The sign in front of the gas station says “Unleaded, 3.39, special on Colt .357 Magnum, six-inch barrel.”

   Visitors here in the valley do a double take when they see Vince’s sign there at what we all know as “the gas station gun shop.” That’s because Vince doesn’t believe in being deprived of his passion while earning a living. His passion: guns. His living: pumping gas.

Continue reading “HOME COUNTRY: Visitors here in the valley do a double take when they see Vince’s sign” →

Slim Randles – CNBNews Correspondent

  “I think it’s disgusting and weird and unnatural and it should be outlawed!” the tall cowboy said, coming to rest at the philosophy counter of the Mule Barn truck stop.

  “Aw Steve,” said Doc, “the coffee isn’t that bad.”

  “Coffee? Nay, I say unto you, Doc. It ain’t the coffee … it’s them award shows on the television. You see them? All them good-looking women Scotch-taping themselves into those dresses so they almost stay on? Those weird guys they’re with who only shave on Tuesdays?”

  “And this makes you angry?”

  “Sure does, Doc. Those folks make a lot more money than I do and all they have to do is dress up and talk to those red carpet camera guys.”

  “Well, Steve,” said Dud, “we can do just as good as they can. Stand up.”

  Steve looked around and then stood slowly.  Dud picked up a bottle of Tabasco sauce and, using it as a microphone, turned to the breakfast crowd in the Mule Barn.

  “Good morning, folks, and we’re so happy you could join us here on KRUD this morning to welcome our list of celebrities. Oh, look, it’s Steve, the pride of farrier life and heavy anvils. Steve, wherever did you get that outfit?”

  “Well,” said Steve, grinning, “it’s a creation of Levi Strauss, and please note the genuine brass rivets.”

  “Give us a twirl there, cowboy.” And he did, to great applause.

  “And your headwear today, Steve, that would be what … Stetson?”

  “Yessir. A genuine John B. Stetson original. Five ex beaver fur felt.”

  “The sweat stains?”

  “Those were added later, actually, Dudley. A genuine cow pen fillip to offset the otherwise stunning look of my entire ensemble.”

  “So as not to overwhelm the onlookers, I suppose?”

  “Precisely. We don’t want ordinary people to think they’ll never achieve this look, you see.”

  “An admirable pursuit,” Dud said.

  “Noblesse oblige, I believe,” said Steve.

  “Not until lunch,” said Loretta, topping off the coffee mugs. “Breakfast special is bacon and a short stack.”

By Slim Randles | CNBNews Contributor

It was like buzzards circling the body.

  The Jones kid, Randy, was out in the Mule Barn coffee shop parking lot with the hood up on his car. He was staring down into it the way a first-time parachutist would look out the airplane door. You never quite knew for sure what lay ahead.

  “Looks like Randy’s got problems,” said Steve.

  “Let’s have a look,” said Dud.

  So coffee was left to get cold and the entire Supreme Court of All Things Mechanical – Steve, Dud, Doc, Herb and Dewey – trooped out to see what was going on.

  They formed a powerful semi-circle of wisdom around the youth and his engine with folded arms and facial expressions that said, “It’s okay, Kid. We’re here.”

  Dewey spoke first. “Having trouble, Randy?”

   “Won’t start.”

   Doc, who has the most initials after his name, said, “Give it a try.”

   Randy ground the engine, but it wouldn’t kick over.

   “Stop! Stop!” Doc yelled. “Don’t want to flood it.”

   All Doc knows about flooding is that the animals went on board, two by two.

   “Randy, I think it’s the solenoid,” said Steve, looking wise. And of course he pronounced it sell-a-noid. 

   “Doesn’t have one, Steve,” Randy said.

   “Sure it does. All cars have solenoids.”

   “Not the new ones. Haven’t made solenoids in years.”

   Steve’s expression said, “Young punks, what do they know?” But his voice said, “Well, what do you know about that?”

   “Need a jump?” Dewey asked.

   “Got plenty of spark,” Randy said. 

   Randy looked at the older men and then bent to the engine and smiled. His voice came floating up over the radiator. “Might be the junction fibrillator. Or it could be a malfunction of the Johnson switch. If I rerun the wire from the organ housing to the pump by-pass, that might get it done.”

When Randy looked up, all the men had gone back in for coffee. He smile and called Triple A on his cell phone.

= –

Brought to you by the new novella “Whimsy Castle” by Slim Randles. Contains plenty of words and laughs. Cheap, too.

Chickens have forever had a place in our hearts and on our tables. Why is that? Well … why not? 

  And so I’d like you to come with me back to the summer of 1970, ‘way up north of Fairbanks, Alaska, to what was once the thriving gold mining village of Chicken, Alaska. I was on my way, hitchhiking with a canoe, to paddle down a stretch of the Yukon River and to see the cabin where Jack London spent the winter once upon a time.

  Just as an aside here, hitchhiking with a canoe, or with a sled and 10 dogs, would make a lengthy how-to book all by themselves. It doesn’t sound easy, does it? It isn’t.

   So what I would do on these “adventures” of mine, (my boss, Larry Fanning, referred to them as Slim’s tin-cup trips because of all the scrounging I did) is go neat places and interview great people, and write stuff. My column in the Anchorage Daily News … brace yourself … was called “Slim’s Column.”

  Truth in advertising.

  So I arrived in Chicken, Alaska, only to find I’d nearly doubled the local population. In the far-distant past, Chicken was an actual town. When the gold gave out, so did Chicken.

  So what was left was “the business” consisting of a gas pump, a coffee pot, some postage stamps and a couple of nice folks. But there was something else, too.

  There was not only an outhouse there, but it was electrically lighted. So where should I write my column? In an electrically lighted outhouse in Chicken, Alaska.

Naturally.

  The raising of poultry this far north is uncommon, too many local varmints, including any resident sled dogs, eat them. So how did this gold camp get its name? Ahh … the reason for that column on the wooden “desk” beneath that 20-watt bulb.

  Chicken, Alaska, got its name because none of the miners there knew how to spell ptarmigan.

        I’m Slim Randles, author of the book Packing the Backyard Horse, enabling you and your own Ol’ Snort to have some camping fun in the back country. Packing the Backyard Horse, available on Amazon.com.

By Slim Randles | CNBNews Contributor

We all know that someone will find Jenkins’s cabin. Someday. Oh, it’s up there in those hills somewhere. We all know that.

It’s become a friendly object of conjecture and speculation. No one living has seen it, as far as we know. Jenkins himself died quietly when he was on one of his infrequent trips to town for supplies. Funny guy, that Jenkins.

He worked in the city for years, mostly as a night watchman in a factory that made diapers. Didn’t really enjoy people much, and told us many times how nice it was to just be in the huge factory when it was quiet. Then one day he decided to move to the mountains and make pretty things out of leather. Once in a while he’d have his coffee at the counter at the Mule Barn, but often as not, he’d camp out on the edge of town for the two or three days it took him to sell his crafts and buy supplies. He’d smile and wave from his campsite, then he’d be gone one morning. We wouldn’t see him again for months.

Now and then someone would ask him where his cabin was, and he’d just point toward the mountains and say, “Up there.” How far up there? “A ways.” What was his cabin like? “Not too big.”

And so we came to regard the little cabin as an intriguing mystery, an object of local legend. After he died, several of the fellows tried to backtrack him to find the place, but Jenkins evidently didn’t take the same trail each time, as though he wanted his quiet times protected from even a friendly visit from one of us. During his lifetime, we respected his wishes. In this country, a man has a perfect right to be a little strange. And, truth be known, we hold a certain admiration for those of us who hear different instructions. But there is something in the human spirit, also, that begs to have its mysteries solved. So now, several times each year, one or two of us will use the mystery of the lost cabin as an excuse to poke our noses into the nuances and seclusions of these hills. We play off our curiosity against our wishes to respect a man’s privacy, even when he’s gone.

We have yet to discover Jenkins’s lost cabin. Maybe we never will. Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing, either.

–  –  –  –  –

Brought to you by Whimsy Castle, a love story about a boy and a roof. It’s on Amazon and most of the others. 

By Slim Randles | CNBNews Contributor

They are getting ready now, wondering if the race will bring prize money, glory to their dogs, or just some quiet laughter from the other mushers. 

The Iditarod Trail. 

  It has come to mean “The Trail” to dog mushers and kennel owners all over the state of Alaska and in a lot of other places. 

  There are other long distance dogsled races now. We know that. But the Iditarod started all that “long, cold camping trip” stuff. And I was lucky to be a part of that very first Iditarod in March of 1973.

   Strangely enough, each musher has a list of life-saving equipment and food on that sled.  Unfortunately, when they check a musher’s lungs and heart, they forget to test the brain. The race would probably be run quicker and more efficiently, but it undoubtedly wouldn’t be as much fun.

   In my closet, hanging on a hook where it’s been for more than half a century, is a handmade down parka covered with gold-colored heavy cloth. I wear it every year on the first Saturday in March to remind me of the race and of a woman named Pam who made it for me. We lost Pam this last year, but she was the eyes and ears and ambulance dispatcher of the first few races. And she was my wife, then, too.

   I was injured about 300 miles into this thousand-mile race and was rescued by military helicopter. I started the race with seven dogs, as that was the minimum and then the minimum was changed to nine dogs. 

  So if you find yourself somewhere between Anchorage and Nome and you see tired people and cold dogs with icicles hanging on them. Smile and say you send greetings from Seven-Dog Slim. Will you? Thanks.

Brought to you by Slim’s book “Dogsled: A True Tale of the North” available on the internet and in bookstores everywhere.

By Slim Randles | CNBNews Contributor

“This is ‘bout the best time of year,” said Steve, “to get out and do something fun, like go to a rodeo.”

   “Awful cold out there right now, Steve,” said Doc, who has more degrees than a thermometer. “I guess it’s a good thing they have all those building rodeos these days.”

  “Well, that would take all the sport out of it, wouldn’t it?” Steve said. “Dud, pass the sugar please.”

  Dud passed the sugar. “Don’t know what you mean, Steve. Why would it take all the sport out of rodeo if the folks in the stands were comfortable?”

  “Cold factor,” he said.

  “What?”

  Now Steve was our resident cowboy here at the Mule Barn truck stop’s philosophy counter. He still worked on ranches and lived in bunkhouses and saddled his horses one at a time, but his rodeo days were far behind him. It’s a sport with a very short career … one way or another.

  “You see,” Steve said, “when it’s cold, the rough stock bucks harder … ‘specially the broncs. Not sure why, but you can see it even with broke horses. On a cold morning, they’re liable to hump their backs and hop a few times just for fun, or to shake out the kinks. Same with rodeo broncs. With them, I think it’s just more fun, though.”

  “Well, I can see where watching broncs in cold weather would make it more fun to watch,” Doc said.

  “That’s only half of it,” Steve said, grinning. “Those poor cowboys who ride them are cold and stiff, too. Doesn’t help much with riding rank stock. And that’s the reason it’s more fun to watch a rodeo in cold weather. It tends to rain frozen cowboys.”

Brought to you by Ol’ Jimmy Dollar, Slim’s children’s book about a happy hounddog man and his “kids.” See it at riograndebooks.com.