The Foundry Flourishes!

Two posts in one day! I actually have several posts in draft form. The Mayan Calendar idea actually came as a dream. I am fortunate to be able to remember some of my dreams.

So the third clay foundry I have made seems to be holding together, even at 1400 + degrees. The lid didn't fare so well, as the other 2 did, it cracked to pieces. I noticed a 25 pound barbell weight laying around and it happened to fit quite well. A test firing of the foundry didn't end up well. The aluminum ended up in a big mass and it stuck in the stainless steel sugar canister I used as a crucible to melt in. I suspect the 25 pound weight "stole" too much heat from the foundry. The clay lids act as an insulator. I later found a disc brake rotor that fit as a lid and gave it it try today. Everything went nearly textbook! I have made a 5 inch steel pipe into a crucible and despite a small dribble of molten aluminum from the bottom of the vessel everything was fine. You can see the pipe with molten aluminum in the above picture. She ain't pretty but she's hot!

I used aluminum pie plates, disposable roaster pans and an old gas grill I hammered to pieces small enough to fit into the foundry. If you place large aluminum pieces over an open fire for a few minutes they break easily with a hammer. All told today I netted about 2 pounds of alloy. Probably 8 pounds short of what i will need to cast a metal lathe. looks like I have to eat more pie! I used a muffin tin for molding my ingots after I skimmed the dross from the melt.

You can see the nice shiny "biscuits" in the picture.

Considering my use of a homemade clay foundry, fueled by charcoal and a hairdryer for an added air charge and all the tools I used for skimming and pouring and capped by an old brake rotor I am extremely satisfied. Just as an addendum, I do use leather welding gloves and apron along with a face shield. This can be dangerous stuff. The heavy plank I placed the muffin tin on to pour my alloy was burned about a quarter of an inch deep and smoked for more than 20 minutes.

As a closer I have added a picture of the "Nokatay-Rat's Nest Shop" doors painted a few months ago by my nephew Justin

The Mayan Calandar

I have made a discovery regarding the Mayan Calendar. I know why the Mayan (c. 2000 BC to 250 AD), chose December 21, 2012 as the last day of their calendar.

They were sick and tired of the Christmas Holiday shopping season.

It's true. You see Christ's true birthday is rumored to be in August or earlier, depending on what source you use.

So theoretically, just as today, Mayan Christmas items were on sale in August. I say theoretically because that is only true for the Christian Mayans who were few and far between.

I also believe I have answered another riddle regarding the Mayans. Their great stone temples were not temples at all. They were ancient Walmarts. After careful study of pictures of Mayan temples I see that they were made in a stepped wall fashion. Obviously these were display shelves. Much like modern up scale department stores the more expensive items were kept on the upper tiers. This made it harder for shoplifters to get away quickly with expensive goods. And so this proves another point. Shoplifters became human sacrifices.

Another clue to the Temple/Walmart discovery is in the stone carvings. If you look very closely and squint real hard you can see smiley faces. Rollbacks!

Proof positive of my hypothesis.

The grand stairways on which the Mayan calendars were carved must have actually been the Walmart checkout line. Having a calendar in the checkout line was useful with such a long line. Walmart has since realized that having time telling devices in view of the checkout lines are a bad idea.

In the time of the Mayas writing and math skills were for only the royals and clerics. This made it easy to rip off the average Mayan. Merchandise returns were handled in the human sacrifice department. There were few returns.

Mayans who had been given items as gifts that they had no use for found a way to exchange them for cash. It was just a quick trip to the Great Plains of America. Once there a certain Indian tribe was happy to exchange the items or offer a loan on the item. These Indians were known as the Pawnees.

I feel there is a little more work to do in proving my theory. So I shall continue to provide updates on this discovery.

(This Blog is intended to offend no one. It is purely satire.)

I am not a Crook! But I know a guy who knows a guy

I can actually remember trying to decide if I wanted to be a good guy or a bad guy. I was about 5 or 6 years old. Either occupation seemed to have it's advantages. Joe Friday was a heck of a good guy. Joyous is not a word someone would use to describe Joe, but he always managed a smile or two each show. The bad guys on Batman seemed to have a lot of fun, but getting all those BIFFS and BAMS on the chin didn't seem like a good time to me.

I reckoned I should try each profession out for a while and see what had the best to offer. While not technically a deliberate crime, at the age of 6 I set the woods on the corner of Dogwood street and Causeway road on fire. There was this little pit there, probably a past attempt at a perk test, that made a cool trench for playing army. I was "dug in" one day and decided I needed a camp fire and lit some dead grass to warm my rations on. Before I could react the whole grass lined pit was ablaze. I tried to stamp it out with my foot but it was futile. Doing the next smartest thing I could think of, I ran.

I ran home and went right up to my room and listened as the fire engine raced down the Neck road and onto the Causeway. Peeking out my upstairs window I could see people straining their necks to see what was going on up at the corner. Looking back now I imagine my mother had somewhat of a suspicion when I didn't come running down the stairs and jump on my bike at the first sound of a siren.

As kids we had a good response time to emergency calls. We would all gather at the top of the hill at the first sound of the sirens. We would then spread out to the corner of each street, Dogwood, Cottonwood and the others. If none of us saw a anything out of the normal the kid at Balsam would head south, the direction with the most area and most likely to be the location. Of course we had no idea of what we were looking for. We expected to find a train wreck or an apartment building on fire. Keep in mind there are no train tracks or apartment buildings on the Island. Our system never worked because even if we were on the right street they went flying by and we had to pedal like hell to follow them.

My staying in the house was a good move as it turned out. With in a few minutes I heard voices downstairs and my mother was calling for me. I did the smartest thing. I hid in the attic. My mother and the male voice came up stairs and looked for me and soon the man left. Before I heard the gate click close my mother opened the attic door and dragged me down stairs and started grilling me. I knew how the criminals being interrogated under the lamp felt, I was sweating bullets. Every time Mom banged her hand on the counter demanding to know "what were you thinking?" I thought of the rubber hose whacking the guy being "sweated".

I denied everything of course, as the soot ran down my forehead from the sweat. It was then that Mom took me up the street, to see the carnage I had created I assumed, but it was to retrieve my bicycle. It seems in the heat of the moment in natural my urge to fight or flight I forgot my bike. Holy cow, Batman! That's like a bank robber leaving a car registered to him at the scene of the crime! The devastation I imagined that I had created was nothing more than a 3 foot spot of burned grass. Seems it burned itself out during the 7 or 8 minutes it takes for the fire engine to arrive.

I had to tell my Dad what I had done when he got home. That was probably the hardest thing I had ever done in my life at that time. Worse than when Frank Coelho's dog Sarge bit me on the back of the head and I got 14 stitches. Of course I got the "strap". Three whacks on a bare butt. Oh the humanity!

My next foray into the underworld happened at Mammoth Mart. A Kresge type store which was locacted where Shaw's is today. We had ridden our bikes up the Neck and were flexing our muscles with this new found freedom as 8 years olds will do. My friend Rick Rucker showed me how to steal Matchbox cars. You open the package and put the car in your pocket. That's it. Seemed simple. I opened 10 packages and stuffed the cars in my pockets. As I walked by a mirror in the shoe department I realized that with my overloaded pockets I looked like a Canadian Mounted Police. I ditched the cars in the light bulb aisle. I walked out a new man. An honest man of 8 wisened years.

It wasn't too long after that patches became a big fad. Jean patches, jacket patches. Peace signs, love thmes and American flags among them. These were cool! Really cool. And thin. I coulf fit a few of these in my pockets and no one would even know! I used restraint and stole 4. When I got them home I checked them out to see where I wanted them sewn. SEWING! Ahhh, cheez!! They gotta be SEWN! I can't sew. If I ask my Mom to sew them she'll know I stole them (Moms can see right through even real good lies). That ended the Great Patch Caper.

By 12 years old I think my criminal enterprises were in the past. Oh, we still rode around on our bikes and kicked over Wally Bithers trash cans every Wednesday night. Trash collection was on Thursdays then. Glenn and Scott West said we did that because Wally's dog Sam would chase us, but it seems he only chased us because we kicked over the trash cans. But it was still fun to out run Sam. Eventually I got the Island paper route and had to become a respectable businessman in the neighborhood.

When I was in my twenties I was approached by one of my customers at Budget Rent A Car. Bob Mosher was a Boston guy who rented a car from us a month at a time. Instead of cash he paid in merchandise. Expensive cameras, video tapes and assorted items. This was deal between him and my boss Bill Deveraux. The name Devereuax was Irish Bill contended even though everyone thought it was French. He provided a map of Ireland to prove there is a County Deveraux. So now he was OK with Irish Bob Mosher. Bob asked me if I was Irish and I told him my grandmother Dehlia (Murdock) was from Ireland. I was OK with Bill now too. I was too naive at the time to realize but Bob was part of the Boston Irish Winter Hill Gang, of Whitey Bulger fame. In our conversation Bob asked if I drank, and I boasted how much I could drink. That right there was when Bob said, "Oh I can't use you then." Seems gangsters don't like drinkers because they run their mouths too much. My drinking probably saved me from an eventual prison stretch.

Another guy I worked with in the late 1990's was a great guy. Donnie Lafond had a bad habit of punching in late on our 2nd shift. He would then go into a corner of the plant and start counting money. Lots of money! Like $3000 or so. The first time I saw him counting out cash I said, "Hey, that's a lot of cash!"

Donny said, "Yeah, needs some?", and picked up a wad of about 400 bucks and held it out.

"No, no thanks", I said. I got a 10 pound bag of frozen chicken legs this week. I'm all set."
"Well, anytime," offered Donny. I would see him counting cash about twice a week.

Once during break time someone asked Donny where he gets all the money. He explained that he and his buddy would go to Boston and rob drug dealers. We all let out a collective 'Ooooohhhhh," nodding approvingly.

Well hey, that's all right! Rob the bad guys, helll yeah! Boston, there must be a ton of bad guys there! Great gig if you got the heuvos.

A few weeks later I was reading the newspaper and there was an article about a bank robbery. The article had a surveillance photo. It sure looked like Donny to me. The next day at work Donny and I were in the washroom and I cautiously mentioned that I had a seen a picture that reminded me of him. "Where was that Donny asked?"

"In a bank robbery surveillance photo,'" I said meekly.

"Oh shit. Don't go around saying things like that around here, you know how people are!" he moaned.

That was the last time we saw Donny in person. He went to lunch and never came back. Less than a week later though Donny was spotted on TV. One of the guys came in and was very excited. He said he saw the police were chasing 3 bank robbers. The chase started in Cranston, RI and ended at the Connecticut border on I-95. The story showed film of Donny being led away in handcuffs, tons of money stuffed in his belt and full of blood. There were reports of gunshots being fired at the officers. It turned out that his gun wasn't loaded but was pointed at the pursuers during the chase. The blood was the exploding red dye pack in the money bag. Donny and his crew ended up in Federal Prison for 20 years, although he did escape once while being transported and was caught a few hours later.

Donny had a severe drug habit and was robbing banks to fund his habit. Last I heard he was doing well in prison.

Me, I prefer to be stuck here on West Island, driving my Jeep through puddles. Sometime I do chuckle when I make the corner of Dogwood street and Causeway road. You see, that little Army trench is still visible if you look real hard.