ah right smart o' money.But if you got a business  to run, ya better off looking after it 'n buying yer groceries.

            Raising corn don' take but a few weeks in the sprang 'n the fall of steady work if you got all new equipment- 'n 'bout all ah them corn growers  got new stuff, or near new,  these days.'N they ain't satisfied with jist e10 neither,  they wancha to have to buy e15 so corn 'll go even higher than it is already.

              I got pore people living all around me, and some of 'em kin to me, and I want them to eat good at the least.. I been pore myself. .I growed  up mainly on a little  home  growed   salt meat  'n beans n taters we growed on our little old home place.Worked daylight till dark, cut wood, toted water, wore hand me down   briches 'n shirts that mah brothers out growed. They's plenty of people too sorry to work these days  what with the guvmint keeping 'em up, but they' ten times  more more that's pore that works their butts off, an more besides that   that would ruther work than live on charity if they could find ah job. .'N ever time the price of corn goes up, the price of eggs'n chicken legs 'n hamburger goes up too.'N all the talk you hear about  anybody that want's to ah gitting ahead and doing good is jist bull shit pure 'n simple these days.There ain't hardly no good jobs  no more.'N the guv'mint has fixed it so it's near impossible for  somebody  to start a small business  no more 'thouht they already  got money and edjication , an if pore people had money 'n edjication, well they wouldn't be pore  to start with, now, would they?

             So what it looks like to me is that  gas 'n diesel prices er gonna keep on a going up, n there ain't nothing much out there to take the place of 'em, that  is gonna do you much good anytime soon- cept maybe ah 'lecterc car.Maybe ah fuel cell car one of these days, but there ain't nobody yit selling  'em, and they might not never git cheap enuf to sell a whole lot of 'em. Batry's is coming down fast,'n the bstry is the only part uv a lecterc car that runs into much more money than what goes in ah  reg'ler car,'n you gonna save back part of the price uv it  with a lecterc motor which is a lot cheaper than a gas motor , 'n no transmission at all is hunnert percent cheaper than a transmission..

            Now it's past time we got down to some ser'yus talking about 'em, ruther than the price of gas n diesel, and ng, n sich. Now it so happens I jis got back from Kalerfornyer,'n I had a couple o' days o' dead time to git  the load ah wanted coming back, n'  I bobtailed  down to the Silicon Valley, as they call it,  to look around, and   let on like I wuz interested in buying myself a  used Tesla.Tesla's er  right common round them parts , which is where  they make 'em, 'n where they got the money to buy 'em too. Ah man who drives  a  right flashy truck like mine with his own name on the doors  kin  git the attention of any body selling a high dollar car right quick, 'n it weren't but a few minutes before I  wuz taking the owner uv one  to lunch at ah  fifty dollar diner  too talk business -you got to make the owner unnerrstand  you got the money if you  want the car, 'n fifty bucks is  lunch money  to people what drives  seventy 'n eighty thousand dollar cars. 

            Traffic was so bad we couldn't find a place to open her up  not even one time,  so we pulled over on the shoulder of the interstate like we was checking  for a low tire for a minute, and I set my  watch, 'n he put the pedal to the metal,'n she hit sixty in  right at 5.3 seconds flat-'n that with two big old fat guys , n some junk in the trunk, and the  road being maybe  just a tad up hill to boot.Now that's without burning  no rubber neither.Is that fast?

          Well, I gotta dual quad four speed  positraction 409  Chivverlay  in my garage- just like the ones the Beach Boys sangs about- owned her  for right at forty five  years now. Ain't been rained on for the last thirty years.She's  worth more than my next four cars put together an I been offered way more 'n enuf for her  to buy me a new Tesla, but she  ain't fer sale, cause o' too many happy memories about  drag racing and  one certain young woman I married forty four years ago-memories from back in the  days  back when I was young enuf n dumb enuf to work hard all week and blow it all ever weekend .

   

             Me'n my Sweet Pea's too old 'n fat to play in the back seat these days but  ,but we still set in it once in a while 'n  think about it.We're ah showing air age  but our 409 Bel Air is still  looking  damn near new.Making her  look brand  new agin would knock  thirty or forty  grand off of the price of her, cause she's 'riginal, never been worked on.So she ain't never gitting no new paint  'n upholstery .

            She won't do zero  to sixty in under 5.9  seconds with street tires on her even if you smoke 'em bad  'n take a chance on ripping out   the clutch 'n   transmission. 'N she ain't stock neither- not even close. They got clutches at Napa, but them kind of transmissions start out at four or five thousand bucks used these days, and I aint about to be drag racing  her  no more. I have got all the original  parts to put her back to stock agin if I ever sell her.There aint ah 409 that ever did git  close to 5 seconds,  not unless it wuz special set up for drag racing.

              So the answer to the first question is this- will ah ''lecterc car run? ''N the answer to it, at least if it's a Tesla, is that she'll run like a bat out of hell, and drive  about as  good as anything on the road  in the same price class, 'n better than anything  that sells much  cheaper.

               N' the second question- will it go fur enuf on ah charge to be practical?Two hunnert miles is fur enuf, in my 'pinion, cause most folks who kin afford a real  nice new car kin afford to rent a gas  car  once in a while  if they ain't got two or three cars anyway.'N when gas gits high enuf, people that can't afford but one car will jist  git used  to  staying close ter home er take ah bus  er ah train to visit Granny.They ain't going to be flying much cause flying is going to go back mainly to being fer rich people when karoseen hits  ten or fifteen bucks a gallon, and jet fuel ain't really nothing but karoseen.    

   

           Third question 'n the biggest one,  in my 'pinion, when it's all said 'n done- will it last, and what's it gonna cost to buy ah lecterc car 'n keep up  it up 'n run it? Now listen close- from here on out, till I say otherwise, we ain't talking about hybrid cars- we're talking about  ah pure 'lecterc car that don't have no gaserlene er diesel motor ah tall- jist  ah  'lecterc motor 'n a batry to run it.

             All I kin say fer sure  about the batry's is that  just about everbody in the car bizness  thinks they er going too last at least good enuf that people who owns batry cars will be satisfied, even if they have to buy a new batry  sooner or later.It don't hardly cost peanuts to drive a batry car one day to the next compared to ah  gas car.Five dollars worth of juice will honest to Jesus take you as far as fifteen or twenty dollars worth of gaserlene. Now there ain't no doubt in mah mind that yer  lecterc bill is going to go up  some from here on out, jist about ever year probly. But my 'pinion is that  lectricity won't go up nowhere near as fast as  gaserlene 'n diesel.

            'N 'sept fer the batry, it most likely ain't going to cost peanuts to maintain a batry car neither.First off, ah 'lecterc motor ain't got  nothing but a couple o bearings in it to wear out,'n they ain't nothing going up and down to put a beating on them two bearings like in ah piston motor. They's plenty of 'lecterc motors running ever day  that has been running-ever day- for forty or fifty years 'n still running as good as new.There  ain't no crank shaft nor no balance shaft  nor no camshafts and timing belts   nor no valves nor no heard gaskets nor oil pump  nor no starter motor nor no alternator about ah electric car motor. Jist one big moving part that goes round and round,  not a thang ah going up and down.no distributor, no water to leak out, no fire ah burning in it to   heat up the oil to where it needs changing ever little bit.Not even no oil to need changing.No head gaskets to blow an no rod bearings to git to knocking.   They just ain't no reason at all that the motor in ah batry  'lecterc car , what they call ah pure ' lecterc car , won't  last  jist about forever, without ever being touched, so long as  it's  made out of good stuff  to start with.

     'N as far as the transmission goes, well, there ain't  no transmission , so you won't never have to spend a dime fixing it There is some switches that changes the motor  from forward to reverse, so the car will go both ways too,  'n they will be  high, like any new car part these days, but it won't take but a few minutes, most likely, to put in  new ones.

      You won't need ah brake job but maybe once ever hunnert thousand miles, cause when you hit the brakes, unless you hit 'em hard, the computer will throw the motor over  from  "make her go" to "make her stop"  and charge the batry up  ah little bit while you're slowing down, ruther than  wearing out the brakes to stop. The reg'ler brakes  is just for emergencies, mainly.You won't never need a  new muffler, or ah cat converter, or  a fuel pump,or a water pump, or a radiator,  or new spark plugs, or new plug wires, or ah oil change, or new antifreeze, cause yer new batry 'lecterc car won't have none of them parts on it  to give out er need changing two er three times ah year..

       Now  this stuff adds up to real money right quick, n if you don't do all your own work, which not  hardly nobody does  these days, you can spend four or five thousand dollars real easy in ten years just on smog tests 'n brakes jobs  n oil changes n tune ups.

   People that works on car motors 'n transmissions   are gonna  have to find a new job    when 'lecterc cars finally  takes over. But it ain't gonna happen overnight, it'll be years'n years happening, and it ain't even going to git started good  for a few more years yit. Most likely old motor 'n transmission mechanics  will retire   fast  enough to leave plenty uv   work for the young guys coming up  that want to work on  motors and transmissions  for a  god while  yit. A new gas cat that's took keer uv oughta last twenty years,'n they gonna be building  gas cars mostly for a long time to come.

      You got to unnerstand I ain't saying  that we are jist going to plain  'n simple run out of gas  'n diesel one of these days- no siree.  But the price of  'em is 'ventully  going to git so high that most everybody who can still afford to to drive ah tall is gonna  drive ah 'lecterc car, cause the only thang that costs more about one is the batry, 'n them batry's is gitting right much  cheaper from one year to the next. There  ain't nobody that knows for sure, but most people in the business  seems to be thinking that they can sell the bartys cheap enuf in another four or five years  that ah  ever day git cha to work  'lecterc car won't cost hardly  no more  than a reg'ler car the same size. 

   Now 'summing they last ok -'n cept for the batry they ought to last  way better 'n any gas er diesel car- an the price of 'em,  there ain't but two big questions to keep people from   buying 'em- how far they'll go 'n where  to charge 'em up n how long it'll take.

   

       I' m thinking'   that there's plenty of people who will be  satisfied with a car that will go go a hunnert miles,  cause they don't hardly ever go anywhere out of the neighborhood  where  they live, and most people with families have two or three cars anyway, and they will just drive their  their gas cars when  they  want to go on a trip.You take a Leaf now, like they're making right down the road- you can put two dollars worth of juice in her and  drive sixty miles round trip to work, or seven dollars worth of gas   in the same car  with the gas motor.Add on saving another five dollars a week  on oil and antifreeze and  brakes and mufflers n tune-ups 'n one thing  n another  the gas car needs that the 'lecterc car don't and she'll run close to  fifteen hunnert dollars year cheaper to gitcha to work.   It ain't gonna be no contest between the 'lecterc  car n' the gas car for the  git to work car in a two or three car family after  the batry's come down 'n they git to building  a whole lot of Leaf's , cause the more they build the cheaper they can  build 'em. 

            'N as  far as charging her up- well it don't actually take nothing but a clothes dryer circuit  to git a full charge   b'tween  lights out 'n lights on agin, and if  if you don't need  her ever day, you can charge her up with just a plain old extension cord. A clothes dryer circuit ain't no big deal- most any 'lectrician  with a helper kin put one in a day where you can git to it with a car. 

            'N you don't think the Walton's is gonna miss a bet as good as putting in chargers  'n selling you  two dollar worth of juice for four dollars , do ya?Not anybody else neither, once 'lecterc cars git common 'n they want you to hang around  their business ah half ah hour or more spending yer money. Some of 'em is gonna be so glad you stopped  they don't even charge you for the juice so long as you  buy  yer dinner er a ticket to see the show er fifty dollars worth uv groceries or whatever.

   

            'N I got one last thang to say about chargin' up yer 'lecterc car when ya git it- cause you gonnna git one, one o these days, if you're still young.If you got the sense to buy a house ruther than rent, 'n look out for the long haul, you kin charger her up half the time or more  at home  by making yer own juice. One'er  Mac's perfesser buddies  that lives in Ahwiee has put them solar cells all over his roof 'n  they make enuf juice he don't have to pay the power kumpney no more, they pay him, most months.

          This buddy o' Macs sez he could drive a couple of hennert miles a week east off of what his panels put out if he owned a Leaf, but he has  got ah old Honda that still runs good and he don't drive much no more , so he ain't gonna buy ah 'klecterc car  'less maybe the Honda dies on him.

                  I done looked into it, and ya kin buy enuf of them panels  to  keep make enuf jucie to drive ah Leaf  hunnert miles a day, if it's a good sunny day, for around twenty five or thirty grand, installed , 'n they er gitting cheaper ever year, while gas goes up most ever year. Them pv's ain't got no moving parts  'n they last   for at least twenty years, 'n that's sump'n worth thinkin' about. Thirty grand in the bank ain't gonna git ya more' a few hunnert bucks in inerst  these days but it'll git ya  power bill down to next to nothing  when the suns out good from here on out maybe for as long as yer live 'n then some fer yer kids after that.

              'N if they comes ah nuther time when you jist can't git no gas, like in WWII, or maybe jist ah gallon er two ah week,you'll be ah sitting purty 'n laughing at the people who wuz laughing at you  when you got  yer 'lecterc car 'n yer panels. '

                N gas is gonna keep going up, and 'lectricity too, but probably not as fast as gas..

              Ya kin put  them panels up  yerself if ya handy  'n knock off a whole lot of the price.

             But it won't work out right 'less you live where they have what they call net metering' which means you sell to the power kump'ne when the sun 's ah shining good  'n buy it back frum 'em when  yer car is plugged up 'n gitting charged when you're  ah watching television  'n snoring.You can't charge yer car up straight from yer own panels  unless it 's setting at home in the middle of the day when the sun is the best.We ain't got net meterin' round here but a lot of places has got it.

            Now Mac sez his  typing finger is gittin' sore,'n its time to quit. But  they's still a thang  er two I ain't got to yit that  we'll git to purty soon.

                  Now this is the last I got to say 'bout lecterc cars fer the time being, but some time or nuther I'll come back 'n  say something  bout hybrid cars, maybe in a week or two.

               I been standin' round here listening to all my buddies a bit chin 'bout the people what buys 'em ah hitting money off of  their  taxes.I ain't got no edjicasshin like Mac does, but I do know a few things, 'n cause I make ah point o' listening to people  that knows stuff.If it wuz left up to me, I would probably say the guv'mint ain't got no business ah giving money away to one  to nobody, 'n specially not to one bunch of people when they already got plenty, and not to people that ain't, like when they give you six  er eight thousand dollars off yer taxes if you buy a new Tesla.

        But it ain't up to me, an it ain't up to you , neither, brothers 'n sisters.'N  most of the people who is raising so much cain about it is   either ignerent   er hippercrits pure'n simple.

          

          Less jist come clean with Jesus, 'n  I'll be the first one to stand up 'n admit that I'm a sinner.That tricked out f250  ah setting in my driveway- well, I got a tax break on it worth about five grand to me, in the name o' stimlerlatin the 'conome  'n keeping the UAW 'n Ford  Motor Kumpne happy.

            'N I bought most of my land with a low real innerest guv'mint loan.saved me fifty tjousand bucks over jist the last ten years. 'N my private lake - what you ain't allowed to fish'n swim  in ' less you're my buddy- well, Uncle Sam made  me a gift of 90 percent of what it costed  to build it, in the name uv  flood control. Some uv yer might 'member i said right up front I vote 'publican too- The guvmint  hands out money right'n left  thought no consideratshin of race religion, sex , natshunul 'origins,  er political party, cept in some cased you have to just about hafta be ah democrat to git it, 'n in others you jist about hafta be a 'publican.You ain't apt to git no Acorn money if you wear ah NRA t shirt.

        Mac  has always admitted that the only real reason he ain't  spent his life looking at a mules  tail end an  ah breathing mule farts is that he got a good bit of free to him money out o' the guvmint to go to college ' long with some other scholarship money.

            'N half of you that  happens to read this  is probably got  cheap money to buy the house  that yer lives in  thru ah FHA loan  'n saved   a ton o money in innerest.

           'N the richest man in the town closest by here what owns a big furniture factory free  and clear  'n not a dime o debt to nobody- well, the guv'mint jist lately  give him two million dollars to buy new machinery fer his factory.I know, cause he gits up in front of his 'mployeez  twice a yer 'n tells  'em  'bout how their jobs  er safe cause  his  kump'nee iain't ah gonna close up in spite of all the other furniture plant's around here closing up already.Some  uv them 'mployeez is kin o mine. He ain't said nuthin ' bout the  free two million at the meeting's , but there wuz  plenty  'bout it in the local paper.

             I' could go on all day ah telling you bout people ah gittin  money one way or  'nuther off of the guv'mint.Caterpiller just lately got up in the millions to build a new factory  down the road apiece from here.

   

             Ya can't buy ah  ko koler no more with real sugar in it  cause the guvmint  has fixed it so  a few rich people kin git about twict  the price fer sugar  here in the US as what it ought ter cost, n what it  does cost ever where else.

            The bitchin you hear bout  people gitting' paid to buy 'lecterc cars is mainly jist from hippercrits that has skin in the game one way or 'nuther, or works for people with skin in the game ,or else frum people that  orter keep their mouths shut  cause they don't know enuf  they ought to open it , 'cept maybe  to ask ah question.

       'N on top of lll of this giving it away to people that don't really need it, the guv'mint gives it away right 'n left to people that do, like some of my kin people  that has got old 'n crippled up  'n can't work no more , 'n never made enuf to save a dime in spite of workin' ever day..

            'N  the guv'mint gives away a sight more to people to sorry to work that has figured out how to  live on welfare better'n they can ah working at any job they got a  shot at gitting- besides not having to be botherin'  'bout going to work.I got neighbors  'n some kin of that kind too.I know two  wimmen that lives real close by - closer than a mile, which is the same thing as next door out in the country -that is getting free lunches 'n doctoring fer their kids, and free rent,  and food stamps, and heatin' 'ssistance, 'n help from  the  church,   n' who knows what else- without ever striking a tap at uh snake.Both of 'em is perfect able to work, cause I seen  'em do it inside the last month, for  cash when people  round d here is a planting and gitting in the crops. One of ' em is on disability , for sure, 'n I hear  the other one is ah trying to git on it..

          I know both of 'em fer a fact will do a little house cleaning  er baby settin' for cash cause  I know people that hires 'em. 'N both of them got steady boyfriends that lives with 'em  but has their address somewhere else . One of them two boyfriends has a real good job but the other one  won't hardly work ah tall.

            'N jist in case  anybody is ah wonderin-  these wimmen is snow white  places where  the sun don't hit 'em.

             The guv'mint gives money away right'n left cause that's how things are these days, that's  people ah hitting their itches scratched  turn about.They might as well give some of it to people that buys'lecterc cars as anybody else who don't need it, 'n  when gas  gits too high  to pay fer it anymore, or there ain't none for sale on account of a war, most people will be glad they is some 'lecterc cars  fer sale  without having to wait fer the factory to get built .