A Legal Theft

 

PANTS ON SALE FOR $22.98

PRICE NOT MARKED DOWN ON PANTS, FULL PRICE WAS CHARGED  

         I bought a Keurig coffee maker at the Walmart store in Houston, Mo in December and it quit working a little more than a month later. Got to where it wouldn’t make more than 2 ounces at a time. I took it back to the store in Houston, where I grew up, to ask if they would replace it.  I was told I couldn’t get it replaced unless I had a receipt and the box it came in. Thank you and good-bye!  

         So I asked for the manager and the lady behind the counter said they were all busy.  I don’t know how many managers they have, but imagine that your position in life was a Walmart manager, and that was the extent of your talent and value you wouldn’t want to deal with customers either.  I have found that many of those managers make fun of us, uneducated Ozarkians.  

         This old uneducated Ozarkian got mad.  I waited for 35 minutes, and asked to see the manager 3 times.  Finally he comes out to tell me I can’t get a replacement because I don’t have the box and that is that.  I guess that should be a lesson to me.  I need to make a shed somewhere to hold all boxes that come from Walmart because so much of what you buy from them is defective.  

         I asked the manager for his name and he wouldn’t give it to me.   At another Walmart store this past week I got the Keurig coffee maker replaced, then got my money back for the new one they had given me and I will know better than to buy anything else from Walmart that I can get somewhere else.  That’s a tiny loss to them.  A few years back, my company spent 7000 dollars in Walmart stores. What do they care if I boycott them, that’s chicken feed when you make billions each week.

         But if you think you are going to be dealt with honestly from that no-name manager in Walmart, you need to reconsider.  I have a two-page article about Walmart in my spring magazine and what I have learned about the monstrous retailer with thousand of stores is going to amaze you. The government has acknowledged intentional lawbreaking there.  Low-level employees have told me all about what they are forced to do that is illegal. 

          I will get that Houston manager’s name and print it there along with the story about how millions of dollars are made by the mammoth chain of Walmart stores through a systematic practice of overcharging.  Not accidental… intentional! You may pay much more at the counter than a product was priced, and you need to know it, and what you can do about it.  Walmart has paid fines for the practice, but it makes the company millions of dollars and isn’t likely to change.  Most of us who hunt and fish use the sporting goods section of Walmart to buy what we use, and I feel a   responsibility to let all outdoorsmen know that they may find some fishing lure for 3 dollars in that section and be charged a dollar or two dollars more for it at a counter.  Some rod and reel marked $24.95 may be $29.95 at a counter up front. 

         All of us need to look hard at the receipts we are given.  Last year I found that practice going on in more than a dozen Walmart stores.  A lady from Mt. Grove said she found pork sausage on sale for a little over two dollars, but she has a receipt she didn’t look at until she got home and she found they charged her four dollars for it. If she had seen it in the store, she would have had to contact a manager to get the overcharge back. To get that done you may have to wait 30 minutes or more. You will read in that spring magazine of mine what a few employees have told me, and what a store manager told me recently. What you encounter at individual stores is no accident, but a planned and well-executed theft that Walmart’s executives in Bentonville, Arkansas know all about.    

         I saw such things, and documented them with photos and receipts, more than 30 times in ten Walmart stores over the past 6 months. One was an overcharge of almost 20 dollars. Oh yes, it is happening to you too if you pay no attention.  And now individual shoppers are trying to sue individual stores for the overcharging.  One such suit is getting some attention in Chicago.  It will take a class action lawsuit of dozens of shoppers uniting to really make them pay for what they are doing and stop the practice.  The size and power of Walmart makes them almost invulnerable to any legal action.  If big-time news media gets advertising revenue from them, think of what chance I have of getting this article printed in those pages.

         The manager of that Walmart store thought I was just some poor old Ozark backwoodsman who couldn’t do a thing about being taken advantage of.  Boy will he be surprised to see that spring magazine with his picture in it, and his name.  I am indeed just a poor old Ozark backwoodsman, but I intend to speak for a whole lot more of us. To get my magazine with some well-hidden information that will cause you to never trust a Walmart store again, just call me. We’ll only charge you for postage to send it to you. And if you hunters and fishermen are about to buy spring hunting and fishing gear, watch your receipts, keep all boxes and think about another sporting goods store.

 

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613   or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

WAS $9.98 on Clearance for $6. But you will pay $8 at register.

Black Death and Bad News

 

 

       They are coming, and believe me, nothing seems to slow them down.  They are non-native birds known as black vultures…an evil plague on the Ozarks. Black Vultures are compact birds with broad wings short tails and powerful wing beats, with white patches beneath the wings and coal black heads. They are carrion eaters but they also kill small mammals, including fawns, newborn calves, small pigs, baby sheep, cats and small dogs. They do that with powerful tearing beaks, eating the flesh before the creature they attack is dead. Their destruction has no bounds and along the White River in Arkansas, folks are being allowed to kill them without depredation permits. There are so many of them there now they are damaging docks along the river. In Texas seven hundred and fifty permits have been issued which allow the killing of black vultures any time, any place.

       I don’t speak of what goes on in the outdoors from just what I read or what I am told.  I have seen these birds, which have immigrated out of Mexico, and I have observed them and the things they do first-hand.  I first saw about a dozen of them at the Bennett Springs state park a year ago and urged park officials to have them killed.  They chose not too, and I doubt that anyone in the Conservation Department knows much about them. They won’t say much about them now, but they will in time, likely when it is too late to stem the tide. 

       I once saw 10 or 12 of those vultures attack a brand new red pickup in a Bull Shoals lake parking lot.  They were pecking at it, hood and cab top and clawing at it with their feet.   You tell me why; I have no idea.  When they left it, they had done nearly 5 thousand dollars worth of damage to it.  It was not an isolated thing.

 

      A week ago at Houston, Missouri I saw about 20 or perhaps 30 black vultures roosting and on the ground off a highway, just a half mile east of the hospital.  I have seen them in smaller flocks in several Ozark locations as far north as Truman Lake.

 In time there will be thousands of them in the Ozarks and I am urging farmers and ranchers to kill all of them you can, and keep quiet about it. Use a .22 rifle at a distance and keep quiet about it. For some reason, some of the worst of the overpopulated big birds are protected by law and badly overpopulated, birds like great blue herons, cormorants and pelicans and turkey vultures too.  

       Eagles are getting to a point of overpopulation.  What a laugh I get out of the MDC’s “Eagle Days” event, when city suburbanites are invited to different Department lands to observe eagles.  Observe Eagles? Lordy, they are everywhere.  Might as well have a squirrel day!

       On some of the interpretive nature hikes I guide each year we pass eagle nests with young eaglets looking over the side of their nest at us as we pass nearby, and their parents circling above us, screaming a warning.  A half-mile from my home there is a nest where eagles can be seen any time of the year, and in my explorations of lakes and rivers within 20 miles of my home as the crow flies I have found 19 active nests. I can photograph eagles any day of the week with little effort. There are tons of eagles now, as compared to my boyhood, when they were as rare as albino black bass.  

       I saw my first eagle floating the Big Piney with my dad when I was about 13. Didn’t see another one for years.  In Canada, they swoop down beside my boat after I throw out yellow perch or small walleye, and they get only a few feet away from my camera.  But eagles are as much a carrion eater as buzzards at times, and in this area they have become year-long residents because they feed in the winter on ducks and coots and fish and dead deer. You now begin to see them on country highways feeding on any kind of roadkill.  They   have absconded with ducks I have killed before my retriever could get to the dead duck and believe me if you have a small dog or a housecat, they are not safe if an eagle is close by.  If you want to see eagles close up in the wilds, join me on one of my March nature trips to Truman Lake.  We take up to twelve people at a time all day, and have a fish fry at noon.  Or you can join the MDC folks on “Eagle Days” and watch them through a telescope.  Right now the only thing easier to see than eagles, are squirrels, possums and armadillos.

         Why is it that the birds we want to increase will not, like quail and woodcock, and even the rapidly diminishing wild turkey.  Whippoorwills and Chuck-Wills Widows will be extinct in 20 years, and I think woodcock may follow.  Read more about that in my Spring Issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Magazine.  Because of the ease of feeding young passenger pigeons, they could have continued to exist in bird sanctuaries 100 years ago, instead of becoming extinct.  You know why we cannot do that with whippoorwills in the future?  I will tell all about it in that magazine article.

        

Email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613

 

Winter and Wildlife

 

      During very cold and vicious winter weather, wild creatures need much more food than they need during the mild stretches that we love to see.

      The acorns that were as thick as I have seen them in a long time, become scarce in February and March, so we are coming upon the lean time of the year, the bottleneck that wildlife species must pass through before the arrival of spring, when there is replenishment and abundance once again. 

      If January and February are mild, and ice is scarce, wildlife survival is good, and reproduction in the spring is much better than normal.  If there is ice and snow and extreme cold, some wildlife species suffer more than others. That's why bird feeders are so valuable this time of year.  I can't keep mine filled.

      Those who feel compassion for wildlife in winter must be careful not to overdo it.  In our region, bobwhite quail suffer more than any other species, and it's always a temptation to feed them. Trouble is, feeding quail sometimes concentrates them in one place, where they become dependent on the handout. Then they are too easily found by predators, especially house cats, and can be wiped out because of that vulnerability.

      If you want to feed quail, don't create a regular feeding area, scatter the food where cover is heaviest, and don't feed them near a road.  Back in the late fifties, during periods of prolonged snow and ice the conservation departments gave rural mail carriers sacks of food to put out where they saw coveys of quail.  Birds are often drawn to rural roads because they can find grit and small gravel there which they need in their crops to grind up seed and grain.  Most of the mail carriers did their job so well, that in little time, the coveys were there waiting for the feed, and many coveys were wiped out by pot-shooters who couldn't resist the temptation. The program was ended when one mail carrier was caught with his shotgun, and a sackful of quail in his trunk.

      Wild turkey suffer if the ice is heavy, but they have strong legs, and can usually scratch through heavy snow to find food. When they are fed scattered grain in the winter, they are not as subject to predation, but they are just as vulnerable to poachers. We are now at a time when wild turkey populations are at critically low numbers and scattering corn where there are known flocks really helps them.

      Deer and rabbits are able to survive a hard winter better in our area because of the diversity of food sources for both. Deer can browse on plants above the snow, and rabbits eat bark when times are hard. Squirrels may not remember where all the acorns have been stored, but when there is a prolonged period of low temperatures, both fox and gray squirrels go into brief periods of hibernation in hollow trees and survive well because of that.

      The bobcat, fox and coyote may find weakened and dying wildlife in the winter, but this time of year is no easier on them than it is on the prey species, because they need more food when the cold is intense. And most of the year, the fox and coyote, and hawk and owl, feed mainly on small ground mammals, voles, mice and rats.

       

      When winter hits in full force, many small underground species will hibernate, and become unavailable. At such times, rabbits and quail are more intensely hunted, and the wild turkey is more vulnerable to bobcats and great horned owls, which are at the highest population levels I have ever seen. January and February sees a great loss in wild turkey through predation.  They are roosting on branches where they stand out like summer buzzards on a gravel bar.

      There are certain Ozark plants that help small game and birds to survive. Sumac and cedar hold berries above the snow for an emergency food supply, though neither are eagerly sought when other foods are available. Of course, in the Ozarks, the acorn is the most important overall food for all wildlife. Almost everything eats acorns, or depends on something that does. It seems that the best way to predict wildlife survival and spring reproductive success is to look at the availability of acorns in the fall and the period of time they can be found.

      But if you feel sorry for birds and small game in the winter, remember that cover is just as necessary as food. Leave thickets of sumac and cedar on your land, and create brush piles around them, and you'll help small game and wild birds even more than you would by creating a winter feeding trough.  I notice that in Arkansas, the Game and Fish Commission has declared war on the red cedar (Juniper) in the Ozarks. If you want wildlife to survive the winter, ignore that. Those folks do some stupid things.  In both Missouri and Arkansas I witness the occasional burning of cover and nesting habitat in the spring.  

      Remember that stands of cedar keep wildlife protected from brutal cold winds and snow, and those berries they produce aren’t the greatest food for birds and quail but they are survival nutrition during harsh, snowy winters.  I know… I see it on my place where cedar thickets in February are home to a covey of quail and several cottontails and a variety of wild birds.

      I need help distributing our publication entitled “The Truth About the Missouri Department of Conservation,”.  If you want to help, call me at 417-777-5227.

 

The Pool Hall Kid

 

       I went to work at the pool hall one afternoon, straight from school.  Ol' Jim and Ol' Bill were there and they could tell I was pretty despondent. I was 13 years old and had just got my first pair of glasses.  I wanted a girl friend awfully bad at that time and those glasses made me uglier than I had ever been.  One of the older girls called me ‘four eyes’.

  

       Now ‘the pool hall kid’ wasn’t my only nickname. Now I was gonna be called the “four-eyed pool hall kid”.  I told my old friends there on the front bench that I was thinking on quitting school and just staying there in the pool hall forever.  Ol’ Bill asked what brought that on and I told him.  I was born too ugly to ever get a girl friend and now I was uglier because of those glasses.

       Ol’ Jim tried to comfort me.  “Onc’t when I was a kid,” he said, “me an’ some a my cousins all found a mirror on a wall in the barn an' we stood in front of it makin’ scary faces to see who could be the ugliest an’ they all said that no matter what I did I couldn’t look no uglier then what I already was.”

         He used his foot to pull the spittoon over a little closer to his range, and then went on.  “But by the time I was 20 years old,” he smiled,” girls was crazy about me.”

       

       “I learnt the way to get a girlfriend,” Virgil Halstead chipped in from his end of the bench. When I was a kid, I cut up some catalog pages to the exact size of a dollar bill and rolled it all up with a dollar bill around it and let Lucy Johnson see it and she spoke to me for the first time in years.  And when I put a five dollar bill around that roll of catalog papers… by dang, she wanted to marry me!!”

       At that everyone on the front bench laughed and slapped their knees and nodded their heads as if they knew what he was talking about.

       But it was pretty clear to me that if I stayed ugly much longer then my only option for a girl-friend was a girl as ugly as me, and I didn’t know any! As to the girls in my school there were just various grades of pretty, and my chances with any of them was comparable to the chance of me killing three ducks with three shots.

       It is rather amazing as I look back on my years working in my dad’s pool hall that I was around a number of World War I veterans, including my Grandpa Dablemont.  Few of them talked about being overseas as young men, fighting the Kaiser. Most of the time, life on the front bench was a joyous collection of hilarious hunting and fishing stories.  I think some of them were true.  They were the best outdoorsmen I have ever known and I treasure the memories they gave me.

       It was hard for me to understand, as a kid, the problems old men faced.   Ol’ Bill said that he had got to a point where he had to get up twice during the night to pee. He, like most of them, had no inside plumbing.  He said that one night when he went out to answer the call of nature he was watering the flowers just off the front porch when it began to rain. Ol’ Bill said he heard the water running off the roof and stood there for nearly ten minutes thinking he wasn’t done yet.

       But Ol’ Jess Wolf had come up with something that made life easier for most of the front bench regulars. He had drilled a hole in the bottom of the wall in his old house, stuck a length of water hose through it from the outside and attached a funnel to the end inside his bedroom, right next to his bed.

       Jess didn’t have to go out on the porch in the cold anymore. He just sat up on the edge of his bed and reached for that funnel. Many years later when I was in college one of the professors there at M.U. told me that I’d never learn much from those backwards old men I had grown up around in the Ozarks, because I was so much like them. I  thanked him for that.

  

       Now, as I look back on my boyhood, I cannot remember a thing that intellectual professor ever said, but I can remember all the advice those old men in the pool hall gave me.

       I wrote a book about those old men I grew up with in the pool hall.  The name of it is… “The Front Bench Regulars… Wit and Wisdom from Back Home in the Hills.”  It is one of my best sellers out of my ten books about the Ozarks. Four or five times a year I publish a great 120-page magazine about the outdoors and the Ozarks together. You can see all of these books and nearly 100 of the magazines on the computer at www.larrydablemont.com.  To get one of any of them, or some of all of them, just call me.

       The publication entitled, “The Truth About the Missouri Department of Conservation” is back and is being mailed.  It is a free publication, all we ask is that you pay the $3 postage!  To get a copy, call 417-777-5227. You can email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.

 

The Museum and A Church

 

         When I was young, nothing about school interested me.  But now I am a naturalist writer who loves the outdoors and I can’t get enough of Ozark history.  I have dreamed of a Big Piney museum for a long time.  It is soon to become a reality, because we have acquired an acre of land south of town beneath some big oaks and a giant pine tree where we can build it.  iwill be there this coming Saturday and if you would like to see it, and where the museum will set, then contact me.

         We are getting ready to pour a foundation.  Such a museum is to be a combination of the outdoors and history both, and a place where the old timers can come and tell visitors about what they saw and experienced.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a lady who knew how to operate an old time spinning wheel, or several ladies  who could make a quilt while folks watched.  I envision having two or three old-time musicians playing banjos or mandolins there from time to time, or perhaps a harmonica.

           

        The location is better than I envisioned, with the possibility of nature trails close-by, and a big rock fireplace where you could have checker tables and fresh coffee.  Nearby will be a pool table that came to Houston brand-new in the early ‘20’s, made by the A. E. Schmidt company in St. Louis.  They named it a Victory Table, for the freshly ended World War 1.  It is one of the best I  have ever seen to play on.

         Just outside the museum we will display two historic john-boats, one a wooden john-boat like the first ones to run the river , and another made from aluminum, created in 1952; 20 feet long with a serial number of 0001. It was the very first aluminum river-boat, and was made for the Piney River.

         I haven’t said much about it before but in 1960  a 13-year old kid found an ivory-pendant artifact in a Big Piney River cave with a second piece of broken, carved ivory. Still today it is said to be the only ivory artifact found in Missouri, obviously carved from a mastodon tusk, radio-carbon tested, and found to be 8,000 years old.  I will bring it too the Brown Hill Church Sunday with some other artifacts, so others can see it.  Much of what that kid found in those dozens of caves will be a big part of the museum. I’ll let you guess who he was, one of the local high school’s worst students! 

         But there will be lots more than what I have mentioned.  I know it cannot be finished as quickly as I would like, but by the beginning of next year, I believe it will be close to completion.

         There will be something about the Big Piney museum unlike most… IT WILL BE FREE FOR ALL VISITORS!  But it will be a place where local people can sell what they make; quilts, paintings, books, wood-carvings, etc.

 

         Next Sunday, January15, we will have another service at the Brown Hill Baptist church  which is about 4 miles east of Houston on the  Brushy Creek Road.  Join us from 11 to noon if you have no other church to attend. A lady who lives near the church is trying to get the community involved, and I am trying to help her. Her name and email is Ouida Malmsko, of native American ancestry, and she would like to hear from anyone who wants to attend next Sunday or help in this project.  Her email is ouidamalmsko.@gmail.com.  I will be there Sunday and we are looking for ministers who have an interest in the church.

         I would love to get that little country church going again since it was the first church I attended as a small boy. It is remarkably much like it was then, and I believe it likely started more than 100 years ago as a small one-room schoolhouse. 

         If you haven’t been going to church somewhere else, contact Ouida and let her know of your interest. That Brown Hill church has been closed for two years.  It has a history, and there are families in that area which can make it an important House of God once again.  You do not have to dress up to come Sunday.  Just come as you are.  You might wash behind your ears.  When I was young, my grandma always made me do that on Sunday morning. What memories I had there from my childhood.  Join us at 11 a.m. if you do not have a church to attend. And  let Ouida know you are coming.

         The publication entitled, “The Truth About the Missouri Department of Conservation” is back and ready to mail. It is a free publication, all you have to pay is the postage!  To get a copy, call 417-777-5227. You can email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.

 

A CHURCH AND A MUSEUM

         Next Sunday, January 8, we will have another service at the Brown Hill Baptist church  which is about 4 miles east of Houston on the  Brushy Creek Road.  Join us from 11 to noon if you have no other church to attend.

         I would love to get that little country church going again since it was the first church I attended as a small boy. It is remarkably much like it was then, and I believe it likely started more than 100 years ago as a small one-room schoolhouse. 

         I am trying to get a minister to join us and deliver a sermon and trying to find a piano player.  The church recently acquired a new piano and there is also an organ there.  

          I don’t want to have people attend our service who have a church to go to, because all around the county are big, fairly new churches, even well out into the country.

  

         But if you haven’t been going to church somewhere else, come and join us.  That Brown Hill church does not need to be closed.  It has a history, and there are families in that area which can make it an important house of God once again.  You do not have to dress up.  I won’t.           Just come as you are.  You might wash behind your ears.  When I was young, my grandma always made me do that on Sunday morning. What memories I had from my childhood when I was a boy..  I will tell you  about some of them Sunday.  Come and join us at 11 a.m. if you do not have a church to attend. I know God will be there, and I’ll bet He will be smiling.  I think God has often laughed heartily at things I have tried to do!

 

         When I was young, nothing about school interested me.  But now I am a naturalist writer who loves the outdoors and I  can’t get enough of Ozark history.  I have dreamed of a Big Piney museum for a long time.  It is soon to become a reality, because we have acquired an acre of land south of town beneath some big oaks and a giant pine tree where we can build it.

  

         Now we are getting ready to pour a foundation.  Such a museum is to be a combination of the outdoors and history both. and a place where the old timers can come and tell visitors about what they saw and    experienced.  Wouldn’t it be great if we could find a lady who knew how to operate an old time spinning wheel, or several ladies  who could make a quilt while folks watched.  I envision having two or three old-time musicians playing banjos or mandolins there from time to time.

           The location is better than I envisioned, with the possibility of nature trails close-by, and a big rock fireplace where you could have checker tables and fresh coffee.  Nearby will be a pool table that came to Houston brand-new in the early ‘20’s, made by the A. E. Schmidt company in St. Louis.  The named it a Victory Table, for the freshly ended World War 1.  

 

        Just  outside the museum we will display two historic john-boats, one a wooden john-boat like the first ones to run the river , and another made from aluminum, created in 1952; 20 feet long with a serial number of 0001. It was the very first aluminum river-boat made for the Piney River.

 

       I haven’t said much about it before but in 1960  a 13-year old kid found an ivory-pendant artifact in a Big Piney River cave with a second piece of broken, carved ivory. Still today it is said to be the only ivory artifact found in Missouri, obviously carved from a mastodon tusk, radio carbon tested, and 8,000 years old.  I will bring it too the Brown Hill Church Sunday with some other artifacts, so others can see it.

           

        Much of what that kid found in those dozens of caves will be a big part of the museum. I’ll let you guess who he was, one of the local high schools worst students!

 

         But there will be lots more than what I have mentioned.  I know it cannot be finished as quickly as I would like, but by the beginning   of the next year, I believe it will be close to completion.

         There will be something about the Big Piney museum unlike most… IT WILL BE FREE FOR ALL VISITORS!  But it will be a place where local people can sell what they make; quilts, paintings, books, wood-carvings, etc.

 

         The publication entitled, “The Truth About the Missouri Department of Conservation” is at  the printers and should be ready to mail in less than 2 weeks.  It is a free publication, all you have to pay is the postage!  To get a copy, call 417-777-5227.