Thanksgiving greetings to all you beadheads!

It’s been a whirlwind year up here in the outback. With no proper winter and the drought nipping at our heels all the ranchers are scrambling to keep the hayfields green and fatten up a few steers.
I had a bit of a reversal early into the year and ended up selling some of my bead treasure to a good friend. While this was painful, at least I can go visit my old treasures from time to time.
It all started out when a pal from my childhood, Harlan, came passing through. He is an old cowboy and lives in old cowboy ways. He needed a place to hole up for a few months and regroup as his missus had given him his walking papers. Harlan is a man who loves women and his women love him. But that passion thing sometimes doesn’t always work out. This wasn’t his first rodeo and he even married this one. But that is another story for another time.
Harlan showed up on my doorstep in need of shelter and commiseration and it was my duty to provide it, as we are old friends.
Out here at the ranch there are a lot of old sheds from years gone by, most of them full of junk or with daylight coming through the roof. We didn’t have a proper put up for him but we did have an old shack out back made of about 50 doors we got from an army auction. We called it the doorshack. It was pretty solid and offered a good cabin environment. We offered to put him up in the doorshack with use of the wet facilities until he got his feet under him and he moved in.
The problem came up when we all noticed it was winter and the doorshack wasn’t heated. So we gave him a little electric heater. Harlan is a tough old cowboy but last winter out here was pretty cold even if it gave no moisture. That little electric heater wasn’t cutting it. So he decided to put a small wood stove in that cabin. He didn’t bother to quiz me on the matter as we grew up as kids together and there is an implicit trust between us. He found an old parlor stove out in the barn with isinglass in the door and figured it was perfect and he’d just set it up in his cabin. No problem. The stove was sound and there were bits of pipe and flashing and cap and such out in the barn with all that other stuff too good to throw away.
He drug all he parts over to the neighborhood of the doorshack and began his work. The first thing he had to do was determine the path of the stovepipe through the ceiling and roof. Old cowboy ways say take a .22 rifle and point it up at the ceiling with a plumb level on the barrel and set a round off. Then just follow the holes when making your openings for the pipe and parts. This has been a good system for cowboys out in the wild, and has worked for many a cowboy in years past, only Harlan didn’t have a .22 with him, he only had his old 45-70 which is a whole other animal. And our ranch isn’t completely in the wild.
The next thing I know, I hear a major rifle shot or some kind of explosion. I came out of the house like a rocket running to see what’s up and no sooner did I hit the porch than I see out in the yard my pickup windshield shattering.
What goes up must come down.
Since Harlan was the only other person on the place save me and the missus, who were in the house, I lit out for the doorshack to see if Harlan had something to do with this business. I came into the cabin to find him sitting on the floor with the rifle in his hands and looking kind of stunned. I asked him what he was about and he explained he was just aligning the stovepipe and not to worry. I told him about the windshield and he just stared for a minute. Said, “well I usually use a 22 but this elephant gun is all I had.” We had a laugh, decided that it wasn’t that big a deal, he’d just buy me a windshield and we’d get on with life.
Then we walked out of the doorshack to find my truck out in the yard totally engulfed in flames.
Best we could figure out later was that big old 45-70 round busted the windshield and continued down into the dash and shorted out some wires starting a fire. It was too late to put it out and we had to stand there and watch the truck burn to the ground.
Now that was a pretty new truck for us and a diesel heavy hauler to boot and none of us could afford to buy another.
So there is the story of my parting with my bead treasure.
Harlan is still a friend, cause it ain’t that easy to get out of our family.
We have a new (to us) diesel pickup, and Harlan has gotten his bearings and moved on in his cowboy life. He did get the stove installed and had a nice warm campout in the doorshack. Thankfully he didn’t burn it down.

Hope all you beadheads had a fine Thanksgiving. We’ve eaten so much up here that we can’t even drink water.
Full and lazy,
Dog