Ron the Mine Inspector?

Today was my Dad's birthday, and I always like to remember him today than the day he died..... 

One of my favorite stories he told was about going to a mine in New England. We used to go to New Hampshire every summer for a week, and my dad was a rockhound.... He would often wear a work shirt, and dickies to dig through dirt, rocks, etc. He rolled up to a mine with his working gear on, and pulled a hard-hat out of the trunk. (of course he had a hard hat!)

He walked up to the mine and asked a guy for a tour. The guy grabbed the foreman and gave my dad the five-star tour of the operation. It became evident that the foreman thought my dad was some sort of inspector and not just a curious rockhound. My dad never told him a story, but just went along with it and got a tour that no other rockhound got that summer! My dad said thanks for the tour at the end, and the foreman probably breathed a sigh of relief thinking he passed some kind of safety inspection. In the end, everyone was happy.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Bug-Zapper - Ron style.............

I was watching Jimmy Fallon last night, and it reminded me of a story my father told me.........  His stories always had two themes........ One is that people generally underestimated him, and he was always able to get the upper hand.  (I'm guessing the stories that don't fit these categories were edited out.)

My father was quite an outdoorsman.  In his teens, he traveled all over his parents property and would trap various animals and sell the pelts for money.  He also liked to go hunting, and he reloaded his own ammunition to save money.  He would reload shotgun shells and bullets for various types of weapons.

One day a friend came over and they were in the small shed covering the spring that fed water to the house and farm.  He used this as his "reloading shack" and he and his friend were having a friendly conversation when a big horsefly kept flying around bothering them.  Without missing a beat, my father picked up his six-shooter and plastered the fly against the roof of the shed.  His friend yelled out a yelp and didn't know what to think!  Evidently my father used his bullet molds to make wax bullets!  He loaded the shells with gunpowder and had himself quite a bug-zapper!