How I caught the Biggest Trout Ever in the State of Wyoming

     

   I live at an Assisted Living Home for Veterans’ just west of Buffalo Wyoming.  At present I’m confined to a wheelchair, but this didn’t stop me from being an avid fisherman.

      One particular morning I was headed for our fishing pond just south of Clear Creek, a creek that runs adjacent to our property. To reach this pond you have to descend a somewhat steep hill and cross a small bridge at the bottom of this hill.

     On coming down this hill I lost control of my wheelchair and almost crashed into the bridge. The only thing stopping me from going over the side was a large rock that spun me around. This action causing my fishing pole to come lose from it’s mooring and dropped onto the ground, causing the hook to come lose and plop into the water.

    And wouldn’t you know it, a fish hit the hook just like that. “Bam” it took off down the creek with the hook in its mouth. Quickly gathering my wits about me, I grab the pole and began to reel him in. I fought with this monster for what seemed like hours before bring him ashore along the creek.

     There I was, looking at the biggest fish I had ever laid eyes on, a true whooper. I knew instinctively this was the biggest Trout in Wyoming….. well hell, for the whole country for all I know. A true record sitting fish if I had ever seen one. 

     But me being a true Sportsmen, I set him free to swim on for another day. I just couldn’t kill a majestic animal like this one. The Granddaddy of all Trout.

     But then to my chagrin, I realized I had no way of proving my story to my fellow Veterans’ at the Home. I had no eyewitness’s, no one to verify my tale that I had just caught the biggest Trout in all of Wyoming. Looking around I quickly picked up the only thing that can prove my story to be true. I went back to my room and got a camera and took a picture of the very rock I hit on that bridge that cause this unseeingly amazing chain of events thus proving once and for all that Fishermen and Golfers don’t lie. 

The very rock I hit

                               Yours truly” Butch the Gospel Truth” Carr

Superdude

Able to leap over tall bullets in a single bound
More powerful that a Wino’s breath
Faster that an Act of Congress…

New open air Outhouses

The Obituary of Rudolph

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer Obit.

Obituary from The North Pole Gazette.      The North Pole Gazette has announced  that Santa’s long time leading reindeer, Rudolph, has succumbed to Brucellosis, and past away quietly yesterday.       He will no longer be playing any Reindeer games, said Santa of his long time friend, and I’ll have nobody to guide my sleigh tonight, lamented  Santa. He surly will be missed. …...Rudolph was famous for his Proboscis Rouge ( Latin for red nose ) that he had acquired from many, many nights cavort with a certain other promiscuous Reindeer named Vixen. Too many late night party’s had caused him to acquire his “Shiny Red Nose” that he was so famous for.       Rudolph is survived by his fellow yoke mates, Dasher, Dancer, and Prancer, Comet Cupid,Vixen, Doner and Blitzen, but, he was of course the most famous reindeer of them all.      In honoring the memory of Rudolph, the Hormel Meat Packing Company has bought Rudy's carcass and plans to make Spam out of him. Sort of a Rudolph in a can if you will. A spokesman for Hormel said “Now every time you have a Spam sandwich at the picnic, you’ll think of Ole Rudolph”.      A eulogy service will be held after the holidays, followed by a buffet that will feature “La Pâté ala Rudolph”, because, as Santa says,  “Rudolph would have wanted it that way”.

Ebenezer Scrooge, a misunderstood Republican

    Ebenezer Scrooge, a misunderstood Republican            I was watching the Dickens classic , A Christmas Carol, on TV last night and it got me to thinking. Here was a good conservative Republican that got a bad rapt by the liberal Democratic bias media . Think about it, Ebenezer Scrooge was a respected businessman and a pillar of his community. He may have not been the most well liked guy, but he helped the English economy to thrive.      Along with his now deceased partner, Jacob Morley, of oh these seven years, they had built up a lucrative Counting House (money lenders) in London. It was a prosperous company, and he was a stalwart leader of the business community. This fact alone made him a target for the bleeding heart liberals who wanted a piece of the action. Rich banker, lucrative business, you do the arithmetic. To them it sounded like just another greedy republican tycoon living of the backs of the oppressed working class’s.            In this film we find Ebb hard at work at his desk when a contingency from the local S.T.W.D. (Share The Wealth Democrats ) arrives at his office looking for a hand out. But Ebb is ready for their liberal isms, and says, “aren’t the poorhouses still open, aren’t the workhouse’s still in operation”?     All of which are good solid institutions of their day. Programs design by a Republican Department of Labor to aid the poor and less fortunate. (who says Republicans don’t have a heart.)        When they inform him that, yes indeed, the poorhouses and workhouse’s are still in operation, they then whine, the poor people don’t have enough to eat and surely might indeed die from starvation. Ebb looks them straight in the eyes and exclaims, “good, then let them die and decrease the worlds surface population”. Ebenezer wasn’t being mean, he was  looking at it from a socialistic point of view, birth control and zero population growth, both of which, by-the-way are good republican ideas.        But ole Ebb’s troubles have only just beginning. It seems that the S.T.W.D. has spiked his drink. At his meager evening meal, remember, Scrooge was a conservative and not apt to be flamboyant in his dinning habits. Eating at MacHenry the VIII was good enough for him. He bites into a MacHenry Burger and starts to hallucinate. Ebb blames it on “ a bit of un-digested potato, or a piece of  mystery meat that’s in the burger”.  He insists that Morley doesn’t exist. But Jacob convinces him that indeed he does exist and informs him that he will be visited by three ghosts.      The first ghost “The Ghost of Christmas Past, will point out to him all the things the Republicans have done wrong to the country, and why it’s all his fault.       The second ghost, The Ghost of Christmas Present,  will allude to “The Present”, as not  meaning right now but, “The Presents” that certain politicians will KICK BACK this year, WINK, WINK, NUGE, NUGE. If you know what I mean?        And finally, while Ebb is still in his drug induced state, Morley tells him of a third spirit to visit him.” The Ghost of Christmas Future”.  Here is were I think they slip him some Sodium Pentothal or Ecstasy or something like that, because after the visit of “The Ghost of the Future” Ebb flips out and starts spending money like a New Deal Democrat running for office, a chicken in every pot and a new car in every garage etc. Sublimely I thought I heard F.D.R. singing “Good Times are Here Again” in the background.         In the beginning of this movie it is suggested that Ebenezer is a cold hearted Republican because he had admonishes his clerk, Bob Cratchet for using to much fuel.  The decadent Mr. Cratchet wants to deplete the nations fuel supply, by putting another lump of coal on the fire  because he’s too cold. Whereas Mr. Scrooge would have turned down the thermostat and put on a sweater. All the signs of a good conservative republican, not a man that’s out to rape and pillage the nations natural resources.        Through-out the rest of the show we are bombarded with the right-wing spin that the “Sob-Sisters of Hollywood” always put in these kind of  films. We are asked to ballyhoo the plight of Tiny Tim and to savage the Capitalistic Industrialist who are trying to scuttle HMO’s and Medicare programs that are advantageous to the average workingman. If Tiny Tim is to have an operation on his leg, he is going to need these programs.     He looked OK to me, he’s even out throwing snowballs with his hoodlum friends. He even knots the felt hat off of “ole” Ebenezer with a snowball when he is walking home from work. Where is the parenting here I ask you? It’s just more Democratic “feel-good” pampering if you ask me.        The movie ends with a brainwashed Ebb, the liberals had gotten to him. He squanders all his money by buying a Christmas Goose for everybody and gives Bob Cratchet a generous pay raise. What they don’t tell you is that after the New Years Eve celebration, he is now bankrupt and has to go into foreclosure. And without the money lending industry, the English economy tanks and the whole country goes into a recession. They, the movie industry, have conveniently left that part out. So much for a Merry Christmas.          So the next time you watch this Dickens Christmas Classic, just keep an open mind and don’t succumb to the democratic liberal manifesto that says its all the republicans fault.   Merry Christmas from Butch “I’m not the Grinch” Carr

The Slaw Makers

The Slaw Maker
By
E.B. Carr Jr.

 
     Brown leaves blow across the parking lot and crackle underfoot as I walk up the hill. I’m forced to squint into the bright cold sun light as I pull my jacket a little tighter around me.. It’s not yet winter, but very close to it.
    In New York City in Central Park West.  marching bands and colorful floats are massing to march down Broadway enter Times Square, proceed on to Harold Square, and escort Santa Claus to Macy’s Department Store. Across this country of ours gridiron gladiators have done battle for the honor of their schools amid a myriad of cheering and adoring fans. In homes across the land, family’s are sitting down for the traditional turkey dinner. Thanksgiving is here.
     I have walked up this hill and I’m now sitting on the bench overlooking the town of Buffalo. With collar turned up and hat pulled down against a cold wind, I think of all those warm homes with all those smells of Thanksgiving permeating the kitchens of those homes down there in town. Roasting turkeys, minced meat and pumpkin pies, mashed potatoes, candied yams and a host of other goodies that are about to hit the tables. I can picture family members chatting, aunts and uncles catching up on family gossip. Siblings squirming at the “little kids table” with anticipation of the coming feast. An American tradition.
 
      I am surrounded by people up here at the Vet’s Home, both residents and staff, but yet I still feel alone. As I sit here on this bench, my mind drifts off to a farmhouse in the pinelands of old South Jersey. It’s gone now, a victim of developers.  My mind drifts to a Thanksgiving of long ago, to a family not unlike these I can imagine here in Buffalo. To a Thanksgiving of when I helped my father fix the leaks on old man Millers chicken coops.  It was a strange thing to do on Thanksgiving so I guess that’s why I remember it so well. My father was self-employed, and he had to take jobs as they came along. Old man Millers chicken coops needed repair and that’s what paid for our Thanksgiving dinner that year.
    Mom cooked on a wood stove in those days. A cast-iron affair with ‘warmers’ above which she used to let her bread dough rise. It had an oven off to the right of the fire-box into which the turkey was placed on holidays and a chicken on Sundays. We raised our own chickens and roasting one on a Sunday became a family tradition. How many of you remember breaking the wishbone? My brother Bill and I had somehow gotten the task of making the coleslaw for our family feasts. He and I would set up the “meat grinder” as we called it to make the slaw. It was a handed cranked affair with a vice like device on the bottom that you attached to a table. We did this every year; it became a family tradition, Bill and I making coleslaw. 
 
      Back in today’s world the Fairmount Park Mounted Police of Philadelphia, are about to lead floats and String Bands down Ben Franklin Parkway pass the Philadelphia Art Museum to start off the nations oldest Thanksgiving Day Parade. If I try real hard I can imagine I hear the sounds of String Bands way off in the distances.     
    I’m brought back to realty by the drone of an airplane somewhere far off overhead. I think of the circumstances that put these individuals in the air on a Thanksgiving Day. It must be important. I look at my watch, it’s12:30, time to go back down the hill for our Dinner at the Home. I take one last look across the valley of Buffalo, I stand there and wonder if there is anybody down there who can use a guy who knows how to make coleslaw using an old meat grinder?

The End

The Rest of the Story ( Jean Baptiste Charbonneau )

Jean Baptiste Charbonneau

Son of Sacagawea 

By

Butch “the Gospel Truth” Carr

One of the stipulations that Sacagawea made for guiding the Corps of Discovery Expedition led by Lewis and Clark to the Pacific Ocean, was that either Lewis or Clark educate her son, Jean Baptiste Charbonneau in a ‘white school’ back east. Wm. Clark took a liken to the boy and took Jean back to St. Lewis when the Expedition ended, and enrolled Jean Baptiste in a prestigious school there.
All of this can be found in the history books. But the history books missed a few things about Jean Baptiste life. Through some diligent research, I “Butch the Gospel Truth Carr” have uncovered the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say.
While attending school in St. Lewis Jean Baptiste heard about a young fellow by the name of Abner Doubleday who had just invented a game called Baseball. Its popularity was quickly sweeping the nation. As a side note I might add that this lead to the invention of Hot Dogs, Peanuts and Cracker Jacks. But let me regress.
Jean Baptiste became so enamored with this new game that he dropped out of school and tried out for a position on the newly formed baseball team called the “St. Lewis Blue Jay’s”, later to be called the St. Lewis Cardinals. After a few successful seasons as a pitcher with the “Jays”, Jean was eventually traded to the Chicago White Sox.
While with the Sox, fame and fortune went to his head. He got romantically involved with a popular Actress of the day by the name of Lillie Langtry, “the Jersey Lily”. In later years Lily became involved with the notorious Judge Roy Bean of Pacos County Texas.
Jean began staying out late and missing practice. With one party after another things just went from bad to worse for poor Jean. He eventually got involved with gamblers and became indebted to the local syndicate. The darkest days of poor Jeans life was about to begin. He began throwing games to pay off his gambling debts. When the newly formed Baseball Commission started an investigation into the irregularities of the game, the Chicago Herald quickly coined it the ‘Black Sox’ Scandal. And Jean Baptiste Charbonneau let a fellow teammate, “Shoeless Joe Jackson”, take the blame for Jean indiscretions and misdeeds. History has never exonerated poor ‘Shoeless Joe’. When in reality it should have been referred to as the “Moccasin-less Jean Baptiste Scandal”. The scandal however ended Jean’s baseball career.
Jean Baptist’s attention by this time was averted to a gold strike at Sutters Mill in California. Jean got the ‘Gold Fever’ and headed west to make his fortune. After making a modest gold strike, Jean Baptiste wanted to invest his money into something a little more lucrative. He heard about an Army Post that was closing and was up for sale in the small town of Buffalo in northeast Wyoming.
Jean Baptiste bought the old fort and decided to turn it into a Bed and Breakfast. But it seemed the only clientele he could attract where ex-soldiers who wanted to live out their retirement years at the fort. By this time Jean Baptiste himself was getting up in years and figured he would retire and move to Florida and open an Alligator Farm.
So Jean Baptiste sold the property to a young Lieutenant who was an ‘Aviator’. The Aeroplane had just been invented by a couple of brothers from Ohio, and this ground breaking stuff. The Lieutenant wanted to turn the Fort into an” Aerodrome”. But he was unable to talk the Army into the benefits of having something called an Air Corps to control the Indians. His plan was to swoop down and scare the bejabbers out of any marauding tribe.
So this young Aviator had to bided his time and wait for the Aeroplane to catch on. So he himself converted the Fort into a Home for Veterans. Thus was born the Veterans’ Home of Wyoming.
And now you know the rest of the story.

Buffalo gets it's name

How the city of Buffalo became the city of Buffalo

By

Butch the Gospel Truth Carr

    Ed O’Malley, Charles Buell and a few other locals, were sitting around the Pot Belly Stove in the Lone Starr Saloon in the Accidental Hotel contemplating the name for the settlement that was growing up along Clear Creek. More and more settlers where moving into the area and they felt a need for some kind of identity.

     Now the Accidental was called the Accidental because it would be an accident if the proprietor, “Thumbs McGurk” got your order right. “Thumbs” was the type of guy who thinks a Stock Tip is advice on raising cattle. He also tried investing money into real-estate until he discovered Sherlock Holms wasn’t an up scale Housing Project outside of Fort McKinney.

Now later the Accidental was renamed the “Occidental” when the local News Paper editor “Oops McGurk” Thumb’s brother, lost all the Capital  “A’s” for his  printing press, and had to substitute “O” in his advertising page.

But getting back to our hero’s at the Lone Starr, after much arguing and many beers later it was finally decided to draw names from a hat. The first name they drew from the hat was 6 7/8. ” Why that can’t be right”!!! Some one shouted, so they draw again. This time they came up with “STETSON”. So the newly formed town council dub us ‘Stetson Wyoming’. It wasn’t until later on when they were notifying the state capital of there decision that “Oops McGurk” got mixed up with the new town name and the Bar menu. Buffalo meat was for supper that night. 

You might say our founding fathers had to eat their hat, and call the town Buffalo.

My Bio

The true story of Butch "the Gospel Truth" Carr

Grandpa waiting to get in...

Born behind an outhouse in the tall mountains of South Jersey I quickly became famous for my honesty. At the age of three I once walked 5 miles in a blizzard (up hill) to return 3 cents I had inadvertently overcharged an elderly lady at my fathers vegetable stand and horse betting parlor.

She was so grateful she left me in her will. When she passed away I became the proud owner of a home known as Stately Wayne Manor.
While working in my lab late one night on an atomic experiment I was bitten by a radioactive spider and found I had superpowers. I was faster than a speeding building, I could leap over tall bullets in a single bound and I was more powerful than a Amtrak timetable.

Using my newly found superpowers I donned a mask and processed to clean up lawlessness in the Old Western parts of So. Jersey, with my Indian friend Pronto. He was from Cleveland. A Cleveland Indian.

later on I decided to buy a charter boat, being that So. Jersey has so many waterway, bays and inlets. After hiring a second Mate named Snookie, I took a group out for a three hour tour. We were hit by the Perfect Storm and wound up ship wrecked on an uncharted island.
We where stranded for a considerable amount of time One of my passengers, a Professor MacGyver was able to fashion a radio transmitter out of conch shells, seaweed and old washed ashore beer cans. We where soon rescued by a passing Navy PT Boat Commanded by a Lieutenant Commander Quinton McHale and his wacky crew.


At the time I bought the charter boat I had a few dollars left over form my inheritance so I invested it in what I thought was a fruit company. It was called Apple. Upon returning to civilization I checked on my “Fruit Company” and discovered I was once again a millionaire. So I bought a mansion in Buffalo Wyoming. It has about 90 rooms with a cooking and cleaning staff and full time nursing care. I also have a maintenance crew that keeps the grounds mowed in the summer and plows the snow for me in the winter.
My bucolic mansion is nestled next to the Big Horn Mountains on Rte U.S. 16 about 2 ½ miles west of Buffalo, Wyoming. I call it the “Veterans’ Home of Wyoming”