Thanksgiving Day

The beginning of our Thanksgiving. How far have we strayed?

In 1789, following a proclamation issued by President George Washington, America celebrated its first Day of Thanksgiving to God under its new constitution. That same year, the Protestant Episcopal Church, of which President Washington was a member, announced that the first Thursday in November would become its regular day for giving thanks, "unless another day be appointed by the civil authorities." Yet, despite these early national proclamations, official Thanksgiving observances usually occurred only at the State level.

Much of the credit for the adoption of a later ANNUAL national Thanksgiving Day may be attributed to Mrs. Sarah Joseph Hale, the editor of Godey's Lady's Book. For thirty years, she promoted the idea of a national Thanksgiving Day, contacting President after President until President Abraham Lincoln responded in 1863 by setting aside the last Thursday of November as a national Day of Thanksgiving. Over the next seventy-five years, Presidents followed Lincoln's precedent, annually declaring a national Thanksgiving Day. Then, in 1941, Congress permanently established the fourth Thursday of each November as a national holiday.

Lincoln's original 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation came - spiritually speaking - at a pivotal point in his life. During the first week of July of that year, the Battle of Gettysburg occurred, resulting in the loss of some 60,000 American lives. Four months later in November, Lincoln delivered his famous "Gettsysburg Address." It was while Lincoln was walking among the thousands of graves there at Gettysburg that he committed his life to Christ. As he explained to a friend:

When I left Springfield [to assume the Presidency] I asked the people to pray for me. I was not a Christian. When I buried my son, the severest trial of my life, I was not a Christian. But when I went to Gettysburg and saw the graves of thousands of our soldiers, I then and there consecrated myself to Christ.

As Americans celebrate Thanksgiving each year, we hope they will retain the original gratefulness to God displayed by the Pilgrims and many other founding fathers , and remember that it is to those early and courageous Pilgrims that they owe not only the traditional Thanksgiving holiday but also the concepts of self-government, the "hard-work" ethic, self-reliant communities, and devout religious faith.

Still working on Wild Woman Creations

Well since we didn't have any other place for the hoist, it seemed like a good idea to make it a more permanent fixture,

and use the ratchet straps somewhere else. So I fabricated a couple of mounting brackets and bolted it it place utilizing the post it was against originally.

We had to keep it in the same location due to the post and also the overhead fan.

That pretty much finishes the Wild Woman's side, so now I can start doing some work on the pick-up. Oh yeah a couple of days ago I was able to work on the LeBaron I replaced the left door latch the piece in the counsel shifter that keeps stuff from falling down into the counsel, and I repaired the switch for the passengers side power window.

Keeping Busy

Well we have got all the dots up for the Wild Woman, and we are now working on the 

permanent mounting brackets for the hoist, and the vent in the bathroom.

They told me that the rear brake hose was on back order for the Ranchero so I put the front two on, bled the brakes and the day after I took it off the lift the rear hose shows up, so now I will have to replace the rear hose sometime.

I also have a door latch and strike post for the LeBaron and might be working on it today.

Looking forward to Cruise Oregon only 35 days away, have already finished my commemorative PMC piece to donate, and replaced the carb and distributer in the Ranchero.

I have applied for a job driving school bus with Mid-Columbia here in Lincoln County, already had my interview and now start the hiring process.

The Joy's of working on Older Cars

Well the "leak" was one of the three rubber hoses in the brake system, so I might as well replace all three, only problem with working on 40 year old cars is that that don't have your parts in stock.

NAPA was able to get the front two hoses, but the rear one they say is discontinued, so time to look at the catalogs. Why is it they can show '60 to '65 and '67 to '70 Falcon but not the '66 :-( , and of course no pictures so we take a chance and order one we hope will work.

Tis the Season :-P

Well the car show season is off to an awesome start,

that is if you don't mind Spring weather on the Oregon Coast, we had showers, sun, wind, thunder and plain old rain.

Vince was the transport for the Grand Marshal but he had to leave the top up, and he left the windows down so that the GM could wave to the crowd and the wind blew the rain in one side of the car and out the other.

The best of Show went to this 1961 Chev "Impala SS Nomad" a lot of really hard work went into making  this one-of-a-kind car and they drive it too, not just to shows, they came down from Washington.

And then after calling it a day early because of the weather, on the way home the brakes on the Ranchero started to fade, one of the front hoses started to leak!

So now I really get to break-in the new shop! Good thing it was ready.

Meanwhile Rosie and I have been working in the studio, we have already had a few classes and I finished the handrail out in front. We had 'Red' make us some Dots to dress up the front of the building and we had a chance last week with the good weather to put some of them up.

Of course I have to wait for the parts for the Ranchero so if the weather stays nice we will put up more dots, if it turns nasty I work inside the building on some other projects.

What's Up

Since getting back from Albuquerque I have not been feeling very well, so not much has been done, but now I'm starting to feel better so BACK TO WORK :-)

Happy Anniversary

Well Stephanie and I have made to our first big milestone, 10 years together.

So we treated ourselves to a road trip to see "MAMMA MIA" on stage at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, NM.

We flew down and the first thing the rental car company wanted to do was stick us in a PT Cruiser (which I find very uncomfortable) so we upgraded and got a Toyota Hi-Lander instead.(Much Nicer).

Then after letting the Garmin figure out where we were we headed to our hotel, an Econolodge, that we had booked online, when we got there it kind of looked deserted, and after waiting a few minutes for the clerk we had our room and headed for it. It was a disaster, the heater was unplugged because the knobs did not work, the access panel for the plumbing of the unit above us was broken so it was hanging from the ceiling, there were stains in the bathtub and the door handle was loose and hanging at a 45 degree angle. So I had picked up some flyers in the lobby and we called the Route 66 Hotel Casino and their rates were not as bad as the other Casinos that we had check out earlier in the area.

So we checked out and headed for our new room, the hotel is only a couple of years old and was not in the garmin so I entered the address that they had on their flyer and off we went, well the Garmin told us to take exit 140 off the freeway and the turn onto a frontage rood and as soon as we had we saw a billboard saying take exit 149, well what's 9 miles on a frontage road? After we had traveled about 4 miles the Garmin said that we had reached our destination, and we were out in the middle of nowhere but we were still beside the freeway so we kept going, well after another mile the pavement ended and the Garmin did not show any road going on so we doubled back to the freeway and sure enough at exit 149 there was our hotel.

So this became our base of operations for the next few days. 

The weather was still being nice to us there was sun but it was cool and the wind was blowing. Tuesday we headed up to Santa Fe and saw how the other half live, we were not impressed! We did have an excellent meal at a restaurant that had been recommended to us, then on the way back to our hotel we did a little sight seeing.

Wednesday we headed up to Sandia Peak and rode the Tram up the 2 1/2 miles to the top, a rise of 4000 feet, quite impressive. When we got to the top the temperature was 20 F and the winds were blowing 20-30 MPH. We were able to have another person take a photo of us at the top.

on the way back down I was able to get a good spot and snap a few pics.

Wednesday night we went to the show and it was GREAT..

Thursday we just rested at the hotel and got ready to go home. That night the news said that a winter storm was headed our way, so we didn't sleep very well and when we got up they were saying on the local news that they had 4 inches of snow on top of Sandia Peak and the interstate highways to the east and to the north had been closed due to hazardous conditions. Luckily for us the roads between our hotel and the airport were clear and so we made it out of there at the right time, we are now back home and I caught a cold from someone, probably on the plane, and Stephanie is opening her Studio/Gallery 5 days a week and getting a lot of positive response and great write-ups in the local papers.