Hiya Uncle Old Duke!!!!

Sure Happy You'll enjoy your new year with Mrs. Old Duke, the family, and pals!!!

Oh, yeah, I'd be pleased with the small block Ford 289 or 302 (Boss?). Don't need the power or terrible fuel economy or extra emissions. I'll go for the Ford inline-6 overhead valve for the torque yet with that third pedal for a 5 or 6-speed manual gearbox. Gets you on the freeway up to speed just fine with all that smooth inline six torque.



No need to race past the speed limit much if at all here in the city with that gateway arches thing. The roads are awful with them truck-eating potholes that never get repaired. With days of rain the roads here get slicker than sheet. Try a burnout here and you may spin out. Did that more than a few times with the all factory stock well tuned 240. Yet them Michelin XZX tires were rather hard in warm weather and sis not stick all too well. I like the Hankook tires; specially the now tires. The Hankook snow tires take you anywhere you wanna go, carefully, in a full-on Spokane snowy winter. I need a snowy winter like they have in N. Idaho and Spokane and Montana. Maybe Finland or NW Michigan? Houghton, MI on the Upper Michigan Peninsula?

I'm not in it for the speed. Just the ability to merge and pass. Rarely do. I don't drive much here in dumb dumb town with the NHL blooosss and the MLB cardinals. Don't care for professional sports much. Hope the Baltimore Ravens get a chance to whip them Patriots for good. Yet do cheer for the Packers and the Vikings! Go Serena Williams and Roger Federer!!!!

All them kitty and other silly images are from the i-net, merely linked using the bright and happy yellow infographic Art Benstein method. Though I'm sometimes HTML 3 and use double quotes " to contain the image URL and the image width.

Mr. Michael Yount and his 9-liter or something LS1 GM equipped 1982 (?) 242 (282?) gets better gas mileage he states then if he had the K-Jetronic (or early LH-Jetronic?) injected factory installed overhead cam redblock there. Now that is an awesome conversion done right!

Maybe if a roller Marquis or Crown Victoria, fab up a Volvo B30 with M410 for conversion? The B30 and Volvo M410 are very rare now unless you find a 164 so equipped. Be better with the Ford inline six 189 cubic inch? I like the vintage inline six engines from Ford, the slant inline six from Chrysler like in the Darts, and even the I6 engines in RWD GM. More about torque than horse power. Like an all stock Volvo 850 / S70 with M56 / M66 transmission. Hold the Turbo! I'll take extra onions and dill pickles, however!


1996 Marquis with manual swap. Rather from the factory, no swap.

Oh, yeah! I remember the Mike Nelson character lead on the television series Sea Hunt. Use to see that a long time ago. You remember Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea?

I'd not ever known badly behaved cats or dogs yet would correct behavior or, better, reinforce good behavior with treats and pets. Never needed to spank or deliver corporal punishment to any pet. I'm reluctant to ever do so.

There was an orthodontist, like a dentist, with a farm in Washington, MO. The so-called family that I was a part of was invited for a grill out. The orthodontist guy had a sort burly son that was always angry. They had horses. While we were there, he was punching and kicking the horse in the head and jaw. The horse did not do anything. It was terrifying a bit. The orthodontist father guy and others interceded. We then visited the horse and gave it treats and pets and led it to water to drink. The horse was a sweetie.

I like Dachshunds and Corgis (like UK Queen has!). They always seem very sweet doggies if rather independent.



I'd known mean cats that others had that did not like pets or people other than the owner, if at all. I avoid the mean kitties. A spray bottle of clean water seem to help.



You should see all the grey squirrels here. Gangs of them. I sometimes leave the storm door secured closed with the inner door open for more light in this terrible malodorous gulag (it is a prison like heck hole) residence. The squirrels will gang stalked the door and try to open it.



There were a bunch of rotten trees under the power and date lines between the electrical utility power pole between the heck hole apartments. I asked both property owners, the apartment complex owner and the property owner to the north. None of them listened. So I photographed the rotting, hollow, bleeding trees, made up diagrams over the images, and sent to the utility. In two days a local tree service arrived and removed the rotting trees. I did so as I repair Volvo 240 in the car park to the north. Property owner to the north has known me and the boozing parents since the early 1970s. Could stand the cigarette smoke though. So they let me park one of the three 240s. I rotate them to maintain battery charge. Though they all need serious preventive care and without a garage I don't want to suffer a broken exhaust stud and have to remove the cylinder head with a mere exhaust manifold to cylinder head gasket replacement that two of them need now. No leaks, like to effect repair before it is broken.

The trees are removed and I saved both property owners apparently some many 1000$ of dollars. And power lines from ruination. Several of the trees were hollow. Squirrels and large rats lived in them. Fleas are all over the place. Perfect for bubonic plague here in this slummy area of Saint Louis county - what a hell hole.



Oh, well, the water is not utterly terrible. Yet Saint Louis County takes in water from the Missouri River upstream of the West Lake Landfill Superfund Site, were Mallinckrodt and others dumped vitreous (acidic) radioactive waste from Uranium and Plutonium refinement and enrichment in steel oil drums and buried it. Yet there is the Weldon Spring nuclear waste dump from the same or like era as the Westlake nuclear waste disaster area in Saint Charles county up stream of the water treatment intakes for both counties. It is a mess like the Hanford Site in WA-state, yet at least that site is getting cleaned up like no effort before ever. Need a Hanford Site effort here yet Misery-state does not care.

The water distribution infrastructure here is very old, though was sort of built to last. A primary issue is the use of cast iron alloy water mains lined with lead to prevent cast iron alloy corrosion. The surface and well water sources here are rather alkaline and all of that helps to line the leaded with mineral scale that slows or sequesters lead intrusion into the passing potable water flow. Yet the water companies chlorinate and fluoridate the water. No need for fluoridation anywhere. The fluoride used is sometimes a by-product or aluminum ore processing and refinement.



To further ensure sequestering or intrusion into the tap water Saint Louis area people drink, the water companies add usually phosphorous-based anti corrosive compounds. These compounds effect or limit the tap water solvent action when cooking, or boiling a grain bill to make beer, or make a beer for distilling into liquor. At essence, how flavor compounds escape the decoction or infusion of the items steeped, cooked, or otherwise flavors the water whether cold, hot, or boiling. So the outcome is bland flavors. Many craft brewers cannot get savory beers like Ales, IPA, and lagers right at all. So they cold crash, meaning removing the incompletely fermented beer (or wort?) and let ferment-able sugars remain as they drop the temperature to slow and stop the yeast so the yeast falls to the bottom of the cold crash tank.




Some beers should not be sweet. Most are here. Go to Spokane or Bellingham, with modern water systems, and you get great savory beers with flavor that are not sweet.

The same goes for me brewing the daily earl grey tea. In Spokane WA-state tap water, the aroma filled the prior residences during the steeping infusion. Here, the fragrance and flavor is sharply muted to, again, blandness.

The tap water in Spokane and like PacNW locales is simply better. Like water in northern MN, northwestern MI and the Michigan UP, northern WI, and some places in rural MO. The Saint Louis county municipality I'm in had their own water system and the water was much better as I recall. Now it is a single water system for each county and separately St. Louis city.

Though the water is better tasting everywhere else in the region than this slum I reside in for now five Novembers through Januarys.

Maybe some more funny images?

Happy New Year Uncle Old Duke and Everybody!!!

Sorry to go on so. All that strong earl grey tea this morning. Not much beer yesterday. Have some 32-ounce tallboys of Natural Light (terrible). Should stick with Stag in the can. Dearly miss good western ales and IPAs.



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Jonathan Harshman Winters III: The Mightiest, Greatest, & Most Powerful North American Comedian & Comedic Actor in Perpetuity