Jacob's Ladder (Part 2)

It's no strange coincidence that the last part of this story comes on Friday 13th. A day viewed by most English as an unlucky one. By no strange set of events it also involves a ladder.

Now Jacob had all the things needed, so he thought, to build his ladder. No one can fault him for working diligently on it either. Never have I seen a man so carful in his measurements, cuts and jointery. In the end of it all a fine specimen of a ladder was complete and ready for testing. Well, Jacob thought he'd test the often used "straight" setting for the ladder along the side of the barn. because of the manner the hinges were installed it worked flawlessly. Next came the test of the "A" form of the ladder. A great crowd had gathered to see the new improvements and for all practicle purposes the second test was a great success as well.

New ladder in hand Jacob decides he's going to fix the lightening rod on top of his barn. He folds his new invention in half and heads up to the roof with cheery whistle and a sly grin. He got up the point of the roof, set up his new ladder in the "A" form, and then proceeded to climb up. Just as he reached the top it seemed his mass overcame the resistance of the asphalt shingle roof to his new ladder. With that it crashed down in half with poor Jacob grabbing on for dear life. All of a sudden his eyes lit up wider than the double doors on the barn as the ladder and he began to slide down the side of the barn. Not to be one that doesn't keep a stern eye on things the Parson was on hand as usual. Unfortunatly, for the Parson, he was directly under Jacob as he began his trip down to terra firma. The only thing we can guess at this point was that the Parson didn't fully realize the depth of the situation. You see the Parson began waving his hands back and forth and yelling, "Stop, stop Jacob!!!" Considering Jacob forgot to put a locking bar for the ladder I doubted that he remembered to install a handbrake. This was proven without a doubt when Jacob flew beard first headlong onto the Parson.

Fortunatly, for us, Jacob, and the Parson no one was harmed and the only thing hurt was a little pride. Sadly fro Jacob though the Parson has limited his trips to town and only under supervision lest he should come up any more ideas. I can't blame him after all. It seems the Parson is the only one that gets hurt from Jacobs experiments. He's still trying to grow his beard back to even form after Jacobs previous improvement. It was a solor powered flashlight.

Jacob's Ladder (Part 1)

As you well saw in my previous post, Jacob a good friend of mine, has an innate nack for getting himself into odd predictaments. He's a curious man to say to least in both his personality and his interests. As you may have thought from the title of this particular ranting it concerns his wooden ladder. Well, this is where Jacob's odd interests come into the story. You see ol Jacob has a wandering mind always thinking of ways to make things "better" for the rest of the Ordnung. This particular day after a hot afternoon working on the barn Jacob had an idea that he said came from something he saw an English using on his own home. This particular ladder that he'd seen would bend in the center to let the person make an "A" style ladder instead of the regular straight ladder that we normally use. Well, this is indeed a grand idea in the overall view of things but ol Jacob seemed to have missed something very vital in the construction of this new "bending ladder" idea that he had... a locking cross bar. You see our particular Ordnung has an odd view of modern things. We can look at them, take rides in vehicles, and even talk on cell phones sometimes. At the same time though there are things we cannot buy and this particular type of ladder is one of them. So, what does Jacob do you ask? He went down to the local True Value Store and bought himself two brand new straight wooden ladders, two brass door hinges, and the recently Council approved roll of duct tape. With that Jacob had everything he needed for this new and "improved" ladder.

The Goat and The Hole

Today was an interesting day by far. You see a friend of mine, Jacob, and I were out in the back 40 taking stock of our crops. Suddenly, Jacob, fell crashing to the ground waist high into a large hole. After I helped him out and checked him over for any injury we started to wonder where exactly the hole went. Jacob suggested we should throw a rock into it and see how deep down the hole went. We did, and after listening intently for a while we didn't hear the rock hit the bottom. Well, I figured we could try a larger rock to see if we were going about it all wrong. So we both lifted a larger rock we had laying to the side of the field. Again, after listening a while, we heard nothing. Frustrated, we decided we needed something much larger as, obviously, this hole was definitely a deep one as far as holes go. With that Jacob went out into the woods and came back a short while later with an old railroad tie. With that we heaved her down the hole and waited. A few seconds later a small goat came running by and jumped head first into the hole. It really shocked us something bad to see a goat running fast and jumped into this hole. About half an hour later this older fella came and asked us if we had seen a goat come by us. So we figured we had better tell him about the goat that jumped down the hole earlier. He told us though that there was no way that it couldn't have been his goat running that fast much less jumping down a hole since he was tied to a railroad tie. I'm begining to really wonder about that one though.

Top Ten Signs Your Teen Is In Trouble.

Today I thought I would give some advice due to some personal events happening in my life at the moment. Oftentimes, through no fault of the parents, at least one of your children will try to assert his/her authority. Given the size of our family (10 children) it was no surprise that we fell to this often troubling event in proper child rearing. I've decided to write down for the benefit of all who read my ramblings. I will ask you to be careful as some of the things I have written could find me in disfavor with the Parson. In addition, some of the things are written as delicately as possible but still may seem offending considering the nature of the situation.

10. Sometimes stays in bed until after 5 am.
9. In his sock drawer, you find pictures of women without bonnets.
8. Shows up at barn raisings in full "Kiss" makeup.
7. When you criticize him, he yells, "Thou sucketh!"
6. His name is Jebediah, but he goes by "Jeb Daddy."
5. Defiantly says, "If I had a radio, I'd listen to rap."
4. You come upon his secret stash of colored socks.
3. Uses slang expression: "Talk to the hand, 'cause the beard ain't
listening."
2. Was recently pulled over for "driving under the influence of
cottage cheese."
1. He's wearing his big black hat backwards.

Operation "Cold Turkey"

Operation "Cold Turkey" really sounds like some half wit attempt at humor by the misguided leader of our country during a Thanksgiving dinner in Iraq. However, this isn't the case in this instance. Instead, it's a clever name given to a special punishment we have found effective (albeit for a short time) for our cat that has taken to misbehaving in a truly twisted way. He feels it's his duty to do his duty in whatever corner of our little home when he becomes agitated, upset, angry, or flat just doesn't get his way. We've tried everything short of a therapy session with the world renowned psychotherapist Dr. Phill. It's been suggested to us to spray him with a water bottle. To no end he doesn't get either enough water to prove the point or just isn't phased by a small, projected, lukewarm stream of liquid and stern lecturing. This is where Operation "Cold Turkey" comes into the picture. As with some particularly bad habits the phrase "cold turkey" is often used to indicate an attempt to intervene and abruptly stop such behavior by whatever means necessary. Given the stubbornness of our particular royal pain in the posterior feline water does work to some extent if applied in proper and sufficient amounts. Our intentions are to get said feline to stop this undesirable behavior by doing just that, stopping cold turkey. Not only is it the method of choice but given the fact that both cold water is being used and often times the said feline is referred to as a "turkey" the term has more than one use. The last time we applied Operation "Cold Turkey" we were successful for a period of two days. Last night it seems, at some point, our other dear misguided and much younger cat must have upset the "turkey" to the point of "doing" on the floor yet again. Without delay we promptly snagged up the offending kitty introduced him to the sprayer that cat's have nightmares about in their slumber... The removable showerhead. We know not how long this endeavor shall last but know this for certain. We shall not grow weary or falter in this thing. Persistence is our best friend and endurance our strength. We will overcome this mule-headed cat come new carpet or cold water.

The Great Barn Raising.

Welcome to the "barn raising" of the Amish Electric Publications (AEP). Why would a devout dyed into he wool Amish man create a blog of all things? Well, for several reasons. One of which is because I was told I could not and that it is greatly frowned upon by our Ordnung. The others, which are personal, are more for myself than anything. Besides how shocking would it be for you English to know that we Amish actually are not as different as you think we are. In fact we have many of the same luxuries you have. We use electricity everyday. Not the same as you but we do so nonetheless. We also have telephones, cell phones, television, radio, and of all things power tools! Oh, but to the average tourist these things are not readily visible. Ususally because they are hidden away in the secret places of our barns obscured by the misconception that we as Amish don't use such technology.

Again, I welcome you to my humble part of the great expanse called cyberspace and hope to see you again as I continue my daily ranting and mumbling about all that is in this crazy world.