Forum: Lost Stories

Man buys a house and lives on a mountain

BlueLantern 🚫

I'm brainfarting on a story I enjoyed a while back. No luck when searching mountain in title or description. Here's what I remember:

Long story written in a daily life type style. Man buys a house on a mountain. Meets neighbors who are elderly. House is quite small and rustic in the beginning. He ends up with a Mexican girl and her mother. Has lots of babies. As time passes and his family grows he adds on and improves the house. He starts farming and the farm expands becoming a business. He makes a deal with a telecom to cut down trees for paths for them to run lines That grows and becomes a business too. He gets fed up with the poor roads and so ends up taking over creating a business paving roads and plowing snow. At some point he ends up finding some secret stash of confederate gold that he stashed away and sells in nearby towns. Old granny neighbor dies but he feels her spirit in the mountains appreciative for him living well there.

Pretty much a nice chill and relaxing slice of life story of a dude living well on the mountain and helping others along the way.

Replies: Keet

Keet 🚫
Updated:

@BlueLantern

author: Dual Writer
story: Recluse and Ghost

ETA: You might like Dual Writer's Ozark Life too.

Replies: Ernest Bywater BlueLantern Jupiter

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@Keet

That'll teach me to take a nap. Just woke up and find Keet beat me by 90 minutes.

Replies: Keet

Keet 🚫

@Ernest Bywater

That'll teach me to take a nap. Just woke up and find Keet beat me by 90 minutes.

Knowing you're awake I can take my nap now ;)

Replies: Lapi

Lapi 🚫

@Keet

Both are very good stories. Scarecrow by Lubrican is similar and also a very good story.

Replies: Keet lnettnay

Keet 🚫

@Lapi

@Keet

Both are very good stories. Scarecrow by Lubrican is similar and also a very good story.

Yep, very good. I think those are the best I've read from Dual Writer.

lnettnay 🚫

@Lapi

Hi Lapi,

Having read most of Lubrican's stories I couldn't figure out why I didn't recognize Scarecrow. I went to his author page and looked for it. Didn't find it. Using advanced search i found https://storiesonline.net/s/74049/the-hermit-of-scarecrow-valley which I have read and enjoyed and was going to recommend also. It would help if the full title was given.

Thank you,

Lonny

Replies: ian_macf Lapi

ian_macf 🚫

@lnettnay

Sadly, Premier only

Ian

Lapi 🚫

@lnettnay

Sorry, I think I had been reading all three for the 3rd or fourth time. It was the Hermit of Scarecrow Valley. Getting old I guess.
There are some Post-Apoc type stories like Aftermath and A Reluctant Hero based in wilderness locations; even Money Grab

BlueLantern 🚫

@Keet

Thank you!

Jupiter 🚫

@Keet

Damn good story!!!

irvmull 🚫

Thanks, I really enjoy these types of stories, because I'm living one:

Bought mountain, built cabin, met elderly neighbors, found Confederate gold mine (not much gold, unfortunately).

Everything but the Mexican girl (and the babies, fortunately!)

Replies: samsonjas

samsonjas 🚫

@irvmull

Details! Please?

Replies: irvmull

irvmull 🚫

@samsonjas

Details! Please?

I think I'll have to write a story. Background, however, is that I was on call 24/7 for a computer center where stuff *just had to work*. Too much pressure, so I "retired" at age 40.

It was a psychological shock to go from sweating ancient COBOL code to sitting on my porch at twilight, listening to the latest news from Lake Wobegon, where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average".

Never looked back. Too bad the Mexican girl never showed up...

Replies: Aardvark8

Aardvark8 🚫

@irvmull

Hey, careful about calling COBOL "ancient", boy!

Replies: irvmull ystokes

irvmull 🚫

@Aardvark8

Hey, careful about calling COBOL "ancient", boy!

It's ALIVE!

Replies: Aardvark8

Aardvark8 🚫

@irvmull

Not only alive, but object-oriented, of all the perversions.

Replies: Keet

Keet 🚫

@Aardvark8

Not only alive, but object-oriented, of all the perversions.

And now with good IDE's with dark modes too!
*remembering the days programming COBOL on a 4.77MHz machine with two 5.25 disc stations*

Replies: irvmull

irvmull 🚫

@Keet

And now with good IDE's with dark modes too!
*remembering the days programming COBOL on a 4.77MHz machine with two 5.25 disc stations*

You had DISCs? We had punch cards! (I don't think IBM had any MHz back then).

ystokes 🚫

@Aardvark8

Hey, careful about calling COBOL "ancient", boy!

How about QBasic?

Replies: Aardvark8

Aardvark8 🚫

@ystokes

Hah, a rank newcomer! It needed/needs DOS.

My first language was BASIC, but on a Data General.

Aardvark8 🚫

MHz?? Damn, you're young!

Try a 3278 coax-attached terminal, using ISPF/TSO, on an MVS operating system.

The terminal weighted more than my pickup, and put out more radiation then Chernobyl.

Replies: Keet

Keet 🚫

@Aardvark8

MHz?? Damn, you're young!

Try a 3278 coax-attached terminal, using ISPF/TSO, on an MVS operating system.

Worked on those terminals too. Damn those blocked data streams to the mainframe.

burlarr 🚫
Updated:

Just the thought of punch cards brings up horrid flashbacks of an evil time.

Replies: Aardvark8 Ernest Bywater anim8ed

Aardvark8 🚫

@burlarr

Like dropping a deck that didn't have sequence numbers, for instance?

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@burlarr

Just the thought of punch cards brings up horrid flashbacks of an evil time.

Especially the trouble and time taken to fix things when some idiot knocks the boxes of your cards off the table or shelf and they spread out all over the floor. That will put running the program back weeks at a time.

I use to have to make punch cards for a comms network design program where the software took four boxes of cards and the data used seven boxes of cards. After each run I had to go through the print out (all four feet of it), and compare various results with the wanted results, then look at and recalculate changes for results that were outside of parameters prior to punching up replacement cards to effect the changes. Most cases to change a single figure needed several cards changed. - I lost count of the number of times I played with and ran that program before we had an acceptable design to put to the International Conference the data was wanted for back in the 1970s.

Punch cards brings back more horrific memories than good ones.

Replies: irvmull

irvmull 🚫
Updated:

@Ernest Bywater

Punch cards brings back more horrific memories than good ones.

Maybe, but back then, the best programmer on the staff was an incredibly good-looking young woman with, shall we say, "amazing assets". Unfortunately, she was dating a professional wrestler...

Replies: Ernest Bywater

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@irvmull

Maybe, but back then, the best programmer on the staff was an incredibly good-looking young woman with

I wish. I was the only IT support to a bunch of Telecommunications Network Design staff working on the new regional telecommunications network. They liaised with all of the regional countries and gave me the info of what infrastructure would be available when and where, the number of circuits for cable and satellite for each year, and I had to calculate and punch the cards to translate that info into data for the fancy program we ran on the CDC mainframe across the city. We rented time, but every run took 8 hours at the highest priority, so it always ran overnight.

Other than idiots knocking over the punch card boxes, the biggest problem was adjusting the circuit and growth numbers to ensure each location only ever had a full circuit for each usage at each set date and the totals available at each location and network line were within the allowed numbers.

The program wasn't the best as it allowed for little things like 2 countries using half a circuit each and thus the overall totals matched, but the individual sections didn't as sharing cable circuits on a permanent basis was not physically possible. Thus the frequent checks, re-calculate, and re-run. Since all this was basic calculator stuff it was left to me as the engineers had degrees and didn't work on such minor stuff.

anim8ed 🚫

@burlarr

My flashbacks had more to do with the little rectangles left over from the punch cards. Tiny little things... My uncle was not too appreciative of the pound or so we put in the air vents of his car on his wedding day. He never was able to vacuum them all out of the carpet after they worked into the fibers.

Replies: irvmull

irvmull 🚫

@anim8ed

My flashbacks had more to do with the little rectangles left over from the punch cards.

AKA "chad" - not to be confused with the N. African country or the HS Senior with a new BMW and a girlfriend named Trixie.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@irvmull

AKA "chad"

Florida likes to hang Chads. Otherwise they use lethal injection.

Lapi 🚫

I guess none of you are old enough to remember paper tape or plain key entry!

Replies: madnige Ernest Bywater

madnige 🚫

@Lapi

paper tape or plain key entry

...on an ASR-33 with a dry ribbon so the type is barely legible.

Replies: Aardvark8

Aardvark8 🚫

@madnige

I learned on one of those. Always loved it when your storage medium (the paper tape) was eaten by the reader.

Ernest Bywater 🚫

@Lapi

I guess none of you are old enough to remember paper tape or plain key entry!

Years after leaving the job where I used punch cards I was in a job where I frequently cut punch paper tapes to send telexes around the world.

irvmull 🚫

This was back in the late 70's. There were two groups: Programmers, who worked in smoke-filled rooms sweating over obscure code, and Operators, who worked in sweaters thruout the summer in cool, smokeless rooms, where Programmers feared to tread, lest the poison gas come down from the ceiling...

Aardvark8 🚫

My wife was a computer operator in the late 70's. Lovely long, brunette hair, which got sucked into the vacuum column of a tape drive one day. Different hair style the next day.

I thought that the halon came from the floor...?

Replies: irvmull Dominions Son Remus2

irvmull 🚫

@Aardvark8

I thought that the halon came from the floor...?

Perhaps it did. Lowly programmers weren't welcome there, anyway.

Dominions Son 🚫

@Aardvark8

My wife was a computer operator in the late 70's. Lovely long, brunette hair, which got sucked into the vacuum column of a tape drive one day. Different hair style the next day.

At least she still HAD a hair style the next day. :)

Replies: Aardvark8

Aardvark8 🚫

@Dominions Son

Yes, most fortunate. Otherwise, they would probably have had to replace to tape drive. :)

Remus2 🚫

@Aardvark8

No, the typical configuration was from the ceiling. There may have been some oddball systems somewhere, but most are like this:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zn9yyRybcmg

tabbyiz 🚫

Back in the sixties I worked on an anti-aircraft rocket test site. The I T dept. used punch tape. After a while I got to know the operators quite well, on the day I left one of them made me a punch tape with all 95 verses of Eskimo Nell.

Replies: samuelmichaels

samuelmichaels 🚫

@tabbyiz

Back in the sixties I worked on an anti-aircraft rocket test site. The I T dept. used punch tape. After a while I got to know the operators quite well, on the day I left one of them made me a punch tape with all 95 verses of Eskimo Nell.

Wow! Now that's impressive.

Wonder if Eskimo Nell is under copyright and if not, if Laz can post it here.

Replies: Dominions Son

Dominions Son 🚫

@samuelmichaels

Wonder if Eskimo Nell is under copyright and if not, if Laz can post it here.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ballad_of_Eskimo_Nell#Origin_and_history

This is a folk poem with no known author. It is in the style of Robert Service, the writer best known for his writings of the Canadian North, in particular of his poem "The Shooting of Dan McGrew".[1] As with all traditional poems and songs, there is variation between the texts. It was geographically widespread by 1940 or earlier;

Pre 1976 and no known author, it was probably never under copyright in the US.

Canada, I have no idea. Though there's a chance it's off copyright under the Berne Convention standard as well.

Wheezer 🚫

Florida likes to hang Chads.

Only in predominately Democratic neighborhoods.

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Forum: Lost Stories

Man buys a house and lives on a mountain

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