The islands got whacked by ice flows and floods

I was not feeling well enough to bring the dump truck and bobcat home to the islands. It appears this will be a costly mistake. I will try to post some photos to show what an ice flow can do to a picnic table and the size of some of the trees which now block our roads. The dog had a blast chasing the geese as I took the golf cart to assess the damage. I will now have to rent a skidster to move some of this debris because it will be weeks before I can return to pick up the dump truck. The damn grass is growing and I cannot get to sections of the islands because of the floods and blockage. I sense that flooding will be an issue this year. The river is overflowing and the fields are full of water which indicates they had a great deal of rainfall while we were gone.

Wife got golf cart stuck in low flooded area.  The number one rule on an island in a river is do NOT drive a vehicle into standing water.  It is like quick sand sucking up a vehicle, and without the rubber tracked bobcat we had a difficult time extracting the cart.  Fortunately, the four wheel ATV with a long tow rope was able to pull it to dry land.  Had to chase off three trespassers who thought we were in Florida.  One person thinks he can just bring friends on our property because we have known him since he has been 10.  I blew up with him last year and banned him from the islands until this year, but he never apologized for coming at 1:30 AM and ringing the bell and waking up our grandchildren because he wanted to fish.   I told him to get the F out of here, and his response was "really".   I told my wife if he was not the only grandchild of our neighbor, having lost her only son to pancreatic cancer, I would have kicked that 19 year olds asz right then and there.  He has a mother and nine year old sister who are struggling to survive, and this lazy dumb asz Trump supporter has worked one job in his 20 years of life for two months at a youth camp in the kitchen before they let him go.   He mooches off his grandmother and his step grandfather who is a close friend just wants to wring his lazy neck.  He will blog about the second amendment and government taking his guns away.  As a kid he sat in front of a computer, and was booted out of school because he was as dumb as a post.  He never finished high school, and he sits around feeling sorry about not being given a job, yet too lazy and stupid to take GED courses.  Like every teat sucker, he dreams of joining the military where he can shoot people.  Dear God if this is what a young Trump supporter looks like we are doomed.

He thought we were in Florida, so he just gets his buddies and goes onto our property after my wife told him last year he can only come onto the property after he talks to me and apologizes for that night.  She asked them to leave, and one of his buddies gets smart with my wife and says they will "just" fish off the causeway.   She firmly says NO....you will leave our property, and Dylan you will talk to seaoat if you ever want to come onto this property again.  He is such a wussy worm user, he is frightened of a sick old man, but in this case rightfully so.  I am afraid I will go to jail kicking his asz and forever alienate his wonderful grandmother who is a dear friend.  His step grandfather has bitten his tongue for ten years because his wife lost their only son who lived with them, and he was a full blown alcoholic who doomed this kid with living off his mother......this was his role model.   So his mom came back into his life after dad died, and his half sister who is a bright kid doing well in school get help from the family while this lazy bastard sits on his fat asz.  I started working at 14 after my father died when I was 10, and my wife lost her father at 10, and we both bristle at people feeling sorry and enabling this slacker.  I just wish we could have been more of a positive influence in his life as we tried to take him under our wing when he was 12, but after his father died his mother moved to AZ where he got kicked out of school, and even spent some time in JD facility, none of which has helped turn this slug into a man.

He has neeeeeds comrade. Your greed is the issue.

He has neeeeeds comrade. Your greed is the issue.


I tried when he was younger. We have an annual river clean up. I organize a section of the river and get volunteers. Our section is about seven miles so I gather folks up, and we take our canoes up river and float down to pick up junk. When his father was sick I asked if he could come along with me. He had a great time and seemed to eager to learn, but he was so deeply damaged by his mother's rejection of him and his father's alcoholism that my wife after repeated attempts just could not break the cycle of his grandmother babying him which enabled him to skip school when he needed his asz being kicked and attending. We tried to teach him concepts, but something as simple as geographic directions he could not master. I created a web site which he could offer his services as a fish guide and would post photos of his daily fish catches, but he was not capable of understanding how to do the web, and was more interested in playing computer games.

We have given up. He has guns now, and we believe he is an unstable individual. His posts on facebook have been pro trump, pro gun, and very racist toward President Obama. His mother's boyfriend was an undocumented Mexican, and his half sister is half mexican, and when he came back from Arizona when his step father suddenly died, he turned into a little fascist with horrible racist views on facebook. He is an arrogant, lazy slug who probably was irreparably damaged as a kid. Even now.....not once has he cut his grandparents grass. At least his father who mooched off his mother would try to cut the grass. This kid's mother and sister are barely surviving on her wages, and the kid steals his sister's laptop which was a gift and sells it for pennies on the dollar. We tried to let him help us on the islands, but he is so fricking lazy that he creates more work for us. We just do not want him on the property. I am going to have to control myself because I said when he was 12 and was talking back to his sick dad, his step grandfather, and his grandmother, I was about to kick his asz. I would get him in a room alone with me and we would work on a permanent attitude adjustment.

We have decided to tell him, we expect an apology, and when he gets a job and helps his mother and sister we will consider letting him fish the islands, but that to enable his lazy self destructive behavior will not happen. We fully expect to not be invited to some of his grandmother's social events because she still enables this loser, while her husband like me just wants to kick his lazy asz.

Maybe he will grow up to be a democrat and live off handouts.

Joanimaroni wrote:Maybe he will grow up to be a democrat and live off handouts.

A Trump supporter is not going to become a democrat. He'll continue grifting and living off his grandmother, like any good Republican.

This kid and his buddies all do not have jobs, are lazy, and living off their parents. They all love their guns, hunting, and fishing, but are allergic to work. They all supported trump, and after the 1:30 am incident he took my wife off his facebook page which was his lazy computer game buddies bad mouthing the black president, mexicans, and lazy welfare blacks.....my wife said it was fricking incredible to read their dialogue and beliefs. My point is that Trump attracts these type of losers. They need to look down on somebody, and what particularly piszes my wife off is his beaner comments with his sweet half sister being of Mexican descent. Her mother works her asz off at a local factory, and this kid is not longer a kid. He is a twenty year old man living off his mother. I started working at 14. By 17 I was working 60-70 hours a week on car lots doing maintenance work and saving for college, buying and fixing up a car, and paying my own insurance. This kid does not even help his grandmother cut the lawn, but can get his buddies and grab their fishing poles and fully knowing I had banned him from the property, sneeks on the property yesterday thinking we were still in Florida. Character is something which is instilled by hard work and responsibility for one's self. We have decided not to let me go off on him, rather matter of fact routine conversation will involve as soon as he is working a job and helping to take care of himself, his mother and sister, he will not be allowed to fish. He will give an apology, but we will not enable this lifestyle of hunting, fishing, and probably drug use as the night he came barging into our porch at 1:30 am he looked like he was high on meth. He blamed his father's drinking and the immediate family's drinking for his problems, which has a kernel of truth which he has hoped will enable his lazy lifestyle.

He is too dumb to convert to a democrat. I grew up with my mother being a republican precinct committeewoman and went door to door for Goldwater. I was active in sports, boy scouts, and worked a paper route. The smart kids were all Republican, and the dullards were democrats, but this whole thing has flipped and the same kind of dumb asz shiftless kids have become Trump supporters. They were not happy about my Hillary sign, but people are afraid of me because I took on the town bully who had terrorized people for years, and have grown to respect my work ethic and bit of crazy which is often on display. I mean I fished as a kid, but I paid for my boy scout camp selling the fish we caught, and we would go to the local bait shop and would get nets and were paid a penny a crawdad as we often would catch thirty or forty which would pay for our visit to tastee freeze. We would walk around the golf course and find golf balls and sell them. I paid for my scout summer camp since I had been 12 by working, paper routes, cutting grass and shoveling snow........this adult man is now 20 and has done nothing, he is a liar, and a thief.

The roads are blocked with debris from the ice flow.  A great deal of damage and no bobcat to clear the roads until I return to Pensacola and get the dump truck and bobcat.   I may have to rent a skidster.

This is my pup.....well I guess at three years old she is no longer a pup, but she is back in dog paradise. She chased geese all day yesterday and has been wading in the water. She slept in my lap this morning for two hours content to be home and letting me know how happy she is to be able to run free again.

My wife and I rebuilt this causeway by putting the three foot wide and 16 feet long concrete culverts on top of the existing causeway. Now in high water the water pours through the tubes, yet we are able to take equipment over to the islands and maintain the grass.

Beautiful spot . . . . . looks practically identical to Kentucky wetlands.

Love the property.

Beautiful spot . . . . . looks practically identical to Kentucky wetlands.


It has incredible fishing. The Native Americans had a Village along the shore in the late 1700s and one of the first French trading posts was over the main river channel where I had taken the photo of the tree blocking the road. In the 1850s a gravel company bought the islands and would pull river gravel out of the river. At that same time people would claim and commercially fish channel cat. When Abe Lincoln came after Chief Blackhawk in the 1830s, Northwest Illinois began getting settlers and about a two hundred yards south of that photo was a ferry crossing where settlers heading west would cross the river. We did not get a bridge in town until about the 1920s. The Walleye this time of year on the down river side of the causeways are incredible. There are few better tasting fish than freshly caught early spring Walleye. There is a cabin in town from 1840, and sad stories of women who would help each other but a young bride who in the fall went to their cabin on the other side of the river, but the ice cut the other women off and she died in child birth. Immediately behind our current home was the town swimming hole and there were drownings there as written in the local history book. When I was dredging for the new causeway, I found an old model T frame with the excavator, and put it back in because the fishing was incredible around that structure.

No, there are few places more beautiful. It literally is rosebud. I am honored to have worked for 13 years to clean it up and make this portal into nature available and accessible. I just do not want bums trespassing.

Just got very lucky. I was able to start the lull and it was mostly good gravel roads leading to the big tree blocking our smaller island. I had left most of our chain on the project, but we had just enough to wrap the tree and I pulled it clear of the road. I will move it again when the ground is not so wet. Getting the lull stuck would require me getting a crane to pull it out, but more importantly if I get it stuck and the river floods, I am out 20k of uninsured loss. We have Mexican friends who are out on the islands fishing. They are both medical technicians and have raised their families with high achieving kids. They were both undocumented until President Reagan gave them amnesty in the 80s. They said as children they dreamed of being in the American woods and fishing and camping. They are wonderful people and their friends own a Mexican bakery in Wisconsin and when they come fishing they always bring a big bag of Mexican bakery goods, all fresh and all with unique flavors. They do not use traditional refined sugar on those baked goods and we look forward to when they visit. Humans are just naturally attracted to the pristine beauty of God's gifts to man. We had an audience of kayakers watching me pull the monster tree off the causeway. The river is alive despite it being a bit chilly, and I am so glad to be home in this natural beauty. I love the project, but my love for these islands where my ashes will be spread are very deep. Our friends brought a lab pup and she is just having a blast running free on the islands and chasing the geese. Dogs love chasing geese.

Sounds great!