The Art of Collecting

 Collecting anything is an art.  Really good collections have been put together by a knowledgeable person who has refined their focus.  I have collected a lot of things over the years and I had to learn how to walk away when the quality was not there or when I couldn't afford the asking price. I have had access to several large collections of motorcycles,  guns and decoys.  If you ever want back in, be careful how you ask what's for sale. That is an art as well. 

Rotations of really good collections are usually based more on boredom than need of cash.  Our focus becomes more refined and selling 3 or 4 items may get us one good item. 

Remember a couple of things when collecting.  You must be your own expert so do your research.   Learn how to walk away and be polite about it,  you may want back in later. And finally...buy only the best that you can afford. Someday it will all be sold so make sure it's all sellable. 

1912 Elmer Crowell Preening Pintail

 This bird sold for over $600,000

John Blair Decoy

 This is not the most expensive decoy ever sold but I like it. You could buy this bird for a bit over $200,000

I have been collecting decoys for quite a long time.  I had an interesting collection years ago but sold most of it.  Recently I started collecting again and sure wish I had kept a few of my best pieces.

 I will never have a bird like the one shown but I have a few that I really like including a pair of redwood Pintails that I carved myself.   When I worked for American Canyon Fire we were burning a house for training. Captain Wallace knew I was looking for some large pieces of redwood So he cut some beams and presented me with a few seasoned pieces of redwood that I carved a nice set of decoys from. Thank you sir, I still have them 

The only pair of Tim Drennen carved decoys

Lucas ET Ignition for BSA 441 Single

 

I just started on another BSA 441 single. This one is a pure race bike with no battery. 

More to come, stay tuned....

My Last Best Dog....

 Prince Indy's Ace

My last best dog.  OK, I confess.  They are all my last best dog.

We bought Ace for my granddaughter and he belongs to her and my wife, I just take care of him.

We had a scare last week and a quick trip to the vet where he got checked out and he's doing fine!

Things like that make you aware of the impact that the loss of a dog can have on people, especially my people, who are very attached to him.

We bought him to replace Golden Ace who was a very aggressive Golden Retriever and not a good fit for our family.  He was rehomed and is doing great.

These things always seem to germinate in my mind...should I get another dog ?  It is a long term commitment and has always been a part of my life.  We were sitting on the back porch and I "found" a litter of black lab puppies that were papered.  I say "found" because you can find anything almost quickly as you think it...not sure that is a good thing?

We went to look at the litter and as soon as we got out of the car Ace came running to us, he was only 7 weeks old.  The other puppies were hiding under benches and whatever they could find.  I told my wife, "this is the one".  She got a little stirred at me because we were supposed to evaluate every puppy and then think about it...not hardly.  I wrote them a check and we went home and surprised Grace with him that afternoon.

He's a good dog and always has been.  Never a growl or snap at any of us.  He destroyed the yard for the first year then settled down.  He graduated at the top of his class in obedience school.  Good dog !

I have had many last best dogs, but I really think that this is my last best dog?

Red or Blue ?

 

Red or blue ?

My 1912 Hendee belle...what color to paint her ?  Since the engine cases and the wheels will match the frame I have to decide early what color.  A friend came by and asked if I was going to paint her the usual red or do something different ?  Blue was an official Indian color.

The perfect color...patina never looks right unless its original

Goodbye Bro......

 David Lawrence Drennen 

May 23, 1950 - December 20, 2021

It's difficult to tell the story of my oldest brother David without going too deep into family history.   I dont remember David as being a boy, he became a man very early in life.  

While my dad was traveling all over the world, David tried to take care of my mom.  He did his best.

David loved my maternal grandfather Willard Truax who had a large farm in North Dakota.   David loved working on the farm with my cousins the Truax's.  I dont remember David being idle for too long. He was always building and experimenting. 

One time he and his friends built a huge balloon out of dry cleaning bags.  It must have been 10 feet high.  They assembled one night in our friends the Waldo's back yard and heated it up so it would float way up high.  They rigged a sterno burner under it which kept it airborne.   The next day there were write ups all across the state of Montana about a UFO !

David was all of our hero from a young age.  Believe me, we needed one ! He was always there to rescue you. We had a very volatile family so it was good to see him coming !

He left home right after he graduated and went to college for a short while in Minnesota. We still lived in Montana after leaving North Dakota.   

Shortly afterwards he enlisted in the Navy and had some good years in the military.   He married his 1st wife Pat and had 2 sons who he dearly loved.

When his 1st marriage ended he went into the US Army and served in Germany.   This was before the Berlin wall came down. He was an Army Scout and patrolled the German border .

I have a picture of him in civilian clothes standing in front of the Russian Kremlin.   He was smuggling bibles into communist Russia. 

About this time he came back into my life. I had a pretty serious accident and my life was in a shambles.   He came out to California and stayed with me and really helped me get back on my feet.  Together we formed Bro Construction and worked all around Vallejo until we saved up enough money to journey across the country on another great adventure.

We drove across the country in my van and I still remember everything. He had to stop everywhere that was interesting. 

I went to visit him in Alabama before he left for Europe.   This was a truly life changing weekend.   We went spelunking in some caves that he and his friend Steve Calvert knew about.  I'm not sure how bright it was but it was interesting!

We were going to go to Europe and tour around together.   I wasn't able to go but he did.

He ended up back in Germany where he became a German trained engineer.  

This is when he met and married his dear wife Heide.I believe this was in 1986. 

 My life took some serious changes that year for the good and we always stayed close to each other.  Neither of us held back on our beliefs but we always ended things peacefully. 

We didn't agree on everything such as politics and religion but we always stayed close friends. We agreed to disagree..

We just decided that we would be close regardless.   

We often talked on the phone,  it was always "hello bro" and ended with "I love you bro".

David was a deeply religious person and was totally engrossed in politics.   He studied and taught constitutional law. 

He worked as a systems engineer in the automotive industry.  He was working right up until he contracted COVID a few weeks ago. It turned into pneumonia. 

I will miss you bro ....

P.S.  David was very private and hated the internet but I wanted him to be remembered properly. 

The black and white picture was in 1967 just before my brother Dale was struck by a car and killed.  Dale is holding  the cat.  He loved all animals.   The car missed David by inches.  David is in the back row next to my dad. My brother Gilbert is in front, I am in the next beside my sister Leah and just in front of my mom. My brother Dana is next to me.

 

You Can't Wear Out an Indian Scout

 My old 1927 Indian Scout. This was a very cool motorcycle that I should not have sold.

I rode it a fair bit and it was fun, but you had better plan your stops.  

I was riding it one day and it stopped running.  I pulled over and noticed that part of the carburetor had vibrated loose and fallen off.  I walked back down the road and the missing part was laying in the street. I screwed it back on and the little Scout started right up and I rode home.

"You can't wear out an Indian Scout"

Hillclimber for Tiff

 Sometimes you just know where something belongs...

I Rang the Bell Today...

I wrote this on March 10,2022

Since that time we have all lost many loved ones to cancer...it is an evil disease 

 I rang the bell today..I rang it because its been 5 years and I am now cancer free, I rang it for all my friends who are fighting cancer today, I rang it for all of our loved ones that cancer took.  I rang the bell today..

I wrote this on March 10,2022. Since then I have lost many more friends to cancer.  It is an evil disease!

First I would like to thank my God who was with me through the whole time.

I would like thank my dear wife Laurie who cared for me as I went through treatment and drove me to all of my appointments and waited patiently as I went through everything.   Thank you so much.

I would like to thank my granddaughter Grace who came in and checked on me when the chemo was almost too much.  It kept me going just to see you every day. Thank you 

I would like to thank all of the staff at Compassionate Cancer Care especially my dear  friend and nurse Maritta who was always there.  Thank you.  

I am thankful for my good doctor Raowas who was always honest and listened. 

I thank my good friend Caesar who jumped on a plane and came to check on me when things were real bad.  You were like an angel when you walked into the ICU unit that day.

Thank you David, Rodney, Aaron and all of my dear friends and brothers who were always there.

Thank you Leah and  Jerry for driving out to see me.  I wasn't a very good host but thank you.

I would like to thank my  nurse at Riverside Community Hospital who always just showed up.  You were there was when they did the bone marrow biopsy, you were there when they put my chemo port in and you were there when they drained all the fluid from my lungs so I could breathe.   I was too sick to remember your name but you were an angel.  You weren't even my official nurse but you just showed up...

Thank you Tom Truax for calling me every month...I hope that you are doing well. 

Thank you all my friends for your prayers and get well cards.

Thank you to all the children in the Vallejo church who made me cards that day.  I read them all.

I rang the bell today....

Silver Rings and Other Things...

After leaving Montana and moving to live with my sister in Benicia, California I still needed to finish High School.  My sister's neighbor was a lady named Colleen Coll who played a huge part in my life.  She gave us connections to get me enrolled in the C.E.T.A. program. Now that I think about it, I believe that she worked there.

Through CETA you could go to High School and get your diploma or go to Mare Island Naval Base and be trained as a machinist.  I chose to go to High School which was a corner spot named New Youth Campus on the corner of Georgia and Marin Streets.  Most of us students were not the best students.  I think the teacher was scared of us and was always a bit jumpy.  To get back to the rings...  he was also a silversmith and made the rings that are shown in the picture which was my graduation picture.  Yes I thought that I was cool.  Really just a big dumb kid!

Fast forward a few years and I had gotten my first tattoo by Lyle Tuttle Jr. and we were on the way to Wyoming.  I had my girl, my bike and my silver rings.  What could possibly go wrong?  

I shared some of my experiences in my last story but after my girl went back to California the little raggedy cabin by the lake was not my favorite place.  

My brother and I were driving down the main street in Riverton one day and he told me that whatever I do....do not go in that bar.  Of course that is exactly where I went the next Friday night.  I was hanging out with a couple of cowboy looking gents. I didn't know that in their little drug addled little minds, they had decided that I was a narcotics officer.  As the evening went on things got stranger and stranger.  I was invited to take a drive and we would pick up a few things to partake in, why not? We went to a certain trailer house way out in the country and one guy went in and the other guy stayed in the car.  Cars used to have large bench seats and I was sitting up front between these guys which wasn't that unusual back then.  

When we stopped something felt wrong and I got in the back seat.  The guy came back and got in the front, then turned around and put a gun to my head.  He was pretty stirred up and was convinced that I was law enforcement.  He and his friend were going to kill me and dump my body off by the country road we came in on.  I was totally calm and pushed the barrel aside which really got the guy stirred.  He pointed the gun back at my head.  This took place several times until I convinced him to put the gun down and we would talk about it.  When he put the gun down I jumped out of the car and ran behind a dumpster.  They took off and here I was , in the middle of a trailer park way deep in the country and it was about 2 in the morning.  Picture me as I look in the picture with a black leather jacket and ask yourself if you would let me in your house?  I knocked on a door and the couple who lived there let me in and I called the Sheriff.  I'm sure that the man of the house was armed and I don't blame him.  The Sheriff came and took my story and gave me a ride back into town where my car was parked.  Now get this....the guys were walking back into the bar !  I told the police that they were the ones who attempted to shoot me and they were arrested,  When the Sheriff arrested them he asked them "why did you try to kill him"  and their reply was " because we thought he was an undercover narc"!   

It's whole other story but long haired guys don't fair well in court against cowboy drug dealers in Wyoming in the late 1970's. Yes, they got off Scott free.

So what has that got to do with rings?  After the drug dealing cowboys attempted to assassinate me, they were released and threatened my life.  My brother had a small .22 caliber revolver that he had disabled by filling the barrel with lead and breaking off the firing pin.  He gave this to me for protection?  I drilled out the barrel and made a firing pin from the tip of a small screw driver.  Not super accurate but it worked.  I used to lay on my bed and shoot at mice as they ran up and down the wall.  I don't remember hitting one.....

One evening after the snow had come and the lake froze over I took a walk and met a couple of one percenter bikers who were ice fishing.  They had an RV and after a while they invited me to come in and partake in some libations.  As we sat there one of the guys was admiring my rings and asked to try one on.  I gave it to him and he put it on his finger but he intended to to keep it.  There was no way that I could have won in that situation so I made my excuses and went and got my .22 revolver.  When I came back I told him that I wanted my ring back.  I kept my hand on the pistol in my pocket. He became very indignant and said that I gave it to him and that we were brothers.  I don't mean to make me out to be super brave or that I threatened them, I did not.  I simple told him that I wanted my ring back.  I'm sure that it was the grace of God in that situation as it could have went very badly.  Probably for me.  He finally gave it back and sorry there was no dramatic shoot out!  

It amazes me to this day how someone could get killed over some silly thing but this is a true story and there were several bodies found by that road and others around Riverton and Lander Wyoming.  

When I watch the show Longmire , I can totally relate......

 

A Dollar, a Blanket and a Bible......

I don't know why but I was thinking about this story this morning.  It's true and then some....

 A very long time ago I made the transition from California to Wyoming in search of construction work. My oldest brother lived in Riverton and told that there was plenty of opportunities for employment.  I drove up there with a friend and started on a series of adventures that brought me very close to death several times.  Everything took place in about a four month period of time.

When we arrived in Wyoming I found that my brother and his wife had decided that we were not welcome to stay in their home.  Fair enough....  He told us to follow him and he would show us where we would be living.  OK, at this point in my life I was used to rough living but this was on another level.  He took us to a cabin way out in the country that consisted of one room with a propane cooker, not a stove!  The toilet and showers were just a short walk away!  It had not yet gotten cold but that was coming.  I was 20 miles out of town with winter coming.  Have you been to beautiful Wyoming in the winter?  I grew up in North Dakota and Montana so I had some idea of what was coming!

After a short while my friend hot footed it back to California and took her car with her.  I had found work building flood dams way out in the middle of nowhere but now had to find transportation.  My other brother Gilbert loaned me a car which was very gracious of him. Thank you sir! It was an old car but it ran.  When I think of this car... "hoopdie" comes to mind.

I will save the story of how I was almost executed for being a narcotics officer for another time...oh yes, Wyoming was fun.  Also a near catastrophic encounter with a couple of one percenter motorcycle club members.  Wyoming is home to a pretty notorious motorcycle club believe it or not.  I am not naming names...

I transitioned into a job in Riverton when the dams were completed which was a bit better.  It was now cold winter and I was working for a guy building a restaurant in town and had decided that California was a better place after all.  One day after work my boss was complaining about  how he was in the middle of a divorce and was stuck with car payments on a beautiful yellow Corvette convertible.  After a bit, he suggested that I take the said car and go somewhere else.  He would give me 24 hours and then report it as stolen...great idea right?

I procured the Corvette and took it back to my cabin which had lost it's charm pretty quickly.  I had my black BSA chopper, some books, clothes and a German Shepherd puppy which needed to rapidly fit into the Corvette.   I removed the passenger seat and disassembled the motorcycle and stuffed everything in the car and took off for California with the puppy on my lap.  After almost wrecking the car twice in the mountains I drove to California in 24 hours.  Driving through Nevada I was clocking over 100 mph the whole way.  I might be wrong but I don't believe that Nevada had a day time speed limit at that time, some states didn't.

Long story short...the guy didn't give me 24 hours and I was arrested in Vallejo for grand theft auto and it was serious because I had crossed multiple state lines.  After hanging out in the Solano county jail for a month  or so I was extradited back to Wyoming in the back of the Sheriffs car in handcuffs and chains.  

Solano County Jail was not at that time for the faint of heart.  People doing long sentences in the most notorious prisons in California would go the county jail when being resentenced or going for an appeal.  I am telling you...you had better learn some things very quickly !  County jail was possibly worse than prison?

The Sheriff decided that since had to go pick me up that he would make it a vacation for him and his wife.  They were actually pretty kind to me, thank you.  No, you don't stay in a hotel overnight when being extradited! A very interesting journey for sure....

My BSA ended up in the trunk of a friends car for several months which is another story.  A big thank you to the Coll family, you were great!

When I got back to Wyoming I was locked up in the county jail and awaited trial. That's an experience that impacted me even to this day....yikes! 

My brother did help me out by talking to the Sheriff and then the Sheriff found my old boss and the whole story got changed so that I was found not guilty and released.  I really had not stolen the car and he sure couldn't claim insurance fraud now could he ?

I spell Sheriff with a capitol letter because the person holding that office has a lot of power and authority and deserve some respect. Most of them are pretty fair because they see a lot.

It was now January or February and the winter had fully set in.  The day I was released my brother gave me a dollar, a blanket and a bible and then took me out of town and let me out of his truck.  I think he might have bought me breakfast first?  Have a nice trip!  You know, amazing enough I was completely happy.  It was early days yet.

I hitch hiked from Riverton to Vallejo, California in dead winter.  Some people were cool and some not so much.  Mostly I rode with truckers, a few hippies and some other strange individuals.  I walked for miles leaving Salt Lake City, some trucker had let me out at a truck stop and it was dead night and cold.  To stay warm I walked until the sun came up and then just sat by the road until my next ride.  The sun was up and it was a bit warmer.  I got a ride with a guy in a VW bug and he took me as far as Lake Tahoe where a full blown blizzard had blown in.  I mean cold and a lot of snow.  He parked for the night but it was cold and I got out and walked over to a cafe which was next to the road closure station.  I couldn't buy anything but a police officer saw me and bought me some coffee and something to eat.  Thank you sir!   I had a lot of experiences with law enforcement officers and I found most of them to be fair and would go as far as they could to help you if you gave them some respect and didn't lie to them.  Almost everybody lies !

It was the middle of the night and they had were getting ready to close the pass. I was back out on the road trying to get a ride.  The picture I show is how I looked so I don't blame folks for not letting me ride with them. Cars would drive by and splash slush on me and it was cold!!  I walked over to the police officer that was letting trucks and pickups with four wheel drive get through.  I told him, "if you don't get me a ride I'm going to freeze to death." The last pickup truck they were letting through was driven by two drunk cowboys.  The officer insisted that they let me in and they did.  To be honest, after a few miles they were pretty cool about it.  They gave me a pack of smokes and a few dollars and took me as far as  Sacramento.  Man I'm telling you, sunny California looked good!

My life was a mess and my prospects were slim.  But really... a dollar, a blanket and a bible?