One That Counts
Rain driving in to work this morning, the sun breaking through later for a long cold day at the office, the snow level down to 500 feet. I've been skating at the edge of a cold since Friday and I assume I'll know tomorrow, one way or another, what the rest of the week will be like. I've been lucky this year, half the people at the office have been wiped out at one time or another, but I, for whatever reason, have ducked the bullet. Maybe my bullet has arrived. Maybe not. I'm sitting here writing with nothing particularly pressing to impart. Let's see how it goes.
I shot a couple of pictures of the number 13 that was painted on an infernal device sitting in the center or our building lobby. There was a card attached:
Always Oxen Free, 1936
Was built by one of the younger Schultz Boys in March of 1936. As snow lay deep upon the ground, young Bobby noticed that it was melted by the heat of the manure pile. He powered his traction engine with cattle waste, which caused him great pleasure.
I really should go back and take some proper pictures, not because this is a particularly wonderful
exhibit, but because you should never attempt anything less than proper, else why make the effort? The messy background and the cropping of the "infernal engine" to the left, for example. I had it slightly off kilter and had to rotate the image to bring it closer to an acceptable alignment. True, it was taken returning from lunch and I'm often half swacked after lunch, carbohydrates unfortunately, rather than alcohol, but I recall it was slightly skewed and I just thought, oh, well, it's an infernal engine, what's the difference? (There was some debate later at the office whether this qualified as an "infernal engine". The picture of the scooter bomb that I ran at the top of a recent entry is clearly an "infernal engine", but this is, after all, a manure powered - and therefor green and politically correct - device that doesn't blow anything more dangerous than the occasional puff of powerful gas. I voted all of them into the "infernal engine" category for two reasons: one, "infernal engine" makes better copy and two, my vote is the only one that counts.)
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