I'll Show You Mine... If You Show Me Yours!

[Moonmagic]

OK, as promised...

I live in the middle of what others pay good money to put pictures of on their walls... God's country as we like to call it. Northern Alabama. Here's a taste:



Lived here all my life... Dad built this house I live in when I was less than 2 years old. Nestled back in a hollow, the mountain behind it is my refuge and sanctuary, as well as the location of my shop. In my youth I spent days at a time living in it, with nothing but a knife. I am comfortable there. I know the critters and the plants better than most people know each other. I can disappear at will... you could walk within two feet of me and never know anyone is there. I would hear you, though... humans have a unique sound. I can tell most critters by sound if it's quiet... tracked a bobcat around my camp one night by sound so I could have him some snacks ready when he showed up. Shocked the friend that was with me; he never heard a thing.

Also turned out he was scared of bobcats. That was a fun experience...

And yes, we have moonshiners... not many any more, but there's still a few who keep the old ways going. Just be sure they know you when you drive into that hollow... cars have a tendency to develop big holes otherwise. Nice folk, but they do like their privacy.

Drive through my neck of the woods and you'll likely be listening to hear "Dueling Banjos" coming from the treeline while you're staring at Confederate flags (technically Confederate Battlejacks) still waving in the breeze from the few houses that dot the countryside. Yeah, they made the movie "Deliverance" not that far from me. Yeah, we remember the War of Northern Aggression... one lone structure stands that pre-dates it; everything else around here was destroyed. It's only a few minutes from me, as a matter of fact. I know the family who owns it.

But we're not just dumb hicks either:



NASA is here, NOAA is here, Boeing is here... We design everything from rockets to microprocessors. A great deal of the self-driving technology comes from here. Even out here at my home in the sticks, I have high-speed fiberoptic cable running to my home and several WiFi networks.

My latest project? I need a 3D printer, so I bought one. Problem is, I now need a place to put it. So I took a red oak tree that fell and traded a guy some cedar trees I want gone anyway for him sawing it into boards. I bought a planer, but I needed a table to set it up on. I made a table out of scrap lumber I had lying around  and set it up at my barn next to the lumber. I am planing boards as I can, and probably have enough ready now to make a table to go in my home office big enough to hold my 3D printer. All on my own, using my own hands and my own tools. Not counting tools, I might wind up having $20-$30 in a finished solid oak table that someone else couldn't buy for $500.

That's what I do: I make things I need and fix things others throw away. Even retired now, I do what I can do when I can do. I always will. It's what I do.

We're a mixture of the very old and the very new, living side by side in harmony. I'm as comfortable designing a circuit board for a new project no one had ever thought of before as I am siting on a rock in the middle of 1000 acres of trees watching the deer play. I know where I am going, but more importantly, I know where I came from.

TheRedneck

I did not picture Alabama looking like that, beautiful! One thing I always loved about America, how vast, different and beautiful the whole country is from end to end! I would give anything to travel the whole 50 states one day!