Peter Lebeck Chapter #1866

Hail Cloggites! And welcome back to Peter Lebeck's notorious Clamper Blog -- the PXL CLOG. We have quite a bit to cover so let's get started, shall we?

First of all, thanks to everyone who came out to Fort Tejon and made our Fall Doin's a success. Congratulations are in order for our latest members, Christian Huth (pronounced "YOU-th"), sponsored by XNGH Top Turner; Jesse Garibay, son of long time member Jesse Garibay; and Noah Bouza, son of XNGH Luis Bouza. Some wag suggested that it could get a bit confusing having two Jesse Garibays in the club, but given the size differential it was also suggested that the new Jesse should be known as "Sasquatch," and the old Jesse should be known as Half Squatch. That means we could be ahead of every other chapter by a Squatch and a half.

 

 

Then there was the most serious matter of the "Beantastrophe," when Ptimbo's award winning beans ended up spread all over the ground when the stand supporting the pot suffered a mechanical failure. The bean gremlins had finally scored.

The memory of man runeth not to a time when PXL has ever been without beans at a Clampout, though such a prospect threatened at the Spring 2014 Doin's, when Humbug Charles Topping decided against beans in favor of tender "potatoes lovingly baked in Dutch ovens over hot coals." Well the truth was that the potatoes were delicious, and the potato bar was genius, but "lovingly" turned out to mean having to wait an extra hour for dinner.

Even before that wait had become a reality, the reality of "NO BEANS!" sparked the Great Bean Rebellion of 2014. XNGH Bob Cordes, upon discovering this heresy, recruited Kenton "Airdale" Miller as shotgun and they drove the 25 miles down the mountain from Walker Basin into Isabella where the two Redshirts commandeered a shelf full of canned legumes. Upon their return, Bob declared that no Clampout should ever be, nor would ever be, without beans!

But now it has finally happened (so a moment of silence, please . . . and uncover if you have 'em).

 

Now before the mood gets too morose, I should probably move on to lighter subjects, like maybe our upcoming business meeting which is scheduled for Saturday, November 4, 2023, at 10 a.m., at the La Sierra Mexican Restaurant in Frazier Park. Veronica and her husband have been hosting us for several years now and have made the back room available to us at no cost, so please be generous with your tips and support this important PXL Watering Hole. Be there for breakfast starting at 9 a.m. My favorite is the Chiles Rellenos in case anybody wants to bribe me.

I will post the agenda here when I get it. Keep in mind that this is our annual, state mandated, corporate business meeting where we wrap up the current Clampyear and rough out the year to come. Our yearly financial statement is reported out, and the Graybeards choose a Humbug Erectus, who is expected to propose his slate of functionaries and events for the coming year. Once all the items on the agenda have been addressed, the meeting will be adjourned to the day of the Widders' Ball in February for a short clean-up meeting in the morning and the formal change of officers at night.

Much of this work could be done in executive session and the results reported out to the membership, but, unless there is something of a sensitive nature to discuss, our board likes to conduct its meetings out in the open, where members can ask questions and provide input. A hearty breakfast and a little beer or a Bloody Mary doesn't hurt, either.

If you would like to go "up the chairs" or just want to formally volunteer, email our Vice Humbug, Kelvin "Dr. Clapper" Swanson, right away (before you talk yourself out of it). Check out our functionaries page to get a better idea.

While we are on this subject, here's three more related matters . . . the monthly Red Shirt Getaway for November has been canceled since we'll be at the business meeting in Frazier Park; but plan ahead for the first Saturday in December, when all Redshirts in good standing and their prospective PBCs are invited to join us at the Elks Lodge in Santa Clarita where the fun starts at noon, and the suds, dogs and talk are all cheap. Also if you'd like to reup your voluntary $50 contribution to "Feed the Bear," the 2024 FTB hangers will be available at the Getaway. See GDR/XNGH Dale "Top" Turner about that.

 

In case you missed it (and almost all of us did) the "Road's End" monument was replaqued on September 16, 2023, on the Kern River side of Mountain Highway 99, several miles north of Kernville. Much thanks to our Humbug, Al "The Quackster'' Price, XNGH Charles Topping and to the brothers of Dr. Samuel Gregg George #1855, who made this possible.

Though the site is associated with Kernville, it is actually in Tulare County, so this was a joint reerection. The original 2005 project was honchoed by our late XNGH Steve "Historically" Born, who worked as a high school history teacher for the Los Angeles Unified School District until illness sent him off to the Golden Hills. He and his then Vice Humbug, XNGH Don Johnson, were also our point men on the massive California City Six-Way, the following year.

The Road's End project required coordination with the U.S. Forest Service. They insisted that the plaque, which was to be located in a parking lot beside the Kern River, be affixed to "a natural feature." That's forest speak for "a rock," and it was one which turned out to be so low to the ground that someone ran over it and shattered the granite plaque.

The Quackster's solution is much more resilient. He still had to use the same old rock, but the new plaque is made from aluminum and the surrounding boulders make the monument much better protected.

If you'd like to see it, two photos are temporarily located on the "PXL's Latest Plaque" Page. You'll find it at the bottom of the links box on the left. This used to be the "Clampdown!" link, but a few years ago I began using this spot as the best place to temporarily show off our latest plaque.

Jayne, our Quackster's widder, also took a few more photos and I've added those to our site through a link on Peter's Picture Pages, where you'll also find the pictures that Max and I took of the Fall Fort Tejon Doin's.

 

I'm currently busy fixing parts of the website which have degraded over the years often due to technological changes and just plain not having enough time to keep up with this stuff. Back when I took on this project the only social media you could access on your cell phone - -assuming you had one - - was called a "telephone call." I've rebuilt the website twice, though even now it's still best viewed on a laptop or home computer, though I'm working on improving that.

So back in the day the chapter was recovering from a waning phase when very little plaquing had been going on. We had become an historical society that had lost track of its own history. We couldn't account for our existing plaques, related keepsakes and even the identities of our past Humbugs.

So what started as a free web site limited to five pages and used for posting announcements, morphed into a 200 page online closet where we could memorialize our conclaves. Even if we couldn't account for everything that had gone on during the chapter's first forty years, we could at least piece some of it back together and put it somewhere we could find it, along with all our current stuff.

I'll be the first to admit that I haven't been able to keep track of everything, but if you want to see who was involved with our chapter in the past and what we were up to, this is the place to look.

So now that I'm retired, I'll be going back into the site and whipping it into shape section by section. Some parts don't work anymore so I'm going to need plenty of time to fix them. For instance, many of our early photo collections won't display because they were compiled in Adobe Flash which doesn't work on current browsers. I'll also need the original photos, if I can find them, to make sure the images are large enough to be seen at current screen resolutions.

Unfortunately there are some things I'll never be able to completely research. I have several hundred hard copy photographs from collections by the late XNGHs, Pat "I-Man" McGee and Jim Adams, but there is really no sure way to curate and organize them. With luck, the back of the photos may be date stamped, and may be identifiable as relating to a particular event, but that's about it. Still, we are lucky to have them.

On this current set of fixes, I've gone ahead and archived a good chunk of the most recent CLOG posts and added them to our CLOG archive which is now 34 web pages and contains every CLOG post going back to 2007. You'll find the links on the left under the navigation box. I have also added a new navigation links at the bottom of each of those pages to allow for continuous reading. Other pages throughout the site that had faulty CSS formatting, and whose display could best be described as "SPLAT," are fixed and now readable again. It's a start with more to come.

On a sad note, I've taken down the link to the Paul Gleim's Rfocus Store. Our brother Paul has moved out of state for medical treatment, and was counting on help running the store. Unfortunately that didn't pan out. Paul's Rfocus store was an important resource for us because with his dye sublimation printer he was able to produce single copies of T-shirts and hoodies at a reasonable price. That said, we wish Paul well and look forward to his recovery.

 

Moving on to the subject of breakfast, we need to thank Frank "Two Time" Webster for getting up early and supervising the kitchen during the preparation of Saturday's Graybeards' Potluck Breakfast. That kind of initiative is a big help. While we are proud that our members always pitch-in to set-up, break camp and help us out in other ways, sometimes you just need someone to coordinate, and Frank did a great job doing it.

We've been blessed to have guys like Circus Masters Dave Staley and Fred Fenski - who've mastered our kit and know how to direct our guys in how to set it up and put it away. Or Mike Mazzetti, who's taken control of the Hawker store and, with the help of his Tackle, Jim Mann, is doing a bang up job.

 

But there is one place where we are hurting right now and that's at the position of Clamp Chef. Anyone filling this position has to be pretty selfless. Aside from planning meals for fifty to eighty guys, it requires a day of bulk shopping at a restaurant outlet, a day of prep, making the beans, putting everything on ice, and lugging it to the Doin's. Already that sounds like someone who could use some help.

Except for a stint where Kenton "Airdale" Miller took over at Clampchef, XXXNGH Ptimbo Gillespie has been in charge of the kitchen since he took over from our beloved XNGH Kenny "Cookie" Young in 2008, the year Kenny succumbed to the Big "C." For years Kenny's skills behind the grill were well respected, and his dedication to Clamperdom highly recognized. In 2007, the Dumbillican Brotherhood appointed Cookie as their "Committee of One," and he only left us after having given his final report at Grand Council in 2008.

So it's been a long, long time. Ptimbo would like to move on to become our "Cookie Emeritus," and I think he's earned the right to spend a few years enjoying the "fruits of his labor," which are more than just beans and tummy rumbles. That means we are going to need a replacement at Clampchef, and if you are game, Timbo might even make you keeper of the secret bean recipe.

There's also been talk of lightening the load a bit by getting crews together to take turns wrangling Friday night's meal, and it's been done before, with our veterans pitching in. While I have no serious objection to a hearty and hot Penne Putanesca (aka pasta and frozen meat balls), at this last Doin's Jesse "Zeus" Garibay went down to his local Mexican market and bought enough precooked fixxin's for soft taco dinners for everyone. It was well within our budget, very tasty, and we even had leftovers. I think Jesse laid down a challenge, and he's given us something to think about.

 

As you can see, I'm also getting the site ready for the 2024 Widders' Ball. The flyer will be up soon, but in the meantime, save the date, Saturday, February 3, 2024. We'll be headed back to the Homewood Suites in Bakersfield, where we'll be the guests of XNGH Jim "Bullseye" Bailey. It's a bye week for football so no excuses. Put on your dancing shoes because they'll be a party going on!

As usual we encourage you to stay overnight for your own safety if you intend to ingest adult libations. Jim Bailey is making a special room rate available for both Friday and Saturday nights. What we won't be doing this year is putting on an organized Friday night buffet. If you intend to stay over on Friday, you may consider partnering up with other couples for an informal night out.

 

As for next year's schedule, I expect that to be firmed up at the November meeting. But what I can tell you is that we expect to plaque the Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond in the spring. There is also talk of a "Candle Light" initiation sometime after Grand Council, in May or June. This event will be PXL only, and won't happen at night, so think of it as a "Candle Light in the Light" lite initiation. If you have a PBC who is 65 or older, or has an infirmity that would rule out his going through the typical PXL initiation, this is an opportunity to bring him into Clamperdom without exposing him to the elements.

I'll update you again soon, Until then, peace out, and have a Happy Halloween!

"9-11" - "the deadliest terrorist attack in human history" - occurred 22 years ago today. It is a solemn time worth remembering for it took the lives of almost 3,000 innocent individuals, all of whom were just going about their daily work, or traveling from one place to another. It was all routine until it wasn't.

Not all whose lives were taken were Americans - - nearly half were not - - but it was an evil desire to kill Americans and to damage our open way of life that motivated the malefactors. What they did affected us then, and it continues to affect us now. That is sad, but all the more reason on this day of remembrance, to resolve to be a better and more discerning people. The terrorists should never be allowed to claim even a pyrrhic victory.

So say a prayer for the innocents, those who died in the Towers, the first responders who selflessly went to the rescue and didn't return or later became seriously ill, those who died in the planes and at the Pentagon, and, of course, the heroic passengers who died at Shanksville. They all deserve our thoughts, and may their memory be a blessing to all of us. --MGM

 

Our Clampcrier and GDR, XNGH Dale "Top" Turner wants to emphasize that:

Friday, 15 September 2023 is the last day to register for the Fall Doin's at Fort Tejon. Registration closes and payment must be received by 1800 (6PM). Late payment is $15.00 more or $90.00.

PBC Registration was closed on Saturday, 2 September at midnight. Event Shirt orders were also closed at the time and the ordered placed. If you ordered an Event Shirts and or name tag it will be waiting for you at check in.

LISTEN UP!! If you are not able to attend the Clampout and have already paid, you must contact Top Turner, XNGH/GDR before the end of the day on Friday, 15 September to have your funds rolled over to the next Clampout. You will then have one year from the current Clampout to use your saved Gold Dust.

Failure to cancel before the end of the day on Friday, 15 September the Chapter will thank you for your donation.

 

This coming Saturday, September 2, 2023 there will be a RED SHIRT GET AWAY at the Santa Clarita Elks Lodge #2379 located at 17766 Sierra Highway, Canyon Country 91351. The doors open at 12noon, and admission is free. Come join us as we tell Clamper Tales and lies and share a libation or two. The Lodge has great Hot Dogs!

Should you have any questions or concerns I can be reached at 661-714-7203

Dale "Top" Turner, XNGH/GDR