USMB Coffee Shop IV

[Montrovant]

Or you don't have breakfast with grits, if you are me.

If you're a yankee you eat them like cream of wheat.........

Sometimes you do that even if you're a southerner.

I just had a bowl of bacon & cheese grits........
What's funny is I was born in the UP (Michigan), the wife is a Virginian, I like grits and she hates em.

I was raised as a New Mexican and that does not include grits pretty much anywhere. Hombre was raised in grits country. I like grits. He hates them.

The only real problem with grits is one has to make sure they have a toothbrush and floss available after eating them............

I hate food that gets stuck in my teeth.

I can eat grits, but I wouldn't choose to. Besides, I almost always have a bowl of cereal for my breakfast.

 

[Montrovant]

One of the real annoyances of psoriasis is unexpected bleeding. A couple of days ago I noticed a little blood on the carpet of my room. I looked myself over a bit, but didn't see any wounds. Later that day, the little one noticed the knee of the pants I was wearing were bloody. Apparently I had bumped my knee into something and it started bleeding without me ever realizing it. Now today, I'm putting my new PC together, and I hit my elbow. It hurt a bit, but not too much, and I move on. After doing things for a couple of minutes, I put that arm up to grab something, and see blood dripping down my elbow. It had dripped on the floor in a couple of places and didn't want to quit bleeding; I've got 2 bandaids on it now.

If the same things had happened to parts of my skin without psoriasis, I likely would not have gotten any wounds. It's just too damned easy for psoriasis patches to get cut.

 

[Foxfyre]

I was raised as a New Mexican and that does not include grits pretty much anywhere. Hombre was raised in grits country. I like grits. He hates them.

I can't stand grits, by I love polenta.

Go figure.

The wife loves quinoa, I can't stand it.

I can only eat quinoa mixed up with other stuff. My favorite local restaurant serves a lovely kale quinoa salad.

I don't think I've ever had quinoa that I was aware of anyway. I have tried kale in various ways and so far have not cared for it. Much prefer spinach, mustard greens, turnip greens, collard greens.

I've developed a taste for kale as it has been a trendy salad ingredient around here for the past few years.

I also put it in my Not-Soylent Smoothie. I developed the recipe in response to the absolutely repulsive concept of Soylent, which is an actual product:

Soylent: What Happened When I Went 30 Days Without Food

Instead of this bland, flavorless gritty drink that causes constipation (no thanks), I made up my own smoothie recipe: kale, spinach, fresh pineapple, strawberries, lemon, protein powder, fermented essential greens powder, carrot juice, almond milk and chia oil. A minute or so in the Nutri-bullet and voila! Ooobleck! (That's my name for it).

It tastes GOOD! And is VV healthy.

Our morning smoothie for breakfast consists of a quark which is a slow blending of 2 parts low fat cottage cheese to 1 part organic unrefined flax oil. (The slow blending using a blender wand changes the chemistry and makes this a super food full of the correct balance of omegas.) To that we add some raw honey, pure fruit juice of some sort plus a whole orange, whole apples, banana--we do peel and core those of course-- berries, fresh peaches or whatever we have available. And then add some freshly ground flaxseed and blend it all into a smoothie. Yummy good and as you say, VV healthy.

 

[Foxfyre]

One of the real annoyances of psoriasis is unexpected bleeding. A couple of days ago I noticed a little blood on the carpet of my room. I looked myself over a bit, but didn't see any wounds. Later that day, the little one noticed the knee of the pants I was wearing were bloody. Apparently I had bumped my knee into something and it started bleeding without me ever realizing it. Now today, I'm putting my new PC together, and I hit my elbow. It hurt a bit, but not too much, and I move on. After doing things for a couple of minutes, I put that arm up to grab something, and see blood dripping down my elbow. It had dripped on the floor in a couple of places and didn't want to quit bleeding; I've got 2 bandaids on it now.

If the same things had happened to parts of my skin without psoriasis, I likely would not have gotten any wounds. It's just too damned easy for psoriasis patches to get cut.

Been there and done that. I aggressively treat the flare ups now though with a product called Psoriasin available in most super markets and drug stores plus I also use cortazone and healing lotions like Vaseline. Keeps it under control or clears it up completely.

 

[Nosmo King]

I'm not bringing politics into the Coffee Shop, but the news of the steel tariffs got me thinking about where our American steel is going to be made. The Crucible Steel works in nearby Midland, Pennsylvania closed down and got bulldozed over years ago. Crucible was the backbone of the area providing 4,000 paychecks. And those payxhecks were spent at drug stores and hardware stores and barber shops and supermarkets.

I worked there two summers while I was in college. They had a summer job program for us college kids and it was tremendous! We learned hard work, dangerous work and were rewarded spectacularly. The union Steel workers enjoyed great vacation benefits and it was up to us kids to fill in the blanks as the hard working Steel workers spent their three weeks in Myrtle Beach and the Jersey Shore.

My first summer was working in the Cold Strip, the massive section of the steel mill that, at its peak, produced 27% of the stainless steel used in the free world. At least that's what the orientation movie told us. The Cold Strip was the Beverley Hills of Crucible. We swept the floors, guided the gantry cranes into the coils of steel and maintained the Wheelabrator.

Okay, here's what the Wheelabrator did. Raw steel coils were fed into the beginning of the line. The Steel is then heated white hot then quenched in oil to temper it to the proper strength. As it emerged from the oil bath, an amount of scale appeared on the surface. This scale had to be removed and that was accomplished by the Wheelabrator. It was basically a sandblasting machine, but rather than sand steel,shot, wee particles of steel the consistency of sand was used.

This Steel,shot rained off themmoving coils and accumulated under the machine in a pit ten feet deep. There was a bucket conveyor that picked it up and took it to the top of the Wheelabrator to be reused. Every shift the conveyor clogged up with shot and had to be manually cleared by one of us college kids. We would don a respirator fitted out with particle filters, grab a shovel and climb down the ladder into the pit.

Now, shoveling Steel is different from shoveling anything else. Mainly, it's heavy! Think about scooping up a shovel full of sand. Now multiply the weight by a factor of three. So, shoveling shot took three times the effort of shoveling sand. The piles of shot sometimes measured five feet deep. And it's hot. And it's dirty. And it's noisy. And so several hours were spent in the pit moving heavy shot into a conveyor.

After the scale was blasted from the constantly moving coil, the steel was moved into a tank of sulfuric acid to bring the nickel content to the surface. If you've ever worn a pair of shooting sunglasses, the ones with th yellow lenses, you can imagine what the area around the acid bath looked like. After a quick submersion in a neutralizing solution, the stainless steel was recoiled and interlaced with craft paper to preserve the shiny finish. Steel,straps were tightened around the coil (measuring about six feet in diameter) and the gantry crane lifted it to the loading dock.

The whole Strip was about two hundred yards long and there were ten of them operating 24 hours a day. And that was just one part of the mill. There was the Hot Strip adjacent to the Cold Strip where steel ingots were heated and stretched until they formed the coil of raw steel processed in the Cold Strip. There was the foundry where the ingots were cast in sand molds. There was the blast furnace that rendered scrap iron, scrap,steel, limestone and coke. And there was the coke plant that produced the coke.

Coke is to coal as charcoal is to hardwood. They fed coal into the top of what they called 'batteries'. The batteries were, how best to explain this...

Think of a loaf of sliced bread. Every 'slice' is a chamber about four feet thick and twenty feet on every other side. Coal is dumped into the top and massive gas fired flames applied at the bottom. They top is sealed with a cement mixture and the air inside each battery is sucked out. So the coal roasted rather than burned. That heating process is what made coal into coke.

When the roasting was complete, one side of the battery was opened and the red hot coke was pushed into a waiting rail car. That was then pushed under a waterfall that instantly cooled the coke. Imagine the heat, the steam, the noise and the smell of this process. You can't. I couldn't until I saw, heard it and smelled it for myself. I truly pitied my the guys whose job it was to seal up the batteries with the cement. They had to wear special wooden soles shoes because anything else would melt to the top of the battery sticking them there to roast along with the coke.

The mill also produced agricultural discs, the kind farmers use to till up the soil on their fields. If the coke plant was hell, the agricultural disc mill, called LaBelle, was where those condemned to hell went if they were extra evil. But more about LaBelle later.

Daisy wants another walk right now. Ask a dog what time it is and they will answer "NOW!"

 

[gallantwarrior]

And with happy thoughts of Penny snuggled warm and safe in GW's arms. . .

Good night darlinks. I really do love you guys.

And we continue to pray and/or send good vibes and/or positive thoughts and/or keep vigil for

Harper (Save's granddaughter),
Pogo’s friend Pat and special comfort for Pogo,
Nosmo's mom,
Rod, GW's partner,
Kat's sister,
The Ringels in difficult transition
Dana, Foxfyre's friend recovering from heart transplant
Strength and stamina for gallantwarrior in his relocation project,
Ringel's injured shoulder and general wellness,
ricechickie for trouble free healing and wellness,
BigBlackDog for comfort and effective treatment
TK
Sixfoot for an accurate diagnosis and wellness,
Sherry's Mom for treatment to be successful, and wellness for Sherry's daughter, her dad, and family.
Wellness for Foxfyre's sister and Hombre's sister
Healing for Ringel and Mrs. R's Gizmo
Gracie
Nosmo's Uncle for good news and Aunt Roxie

And we keep the porch light on so that many others scattered here and there can find their way back.

May 24 is National Scavenger Hunt Day, but since I don[t need anything from Albertson's and I'm not too interested in National Escargot Day, I'll probably serve tomorrow as "Eat more Fruit and Vegetables Day."

I've never eaten a snail and have no desire to. Lol.

The newest thing in hair and skin care is snail slime, believe it or not! I kid you not.

I always envisioned escargot as little crispy things like fried oysters. But then I looked them up and nope. I have a very adventurous spirit and I think a pretty sophisticated palate when it comes to cuisine, but I'm going to pass on the snails as food or hair products.

Properly prepared they are delicious. Like some types of seafood and shellfish, though, if you overcook them it's like eating chewy chunks of dirt. But don't go collect some from your garden and pop them in the oven, they have to be screened and starved in order to clear their guts of whatever they've been eating.

 

[gallantwarrior]

To the ladies, has anyone used Bamboo anti-frizz products?

I recently got these . . .

I also got this . . .

I have naturally curly/wavy hair, and I have a HUGE problem with the frizzies when it gets humid or rainy. These were QUITE the investment, so I hope they work. I've used the shampoo and conditioner already, and they seem to work pretty well and smell really nice, but it wasn't a really bad hair day. We shall see. I haven't tried the overnight hair mask yet. I will wait until it is really hot and humid for that.

As someone with frizzy, poofy hair when it's long, I recommend you just accept your fate.

Well have you tried any of these products, or do you use Suave which is harsh and stripping enough that you could probably wash your kitchen floor clean with it.

I don't have to worry about it now, my hair is very short. When it was long, I almost never bothered trying any particular product. I have never had much in the way of money and never thought hair products were worth wasting it on. I usually kept my hair up in a pony tail, and when I let it down, I just let it poof and frizz how it wanted to.

This was me 20-25 years ago. Yes, the whole left side of the picture is my poofy hair.

View attachment 195184

Looks like you'd need a whip and chair to tame that pelt!

 

[gallantwarrior]

And with happy thoughts of Penny snuggled warm and safe in GW's arms. . .

Good night darlinks. I really do love you guys.

And we continue to pray and/or send good vibes and/or positive thoughts and/or keep vigil for

Harper (Save's granddaughter),
Pogo’s friend Pat and special comfort for Pogo,
Nosmo's mom,
Rod, GW's partner,
Kat's sister,
The Ringels in difficult transition
Dana, Foxfyre's friend recovering from heart transplant
Strength and stamina for gallantwarrior in his relocation project,
Ringel's injured shoulder and general wellness,
ricechickie for trouble free healing and wellness,
BigBlackDog for comfort and effective treatment
TK
Sixfoot for an accurate diagnosis and wellness,
Sherry's Mom for treatment to be successful, and wellness for Sherry's daughter, her dad, and family.
Wellness for Foxfyre's sister and Hombre's sister
Healing for Ringel and Mrs. R's Gizmo
Gracie
Nosmo's Uncle for good news and Aunt Roxie

And we keep the porch light on so that many others scattered here and there can find their way back.

May 24 is National Scavenger Hunt Day, but since I don[t need anything from Albertson's and I'm not too interested in National Escargot Day, I'll probably serve tomorrow as "Eat more Fruit and Vegetables Day."

I've never eaten a snail and have no desire to. Lol.

The newest thing in hair and skin care is snail slime, believe it or not! I kid you not.

I always envisioned escargot as little crispy things like fried oysters. But then I looked them up and nope. I have a very adventurous spirit and I think a pretty sophisticated palate when it comes to cuisine, but I'm going to pass on the snails as food or hair products.

I've discovered that oysters are the only food that cumin doesn't destroy the taste of. It tones down the thickness of the oyster's taste.

I enjoy breaded and fried oysters if prepared by somebody who really knows how to do that properly. And some oyster dressings are to die for. But just eat an oyster on the half shell or some such, no. Even cumin wouldn't make that appealing to me.

IMO, an equivalent experience to eating raw oysters would be like sucking the snot off your upper lip.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Note to Nosmo King re your new Alexa system in your home. I ran across this video and article today:
Woman says her Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

If this is on the level--I always leave open the possibility that it is some underhanded trick by a competitor--then I can understand Amazon being reluctant to refund that couples' money for a system that they no longer want to use as that would set a precedent that could open a floodgate of such requests.

But I have often wondered about the voice activated stuff as to how much the suppliers would have ability to use them as 'spying' devices? For instance, does my voice activated remote for our TV listen to everything we say? I am less concerned about that as you have to depress a button on the remote in order to use the voice commands, but I do wonder.

Occasionally Alexa will answer a question nobody asked. Occasionally Alexa responds to the television.

But I do not own a cell phone not because I am a Luddite, but because I feel cell phones divide us into what I like to call 'electronic hermits'. At our Mother's Day brunch I noticed every table in the restaurant had at least one person, and more often more than one person, with their head bowed, their thumbs scrabbling across a screen and not talking to the other members of their party.

I may be old school in my thinking, but I found that behavior to be very rude.

As far as Alexa eavesdropping on me, I don't say that much here at the Luxurious Pimplebutt Estate aside from calling Daisy the Mutt to go outside or to the park. If it is listening into my phone conversations, I cannot fathom what sort of information it is listening for.

Meanwhile my trip to Brooklyn this weekend is cancelled. I took Daisy the Mutt to the vet this afternoon following four days of her refusing to eat, play or do anything but sleep or curl up on my lap. She has Cholangiohepetititis, an inflammation of the bile ducts. It's treatable through a regimen of antibiotics and steroids to be administered twice daily for the next week or so.

She got an infusion of saline solution through a needle plunged between her shoulders. The vet squeezed the plastic bag and I watched the stuff fill her back with fluids. At the end it looked as if she had a Thomas's English muffin between her little shoulders.

I must keep her quiet and jamb for pills into her maw then make sure she has swallowed them. A task I could not ask my brother and sister-in-law to do, not only because it is a delicate procedure with such a small and sweet dog, but because their dog Teddy would torment Daisy to play and run.

Anyway, I have my work cut out for me this weekend and I'm hoping this chemistry set of medication she has to take does the trick.

Poor Daisy! I hope she isn't too uncomfortable. Have you tried a product called "Pill Pockets" to give her her daily dosages? They are squishy treats with a hole to insert a pill into. Then you mold the treat around the pill and voila! My dogs, and cats, love them and they make administering pills so much easier. Good luck, I hope she gets better soonest!

 

[gallantwarrior]

I have started reading books from my extensive library, instead of wasting time watching second rate daytime TV films. I am reading the history of English literature, of which I have an excellent four volumes book set in my library. I am also reading the History of western philosophy by Bertrand Russel. I alternate between the two.

Oooh! Oooh! "The History of English Literature" is in audio book form at the local library. Would you recommend it for a two-hour commute?

 

[gallantwarrior]

I am one who used to love to polka. An instruction video for those who might like to try it:

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with the annual Mummers' parade in Philly, but most of my relatives on my Dad's side of the family played in them for years. Here's a sample of the Polish American, the last band I knew they played in. Among other activities, they always had a couple of polka parties. That's where I learned to polka, and a true blast it was, too!

 

[gallantwarrior]

Looks like some folks on the Gulf will be cancelling bar-b-ques for Memorial Day. It will likely miss Sherry and WelfareQueen but Kat and Ernie S. appear will take a direct hit from Alberto.

We've already had lots of rain over the past week and the ground is saturated. Now they are calling for 6 to 8 inches. Areas to the south of us are prone to flooding, and had flash flooding yesterday. I hope everyone stays high and dry, especially Drifter.

Well, hopefully you got the typical guy's eight inches instead of the regular, ruler-measured eight.

 

[AVG-JOE]

Big virtual kiss on the cheek for The Eternal Optimist!!

​

 

[gallantwarrior]

I just wrote a letter to the local paper complaining that someone may be killing the local foxes . I took hundreds of photos last year, but I have not even seen or heard a single fox this year. I think the council may have culled them, in which case I will complain. Or some other horrible bastard may have killed them.

Sadly, there are always some who cannot abide by Nature. I found out recently that in Anchorage, people are permitted a certain number of chickens, depending on their lot size, but absolutely NO roosters. I love the song my rooster sings around here. Some people

 

[Nosmo King]

Note to Nosmo King re your new Alexa system in your home. I ran across this video and article today:
Woman says her Amazon device recorded private conversation, sent it out to random contact

If this is on the level--I always leave open the possibility that it is some underhanded trick by a competitor--then I can understand Amazon being reluctant to refund that couples' money for a system that they no longer want to use as that would set a precedent that could open a floodgate of such requests.

But I have often wondered about the voice activated stuff as to how much the suppliers would have ability to use them as 'spying' devices? For instance, does my voice activated remote for our TV listen to everything we say? I am less concerned about that as you have to depress a button on the remote in order to use the voice commands, but I do wonder.

Occasionally Alexa will answer a question nobody asked. Occasionally Alexa responds to the television.

But I do not own a cell phone not because I am a Luddite, but because I feel cell phones divide us into what I like to call 'electronic hermits'. At our Mother's Day brunch I noticed every table in the restaurant had at least one person, and more often more than one person, with their head bowed, their thumbs scrabbling across a screen and not talking to the other members of their party.

I may be old school in my thinking, but I found that behavior to be very rude.

As far as Alexa eavesdropping on me, I don't say that much here at the Luxurious Pimplebutt Estate aside from calling Daisy the Mutt to go outside or to the park. If it is listening into my phone conversations, I cannot fathom what sort of information it is listening for.

Meanwhile my trip to Brooklyn this weekend is cancelled. I took Daisy the Mutt to the vet this afternoon following four days of her refusing to eat, play or do anything but sleep or curl up on my lap. She has Cholangiohepetititis, an inflammation of the bile ducts. It's treatable through a regimen of antibiotics and steroids to be administered twice daily for the next week or so.

She got an infusion of saline solution through a needle plunged between her shoulders. The vet squeezed the plastic bag and I watched the stuff fill her back with fluids. At the end it looked as if she had a Thomas's English muffin between her little shoulders.

I must keep her quiet and jamb for pills into her maw then make sure she has swallowed them. A task I could not ask my brother and sister-in-law to do, not only because it is a delicate procedure with such a small and sweet dog, but because their dog Teddy would torment Daisy to play and run.

Anyway, I have my work cut out for me this weekend and I'm hoping this chemistry set of medication she has to take does the trick.

Poor Daisy! I hope she isn't too uncomfortable. Have you tried a product called "Pill Pockets" to give her her daily dosages? They are squishy treats with a hole to insert a pill into. Then you mold the treat around the pill and voila! My dogs, and cats, love them and they make administering pills so much easier. Good luck, I hope she gets better soonest!

Her mouth is so small that any treat bigger than a housefly gets chewed. I've concocted a make-shift mortar and pestle and grind the pills to a powder. Mix in a forkful of soft food (which she never regularly eats) and she gobbles down the mixture as if it was flirt mignonette!

Her regime has changed from twice daily to once daily and getting her to take her mess is easier now.

She again has a light in her eyes and she's much friskier!

Thanks for your concern.

 

[gallantwarrior]

Greetings!
I manage a few minutes to come by, catch up, and visit. I've been cleaning: the partner's place in town (he's out here on vacation) because it has to be done when he's not around; the place in Birchwood where the goats have been living these last years; and around here in Willow.
Note: when dealing with a hoarder, DO NOT let him/her see you dragging some precious treasure to the dump trailer, and NEVER ask them to help you load it. In this case, and old, rusted out charcoal grill that is falling apart and rotting to pieces. I loaded it myself but discovered it stashed again when I came home today, so he dug it out from the stuff I buried it with and dragged it back off the trailer. Now I'll have to wait until vacay is over to move the trash out.
Good to see all are doing well, school is out for the summer, Daisy is recovering, and no one got flooded out by the storm. I missed Peach, how is she doing? I'll check back later, gotta get a nap before I go to work. At least the commute is easier when there is daylight for the drive. We're only about three weeks short of the Solstice, and then we'll start losing daylight again.
"See" y'all later!

 

[Montrovant]

One of the real annoyances of psoriasis is unexpected bleeding. A couple of days ago I noticed a little blood on the carpet of my room. I looked myself over a bit, but didn't see any wounds. Later that day, the little one noticed the knee of the pants I was wearing were bloody. Apparently I had bumped my knee into something and it started bleeding without me ever realizing it. Now today, I'm putting my new PC together, and I hit my elbow. It hurt a bit, but not too much, and I move on. After doing things for a couple of minutes, I put that arm up to grab something, and see blood dripping down my elbow. It had dripped on the floor in a couple of places and didn't want to quit bleeding; I've got 2 bandaids on it now.

If the same things had happened to parts of my skin without psoriasis, I likely would not have gotten any wounds. It's just too damned easy for psoriasis patches to get cut.

Been there and done that. I aggressively treat the flare ups now though with a product called Psoriasin available in most super markets and drug stores plus I also use cortazone and healing lotions like Vaseline. Keeps it under control or clears it up completely.

I have a container of Psoriasin on the desk in front of me. It's thick and greasy, so I don't use it all the time. It also doesn't prevent or get rid of my psoriasis, it just helps keep it from getting dry and flakey. Most of the time I just use some sort of moisturizer.

 

[Michelle420]

Hi all, looks like everyone is doing well. First off, waiting to hear about two potential jobs the wife has interviewed for, one is a state job (in Santa Fe) and the other is a state contract job in Roswell. I'm pulling for the Santa Fe job but she's hoping for the Roswell job basically because of the commute up to Santa Fe and back. We should know something soon.
Then just a few minutes ago I saw a couple of sparrows chasing off a huge raven (what the wife calls "black chickens"), apparently it got too close to their nest, one of the sparrows landed on the flying raven's back to attack.

Really it's not a bad commute to Santa Fe from here, but Roswell is a great little city too. Not in the mountains but an easy drive to Capitan or Ruidoso. Roswell and Carlsbad are really hot in the summertime though. If she got the Santa Fe job, she could also use one of the many Park and Ride groups or take the train. It's tough to get a state job unless you know somebody. . .at least it used to be. . .but maybe things have changed for the better. And maybe she has skills that they need and nobody else has. So we'll keep our fingers crossed.

Roswell's a cute little town. I used to live there, smoked a lot of weed there.

 

[Michelle420]

I'm in Florida for the weekend then I am going to Savannah, Georgia. I hate Florida in the daytime the heat and humidity. I love Florida sunsets and rain.

 

[Nosmo King]

Okay. Daisy went walkies. Her kidneys and bladder have been working overtime. The steroids and anti-biotics are doing their job and the infection is being flushed out. We go outside eight times a day and she 'cropdusts' the tiled floor in the foyer over night. I bought 100 chucks (the pads health care providers place under bed ridden people to prevent bed sores) and we're going through them like balloons at a political convention.

So I was telling yinz guys about the Cruxible Steel mill that is lost and gone forever. I briefly touched on the agricultural disc mill known as LaBelle. I worked in the comparatively Luxurious Cold Strip my first summer there as a college kids. My locker and shower room was in LaBelle.

I showered down with the LaBelle workers and was horrified. Each of them bore scary scars, some of them had missing fingers. While I worked in the Cold Strip, I was thankful I wasn't working in LaBelle.

Well, karma is a fickle mistress. My second summer at Crucible was in LaBelle.

To make an agricultural disc, you must begin with a coil of raw steel. The coil (a long ribbon of steel about four feet wide and a quarter inch thick) goes into a press that punches out discs about two feet in diameter. This, of course, leaves remnants of the coil with sharp pointy edges that need to be picked up and loaded in special hoppers to be taken back to the blast furnace to be reused.

The newly stamped discs are then put into another press to punch out a square hole in the exact center so it can eventually be mounted on the axel of an array behind a tractor. So we also had to gather the chads (remember that word?) and again send them back to be remelted in the blast furnace.

But that's not the whole process. Not by a long shot. The discs are then put on a conveyor of rollers that lead into a furnace that heat those discs up until they are white hot. As the discs slide from that furnace, they are caught by a worker using a pair of long handled tongs that seem to have been designed to do what needs to be done in the worst possible way.

Remember we're dealing with a two foot wide and quarter inch thick piece of white hot steel. The caught discs are lifted using the ineptly designed tongs and placed on a die mounted in a press about the size of a small house. The die is dome shaped and, at the nod of a head, is coupled with great force with its opposite side. BOOM! The press slams home forging the flat disc into a dome.

A worker on the opposite side of the press then has to peel the white hot dome shaped disc from the mold and put it on yet another series of rollers that carry the steel into yet another furnace. So your working conditions include standing between two furnaces fired up at about 1,200 degrees while dealing with a massive press that slams home without mercy. In fact the only mercy shown these two hard working people is when someone shows compassion an sprays water from,a hose into the big fans that are supposed to help cool them off.

From the second furnace, the discs are slid down a thick steel,screen and into a vat of tempering oil. One of my jobs there was to man a big handle that, when pulled, would open a steam valve and release steam onto the oil vat should a fire break out. The white hot discs would raise the temperature of the oil to the flash point and having an open flame there would eventually be catastrophic. And fires broke out all the time.

The tempered discs would then be carried up and out of the oil vat by another chain-mail like conveyor. Then into a moderately cool oven and finall spit out to be stacked up upside down so a fork lift could move them to the next step.

Sometimes notches were cut into the perimeter of the discs. This was done essentially by had. A worker would pick up a disc and place it on a press that stamped out the crescent shaped notche. All discs had to be sharpened and, again individually by hand. Sparks flew from a series of grinders as Steel workers put an edge on the discs.

From there the discs were placed, again by hand, on an overhead conveyor fitted out with two foot long hooks. They were hung by that square hole punched into the disc way back at the initial step. The hook conveyor then immersed in a vat of varnish to protect and coat the newly minted agricultural disc.

Occasionally that square hole became misshapened and had to be forced back into tolerance. When a batch of bad discs was discovered they would be sent to an area of LaBelle where a hydraulic hammer would pound the not-so-square hole back into line. Now, the discs were sharp. The discs were heavy. And the discs were many in number. Another one of my jobs was to take one of these discs from a stack, balance it on a cylindrical 'anvil', align the hole with a dot punched in the top of the anvil (which was about the diameter of a beer can) then nod my head as I gripped the edge of the sharp disc. Did I mention they were sharp?

At the nod of my head, a guy who sat in a seat padded out with as much foam rubber that was conceivably available in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, would pull a lever and release the powerful hammer down on the disc in three hard blows. NAM, Namg, bang.

A check with a square peg to assure the hammer did its job and then on to the next disc. Eight hours later, it felt as if I had held my hands out in front of myself so someone could rein down blows on my palms with a baseball bat.

One,of the old timers in the shower, after noticing my horror of the scars that seemed to wrap around his torso said, "If ya got all ten fingers here, we think yer a goldbricker!" Yinz guys just had to be here to believe it.