Friday, August 27, 2010

A Little About Me , Mike

I was born in a little town in central Texas where my grandparents lived. My dad worked as an electronics engineer in the aerospace industry at that time for Texas Instruments. We lived in Dallas Texas. Later we moved to Arizona where in the same field of work, he worked for Goodyear, and I got to ride in the Good year Blimp at the air show there with the Blue Angels where performing in their jets. I guess I was about 8 and my parents got my brother, sister and me some Dutch rabbits and with the heat there my dad built a shed off the side of the house and put in a swamp cooler, and this was just the start of my animal raising. Then we moved to the foothills of Los Angeles, California to little towns called San Dimas and Glendora, where my dad worked for General Dynamics and I raised chickens and some Bob White Quail I brought back from Texas on the Jet from visiting my grand parents in central Texas.

Because my dad's work in aerospace at the time was about designing bombs for the Vietnam war, my dad left that job and we moved to Monterrey County, Calif., where I raised chickens too and worked at a poultry farm veggie stand where we sold feed too. At the poultry farm I learned a lot about chickens, feeds, egg processing, vegetable production and sales to the public. I went to School at Carmel High School where i had some great teachers , no they didn't teach me to spell but more importantly things like wilderness survival, photography and lots more. Some of those teachers where Ralf Kall, Peter Loins and Jack Savage, who had people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston come to our photo class to help teach use photography. After that job at the poultry ranch I started working in the really nice restaurants of Carmel. One of them was Clint Eastwood's. Here again I learned a lot; about food, serving the public, food safety and the restaurant business.

But after many years I got tired of being inside all the time. I got a job as a carpenters helper on multi-million dollar custom homes. At the same time I was care taking ranch and hobby farms for a place to live and learn more about it and raising my own chickens, garden and dairy goats. This was on the beautiful Big Sur rugged coast of central California, where I lived on Partington Ridge. One of the ranches I helped out on was Al Jarden's , one of the Beach Boys.

One summer we had some bad forest fires and had to be evacuated, but they stopped the fire before it got to our houses and cabin. About 20 families lived on that ridge. After that the rains came and it rained and rained, then the mountain gave way and a mud slide closed the highway to the south, then another mud slide came down on the north side of us. The highway department worked to reopen it , but as they worked on it, a bigger slide came down the mountain, taking the D9 Caterpillar and its driver over the road and off a 1000 foot cliff to the ocean beach below. It took the highway department a year to move, repair and reopen the highway. During that time we either had to hike over the slide to get out, and every 2 weeks Air National Guard would fly us supplies in and give us rides. I lived there for over 15 years, most of it in my little cabin in the red wood forest canyon just below the ridge and most of that time without electricity.

Over the years I saved my construction money and put that money down on 120 acres I found on a salmon/steelhead fishing trip to the rugged south western coast of Oregon. There I set up my homestead, worked at a feed store, did some carpentry for people and was a caretaker of other people's land and animals too. The property I got had been logged off and needed replanting, so in a 3 month period, I planted 12,200 fir trees in the rain and snow. I lived there for about 6 years where I was married with my wife, than she ran off with a friend that was the building inspector there. We where divorced and shortly after that I got a phone call from my grand mother. She told me that my dad wanted her to move to the rest home, that she needed help, and she didn't want to be in a rest home. So for all my grandparents had done for me in spending their time with us kids, I felt that I should help, so I sold my place and moved to the flat land of Texas.

What a shock. From the wilds of the Oregon forest to living in a hot brushy area of central Texas in a town. I took care of her for almost 9 years so she could live out her life in her home. I got 10 acres outside of town to have a place to go between helping her and making her meals, that I could raise some chickens, a nice garden and, yes, dairy goats. When there I also stopped a federally funded airport from being built on some of the valuable farm land there, when they already had a nice airport that had worked out for the people there for many years and would for many more. I also helped organize a 3-D archery club and course that is going strong today. I also was a care taker there of a 375-acre cattle and high fence deer ranch, as well as helped caretake another exotics hunting ranch, where I was Ted Nugent's guide and tracker for 5 days of hunting and filming for his hunting show, "Spirit of the Wild." To you, Ted!

At 96 my grandmother had a stroke and shortly after, died. So I sold my land over there and found this place in east Texas Piney Woods, Sabine National Forest and an eighty-mile lake Toledo Bend where I could kayak all I wanted to. Land was a very low price. I got 14 acres, a barn, pond and a 4 bedroom brick house for $69,000, with the mineral rights. Sounded good to me, so here I am and I have since gotten 4 more properties around here, and one on the water in a protective cove. In the cove, when kayaking, I have seen a momma river otter and her 3 babies, some beavers and eagles, and have caught big bass and catfish that were 36 pounds. It's a wild beautiful paradise. Sorry about the spelling. Got lots of work to do so I'll have to come back some time and fix it, or you could stop by and help me with it and have a glass of ice tea on the porch.

Thank You'All
Mike

[Editor's Note: I've fixed the spelling, but there is still iced tea and a porch.]