About Knight Transportation/Refrigerated

They have up thru 12 levels of pay ...
but regardless of how many years of trucking experience you have
everyone starts at the same "starting rate" level.
That 0-200 mile pay is actually for 50-200 miles.
0-50 miles they pay you an hourly rate.
Team pay is split between the 2 drivers ... each getting $0.20 per mile ... for every paid mile that the truck runs (regardless of who is driving).

Knight is one of the few trucking companies that apparently penalizes you for taking longer mileage trips ... THE LONGER THE RUN, THE LESS YOU GET PAID PER MILE. You will not find this on their website. Only after you have applied to them will they send this information out to you.

There ARE drivers who have been there a long time. If you live close to one of their terminals ... you WILL get home on a regular basis. Which is really nice. And, like any trucking company, they do have some 98 mph dispatchers ... while their trucks are governed at 62 mph.

Deer at Night

While traveling home about 10 p.m. last night on a little narrow two-lane road in the countryside ... we saw a dim image coming from our left ... suddenly we were on a collision course with a large buck deer ... as my wife startled me by suddenly screaming ... the deer (who had started running forward ... towards our right) reared upward and back ... we missed each other by only inches.  Good thing we prayed for protection for us, our vehicle, and those around us.  By all rights, there should have been a damaged car and a dead or injured deer.

Spectator Sport

Presley thought checking the garden was a spectator sport ...
until I turn the camera on him ...

He definitely didn't see any treats.
"Get that thing out of my face ..."
And when I flipped up the flash unit
he hopped off the porch and headed into the bushes.

Garden - Not Yet

I was looking at a blog in SoCal ... and they were already showing tomatoes that they harvested from their garden just last week!
Some from a volunteer plant that grew on its own ...
So, I decided to step out side and see
what was volunteering in my garden ...
Doesn't look too good from this angle ...

I don't think it looks any better from this angle either ...

So I finally pulled out all the grass and dead plants ...
raked the two garden plots ...
and all of that stuff ended up in a kind of brown compost pile,
way back behind that tree.
And I was bit by several fire ants while wearing my crocs (and no socks) to work on the garden.

Sleeping In Our Driveway

Hey⁄! I don't care if you ARE planning on leaving ...
don't bother me ... I'm sleeping ...

Occasional light rain showers all day.
Visited with Homer, Rachel, Peggy, and Diane.

Presley

No cats have come around lately to eat ...

It might have something to do with our neighbor's dog, Presley,

deciding that our house was a nice place to relax.

How about rubbing my tummy?

Well, are you going to rub me or not?

Ah, phooey. Take your camera and go away.

Grandpa's Red Barn

This is grandpa's old red barn.  This foto was taken in 1975 ...

before the dam burst and wiped it all away.

I took the foto from just north of the machine shed ... in the north pasture ... just due west of what used to be the grove of trees "B.G." (before grandma - she chopped them down ... because a "modern" farm didn't have groves of trees to supply wood to repair things and for firewood.)

The barn had seen better days ... but served long and faithfully.

The south extension was the milking parlor (with the bin of molasses oats) and a hay loft above it.  The north extension had the calf stalls on the ground level and hay loft above.  On the north side of the building was sometimes a pig pen and beyond that the main haystack.  There was a west wall on the barn to block wind for the cattle huddling inside during the winter.  The two beams extending outward from the peak have a metal rail on the underside to drop a hay rake down to pick up a load of hay then transport it inside and store it in the lofts.  There were always pigeons nesting in the upper reaches and walking along that ledge of the upper openings

 ...  a bit out of the effective range of BB-guns.

Here you see the corral on the east side of the barn.  Past the milking parlor door was another corral on the south & west sides.  After the winter we'd clean out the floor of the barn and the corrals, of the built-up manure ... put it in the manure spreader wagon, and spread it on the fields to fertilize them.  I slipped and a loaded wagon ran over my legs one time in the barn ... fortunately there was still a lot of manure cushion so nothing happened to me.  But accidents can happen on the farm.

Old Time Tools

How many of these can you name and tell what they were used for??

Modern laundry equipment ... keep little hands out of the wringer

Can you name any of these??

What are all the little knobs for?

Are you ancient if you once had to use one of these?

Siblings

These are some scanned fotos of some siblings ...
guess who ... but don't tell.

More Art Show

I liked this painting with its little vertical lines ...

A view a little further around the side of the gourd.

Addie thought the Paul Newman painting was good enough to kiss

Black sun and a collage ... which Addie wanted.

Black & White Art Show

I attended a Black & White Art Show this evening.
This is a gourd that was carved and painted ... won 1st Prize.
The camera flash distorts the color of the paint ...
but brings out the details.

The black sun in the background was painted by Kat.

This is the actual color of the gourd.
It was absolutely the best piece in the show.

Questions Answered

The Recruiter said, "Ok. All my questions have been answered. Now I need to get together with the regional driver guys and see if we have an opening in your region. I'll email you."

No email yet.

Icy Proposition

That is ICE on top the water in this bucket!
That may not be surprising or interesting to people in Certain parts of the country like Country Doctors Wife or like The Pioneer Woman who are already freezing their tails off in snow and ice ... but this is unusual down south on the Gulf Coast. Next to it is the un-dead Christmas tree ... still in its original pot from over a year ago ... tossed back outside to survive on its own.

They are talking about a "hard-freeze" warning tonight ... wind chill of 19 at the moment. Brrrrrr! The Milkmans Wife is living with -34 degrees today. I don't think I'll go outside before Noon.

UPDATE: Even in direct sunlight in the middle of the day ...
that ice never melted. Uh-oh.

Looking Up

Received a card in the mail today from Werner ...
Isn't it pretty!
They are out of Omaha, Neb. and it is almighty cold up there right now.


UPDATE: called them ... they asked, "Who are K&J Partnerships?" ... a bookkeeping company ... so they are trying to verify my convoluted work history ... "Call us back about the same time tomorrow for a status report."

Once Upon A Time ... From Long, Long Ago

When Oliver Kingsbury Meservy & Charlotte Eleanor Bagley married
This was the log home they built to live in and have their children.
Besides chinking the cracks between the logs with mud, they bought fabric, sewed it together, hung it down the walls & under the ceiling, and painted it white to insulate and attempt to stop the wind from blowing through in the winter.
After the new plank house was built, this was used as a garage and then as a shop.

In front is the old pioneer cabin that was used as a granary.
To the left is the chicken coop ... to the right the equipment shed
and in the back is the big red barn

This is the new house with short Grandma Meservy (Charlotte Eleanor Bagley) standing next to Jan Janett Johnson Meservy
The red barn is in the background.

An unusual family foto with all living children & Leroy Watson.

engagement foto ... for those who think nothing was kept.

Oliver Kingsbury Meservy - age 22

Joseph Robert Meservy and his wife, Mary Ophelia Kingsbury

Emanuel J. Bagley, father of Charlotte Eleanor Bagley

JaNae Suzanne in the play Saturday's Warrior

Blogging for Niece

I applied to 3 trucking jobs and 1 shuttle bus job. I've had some kind of response from the shuttle bus and one trucking company. Nothing definite on any of that yet.

Had a 4 state broadcast from SLC today ... shorter than the usual conference meeting.

Temperature started out warm this morning and is definitely colder by mid-day. All the trees are blossoming ... is supposed to freeze Thursday night ... NOT good.

Don't need my cane for walking ... just for levering my rear up out of the seat ... just to get past that tailbone pain layer.

More Little Town

That's it.  The entire "old" downtown area.

The 2-story building behind the police car is the old Masonic lodge.

The brown one with the green awning on the right is our one lawyer.

One stop shopping for couples ...

gunshop on the left ... hair salon on the right.

(the bicycle is one of mine)

Measuring tape in hand ... we found

we are living in 386 sq feet of space ... 2 bedrm, 3/4 bath.

That thing protruding out of the back wall ... 

is where they had to cut through the wall in order to insert a shower.

You have to step into the shower to change your mind or turn around.

Can barely wiggle between the pot and the sink.

The blue-tarpped lean-to is for extra storage.

Little Town life.

Life in a little town can be somewhat different.  I live on a narrow little street that used to be somebody's driveway ... it becomes a one-way street twice a day when parents deliver and pick up their children from the elementary school ... 3 buildings left of where I live.  Our house is so big it would probably fit inside our neighbor's swimming pool.  Just south of our shed/workshop they inserted the Family Healthcare Center ... where a P.A. and 2 nurses show up twice a week to see patients.  The other building between the medical building and the school is the old historical Baptist Bible College (Oates-Reynolds building).  In back of all of this are cow pastures and a couple of cell-phone towers.

The town is basically "Y" shaped.  One main road that runs through from NE to SE ... with a road that branches off and runs East from the Liberty gas station/convenience store in the middle of "old" downtown.

The town library is located in the former Bible college ... having moved from the old city hall building in "old" downtown.  Then, due to the space available and the historical building funds the mayor decided to move city hall into the old Bible college building ... leaving the police department and the court in the former city hall ... next door to the former city bank (which Wachovia bought and then closed).  Our bank is now a branch of another little town bank (Hartford) and is a trailer located directly in front of the medical center.  The ambulance service moved out of "old" downtown and into a former convenience store building just north of the bank trailer ... the gas station located just north of the ambulance service is now a church.

Old downtown is now mostly empty buildings ... leaving just our one lawyer and the laundromat across from the police department.  The Masonic lodge bailed out of the only two-story building in "old" downtown and moved back of the ambulance service.  So, downtown has effectively moved 2 blocks SE of "old" downtown.  Our only restaurant (Andy's) and the Used car business on College St, have both moved 6 miles down the road to the next little town (Pinkard).  Even the Post Office left "old" downtown and moved just south of the elementary school.

Old downtown still has a gas station convenience store where you can buy really good breakfast biscuits in the morning.  The senior citizens center is located 2 buildings east of the convenience store on King St ... Just down the street from the Methodist and Baptist churches (they are located within a block of each other on the same street) ... the Assembly of God church is a street east and a block south of the Baptists.  Once you get past all the churches you come to the gunshop & hair salon buildings ... keeps the women looking good and the men well supplied for deer hunting season.

If you go to the far NE stretches of the claimed town limits ... you will find the only traffic light, a massage parlor, a strip joint, and a truck stop ... in between here and there are a whole lot of cotton and peanut fields, woods, and some cow pastures.  

The biggest annual excitement is the tiny civil war re-enactment down the hill in the postage-stamp sized park by the river.  The town is built on the hill because periodically the river floods half a mile wide and wipes out all the mobile homes and other structures down in the valley.  But it doesn't go more than 6-8 feet deep, so the Village Inn down at the crossroads keeps being re-built.  

Several other gas stations have come and gone ... along with a couple of hardware stores.  Last year some one set up business at the old Ard Hardware store/gas station parking lot to sell their fresh truck garden produce.  We even have a Napa auto parts store/car mechanic.

And that is about all the excitement from our little neck of the woods.

Urban Meyer Strikes Twice! ... Crimson Tide drains away ...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) -Out of their element, out of their league - and still perfect.

7th-ranked Utah came down from the mountains to SEC country
and established themselves as the best of the BCS busters,
finishing 13-0 with a convincing 31-17 win
over No. 4 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl on Friday night.

Utah linebacker Stevenson Sylvester said.
"We expect to get a lot more respect after this game."
The Utes are as close as it gets stylistically to the only other team to beat Alabama this season. When Urban Meyer left the Utes for the Florida Gators, Whittingham kept Meyer's spread-option offense intact. While the Utes don't have Tim Tebow at the controls, they do have an effective leader in quarterback Brian Johnson,
who was also a Meyer recruit.