Category → Family
Four years ago, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself
Four years ago, Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. He died mysteriously in not just any prison, but in New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center, in the heart of and under the complete control of the Democrat Party political apparatus that he was a threat to. He was under 24 hour scrutiny by two guards and he was under 24 hour surveillance by multiple cameras.
Epstein had tons of horrible dirt on a ton of Democrat Party bigwigs and donors. Had he been allowed to stay alive, he would have talked, spilled the beans, disclosed the horrible secrets about these horrible people that would have disrupted the evil shadow world occupied by so many Hollywood and Democrat Party bigwigs.
Mysteriously, the guards watching his cell got up and disappeared from their guard duty at the same time Epstein died. No one was around to see how exactly he died.
Mysteriously, the cameras trained on Epstein’s cell also failed, did not record his cell, and had no backups. No one ever explained this coincidence.
A mystery visitor to the prison at that same time was never found. No one knows who the burly guy was.
Ultra-Democrat federal prosecutors then dropped the charges against the two guards for leaving their positions and for falsifying their log books that night. Everything was then hushed up. Someone with the information to destroy a political party conveniently died, and no one was held responsible. Not even the paid uniformed guards who were supposed to be watching him. The entire Epstein murder is one giant coverup in plain view of the American public.
Is anyone paying attention to this?
The deep mark on Epstein’s neck is the thin line of a strong wire or cable, nothing Epstein had access to. A ligature, the kind used by hitmen. But his cause of death was laughably and disbelievably recorded as death by hanging from his bed sheet, by a New York City Democrat bigwig, medical examiner Barbara Sampson.
Longtime Democrat Party donor and insider, Epstein was also a convicted pedophile and child molester leading a bizarre life of high finance and child rape on his “orgy island” in the Bahamas. Hundreds of children were illegally sexually trafficked on Epstein’s island, and at least hundreds of Democrat Party bigwigs and insiders joined him there, including Bill and Hillary Clinton. Apparently a few Republican Party bigwigs participated, too. This might account for why “Republican” US AG Bill Barr immediately and outright dismissed all the mystery surrounding Epstein’s death as nothing to see here, everyone just move along. Barr obviously covered for not just the Democrat child molesters, but the Republican ones, too.
Here is one good article about what a sham this murder was, and what a sham the coverup was.
No wonder so many Americans see this disgusting arrangement as a “uniparty” or a “deep state” or an “administrative state” that illegally operates separately from the We, The People, who are supposed to have complete control over our government. Both political parties are in on the sham. They cover for each other, they take care of each other. Meanwhile, the rule of law that is supposed to keep America operating is thrown out the window.
It is almost as if Epstein’s blatant murder was a run-up to the stolen 2020 election, that also happened right in front of our faces, and which the uniparty also told us to move along, forget about, nothing to see here.
Folks, America is in huge trouble from this crap. The only reason all this evil skulduggery has not destroyed us yet is that America is in effect a huge bank account. There is just so much of everything in America that it will take a long time before the rot inside begins to really show up on the outside. Our cultural, political, and financial wealth is all being quietly siphoned off, one political murder at a time, one dropped charge at a time, one official coverup at a time, one stolen election at a time. At a certain point, this corrupt rot will become so prevalent and so blatant that no one will believe in the system any more. And then all hell will break loose.
I do believe that is their plan.
We all fold bed sheets. Have you ever seen a bed sheet that could leave this very sharp, deep cut in human flesh? Neither has anyone else but the New York City Democrat political hack Barbara Sampson. Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself. He was murdered to shut him up.
Racist, violent, weird New York Times has to go away
When I was a kid, and we are talking over half a century ago, the New York Times newspaper was a daily thing, a weekend-long hit, a week of solid reading starting on Sunday morning, and a year-long fixed institution of America’s cultural and political landscape.
The NYT Sunday Edition was about six to seven inches thick starting around ten in the morning, and included incredible analyses of real estate markets, emerging technology, strange and interesting people and places in America and around the world. The Sunday Times Magazine had a fashion section that even a young boy could relate to, not because I liked fashion per se, but because the female models were beautiful to look at. And occasionally only semi invisible behind their colorful shmatas. Its real estate section was so good that even as a kid I enjoyed reading about stairs, table tops, and bars inside Long Island homes.
The NYT Sunday Edition had enough information for an entire week of fascinating reading on every subject known to modern civilization – science, technology, medicine, history, politics of course. Especially the obituaries and the wedding announcements, all of whom involved who’s-who people who we may not have even realized were major players in whatever given field they were in. Brilliant nuclear engineers who lived quiet lives in New Jersey, but who had invented something awesome that ended up powering all of suburban America suddenly had their great last reveal in the Sunday Edition obituary section. Who knew? He (and she) was a who’s-who!, we exclaimed to each other across the room. So much fascinating and rare information was contained in that one section among a dozen such amazing sections.
In our family, people grabbed their favorite section of the hot-off-the-press NYT Sunday Edition around 10:00AM and, with a plate full of lox and bagels, knish, and maybe some creamed herring with crackers, then grabbed a corner of a couch or a chair at the dining room table and sat and read deeply. Occasionally to exclaim something fascinating to the room full of other lox-and-bagel eaters equally entranced by their own compelling subject, pages turning with a rustle almost like a Fall wind rustling dry sycamore leaves in Central Park. And this weekly ritual involved kids and adults alike. Which I still think is a pretty fascinating statement about the complexity and value the NYT brought to the American table at one time. It was a real repository of valuable information, even if its fashion models occasionally had a nip-slip that intrigued a couple hundred twelve-year-old boys across America once a week.
To say that fifty years ago, and heck even thirty-some years ago when I was in grad school, that the NYT was the acknowledged and designated curator of American culture, literature, movies, arts, food, politics, etc. was no big thing. Conservative icons like William F. Buckley had no problem admitting the NYT’s supremacy, and he also admitted he was merely nipping at the NYT’s heels with his own National Review magazine.
While just a newspaper, the NYT was a massive institution with hundreds of intellectually curious people working in its busy beehive on just about every subject known to modern humans. While the NYT always had some sort of liberal-left tilt, it was mostly nuanced; that was rarely put on public display. Because to do so would be to reveal a deep bias at the great institution that would undercut the paper’s acknowledged claim to being the curatorial keeper of the American flame.
For the NYT to do a Big Political Reveal would be to alienate a large part of its audience, if not all of it. Because while traditionalist Americans did in fact revulse at the NYT’s hideous partisan caricature that greeted them especially in Sunday opinion essays in the 1990s, they still could find bits and pieces of meaning and value here and there in the capacious rubbish heap. Not so in the 2000s, when liberals-with-a-brain-and-a-conscience also began to recoil at the NYT’s ever more brazen partisanship, as seen daily in its “news reporting” that read like an English version of the Soviet Union’s daily Pravda: One political party was always bad, the other was always good. Republicans were always mean and stupid, Democrat politicians were always witty, smart, enjoyed the NYT cross word puzzles, and well intentioned if occasionally murderously drunk or rape-inclined.
You did not have to be a conservative to see the very low value in an outlet that makes no effort to tell the other side of the story. Every intellectual wants to know the full story, and while the NYT catered to people who saw themselves as intellectuals, they no longer (if ever) behaved or thought like intellectuals (curious people open to new information).
Well, well, well, how have times changed. No pun intended, the NYT has indeed really fallen badly since its heyday of the 1940s-1980s. Today, the NYT is a shell of its former self. In every way, including the slim to non-existent and almost meaningless Sunday Edition. Its owners and publishers have so garishly embraced a single corner in the boxing ring that they are in essence burning the wood from the NYT’s walls to keep their lights on and heat going, acting as their own termites gutting their own home to stay alive while simultaneously causing the home to collapse. They make no apologies for telling blatant lies and abusing their remaining readership.
Having avoided almost all things New York Times now for several decades, I still receive the paper’s emails. But what have we here in these digital missives, but cheap traders hawking an embarrassing array of cheap and weird goods: Sleep aids, insect repellant, protein bars, the Mediterranean diet available at a click here or there, and of course, everything imaginable that could be construed or cobbled together to be negative about President Trump.
However, if the once mighty NYT now stoops to deal in tawdry middle class diet aid clickbait and 100% fake news political red meat for its dwindling, clueless, bubble-and-silo’d ultra partisan readership, it has finally gone one too far: Yes, the New York Times supports calls for racial genocide against white/ European farmers (and everyone else who has white skin) in South Africa.
South Africa may have been a fundamentally unfair place for black Africans to live for a few hundred years, but at least it was highly functional and its quality of life for most people was a hell of lot better than the nomadic hunter-gatherer cannibals the Boers encountered in the 1600s. South Africa is now a dysfunctional, dystopian, genocidal racialist state that purposefully discriminates against the European people who grow the country’s food and who cater to the valuable safari tourist trade. South Africa is following in the steps of former Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, its neighbor, where racist and genocidal Africans tortured, murdered, and drove out the European people who grew all of the food and did all of the engineering stuff for the entire nation. Zimbabwe sucks. Its public water supplies have dangerous parasites. Its corruption and lawlessness are legendary. So this is where South Africa is headed? And the NYT is cheering it on?
I look at the NYT now with more than fifty years of readership under my belt. Where I used to count the Sunday Hirschfeld comic Nina names hidden among the artist’s slashing style (my own middle child is named Nina in large part because of my childhood-into-adulthood fondness for the Hirschfeld comic search each Sunday) as a kid, I now see not-so-hidden Nazi swastikas and revolutionary torches and pitchforks. How far this institution has fallen. It is a crumbled ruin, a shadow of its former self. It isn’t even a Pravda, whose grinning grotesques at least openly acknowledged the 100% lying propaganda fake news. No, this is a ramshackle, collapsing shell housing a few dozen racist maniacs pounding feverishly away at their typewriter keys, raw and hell bent on a violent and bloody racist revolution across the planet. The once curious and magical place is really gone.
The New York Times deserves to be canceled. Don’t drink water out of the toilet and don’t read the New York Times. Anyone subscribing to this garbage is a shameful person. An outed dingbat, a dumbkopf, a kook, a Nazi or at least a Nazi collaborator.
For shame.
An aggregate of Al Hirschfeld cartoons where his daughter’s name Nina was often hidden, the number told in the artist’s signature. This was the height of the NYT’s more innocent times
Hollywood child abusers protest anti-child abuse film
A month ago, at a party celebrating my daughter’s impending marriage to a fine young man, a strange older man approached me. Me, of jovial mood and big hearted happiness upon this wonderful occasion, found myself backing up as the stranger puked up bitter venom and anger at me.
“I heard you are a big Trump guy. Well, he is morally reprehensible, reprehensible, I tell you, and degenerate. Trump is morally bankrupt, corrupt, and has broken every law known to mankind. And I can’t believe you support him.”
Some people, well let’s say it, liberals, have no class, because they live by their feelings, not their thinkings, and so they are like rabid dogs roaming about randomly peeing on and biting the guests at parties where happiness is supposed to reign. This old guy was true to form, and I must say, having myself grown up surrounded by liberals, I have yet to meet one, and I mean one liberal person, who is capable of calmly discussing or debating politics or culture. Their feewings always turn them into stark raving lunatics. And here I was face to face with Exhibit Number Eight Bazillion of that rule.
“Well, I see no evidence to support what you have just said,” said I. “And I am genuinely interested to hear what you have to say that supports your pretty radical statement just now, especially in light of all of the child sex slaves being trafficked across Biden’s open border. Not much more morally degenerate or bankrupt or reprehensible than selling child sex slaves. Right?”
And the man turned around and walked away.
Every now and then at the party that evening I would catch him glaring angrily at me from across the room. And days later, even as I, father of the bride, was giving my doting father of the bride speech at the wedding itself, this foolish old dolt of a well formed liberal dingbat sat and did his best disapproving scowl at me to let me know what he thought.
And so it is now with the Hollywood-Media Industrial Complex reaction to The Sound of Freedom, a movie about stopping child sex slavery. Turns out that all of the evil child molesting Hollywood-Media people really oppose a movie that shines an unfavorable light on their reprehensible, morally bankrupt, degenerate and corrupt child molesting behavior that is not just aided and abetted but actually jet-fueled by child sniffing Joe Biden and his court of freaks enforcing a wide-open southern border.
Who else am I thinking of here…hmmmmm well, let’s start with Jeffrey Epstein and all of his hundreds of close Hollywood chums raping underage girls at his dungeon island in the Bahamas. And the DAs and judges of one single political party across several states, mostly Florida, who went out of their way to enable and to protect Jeffrey Epstein after the fact was known that he was a reprehensible, morally bankrupt, corrupt child rapist.
After that example there is a laundry list as long as my leg of outed pedophile Mainstream Media personalities in England and America. These morally reprehensible people are trying to get normal people to accept the idea of adults having sex with underage children as a normal thing.
Isn’t it interesting that when you type in the words “pedophile” and “pedophilia” on your iPhone, the autocorrect and instant spell check don’t recognize either word? To the evil woke child-hating psychopaths at Apple, Inc. who programmed our iPhones, these two words should be canceled, they must not even exist, because they highlight and draw attention to a significant amount of morally reprehensible crap Hollywood, Corporate Media, and Silicon Valley people actually believe in and want to do, to children.
There is a sick and evil culture in one political party today, and it is infecting everything it touches. Turns out that party’s PR arm – the Hollywood-Media-High Tech Industrial Complex- isn’t just on the job for professional, financial, or even ideological reasons. These people are actually running interference and carrying water for sold-America-to-China Joe Biden and his administration’s dark den of child molesters because of their own personal immoral sickness and evil.
It is why they are all up in arms about this good movie, The Sound of Freedom. Qanon affiliated? What a joke that accusation is, because Qanon is at most just an idea, and one that is pushed more by liberals than anyone else; it’s not even a real group. It is just another liberal-created boogie man.
It is said that all it takes for bad people to prevail is for good people to do nothing….but sit and scowl, wordless and without evidence or cause, at the father of the bride at his daughter’s wedding. I don’t know how we break through to these liberal people. They are enabling and promoting pure evil, they badmouth a good movie for shallow political reasons, and yet they say it is all someone else’s fault when the problems cross our open border and show up in the “conservative” news.
Say, what is normally done with rabid dogs?
Jerry Johnson & Johnson’s Furs
A fascinating and wonderful human named Jerry Johnson went to meet his Maker recently, and I would like to say why I am going to miss him so much.
Jerry founded and ran Johnson’s Furs in Enola back in the 1960s. Initially started to just buy, aggregate, and re-sell wildlife furs from foxes, coyotes, bobcat, mink, skunk, possum, raccoons etc., Jerry expanded the business to encompass everything possibly related to furs, like annually buying hundreds of thousands of deer and cattle hides, selling Hawbaker and Carman trapping lures, foothold traps, cage traps, Conibear-style traps, snares, cable restraints, and all of the steel fittings that go with those implements.
Jerry’s inspiration and logistical support came from the number one person in the trapping business back then, Stanley Hawbaker. A central Pennsylvania native, nationally recognized trapping expert and proponent Stanley Hawbaker was most active during the heyday of fur trapping, and he designed trapping lures and baits that are still in high demand today. Despite being a competitor for trappers’ business, Hawbaker saw in Jerry Johnson a rare opportunity to expand the trapping industry beyond its narrow focus at that time. And so Johnson’s Furs grew into a regional powerhouse.
I interviewed Jerry Johnson several times over the past fifteen years, and each time was fascinating. He and I were supposed to get together for some video interviews this spring, but his declining health prevented him from getting out or from talking for more than a few minutes. One of our most interesting times together was in his newly reconstructed log cabin, about five years ago.
The benefits enjoyed from Jerry’s incredible energy included having a one-stop shop for buying everything a trapper needs, as well as being able to drop off both pelts and whole critters. Johnson’s correctly processed everything brought in, and dealt with all of the big tanneries. During my last discussion with Jerry, just a few months ago, when I dropped off a huge elk hide for tanning, he reflected on the fact that only one tannery remains in eastern America that can tan an elk hide. He said he had witnessed the explosive growth of the hide and trapping industries in the 1960s and 1970s, and then had lived to see their eventual retraction and maybe even the demise of the cattle and deer hide businesses.
Jerry Johnson was the nicest person you would ever meet in your life. He was kind, patient, funny, and friendly. Like almost everyone of his generation in Central Pennsylvania, he did not know the word “quit,” and he worked very hard and long hours well into his 80s. And his prices were fair to the point of sometimes being unfair to him. When I ran for public office, he put my brochures up in the office and talked me up to interested voters.
Every year for a long time the District 8 PA Trappers Association held a Jerry Johnson Appreciation Lunch. Because it was on a Saturday and during the heart of hunting season, I never could participate. But Jerry knew I appreciated him because I told him so, so many times, over so many years of buying trapping equipment from him and having him process my furs.
I could write a short book here about what Jerry told me, about his youth, his education, his family, and his small business work. Maybe some day I will write a chapter about Jerry, but for now this is what I have to say: He was one of the last of a dying breed of Americans who grew up working hard, with his family, and who worked hard up until his death in his 80s. Jerry enjoyed and loved America and his fellow Americans, and never asked for more than a fair shot at doing business.
Among many other of your fans, I will miss you, Jerry Johnson. I will miss your advice, your quick smile, your quick wit, your outstanding service, and your kind personality. Thank you for all you did for me and my son, and for countless other trappers in the region.
Jerry Johnson and the Princess of Patience in 2021 in front of Johnson’s Furs
Jerry Johnson in 2020, minus mask and no social distancing, thank God.
Summertime harvests & roadside wisdom with strangers
Presently we are enjoying the height of the summer fruit and vegetable season. Berries wild and cultivated can be picked whenever you have time, often right along the road, and many are for sale at small roadside kiosks and shacks. Same goes for honey, sweet corn, and a host of vegetables. Most of which are organic and have not been sprayed with synthetic chemicals. It is really a wonderful time of year to both eat well, and participate in the natural gathering of food as humans have done since God completed our evolution a hundred thousand years ago.
One of the aspects of summer time food gathering that I enjoy is the natural gathering of people around the sources of these fruits and vegetables. Like roadside stands, selling fruits and vegetables picked that morning by the landowner, standing there wiping their hands on their apron, sweat beading on their forehead, and stuffing cash into their pockets or running off to make change.
The people who shop at roadside stands and kiosks are a pretty interesting group, and most of them are willing to strike up a discussion with the strangers around them with little more incentive than a good joke about the weather or an offering of just-purchased cherries from the stand down the road. At the stand where I bought our annual supply of sweet corn, the discussion centered on whither America given that so many young Americans do not want to work, can’t work, don’t know how to work. Everyone present shared their growing up story about how they learned to work hard, and to enjoy it, and where that strong work ethic took them in their life. This is real rural wisdom that keeps the wheels on America and turning.
As if on cue, a ragged bunch of older teenagers went braying by on Route 147, their dirt bikes drowning out the already damaged hearing of their elders gathered at the sweet corn stand.
“See?” said the proprietress.
“I told the neighbors they can’t ride on our farm without helmets because they are so foolish and are going to get hurt. They still ride through our crops anyhow,” she said with her hands on her hips and a furrowed brow darkening her attractive face.
I see it everywhere I go. Doesn’t matter the skin color: White, black, brown, yellow…today’s young Americans are seemingly all huffing endless free sh*t from their families like a recreational drug, and that lack of responsibility has led to a lack of focus, a lack of real goals, no work ethic, a lack of seriousness about life, etc. And yes, America will undoubtedly fail if these kids don’t grow up, wake up, and get serious about their lives and about their nation. Somewhere I saw headlines about half of the young people think “mis-gendering” someone should be a crime punishable by jail. Obviously these are not serious people, they are are adult-aged children stuck in perpetual childhood and whining about every damned little ridiculous nonsense thing.
It felt nice to have my own observations reinforced by the other elders standing around the corn stand. Anyone like me with a blog and strong opinions is bound to eventually live inside my own head. Getting out into the public and hearing from strangers that I am not alone in my worries about the upcoming generations of Americans is reassuring. No, I am not overly critical and demanding, I am just old fashioned because I believe that a strong work ethic makes you a better person, a more civic minded person, a better citizen, a more productive adult.
Some say that America could not be started over and built again today, with the toxic soup of all of the ridiculous and picayune regulations, rules, ordinances, etc surrounding us. But more than anything the challenge to America seems to be the lack of desire among our young people to want to achieve anything of substance, and their willing subservience to freedom-crushing government bureaucrats.
I wonder if these kids can learn to speak Chinese. At least “Please don’t shoot me” in Chinese ought to be a phrase they are taught, as the willing and easy victims they are building themselves up to be will need some memorable last words before their country is taken by force from them.
Enjoy your summer harvest, friends. I do, and I enjoy the old memories, too. When I was a kid, my mother would send me and a sibling out on hot summer days to pick gallons of blackberries, black raspberries, red raspberries, and blueberries that grew naturally on our property and on adjoining farms. We would return hours later red faced, dirty, scratched up, and with buckets fulled up, and unbeknownst to us, our can-do spirit filled up and stronger, too. We eventually ate what we picked; we earned what we ate. From the fruits of our labors Mom made jams, jellies, pies, and sauces, the Mason jars ever more lining up in the pantry nice and neat for us to eat throughout the coming year.
It is a shame that today’s young Americans are not learning such a simple life lesson.
Where are their parents? Where are the Americans?
Roadside sweet corn stand along Rt 147
As fast as the corn is brought up from the field it is stuffed by buyers into bags and spirited off to kitchens across the area
Rural America is full of iconic and inspiring scenic views like this looking at the Susquehanna River water gap
Quaint though they may be, the old-time country mouse values and principles of rural America trump the shallow arrogance of city mice every single time
Our fresh sweet corn was eaten a bit with butter and salt, but mostly stripped off the cob and put into ziploc freezer bags for eating throughout the year. Chicken corn chowder is a popular winter soup
While waiting for my daughter to finish getting her nails done for her wedding, I picked a hatful of red raspberries in the weed patch next to the parking lot. Unbelievably, a woman approached me and asked me for money to buy food. When I offered her my berries she became irate and yelled at me. Our family ate this delicious wild growing roadside fruit over three days.
Midsummer report
My apologies for the long absence here. Summer is in full swing and our family has been operating at full tilt speed. Time only for doing things, and none for writing about it all, until now.
First off, our oldest kid was married on Independence Day. Held at a pretty and historic farm, it was a fantastic wedding, and we feel like we acquired a wonderful addition to our family. However, the preparation necessary for that event took up a lot of time and energy, for many months. And then there was the recovery week. And then there was the vacation week. Hence no blog posts. Full credit to my wife for all of the wedding planning.
At least I myself am back in the saddle, while other people around me are still recovering from their vacation. Not everyone does well with the surf fishing bum lifestyle, including sleeping on the beach, eating questionable food from a warm cooler that has been pawed over and drooled on by feral raccoons, and drinking fetid water. I myself thrive in this kind of environment, and so I am back to report back to our three readers.
What can I say about the wedding other than I fired our small black powder cannon seven times, for good luck. It was Independence Day, and while the venue does not allow fireworks, they did allow the cannon (it’s a cast iron, steel sleeved replica swivel gun with a 1.75″ bore). And in my speech as the bride’s father, how could I miss an opportunity to point out that Independence Day was brought to us by citizens with guns? That is a fact, is it not?
And (of course, I guess) I heard back afterwards that some of our wedding guests were offended by the cannon and also offended by my mention of the origins of American freedom – citizens with guns. You can’t make this stuff up if you tried, like it’s a Hollywood movie script caricature of spoiled rotten children who get everything that Planet Earth can provide and yet nonetheless complain about it. Something like “The food here is terrible and the portions are so small.”
Are Americans now really offended by Independence Day fireworks? Are they offended by displays of patriotism and mentioning of historical facts that unfortunately run contrary to some evil political narratives that privately owned guns are bad and our freedom was brought to Americans by a immaculately conceived federal government that descended from Heaven? Are some wedding guests now so crass that they actually complain about the bride’s father setting off his celebratory toy cannon for the enjoyment of all the normal fun-loving people in attendance?
I have a hard time believing these things, but I did get to witness this stuff. America is in big trouble when its own citizens, young and old, hate its founding and can’t give a proud father his one moment and some space to celebrate it. Jiminy crickets.
Just returned from a subsequent beach trip to a a long spit of federally managed property on the east coast. The National Park Service rangers were 99% normal, nice, intelligent Americans, thank you very much, Gage, Donald, and Stephen.
In this national park there is a problem with artificially high numbers of deer, foxes, and racoons. They have no natural predators and they are multiplying at breakneck rates and having huge negative impacts on the environment and local ecology. Vegetation shows a distinct deer browse line about four feet above the ground, and the racoons are everywhere, aggressive, and aiming to ruin your trip. I watched a red fox steal a camper’s breakfast sausage meal right off of his plate on the guy’s picnic table. We had raccoons patrolling our campsite and under our table as soon as we broke out our food. They will grab your food right out of your hand. It is a fact that raccoons are host to some nasty parasites they excrete in their poop, which was abundantly displayed all around the campsites. Raccoons are also the number one vector for rabies among wildlife.
Aside from posing health threats and incessantly badgering the humans who are trying to enjoy the park, the foxes and raccoons also eat the eggs of rare nesting shore birds. These rare birds enjoy huge swaths of cordoned off human-free dunes and beaches in the park (and also on federal and state lands out on Long Island, like Orient Point and Montauk). And yet the same exact NPS staff enforcing the human no-go dune zones policy are absolutely fine with the overabundant nest-raiding foxes and raccoons that render all the no-go zones meaningless. The staff do not support hunting or trapping these destructive pests, either to improve the park visitor experience or to protect the natural environment.
How can the rare birds successfully nest on the ground and hatch their chicks there when the artificially super overabundant egg-eating raccoons and foxes are allowed to roam at will?
Talking with various National Park Service staff about this problem resulted in exposure to various levels of education and serious/unserious mindset. Most of the NPS staff acknowledged there is a wildlife problem on site that must be addressed. Hunting the deer and trapping the foxes and raccoons is the normal and responsible way to deal with this artificial human-caused environmental problem. These are the responsible and serious ways of addressing a visitor problem on land that is owned by the US taxpayer and whose management is entrusted to taxpayer-paid bureaucrats.
However, when I mentioned the above normal solutions to a young, handsome, tall NPS Park Policeman patrolling our campground, he responded “The same can be said about humans — there are just too many humans. And your solution to the overabundant raccoon problem is not humane.” He would get rid of the humans and allow the artificially high numbers of nuisance wildlife to proliferate. With taxpayer-paid federal employees of this guy’s low caliber and high wokeness quotient, the park visitor experience is going to degrade. C’mon, NPS, you can screen your employee applicants better than this. This foolish people-hating young guy should never have a gun and a badge, much less wear an NPS uniform.
Overall the surf fishing was fun if mostly unproductive. Probably due to the high heat and ferocious sunshine. I can report that catching cownose/ bullnose rays on strong surf tackle is a hoot, but then safely decoupling that animal from the tackle is a whole other thing. They whip their barbed tails around trying to nail the fisherman, who is trying to release them back into the ocean (I learned to place something heavy on the tail while using heavy pliers to remove or break off the hook). We did witness a large shark violently feeding close to shore, and it would be a fair guess to say it was probably eating these rays, which we caught and saw in abundance on both the bay side and the ocean surf side.
So that is the mid-summer report. Fast action, lots of family, some big family celebration and lots of family movement across the beautiful American landscape for work and vacation. I hope that you the reader are also enjoying your summertime. Summer is such a glorious time to be with family and friends, to visit new places, to camp out under the stars and cook over an open fire, to think through life’s normal challenges and to spend time with people we love…and then it is over just when we are all starting to really get into it.
So make the most of your summer.
Campsite neighbor Steve, a PhD engineer ex-patriot Brit and defiant leftist, helped MAGA Maniac Josh fix my malfunctioning headlamp, demonstrating that it’s easy to be enemies when separated by keyboards and easy to be friends when living side by side
Nice level NPS campsites with fire ring and grill
Each campsite has a pavilion and a picnic table. Is this really camping?
Asbury Park Brewery is a local flavor that I was happy to support. No sign anywhere of Bud Lite or Budweiser anything, thankfully
Symbol of foolish National Park Service policies seeking to protect rare shore birds by excluding people from their habitat, but allowing artificially overabundant populations of nest-raiding raccoons and foxes to roam at will.
Beach goers nonetheless entered this area because there were zero nesting birds in it and there were literally tons of foxes running around in it. Come on National Park Service, you can do much smarter than this
Ahhhhh… summer vacation on the Atlantic Coast
Irv’s summertime camping gear recommendations
Summertime Camping Equipment Review
The good, the bad, and the ugly….maybe
by
Irving Krasnoshtayn, Special Guest at joshfirst.com
When I was a kid, my family did not go camping. There was nowhere to go. The “open space” in Brooklyn, New York, was the little crack between the concrete slabs on every sidewalk where small sprouts of grass grow. Football, hockey, even baseball games were played in the street or in a crowded public park if one was near enough. People in tents were known as homeless. The first time I went camping was with a bunch of college friends over 20 years ago. It was a poorly planned and ragtag experiment, by guys with more spirit than knowledge. We brought an axe and chopped our own firewood, and then thought we were real outdoorsmen. More than anything we all got giant blisters on our soft city hands. Lots of things have changed since then, but my enjoyment of camping only grew from that one fun misadventure.
Fast forward just a few years and now I am the dad with little kids who excitedly ask me about camping over summer vacation. But unlike my childhood, society today is a lot more mobile, and outdoor recreation is a lot more widespread, common, and much more easily accessible. When you have a couple kids and a wife, you have to think not only about the easy, happy family coziness, fresh air, and the sunshine aspects of camping, but also about everyone being comfortable, repelling bugs, people going potty in the middle of the night, and having decent food. Meeting all of those goals with a family means that we get to try out a lot of camping gear, albeit mostly car camping and not always wilderness treks. Our destinations are usually commercial campgrounds and state and county parks. So here’s my honest review of some things I rely on when family camping. I know there are plenty of dads and moms out there who are hungry for this kind of information. Links to many of these items are below.
Tents: I have two tents, each costing around $100. One a six-person and the other an eight-person, both made by Coleman. But those sizes are a lie because each tent fits two people fewer than advertised, especially with all their gear. You have to think about keeping your stuff dry inside the tent in bad weather, so a backpack takes up the space of a person.
These Coleman tents are relatively easy to set up and they have been reliable. But buy a bigger tent than you think you need, unless you will be backpacking it on a mountain. In which case you will want the absolute lightest gear, which is a whole other story. Use strong steel stakes, they don’t bend as easily as aluminum and last longer. I also put down a cheap tarp on the ground slightly larger than the tent, to take off shoes before we get into the tent and to protect the bottom and keep it from tearing.
Sleeping bags: I have owned more sleeping bags than I can count on both hands. This key part of camping has been a long process for me, and I hope you can learn from my mistakes. In the course of learning sleeping lessons while camping the hard way, I have discovered I really don’t like mummy bags. Mummy bags are sold as a common camping cure-all, but they best fit small framed and narrowly proportioned people, while I want room for my tree trunk legs and wide shoulders. Don’t buy a bag from an unheard of company, like I have, while trying to save money; you will end up paying the real price in comfort and enjoyment, which is worth more than money. At the lower end of the price range, say around $40, Coleman makes decent sleeping bags. Some have cotton lining, some nylon, some acrylic, some flannel, but either way make sure you like the particular material against your skin before you walk out of the store with the bag. I have used everything from 20 degree bags to 50 degree bags, and absolutely none are as warm or breathable as they claim. Until you test your bag and understand its real limits, make sure you bring extra base clothing to keep warm at night. A drinking bottle filed with hot water can help overnight. Coleman’s Brazos is a decent model. A stuff sack for storing the sleeping bag short term is great to have too. To preserve their fill loft, sleeping bags must be stored long term either hung up hanging freely, or in large sacks that do not compress them.
Sleeping pads: One of the most important things I have bought for camping is a sleeping pad. I like a comfy sleep, what can I say. Once you sleep somewhere rocky you will understand why a good sleeping pad is important. Besides, I’m getting old and want to be comfortable. Walmart sells a cheap roll up pad like the military uses that is about a half an inch thick, and that is the minimum I would recommend. I highly recommend the best pad you can afford, either closed cell foam or inflatable. I have one for each family member of different types and thicknesses. The egg crate type is not bad but I prefer a firm type made of open/closed cell foam.
I own a few self-inflating pads but I’m afraid they might develop a hole and deflate like happened to me once. I like reliability, which the closed cell foam has.
Pillow: When camping with our car, we bring our pillows from home. When backpacking I take one of two inflatable pillows, but some people just bring a pillow case and stuff it with their clothing. That works.
Fire: Although I own many axes, such as the decent Cold Steel axe, I now rarely use one while camping. Instead I use a few different saws to get my firewood. Silky saws of Japan makes the best saws money can buy. The Silky Gomboy with medium teeth is the most comfortable and fastest cutting saw I know of besides using a chainsaw. Their teeth are wider than the spine so they cut very well and don’t bind. They are a pleasure to use but have been known to snap if used forcefully. Take your time and let the saw do the work. They can be found on sale for around $40 and like all good kit, are well worth it. Get the largest one you can afford. “Project Farm” of youtube fame recommended another couple of saws. I will be “real world” testing them soon.
Fire Starting: This is something I have practiced extensively and have found campers need to carry more than one way to start a fire, and know how to use each one. Yes, Bic lighters are a go-to but when it is freezing, snowing, or raining they may not work. Always carry your Bic/gas lighters on your person in a pocket, and NOT in your pack. The reason is your body will keep the lighter warm and the contents in a fluid and flammable state. If the lighter is really cold, the butane will not turn into a gas when you try to light it and it won’t work. Zippo lighters are okay as long as they don’t get wet or leak.
Wind is another reason I don’t rely on gas lighters or survival matches. If you do buy survival matches, make sure the container is waterproof and they are the type that can stay lit underwater. Yes they make those. I used a waterproof pill container filled with LIFEBOAT matches and cotton balls for my kids.
I have made videos throwing every type of lighter or match into a half foot of snow or a bucket of water, and the only thing that was reliable was a Ferrocerium rod. Known as a Ferro rod, I now buy them in bulk and make handles for them out of spent rifle cases. Use the spine of your knife and you will make all the sparks you need to start a fire.
At home I prepare a few cotton balls dipped into Vaseline, and store them in a small Ziploc bag. They have the added benefit of protecting your skin/hands. A Ferro rod will light one immediately and the Vaseline in it will burn for a good minute or two, if not longer. I will sometimes make feather sticks which a Ferro rod will also easily light if done correctly. I own magnesium fire starters, and they work, but they aren’t necessary. Again if it’s windy, the magnesium will often get blown away. Some people like to use military trioxane, but this extra expense is not necessary.
Camp chair: Bring a chair for each person if you can. This is advice that is easy when car camping and very difficult while backpacking. I have not yet found a lightweight folding chair that I like.
Cooking: I have spent hundreds of dollars on a titanium stove and the latest everything else for cooking, and have concluded just a few items are all I need to cook good food while camping. Stanley makes a $30-$40 frying pan kit which is worth it. Titanium frying pans which I own are lightweight but develop hotspots that then cook unevenly. The Stanley frying pan kit cooks everything evenly and comes with two plates, and a take-apart spatula that is almost priceless. Stanley also makes a few other kits including a pot kit and a mug/cup kit which are also very good. I have used them all extensively, and they develop a blackened bottom with open fires. Someone scientifically tested blackened pots and it will boil water approximately a minute faster because it absorbs the heat better. I have a lightweight folding stainless steel grate for chicken, hot dogs and burgers. Works great. I like a titanium cup for quickly boiling water for making tea or a ramen type meal. Lightweight Titanium spoons and forks are also worth buying. Better than any plastic.
Stoves: I like and own many packable wood stoves. The Solo stove is GOOD. It burns wood very efficiently and fast. Sometimes too fast, so you will need a lot of twigs on hand because it doesn’t hold much and you have to keep adding to keep the fire going. Esbit stoves don’t heat up enough for my liking and alcohol stoves might work, but I don’t want to carry alcohol that I can’t drink. Firebox makes quite possibly the best balance of reliability, compactness, yet high capacity wood burning stove on the market. It is amazing and I highly recommend it. The Firebox Nano model is tiny yet unfolds large enough to cook a morning meal without any fuss.
Cooler: I prefer hard sided coolers, because they keep their shape and hold ice overnight, even in the hottest summers. They also repel the sharp claws of raccoons.
Lighting: You will need to see when it gets dark. I prefer headlamps over flashlights because they keep both hands free. I bring one for each person, even the kids. I give out glow sticks just to see where other people are. Any headlamp over 200 lumens is good. Wide beams are more useful for close range. In my work as an electrician, I use headlamps every single day. The cheaper brands have always failed me because they use cheap circuitry and switches that eventually fail just when you need them most. Energizer makes many excellent headlamps.
Eveready makes a good model for $10. On the higher end, Petzl, Streamlight, Black Diamond, Fenix, Surefire and many others make very good lights. Don’t buy a crappy light, because you don’t need to. The good ones don’t cost much more than the really bad ones. I don’t use rechargeable batteries when camping, because unless you have solar panels how are you going to charge it? I’m not going to carry a battery power bank. I bring an extra set of fresh batteries. [Editor’s note: I have used two different Anker solar chargers on long distance ten-day backpacking trips and they work well when matched with the right battery – JF]
Rope: Buy some paracord and keep it in different places where you might need ten or twenty feet of it. Home Depot sells a decent paracord. The brighter colors are better, because your eye will see them and stop your feet before you trip over them when they are guyed out around a tent or a tarp shelter. Also useful for tying down your stuff in strong wind.
Duct Tape: I like gorilla tape. It sticks better than any duct tape I have ever used. Wrap a few feet around something like your lighter.
Multitool: I prefer Leatherman. The wingman model has scissors, a pocket clip, and is relatively light.
And finally, knives: Few outdoor items are more iconic or representative of camping than a fixed blade knife or one of the newfangled, robust, easy-open folding knives. Everyone has different sized hands and skin, so everyone prefers a different handle material and shape, and thicker or thinner, longer or shorter. There are so many knives on the market, I should begin by telling everyone to always carry a pocketknife. Preferably one with a locking mechanism so it doesn’t accidentally close on your fingers. Swiss army knives are OK for home use, but I don’t prefer them as a daily pocket carry.
Fixed blades are also necessary. I’ll start by recommending the least expensive of the bunch, Mora knives of Sweden. They are the best bang for your dollar at the moment. I recommend stainless steel over carbon steel so that your knife won’t rust, and if there is one thing you are guaranteed of on a camping trip, it is that your knife will get wet and it won’t get put away dry.
At around $20, the Mora companion model is a great knife for many reasons. It has a comfortable handle and an excellent sheath which clips onto your belt without you having to take it off. Mora uses a Scandinavian grind on their knives, which is excellent for “Bushcraft” type work, which is a variety of light to heavy utility work, plus food preparation. I prefer full flat grinds which are much more versatile, particularly for food preparation.
ESEE knives have an unconditional lifetime guarantee. They come in 1095 high carbon steel which may rust if not cared for. (Use vaseline from the cotton balls or plain mineral oil to prevent rust)
I used the ESEE 4HM model (~$120) for an entire camping trip and found it excelled at everything. GREAT knife.
In the Outdoors, the sheath is just as important as the knife.
First Aid Kit: Always carry some type of first aid kit and know how to use it. I was an EMT, and based on my experience I think everyone should at least learn the basics. Know how to stop bleeding with pressure or how to stabilize/support a sprained ankle. Accidents happen, be prepared, and having a good first aid kit is step one in being prepared. Car camping first aid kits can be almost like a mobile field hospital in size, and backpacking first aid kits must be streamlined and geared towards treating foot blisters, burns, and knife cuts.
I put together my own first aid kit in a one- gallon waterproof Ziploc bag, including everything from Band-Aids to gloves and gauze to common medications like ibuprofen and aspirin.
Have a great summer camping with your family!
LINKS:
tents:
sleeping bags:
| Coleman Green Valley 30°F Cool-Weather … |
sleeping pads:
Foam Sleep Pad- Extra Thick Camping Mat for Cots, Tents, Sleeping Bags & Sleepovers
Saws:
Silky GomBoy Professional Folding Saw 240mm Medium Teeth (121-24)
| Silky GomBoy Professional Folding Saw 2… |
Samurai KISI FC-240-LH / 9 1/2″ (24cm) Folding Curved Blade Saw Made in Japan
| Samurai KISI FC-240-LH / 9 1/2″ (24cm) … |
Fire making:
Cooking: pots pans
Stoves:
| Lite Camp Stove | Solo Stove |
|
Headlamps:
Knives:
ESEE 4HM Fixed Blade Knife w/ Kydex Sheath & Micarta Handle
| ESEE 4HM Fixed Blade Knife w/ Kydex She… |
How’d that go? PA begins online hunting license & tag sales
Today at 8:00 AM marked the first day of the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s true entry into the modern world of home computers and the Internet. This probably sounds like an unnecessarily harsh or even a commonly outlandish criticism of the venerable PGC, but it is a technological fact that today marks the very first step by the 1895-founded-and-minded wildlife agency into directly integrating with its customer base.
And it has not gone well, although it could have gone a lot worse. Monday end-of-business hours analysis shows the PGC website processing about 7,090 license purchases per hour. That is about 118 per minute, which is a lot faster than the roughly 1,900 licenses per hour purchased in the early time frame I operated in. Given all of the little moving parts involved, especially that carefully measured doe tag purchase, I guess I can see why this is taking longer than the two to three minutes total that each person expected to spend on it. It still frustrated me and others who are not at war with PGC.
The process has been marred by exceptionally long waits, both in-person at brick and mortar retailers and online, with lots of “system crashes” and people standing in line for hours, spawning humorous memes like the old and now former pink doe tag envelope saying “Miss Me Yet?” I like the meme of the skeleton passed out over the desktop computer “Waiting for my 21st century Internet purchase from the PA Game Commission.”
The truth is that this day had to come, sooner or later. The old double-stamped pink envelope US Mail process was increasingly marred by the US Postal Service’s incredibly ever worse performance, to the point where people were photographing piles of time-sensitive pink envelopes sitting in heaps in some post office rooms, waiting for who knows what or who knows who. No one likes to be treated differently than everyone else, and the pink envelope lottery was an idea from 1945 that worked when postal employees did their jobs. These days, the Postal Service is notoriously unreliable. We can’t have a doe tag distribution process that relies on unreliable people and institutions. Even when the applying hunter does everything correctly, his or her pink doe tag envelope might take a wrong turn at Albuquerque and arrive days or weeks after the last doe tag was distributed. Which greatly impacts the hunter’s plans and prospects for that upcoming hunting season.
My own experience today had me first sleeping fitfully all night like it was hunting season, and finally dragging myself out of bed and hunkering down by the laptop well before the 8:00 AM beginning of the online purchase process at www.huntfishpa.gov. Almost like opening day of deer season and sitting down at an ambush site. Except this process revealed itself as having actually started well before the appointed 8:00 AM hour, as I was number 7,023 in line when I signed into my PGC huntfishpa account. With barely any coffee in my veins to buffer this unhappy revelation, an ice cold shock ran through me as I realized I was both early and yet already very late to the process. Thousands of hunters were ahead of me in an online process that was unknown, untested, and sure to have its ups and downs and delays.
The big ticket item for most of us early applicants is getting the doe tag of our first choice Wildlife Management Unit. It is why we stayed in the game til the very end. And the numbers tell the tale: My own first choice, WMU 2G, sold 17,000 doe tags by 5:00 PM today, about twice as many doe tags as any other WMU. There is a strong fear in a lot of guys that if you don’t get in line early either online or at a store, you won’t get your coveted doe tag in your primary hunt region. Fact is, with the ever popular northern “Big Woods” WMU 2G, that fear is well founded. There are many more hunters wanting WMU 2G doe tags than there are WMU 2G doe tags to hand out. The early bird gets this worm, every year.
[UPDATE: At 9:42PM I looked at the doe tag numbers and 23,502 WMU 2G doe tags out of the 35,000 total allocation for that WMU have been sold so far. A sale rate far beyond any other WMU. This means that 2G will be sold out by Tuesday early morning hours. The hunter demand for Big Woods 2G tags has always been high, we knew it, and now we get to see how that demand plays out when the hunters themselves are put in direct control of their tag orders]
Four hours and ten minutes later, having obsessively hovered over my laptop screen the entire time while emailing and bitchfest-texting with friends in both better and worse positions than I, I finally had ordered my general hunting license plus all of the additional license and permits I get, like furtaker (trapping), the annual elk application (I will take anything ya got anywhere ya got it), muzzleloader, archery, spear, atl-atl, sling, blowgun, black bear, fisher, bobcat, armadillo, hog, dog, rat, bat, and zinjanthropus tags. And yes, I got my WMU 2G doe tag, which enables me to hunt the way I enjoy most – solo pack and rifle and maybe an overnight and campfire somewhere way off the beaten path and far from roads and people, and the promise of a long and heavy pack-out of boned-out meat with a single doe’s ear and a completed tag attached. This kind of hunt is the most rewarding among big game hunters everywhere. Guys sitting in warmed box blinds overlooking fields and ravines have no idea.
So yeah, I waited and waited to ensure I got that 2G doe tag. A lot of my Big Woods hunting depends on it.
Anyone old enough to pick up on the Bugs Bunny theme above will understand where I am coming from; it was a loooong and kind of zany morning. In this day and age of Amazon and eBay and Gunbroker one-stop-shop badda bing badda bang badda boom go online and it’s yours two minutes later, Pennsylvania’s entry into the online hunting license world was practically Stone Age. New York has about as many hunters as Pennsylvania, and I have never encountered anything like this when I order my hunting license and tags from NY. It is usually immediate. Even Kentucky’s online hunting license and elk tag application process is faster than ours was today.
I am not picking on Kentucky….but come on, we all know it, Kentucky is not known for being especially technologically advanced. And yet….!
On the one hand, we must must give PGC credit for taking the long step out of 1895 and into the computer and internet age. This step the agency took this morning was one small step for PGC and one giant leap for hunterkind, or maybe the reverse, or whatever….. something like this. It is a big deal and I send you guys three cheers. Three grouchy cheers. Let’s not do this again, OK?
Yes, today’s license purchase has been marred by delays that seem unacceptable, but we all know that the PGC’s public employees have way too much pride to let this situation continue. It is a fact that a lot of employees and contractors will be working all night on this new system, and that by the time 8:00 AM breaks tomorrow, a lot of the glitches and delays we experienced today will be a bad memory for some, and a non-experience for a million others.
Men – you need The Clothier in Williamsport
I am not a fancy clothes guy. Most of my time is spent in work boots, hiking boots, cargo pants, and a short sleeved button down shirt. Yeah yeah, I have some dress up clothes that are high quality, but as I age, they become less and less important. They were probably very high quality twenty or thirty years ago, anyhow. They also don’t really fit well now. Somehow those nice clothes shrank. So, my go-to dress-up kit now is a pair of khakis and a navy blue blazer, nice button down shirt, no tie. This informal-formal outfit has enabled me to properly and respectfully mix and mingle with all kinds of wonderful people at big birthday parties, religious events, weddings, etc you name it.
However, the onset of a pending family wedding prompted me to take another look at my fading wardrobe. What I saw I did not like, and no matter how many ways I tried to mix and match this and that, nothing looked right. For example, skinny pants flood jeans look good on gay millennials and straight millennials trying to look gay, but they made me look like New Jersey governor Chris Christie, which is not a look I want, either in office or on my carcass. So, when you are like me and nothing you own and wear passes muster for a serious, dressy event, you must turn to “The Experts.”
And who, you ask, is an expert in the field of dressing guys, including fifty-something guys with a tub o’ lard around the midsection and the shade of the former tough guy athletic build they had twenty years ago? After contemplating this question, it dawned on me that the billboards around Williamsport, PA, probably meant what they said: Experts in men’s clothing reside at The Clothier. And so, following up on this weeks-long deductive reasoning episode, I looked up the number and called The Clothier.
In a nutshell, what I experienced from the first phone call to them to the moment I walked out their door laden down with all kinds of beautiful high quality clothing was like taking a time warp machine back to 1950s Italy or America or London. Matthew and his dad Francis at The Clothier are serious about Best Quality clothing, shoes, belts, you name it, and they want you to look your very best. If a guy wants the absolute best clothing, the most beautiful clothing, the nicest of everything, trust me on this recommendation, you need to pay a visit to The Clothier on 4th Street in Williamsport, PA. They have an astronomical amount of gorgeous clothing from around the world, including Trask shoes, which unbelievably are not made in my duck foot XXXL Man 13 EE size, dammit. They also have the experienced men to help you arrive at your very best public persona.
Now, a word to the wise. Do not enter into this beautiful den of manliness, filled with its rare and beautiful items, enjoy the luxury of being fitted to a tee with the best clothing you can afford to wear, and then expect to have an Amazon price at the end. No way. The Clothier is at the very other end of the quality spectrum from Amazon. When you go to Matthew and Francis to be outfitted for your own wedding, your kid’s wedding, your nonbinary dog’s third official Los Angeles tripartate polyamorous affair wedding, a big party, whatever, you are receiving the very best service, knowledgeable care, and detailed personal attention to your appearance that a man can receive on Planet Earth. They measure every limb and foot and hip and chest with a tape measure, they ask how you want to look, how you want the fabric to fit your body. Yes, you can get good quality, nice looking clothes for a good price at The Clothier, but do not cheap out or try to hondle these good people if you ask for the best they have. They will make your fat, ugly ass look unbelievable; at least they made mine look presentable. And they deserve everything they charge for that service.
Women have makeovers, and some years ago there was that funny “Queer Eye for The Straight Guy” TV show. Well, father and son Matthew and Francis are not gay, but they have all of the skills that an old world tailor and the talented gay guys had up until Western Civilization took a plunge into everyone either wearing nothing at all or crappy Chinese plastic clothes. They can and will get you looking amazing, if you give them a chance.
I was incredulous, like slack jawed, as I looked around their enormous store. “What on earth are you doing here in Williamsport, Francis?” I asked.
“I mean, you have enough beautiful clothing here to outfit each person in Williamsport daily for a month.”
To which the kindly elder tailor responded “You know what? Seventy percent of my business comes from out of state. Not just out of town, but out of state. Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, West Virginia. Men who want the very best look they can afford come here. And then they come back for the rest of their lives.”
If you are a guy in search of Best Quality clothing, formal or informal, shoes, belt, hat, coat, suit, socks, boxers, and you want help assembling everything into an amazing presentation, then you are not helping yourself until you call The Clothier: (570) 322-5707.
They have parking in the rear of their store at 138 4th Street, Williamsport, PA. And yes, Williamsport has meter people running up and down the street issuing tickets for unpaid meters. The back door parking is a big plus, and believe me, you will need the extra time to really shop. There is almost nothing like this place left in America, anywhere. The visit alone is worth the drive.
What Father’s Day means to me
When I was nine, my dad gave me a set of small Norlund axes, which I still have today. One was single bit, the other was double bit. My specific job with those was to chop and stack firewood all summer, until Dick Fye’s lumber mill stopped sending us slab wood by twenty-ton dump truck loads dropped in our yard.
Dad also gave me use of the chainsaw, which I probably used as much as he did, or more. By twelve I was felling substantial trees. Probably not expertly, but I am still here today, unscathed from that, so I must have been really lucky or pretty good.
Point being, that one of the most important roles that a father can perform is to raise his son(s) to be not just men, but manly men. Masculine men, as defined by all of the masculine things manly men have done since the emergence of our species. Historically, men defended their families and communities, and hunted food that provided for their families. Those are still critically important roles for men to fill. Today, running a chainsaw, correctly using axes to split and shape wood, hauling firewood, supplying your family with sufficient firewood every day from an early age, these are all traditional manly things that can still be done in modern times. Or you can do the updated sedentary society equivalent.
Yes, I am sure that there are plenty of women who can run a chainsaw and split firewood, and who also enjoy doing these things, and although they are far in the minority of women, I say good for them. But today is Father’s Day and we are focused on the male species X chromosome humans right now, fathers and their sons (which of course applies to the masculine gay men I know). And so I say Thanks, Dad, for raising me to be a masculine man capable of doing traditionally masculine things. My family depends on it, and beyond that America depends on manly, masculine warrior men in the military to defend us from our enemies. Only dads can provide that upbringing.
Thanks, Dad!
(about the memes below: I am sick and tired of being falsely badmouthed and assaulted and coerced and demanded and forced and threatened over someone else’s sexual preference or identity or what-have-you. The truth is that I do not care, and it is my individual right not to care, and to be left alone to not care, and to say F*** off if someone keeps pushing something I don’t care about in my face and demanding that I care, and it is also my individual freedom and right and natural instinct to be repulsed by certain behaviors that other people do, and to be naturally phobic of those behaviors. And so I am just throwing up a few memes to provide my own pushback, even if I do not necessarily agree with 100% of each one. Go ahead and be offended, I do not care. I myself have been offended by this nonsense for years and no one seems to care, so back atcha).
