Lightnin' Ridge Publications, 22 Box Street, Bolivar, MO (2025)

09/06/2024

I ordered a new starter for my boat motor from Shorty’s Marine. From past experience I generally avoid the place like the plague but I needed a starter. They ordered one then I took my boat in to get the starter put on the motor, as they volunteered to do… That is a five-minute job that even I could do. Anyone could. I went back to get it and the woman there, by the name of Rachel, presented me with a bill of 441 dollars. I blew my stack. The cost of a starter is only 120 dollars. She was trying to charge me 320 dollars for labor! She said she had to drill two holes in the motor block. She didn’t ask me if she could do it, and she could have ruined the block by doing that. I told her to take off the starter because I wasn’t old enough to be stupid yet, and was NOT going to pay her that money to do a five minute job. She said she was keeping my boat until I paid the whole bill, although she removed the starter (in 3 minutes) and kept it. I backed my truck up to the boat (which was never inside her shop) and she sat down on the boat trailer tongue so I couldn’t hook it up. (I have a photo of that). She called the sheriff and a deputy came. He talked to her for about 10 minutes and told her to let me take the boat and then take me to court to collect the money. He said little to me, but told me I could never come on her property in violation of trespass laws. As if Ianyone with a boat would want to. This was on Thursday, August 15th. On Monday, August 19 I drove to Springfield to a business that sells new starters and rebuilds bad ones. I had mine rebuilt and bought a new one. The business is known as Accurate Electric on west Kearney Street. He went out and installed the starter for no labor charge. Took less than 5 minutes! I found out that Shorty’s Marine had indeed drilled a hole in the block. To replace a 1 and ½ inch bolt, she drilled a hole nearly 2 inches. I was told that if she had drilled deeper she may have drilled into a cylinder and ruined my motor. After going to Accurate Electric, I went to Lowe’s in Springfield to meet my daughter that day about noon. I had left at 9:00 that morning and got home about 4. On Wednesday the same deputy sheriff, by the name of George, drove up to my place and walked toward me with his ticket book in hand. I will swear on the bible this is what he said, with a witness there to back me up. “I am going to have to arrest you for trespassing… Rachel said you came back to her place at midday on Monday and parked in her driveway and glared at her.” I blew my stack again, and told him where I had been and what I had done on Monday. He put his citation book up and said he was going to investigate the matter. He said he would be able to confirm if I was telling the truth by following where my cell phone had been. I have not heard a thing from anyone since. I have left two messages at the sheriff’s department and received no call. My daughter said she had received a call from the sheriff’s department and told them to check Lowe’s cameras at 12:15 p.m. No one did. I am tempted to go to a lawyer with all this. But I shouldn’t have to. It is against the law to file a false charge against someone in order to get revenge. I think that is true everywhere. After trying to talk to Sheriff Morrison for two weeks, I have been unsuccessful. But the deputy did talk to me and said that the investigation had been dropped and the law does not require for me to be informed as to the results. That deputy also said that filing a false report against me has no consequence. Lieing about someone to the sheriff’s deputy is okay. But if I do that to her, that is different. If I call the sheriffs office and say my neighbor is trespassing on my posted land and he is not… I am not going to be forgiven by the law. I am assuming that Shorty’s Marine and I operate under different liability in regard to the law. I am told, by the deputy, my only recourse is to talk to a lawyer.

09/05/2024

facebook has become useless... i see that peoople are sending me messages but ffor. some reason there is a statement that messages are secured on each one and i cannot read them.. any one who wants me to get a message should email me... [email protected]

09/05/2024

rummaging for lost lures on bull shoals lake last week i found this.. about 4 feet tall. nature makes some strange things in the way of sculpture. found a half dozen antique lures too.

09/03/2024

My Big Piney Nature Center and Museum a mile south of Houston, Mo, will be pretty much finished in October and I have an unusual plan to open the finished building, minus the exhibits, sometime during that month to hold a big ‘fishing gear and antique gun’ swap meet.Anyone who wants to bring guns made before 1965 and fishing gear of any kind is welcome. I intend to bring several hundred fishing lures, myself, and some are antiques I used when I was young. That wiggle wart dad and I used back in September of ’65, which we used to catch those smallmouth on, will be there for sale to the highest bidder. I hope that some folks who have old shotguns or .22 rifles will bring them to sell. To reserve a spot just call me, 417 777 5227. I will announce the date of that event soon.You can also contact me via email… [email protected] or at P.O. Box 22 Bolivar, Mo 65613

08/30/2024

this is one of the best canoes ever made... a grumman 17 foot square stern. flat bottom, very stable. a new one today lists on the internet at 2500. this is nearly a new one. not a scratch on the bottom. 1200 dollars or best offer..417 777 5227

08/25/2024

a lot has happened in the last two weeks at our big piney nature center and museum. all electricity and plumbing is done.. we now have water, lights and the entire inside has been painted. the septic system is in, inside walls painted. soon we will finish the floor with red oak flooring. coming soon i will write about the help we have received recently. I am forever grateful for that. i stilll think we can open up in October, but it willl take awhile to get all exhibits put in. anyone who has items that will fit the history and natural history of the big. piney should let me know.

08/09/2024

I HAVE A 19 ft SQUARE-STERNED Grumman canoe for sale for 1000 dollars. it is airplane aluminum, like a new one FROM MARATHON N.Y.. a new one of these costs about 2 grand. I have 2, only need one. a 3 hp motor goes with it for 250 dollars more. I also have a big trailer, (bass boat size). and a little trailer (canoe size)don't email me or text me. if interested, call 417 777 5227.

08/06/2024

I will be at my Big piney nature center toorrow, wednesday, doing some work and planning. anyone who might like to come by and giive me there two cents worth is welcome. should be there from 10 to 4. we need an electrician to hook up our overhead lights. and we need a plumber.

08/05/2024

My Big Piney Nature Center and Museum is coming down to painting the walls and putting the floor in. Hopefully we can open it to the public as a finished project in September. My family is going to help with the painting on Saturday, August the 17th. I would love to have readers come by and see what we are doing, so remember that date and come visit with me and my family if you would like. It is located one mile south of Houston, Mo on the east side of Highway 63. The address is 6410 highway 63. I will likely brew up a batch of sassafras tea (iced or hot) for visitors to try a taste of the old-time Ozarks of my boyhood. We are already moving in some interesting artifacts and on that day you can see an authentic Ozark johnboat my dad and I built years ago.My email address is [email protected], and my office phone number is 417 777 5227

06/16/2024

when my pickup had to go in the shop for two months for bed replacement and repairs after a minor accident, i went to th big piney ford people in houston and asked them to sell me a good used truck.. they did. i got this 2010 dodge ram 4 wd pickup and drove it for 6500 miles. i can't believe what a good truck it is. drives like a new one, no oil use, solid as a rock. i paid fifteen grand for it and will sell it to anyone who wants a like-new used pickup for the same price. piney river ford in houston will tell you the things they might have fixed, or confirm what i paid. they are good people todeal with... told me the truth about this truck. has 165 thousand miles. i will give it a two weeks money-back guarantee.

06/06/2024

i need to hire someone close to houston or cabool to work next tuesday and wednesday on the big piney nature center. we are puttting sheet rock on a cathedral type ceiling there, which will for all practical purposes complete the inside of the building. if you are interested, contact me. will pay 20 dollars per hour.
i found out that the nature center-museum, a non-profit venture, has a page, set up by my daughter Leah dablemont and houstonian cynthia ramsey. Next week we will have a Big Piney Nature Center bank account wherein all donations will be deposited and the spending of each can be accounted for. Donations can therefore be earmarked for a certain part of the project. Any help will be appreciated. The center will be free no entry charge, no cash register, all volunteer workers. To contact me just call my office phone 417 777 5227 and tell my secretary, Ms. Wiggins you don't want to talk to her, but rather you want to speak with me. One other thing, i have 2 dodge pickups for sale now and proceeds go to the nature center project. both are under 15 thousand. I will be selling a lot of things in the next few months to help with the cost of the project. In the fall we will have a big swap meet there.

05/27/2024

a lot of rumors swirl about my relationship with hillary clinton. before we were each married, we just fished a lot together. It wasn't really a big romance. she was crazy about me then, and you ladies can see why. boy was i good looking! years later i said, "Hillary, if you had married me, like you wanted to, you would just be married to a lowly outdoor writer." She answered, "If i had married you... you wouldn't have been a writer, you would have been the governor of arkansas!"

05/21/2024

I wrote about one of bolivar's finest thugs in blue stopping me and hauling me in to be handcuffed, photographed-mugshot and searched while accusing me of not responding to an arrest warrant. i had never even heard of a warrant. seems that walmart, because of what i wrote about them, was charging me with trespassing. the whole story will be in my summer magazine. notify my secretary to get one, at 417 777 5227. walmart had called me to come and pick up some glasses i had already paid for... then they called bolivars finest, and had me arrested. today one of my daughters lawyers told me the judge had thrown out the whole thing and dismissed it. Thanks to Leah, I have been saved from a jail sentence and heavy fine. You cannot write about walmart and the bolivar police without being targeted. But i will, read the story. you need to know how drugs are being brought in due to wal mart, and how they make extra money running up the prices at the checkout counter. You also need to read about how i witnessed a bolivar cop breaking the law, and been told of one who has committed sexual harassment, and how they lost a 600,000 dollar lawsuit.

05/19/2024

this poem and painting will be in my summer magazine. thought some folks might like it.

In this quiet spot which God created, I find the joy and peace I seek.With all the world on fire with angerthe Creator’s hand helps me to sleep.I’ve found a place where men don’t go,with all their problems which destroy us. In the forest where solitude is found, I find this place where days are joyous.And so I sleep, and dream of future golden daysin the woods where I can be alone.And hope there’ll always be such places.In years to come when I am grown. l.a.d.

05/16/2024

I need someone to help find a government grant for our Big PineyNature Center and museum. would such a project qualify it for whatever a gofundme thing amounts to. if anyone is interested in helping with this project, let me know.

05/04/2024

I got a phone call from a turkey hunter from Tennessee. His name is Eric Crouse, a man who makes turkey calls which you can see on the Internet. He told me that he has been coming to Missouri with a group of friends each year since 1991, camping and hunting in the Mark Twain national forest. “No more,” he told me. “The gobblers have just disappeared.” Crouse went on to tell me that if indeed I do get the Conservation Department to come to a debate of some sort, he and a number of his friends would drive from Tennessee to attend such a meeting so they could express their disappointment and ask questions. “We want to know why they keep doing things as they always have seeing wild turkey numbers just drop to near nothing.” Of course their actions are to keep the revenue coming in, but if non-residents like Crouse and his friends quit buying those expensive out-of-state turkey tags, that does not bode well for the money they will make in future seasons. It is easy for men like Crouse and me and other old-time turkey hunters to see what has caused the decline. MDC biologists blame it on loss of habitat, but that is baloney. It is something that allows them to change nothing as we watch flocks decline by 50 to 70 percent overall in the Ozarks.We should be able to debate that at a meeting of several hundred people but the MDC will avoid that like the front teeth of a rattlesnake. In such a debate, they will look ridiculous, and show the ineptness that has taken over that department. I am going to push hard for that, and ask several newspapers in the Ozarks to help sponsor it.We had such a meeting, which I organized, about 15 years ago at a big church gymnasium in Bolivar that was attended by a couple hundred people. The head of the enforcement agents, Larry Yamnitz, agreed to the debate and he brought two of his top aides and talked with oudoorsmen for about two hours. Yamnitz was a top-notch agent in his younger years, and was respected for his response to a fairly hostile group that asked questions in an orderly fashion. I gave answers to those questions in an adversarial response and much good came from it. The following week, Yamnitz changed some rules and policies for enforcement agencies. One important thing that came from it was the elimination of a rule allowing agents to close down taxidermy businesses in Missouri, as they had been doing.I drove around talking to camps of turkey hunters last week, and I can tell you that the MDC is now looked upon by most of them as an agency that has lost its way. Hunter Gary Ellis, from Independence Missouri would love to go to a debate where he could tell what he has seen, the disappearance of wild gobblers and the abuse of innocent people by game wardens. “I had to pay a 100 dollar fine after an agent wrote me a citation for parking on the wrong side of the road,” said Ellis. “ It was a little gravel road alongside a river where I went to fish. I parked there to go look at it and was ticketed for parking on what he considered to be the wrong side.” Ellis was mad, and had things to say about agents that no newspapers would print. That debate which would allow people to ask questions could draw lots of people to a venue in a small Ozark town somewhere. As for any expense, I would pay it, and put my own money into advertising it. I am a biologist too, with a degree from the University of Missouri in wildlife management, School of Agriculture. That term, ‘wildlife management’ has become a joke. At that debate, which I would like to hold the first week of September I will discuss some things their young biologists do not know. The MDC has gone to a lot of time and expense to discredit me with some of the more than 100 newspapers I have written for. Think of how easy it would be to discredit me on a gymnasium stage if a half dozen of their best minds were there against me alone!Wherever you read this, clip out the column and send it to the Missouri Department of Conservation with a note saying…’why not’?

03/08/2024

THE POST I MADE YESTERDAY WAS TRUE. HERE IS PART 2, PART 3,4, AND 5 IS TO COME.THIS IS THE WAY IT HAPPENED...
The Bolivar Police Department holds a grudge against me because I have written about how I witnessed an officer on a Walmart parking lot, where policy dictates they are not to be, committing the crime of insurance fraud. He came into the store and found me in the optical department getting an eye exam. He waited for perhaps a half hour then took me into custody and wrote a citation while inside the store, with many customers watching, claiming I had hit another vehicle with mine. The vehicle was an SUV driven by a crying lady with two kids inside. The front bumper of my impala did not match up with the damage to the back of her SUV, but he ignored that. I am sure he knew the lady and was trying to help her get her vehicle repaired by my insurance. It ended when the man at the counter in the automotive department told the policeman that they had a film of it all and my vehicle did not hit hers. When he said that, the policeman headed for his car, tearing up the citation. I called the police department and they sent a captain to see the film and talk to the policeman. That captain apologized and said there would be a report filed. There never was! I went to the police chief and told him what had happened. He said there was nothing they could do, that it was a civil matter which required me to obtain a lawyer. No local lawyer had any interest, saying they could not oppose any police officer for obvious reasons. When I wrote about it, I received threatening calls telling me I would pay for what I had written. I had received no tickets in 20 years in Bolivar, but in the next month I received 3. I have written since about these things….---A local lady told me about repeated sexual harassment from one officer.---A police officer dismissed from the Bolivar Police Department sued the city and was given a 600,000 dollar judgement in court.---A city policeman fired a bullet into his cruiser engine while practicing his ability to draw and fire his weapon.---I was told by a city attorney that if I contested one of those three bogus tickets she would add the charge of inadequate and malfunctioning equipment on my 2 year old vehicle.--- I know that I am not to be stopped by any police or patrolman unless I am guilty of some wrongdoing. Last week, the two policemen violated my rights.--- I saw a city policeman, investigating the possibility of a stolen purse, borrow a pen and write the information the lady gave him on the palm of his hand!!At Walmart last year a one-armed city policeman called to make me leave Walmart when I was trying to find out why the store was giving 5 carts of supplies and food to 2 illegal immigrants, neither of whom could speak English, signed my name to a document when I refused to. No one, not even a policeman, is allowed by law to sign my name.No one has ever told me I would be charged with trespassing if I came in to walmart for any reasone, much less to receive the glasses I had already paid for. I had to come in to get them fitted.

03/07/2024

Two Bolivar police cars pulled me over for no reason. One policeman was standing outside watching through my passenger window, the other taking my driver’s license back to his car. He came back acting real friendly and told me there was some kind of warrant or something because I had ignored a court summons from last August. That was a lie... i had received no notice of any kind for a court summons.He read to me a charge made by Walmart that I had trespassed in their store. They had it on film that I had come in and turned to the right into the optometry section. I was there because, I had been called by someone in Walmart telling me to come pick up my glasses, which I had paid for some weeks before. I know now that Walmart’s manager had set up the filming of me coming in, and then called the police to charge me with trespassing. The policeman in turn, was supposed to have sent me a notice to appear in court. I received no phone call, no letter, no notification of a charge against me at all. The policeman who charged me, wanted to take me to the police station to sign something. He wanted to have my car towed, but I called my wife to come and get it. He was all smiles and friendliness, telling me how he loved my books and magazines. He said, I quote, “I have to take you down to sign some papers, it won’t take five minutes.” Then he put me in a caged-in back seat, where there was no way to open the door. Instead of taking me to the police station, he took me to the sheriff’s office and jail. When they got me inside, he left and I watched a deputy put on rubber gloves and order me to face the wall. With my nose against the wall and hands stretched high above my head, he emptied my pockets. I realized, that friendly cop had lied to me. And when I turned around, they made me stand there for mug shots. He then handcuffed me to a wooden bench and said to wait there until someone came to fingerprint me. I figured a jail cell would be next. There was nothing for me to sign. While I was standing against the wall, I began to see the zig-zag lines and colored lights in my vision. That is the beginning of ocular migraines, which I have had since I was 13. Sitting on that bench I began to lose most awareness, I lost my vision, and could not speak or understand what anyone was saying. A woman in a uniform came in and began to say something, but I could not understand, her words were garbled. My chest began to hurt. From that point on I remember nothing. Hours later I became fully aware of my surroundings, and I was sitting in my living room. PART 2--CONTINUED HERE IN 2 DAYS...

Lightnin' Ridge Publications

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