# 134 Going back to Iraan for a few days to see if I can pump water with solar

We went back to Iraan to visit with Savannah and see how her little excursion went she had been on her own for four days or so with Mecca.

I guess beyond just retrieving our daughter I thought I would be helpful to these folks fixing a few things because I guess you might say they're land rich and cash poor. They just didn't have a whole lot and I thought it would be kind of like something you might do is at church group for people who need a little help. In other words, I am and have spent a lot of unpaid labor and eventually hundreds of dollars to help people who aren’t even asking for help. It occurs to me I am trying to share some of the wealth with folks who are really poor but friendly enough. Later I would realize I was getting too deep and I would need to stop and leave or stay forever. Collectively I’m sure we don’t want to stay forever.

I had been optimistic about changing a windmill-powered pump at the ranch over to a solar-powered pump The reason this started was that I had a conversation with Mecca about how that she had climbed up in the air I guess it's about 20 feet are so to do certain repairs to a windmill several times and she said she finally just gave up it wasn't her cup of tea to be up that high. She was kind of interested in what it would look like to switch over to solar. Looking back I never really got a chance to see if it would work but I went online and started learning about it. The Pump Jack method is used for pumping oil and sometimes these wells are 5 and 10,000 feet deep. It’s a long sucker rod that just lifts and down usually about 6 inches to a foot in travel and a check valve.

I looked at a number of ways that people had created pump jacks and some people would actually do it manually. There were solar-powered versions that would use an array and batteries to power an electric motor with a large mechanical advantage. There was a very large timber balanced on a fulcrum and with very little motion a pump jack was caused to move up and down enough to pump water just fine. it was my intent to use his large timber and a reasonably small but durable 12-volt motor. A100 watt solar panel would make 12 volts that would pump water without using the windmill. I was so optimistic then I went ahead and purchased the solar panel and charge controller. I was in the process of actually buying it which required several hours on the internet of which low volt motor might be suitable. I looked and looked and believe it or not a grill rotisserie type motor looked pretty good. It was the kind of day that would turn a pig because it can take plenty of heat and it can work continuously. It had a slow RPM which was ideal.

I found a golf caddy that was electrically driven. I got to thinking that if it could run you're on the golf course 18 holes on one battery it would be a pretty useful motor to run continuously. I was on eBay and I was about to buy it but shipping would take too long. It was in Midland.

I was going to go to Midland Texas that afternoon to pick up the golf cart DC motor to operate the pump jack.

On Monday and I told Kenny that let's look at the solar thing and he was a little less than enthusiastic. He said well whether we do that or not let's go look at the ranch and ride around a little. Dad, Mecca, Randall, and Savannah all went riding around in the pickup truck feeding cattle out on the ranch what they called cake. It's just Purina chow in little clumps, protein bars I guess. We stopped at an empty watering trough. At some point, we should fix the water pump. They were able to get it to go by hitting on the head at the pressure switch. Dad then rode us over to a cabin that hunters use sometimes. There was an old-school windmill going there. It had filled a wooden bucket that held about 5,000 gallons to overflowing. I said shouldn’t we cut it off and dad said no let it run. I may not understand it but it did seem a little less than a good steward to just let it pour all over the ground after the tank was full. My assumption is he was afraid to be cut it off it might not start up again. It was also beside an old hunting cabin they rented out. Maybe wasting the water caused animals ready for the shooting to want to hang around the area.

As we were driving away and I saw how effective real windmills are I began to wonder if I was on a foolish path. I had been creating a Rube Goldberg solution to something that wasn't all that broke. It's really hard to beat that technology it’s been working great for 200 years or more and it doesn't need that much fixing. You know, I live and learn.

They had lost interest and so the next step was really to cancel the Amazon order for the solar panels and or refuse it at delivery so we wouldn't have to pay a fee to ship it back. During this time Amazon didn’t just always approve returns and if they did you would have to pay for shipping. I called and they said if you refuse the shipment I would not have to for return shipping.

I probably spent 8 hours thinking about the failed solar project and I had invested about $200 of my money on a solar panel and controller. Whenever they decided to abort I had to have Mecca meet the UPS driver at the library to refuse the shipment. By doing this it was turned around and never delivered so at least it qualified for a refund.

Savannah and Mecca said they had a nice time. Savannah did a lot riding horses and mostly they were just being silly girlfriends and having a nice time. The large part of the gap year RV excursion was to find a part of the country that appealed to Savannah enough to accept an SCA hitch for 6 months or a year. It would be like a trade school and a time to build character. I felt working outside doing something with her hands was what she needed.

I wondered if the Mecca ranch hand was this opportunity as Savannah could stay as an apprentice.

I had asked Mecca if this would be a good idea. Savannah could be a ranch hand for a couple of months. I would give some monthly money for room and board and to me, it functions like going off to college. It seemed reasonable to me. Mecca she kind of thought that that might be more than she wanted to take on. I had asked Savannah twice and she said that might be more than she wanted to do.

I guess all I can do is keep looking for what appeals to her and in the process were having a great family RV trip.

Soon after we arrived a month ago we discovered that there was internet up on top of the hill. From the main house, it was up a beat-up dirt road in and out on top of the property at the very top of the hill.

You could get internet and make a phone call so it kind of reminded me in a weird kind of way of Green Acres where when you wanted to make a phone call you had to climb up on top of the phone pole.

You could be hanging out and all of the sudden when these guys need to make a phone call they’d hop in the car and drive up to the top of the hill. Anytime you want to make a phone call that's where you went to get a signal but it's also kind of funny that Mecca and Savannah and even us at some point would run up there and hang out.

Because we like streaming on Netflix and Amazon we decided let's just drive the RV up to the top of the hill. filled or tanks water got rid of a little grey water went up to the top of the hill and stay there for the rest of our visit which was about 4 more nights or so

The day after roaming the ranch I messed around a little bit at the library up packages that had been delivered.

t I came back and worked on an industrial-type huge air compressor. To get it going I just needed a new battery. I nosed around until I found a decent one and later that day I rebuilt an electrical box at the panel where I jackleged the power a few weeks back.

Kenny and I went up to the top of the hill and he found a good main panel that would solve the electrical problem for Mecca. It was bolted to a heavy telephone pole and we couldn’t lift it. We tied it to the truck and drug it behind us down the hill. It seemed like a great idea at the time but by the time we got to the actual bottom of the hill, there was nothing much left but a pole. All of the parts we were going to use got scattered from one end of the 1-mile road to the other all over the place. We looked at each other and laughed and said well it will all be right there tomorrow once we get some daylight so we quit for the day.

The next day or maybe the girls went up the hill and gathered up all the scattered electrical parts and put them in the back of the truck. I took the parts mainly the main breaker and fixed her panel to permanently solve the 240-volt problem.

I had to climb a ladder and cut the live leads from the power company. When you’re on a job site the slang talk they would say would be like this. I was up on that ladder and I was so scared you couldn’t have got a toothpick between my ass cheeks. It was just like that. I finished the job in an hour or so and I was pleased.

Mecca was always just using the old1970 Cadillac when it was available. She mentioned there was a 2010 Cadillac over there that didn’t run. I asked her why and she didn’t know. The last project I decided to do was to try to get her running.

Of course, Mecca was thrilled because it would be nice to have a nearly new car to get some decent gas mileage.

She had heard it had a fuel pump problem. I did a lot of troubleshooting and finally decided that it just has to be the fuel pump. I figured how bad did it be 50 bucks and I started investigating I found out they were more like $300. Again I am such a nice humanitarian I decided I would volunteer to pay for it. I figured if I paid for paid it forward and someday good karma will catch up with me.

Mom had inherited the caddy from a deceased relative. I spent some time figuring it out and trying to figure it out and determined that I believe you had a bad fuel pump.

I volunteered to ride into town the next day and purchase a fuel pump and provide it to them as a community service. I was thinking we used to give a fair amount of money to the church and this way would just skip the plate and take it right to the need.

Mama Glender wanted to ride along and I suggested India come with us. We rode into Fort Stockton to buy the water pump and it just seemed weird that with absolutely not even a pot to pee in Glenda said she wanted to stop and buy some new boots for the wedding that was coming up on credit.

We also needed to go over the Dodge place and look at maybe by in a $50,000 2015 Dodge Ram truck.

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She had some kind of ad from the dealership

I kind of assumed on the flyer it was one of those things if you come by and test drive a truck will give you a free steak dinner somewhere. What's kind of weird is, was she seriously looking at buying a brand new truck or nearly new.

At this point, I started feeling a little judgy.

If you add it up on the estate there are probably 15 to 25 vehicles strong all over the place mostly none of them run. I’m sure they all have potential including a cool or fire truck, an old tow truck that looks like toe mater. It just goes on for acres and acres and then there's some fairly modern stuff.

There's even an actual tractor-trailer cab that is been sitting there for 5 years with the brakes locked up. All those things are worth $100,000 and are worth 200,000 new. if I was broke I would be trying to sell those things

It seemed the plan was that even though one is very fixed income I'm on social security and very overextended with no real cash at all, let's go buy a truck for $50,000. I guess it's more fun it is to buy new vehicles instead of fixing what you got.

My conflict was it I was doing all this work for free and paying for $300 fuel pumps because everybody was so broke and then we're looking at 50,000 trucks.

It seemed a little weird that a person somehow had enough money to buy a nearly new truck but no not enough money to eat dinner.

As I was paying for this fuel pump out of my pocket I thought it was a little weird that she was buying pretty new boots. I’m conflicted now I just want to go home and finish up the job.

This was my awakening at I knew it was past time to leave the ranch.

We went on back I installed the fuel pump but it looks like there's more wrong than that. I finally just gave up and decided to leave out the next day.

It was probably noon the next day and I had just done all the humanitarian stuff I wanted to do and I had said it was about time to go. Out of the blue, the Dad said by the way we're going to take that compressor you fixed and go clean out the big swimming pool. I had to say no I'm hooking up the RV to leave now.

This has been been an interesting couple of weeks but I believe it is time to go as we left out.

After we left I sent Mecca an email telling her what we were really liberal Democrat independent types but I had kept that to myself. I was just pointing out that although you think you got everybody figured out maybe in a way we're all okay. She has her ways that they're OK and they're pretty hard-right Republican and I'm not but they're OK and pretty cool people. We lean left and we're pretty cool people too so I think that was kind of a nice take away from the whole visit.

I had told India and mentioned in the email that I wondered if I was at some point doing all this free work was like a peacock showing tail feathers for a pretty girl. I sure did do a lot of work for nothing but at least I was honest about it.

I feel like India and I are in good shape so I don’t mean I was shaking my feathers to mate. I’m just saying is there a primal behavior that wants to see the girl smile. Many times as I was fixing things Mecca would say wow you’re really smart or gee that’s amazing. I was admitting I think I was feeding off that praise even if she no bad motives.

On the way out of town, we saw 100 pump jacks were going. It seemed and you could just smell petroleum in the air. I'm sure if you're in the oil business it smells like money but to me, it smelled kind of like petroleum and I didn't care for it.