Stories of family, creativity, and diverse distractions.

Author: Walt Page 10 of 12

Peonies In a Jar: The Somber Celebration of Decoration Day

Today is Memorial Day, though the old folks called it Decoration Day. Memorial Day is a big deal now. It’s a three day weekend for many people, and it memorializes fallen soldiers. To hear Madison Avenue tell it, everyone goes to a parade that features a military flyover. After the parade everyone has a cookout with their family. I can’t say how many people really celebrate Memorial Day that way. But I can say for sure that when I was a kid Decoration Day wasn’t like that at all.

Let’s make a pot support for an alcohol stove

In this post and this post I detailed making an alcohol burning backpacking stove from a couple empty drink cans. In the last post we added a snuffer. Today, it’s a pot support. Let’s get to work!

Let’s Make a Snuffer for Our Alcohol Stove!

In this post and this post I detailed making an alcohol burning backpacking stove from a couple empty drink cans. But in order to cook with it we’ll need a few accessories. Today we’re going to make the snuffer, which we can use to put the stove out when we’re done cooking. Let’s get to work!

Orville Ray Hoel: Railwayman, Father, Prankster

Orville Ray Hoel was born May 12, 1906. He was the son of William Henry and Martha Ann Fisher Hoel. Orville was the seventh of nine children. He was Carl’s older brother.

Left to right: Clarence Lorree, Orville Ray, William Henry, Carl Ray and William Ezra Hoel

Let’s Make an Alcohol Stove – Part 2

In last week’s post, we started to make an alcohol stove, and got as far as finishing the bowl and burner ring. Today we’re going to make the inner wall, put everything together and seal it up.

You Gotta Love Computers, or A Shirttail Relation

As you may know, Michelle and I somehow got appointed as the keepers of family history, lore, and photographs in my family. I’m pretty sure the vote took place when I wasn’t present…

Let’s Make an Alcohol Stove

In a previous post, I talked about what I like about alcohol stoves. One of the things that I mentioned is that you can make your own, out of items found easily at hand. So today I’m going to show you how to make your own alcohol stove out of a couple aluminum beverage cans.

Using Alcohol Stoves for Camping and Backpacking

I have used a variety of camping stoves, from the old suitcase-style Coleman gasoline stoves to the most modern butane burners. But for several years I have been mostly using alcohol stoves (sometimes called spirit stoves) for backpacking. Let’s talk about what’s great about them, and what isn’t.

The Great Letdown, or Patching Things Up Back at Home

Jaxon wasn’t along on this trip, but who can resist a cute dog?

On a recent backpacking trip, my air mattress sprung a leak. It was entirely my fault. I was using it outside the tent to lie on while I propped my feet up, and apparently didn’t clear the ground thoroughly enough. At bedtime I discovered that the pad would slowly deflate, bottoming out in about 5 minutes.

Reuniting the Band: A Token Effort

Now that I had workable maps, it was time to get some tokens. “Tokens” in this sense means small pictures that represent a character or monster, and that can be moved around on the map. We use them to determine how far monsters and people can move in one turn, and who is in range to fight whom. In a face to face game you would typically use metal or plastic miniature figures for this purpose. On a virtual tabletop you use picture files.

A typical token

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