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Texas Dutch Oven
(dagnabbit!)
OCF members are crazy about their dutch ovens. Cumbersom, heavy pots, pits and containers, all designed to be used on an open fire, they're used to fix entire meals, melt wax for "fire starters", mix paint, wash diapers, clean engine parts, etc. Being the industrous folks that Texans is, are, they came up with their own universal cooking container... the Texas dutch oven. Seen pictured above, the Texas dutch oven has been in use (at least in Texas) since 1884. It was only in the last 35 years, hownever, that a power cord was included so it could be plugged into electric tricity. The Texas dutch oven spurred the invention of another popular camper's aid... the portable electric generator (which can power up the Texas dutch oven in the wilds). The invention of that generator further spurred the attempt at inventing the perfect small gas engine muffler. This has yet to be did (ask any tent camper). If it's bigger, better, or makes more noise, it was probably inventioned in Texas!
Park Ranger Keith
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November 2001 FCM
Photo courtesy of
Diesel Jockey News®
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PRK OCF FCM!
by Rancid J. Faultus
Director of Operations
Ransom Park, Texas
Pictured at left is Ransom Park's chief park ranger and head of security, Alan Keith.
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Well, it's finally happened... someone has taken notice of our very own Park Ranger Keith, except this time it may be a GOOD thing! A group known as Online Camping Friends (a Yahoo hosted club) has named our chief park ranger as their Featured Club Member. I contacted the club flounders (who would only give their names as Tom and Sioux) for verification, but neither one seemed happy that I'd found out about it. Tom just grumbled something to the effect that Ranger Keith was the only person who'd not been FCM, and Sioux (who is of American Indian descent) shot arrows at me as I ran for my life. As I stand here typing this (the doctor says I'll be able to sit on my arrow wounds by next week), I recollections seeing a sign on the OCF clubhouse door denying Ranger Keith entrance. This seems strange for a member of their club who is the featured club member for November.
While fleeing the arrow storm, I had been running for a few minutes and came across a deplorable campsite. The occupent was digging a shallow ditch from the side of his class C motorhome over to the next campsite where a travel trailer had fallen off it's blocks. It seems his black water tank had a rather large hole in it, causing a considerable pool-o-doodie on the ground. I asked him about the FCM thing, and he identificationed himself only as CK, and claimed to be Ranger Keith's cousin! He said PRK (which is what the club members call Park Ranger Keith) was indeed the November featured club member, and that he was very proud that a Keith family member was being honored once again. While hosing black water off his red HogScooter's tires, he explained that another cousin, DK, had been the FCM a few months back. I was unable to get any more information from CK as he seemed to be in a hurry to get to a Miss Thud's trailer for some kind of trashing party. Or trashy party... I'm not sure which. Jumping on his scooter, CK spun his tires (sending black water mud all over me), yelled "YEEEEHAAAA" and was gone in a flash (a BIG flash... his scooter backfired and blew the muffler off). Last I saw him, he was blasting through the campground at top speed (about 14 miles an hour).
So, it appears our very own chief park ranger is the featured club member of the month over at the Online Camping Friends clubhouse. But only on the outside (still reseaching the reason he's not allowed inside)! Since I was unable to discover just what qualifies an OCF'er to be the featured club member, I'm reprinting (belowness) an article found on the OCF website, aparently written by Ranger Keith hisself.
So it shall be wroted, so it shall be did.
Rancid J. Faultus
Ransom Park, Texas
"I Be a Featured Club Member"
by Alan Keith
Chief Park Ranger
Ransom Park, Texas
I was born at an early age in Castroville, Texas. But that was in 1960 and I don't remember much about it. I'm told the attending physician, seeing how ugly I was, wanted to slap something besides my butt. He was too much the gentleman to slap my mom, too much the shrimp to slap my dad, so he went out to the waiting room and slapped my brother (which is somewhat confusing because my brother was an only child). He then returned to the delivery room to slap my butt. Loaded up with "delivery gas", I blew his glove off. In fact, for the first day they couldn't keep a diaper on me... I'd blow it completely off. In no time a newly installed one would be stuck to the ceiling or a wall... or a nurse. And my bassinet, being on wheels, was constantly being propelled around the room. Finally a clever nurse used duct tape (to hold my diaper on and keep the bassinet in place). They used lots of duct tape while I was there. And air freshener.
Growing up, I was exposed to fishing by my parents. We had a fourteen foot aluminum boat and small outboard motor which we used on a nearby lake. After a couple of years of going with them, I realized I wasn't into fishing. Or boating. Or cargo loading. My folks would take so much stuff along that there was barely room enough to sit, let alone fish. I discovered that I would get restless after about twenty minutes, but had no room to move around in. They used to put very little bait on the hooks, then grumble if they actually snagged a fish. It was too much trouble to deal with a fish amongst all that junk, and bringing one into the boat interfered with reading or listening to the radio, and sometimes splashed lake water into their coffee.
After loading the boat with all the food, cushions, thermos bottles and other creature comfort items, it rode so low in the water that the slightest breeze could start them bailing. And they wanted ME to go along too! I finally realized that fishing (or shipping cargo) was their thing. The way they went about it cured me of wanting it to be mine. Permanently.
While most teens were playing sports or camping and fishing, I was into working on cars or doing home maintenance with my dad. He never hired anything done if he could figure a way to do it himself by either buying the tools and equipment he needed, or making his own. I suppose I inherited being good with my hands from him, and he taught me a lot about the care and upkeep of everything around the house. Because my dad was in the electronics field, I became interested in fooling around with electronics and sound equipment as hobbies. All through junior high and high school I enjoyed being in plays (comedies, of course), emceeing events, and was very active in band.
After leaving high school, I attended college where I earned a Bachelor of Unified Mechanics degree. Being a rather rare field, there didn't seem to be much need around south central Texas for a BUM, so in 1982 I applied for a job at Ransom Park, Texas. I was hired as a park ranger, and after only 14 months was moved into the chief park ranger/head of security position. I'm also loosely referred to as the general manager by our park director. Of course, with that last clause in my job description that says "and other duties", I wind up doing most of the chores sooner or later. Mostly sooner.
Being responsible for so many things here at the park, I never have a chance to get bored.
I patrol the recreational lake in my official park ranger boat, make the rounds in my official pickup or on my official moped, or haul folks from the Road Kill Grill to the emergency room in the park helicopter. Up until it went missing, I had a giant tractor for mowing the campgrounds and roadways, and sometimes used it to pull folks out of the quick sand in the children's play area. There's always something that needs fixing, new projects that need building, new ideas that need developing, long johns that need cleaning and mending.
I became a member of the OCF club (then it was called Pop Up Pals) because of Derek Gore (RV_Roadie). He emailed that lots of folks in a camping club he belonged to had been visiting Ransom Park, and that I should visit the club's website. So, liking what I saw, I joined the (now) Online Camping Friends club and promptly discovered some of my relatives were members, too. What a small world the web is.
So, even though I don't camp, hike, fish, boat or go RV'ing, I work in a park designed for folks who do. For that reason, when Tom asked me to write a little something about myself as FCM, I was shocked... and then I felt very honored. I receive a lot of pleasure (and much needed laughs) from the club message posts, and enjoy being an OCF family member very much. I believe the founders, Tom and Sue, host the best world wide clubfull of friendly folks on the web. And that's not just my opinion, dagnabbit, that's fact!
Alan Keith
Featured Camper of the Month, November 2001
Online Camping Friends
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March 2001 FCM
Miss Jenni
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Great Gobs of Axle Grease!
by Rancid J. Faultus
Director of Operations
Ransom Park, Texas
This pitchur of the March FCM (at left) appeared all over the park (and the backs of biker's T-shirts) during the OCF's big shindig. Hey... she's kinda cute!
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BIKERS! TENTERS! FIFTH WHEELERS! TRAILERERS! MOTORHOMERS! POPUPPERS! They was everwhere recently (if not sooner) around Ransom Park. It was an assemblage of a club knowed as PopUpPals at the time. They done so much partiatin around Natalia, hownever, that they had to abandonize their old club name so's they could stay ahead of the county law. Now they're knowed as Online Camping Friends, but we won't tell nobody.
Anyways, all this shindiggin was to honerate their Featured Clubbedmember of the Month (FCM). The only clubbing going on might have been by the FCM herself, hownever, trying to keep the bikers in line... they seemed real tooken with her. Of course, the fact that them bikers were bucketing their drinking water from Brown Water Springs might have contribulized to their incessant attivities and "moving" about.
A reperzentative of them Online Camping Friends (AKA PopOffPals), knowed as Camper Keith, turned out to be the seventh cousin (six times removed) of our own Ranger (Alan) Keith, Head of Park Security here. We're not sure whether the two Keithseses hit it off or not, but they was in confabulation off and on about the strange disrepearance of this park's John Deere 9200 trator. Could be also even too that Camper Keith didn't like the way Ranger Keith taken the FCM all over the park on the back of his turbocharged Moped (with the reevolvin lights and sireen).
Poor old Ranger Keith were tooken down a peg or two, though, when he tried to show off to the FCM. He installationed pontoons on his offishal park ranger Moped and went scootin by the campgrounds (on the lake), headed for the Rick O. Tee bridge. Everthing were OK till he tried to pass under it, since recent rains had swellted the water to within a foot of the bridge's underside. Ouch! Ranger Keith spended the next two days trying to fish his offishal sireen/reevolvin light assemblage outta the water around that bridge.
I cain't hardly list here all the junk that the Online Camping Friends (AKA PopTopPals) done while here, but they was a mighty friendly bunch. They even made the local paper (but I ain't sure what they made them do). So, to further extrapolate and lessen the chance of redundancey, beelow are an are tickle witch appeareded in said local news paper, sended to us by one of them Online Camping Friends (AKA PopOutPals) what calls hisself RV_ROADIE (thanks, RV):
Reprinted by persimmon of "The Natalia Harold"
Natalia Harold
"Fits the news into all the print"
4 Mar 2001
I.B. Harold's Brother, staff writer
Jenni aka Pub Lic and the FCM was an instant hit at Ransom Park Campin ground an culinary resort! Jenni charmed all 150 Bikers as she passed out veterans applications for Loans explainin that if ya live on yer hog it might be considered a house and that since it was mobile they could go to california ta pick up the checks! Now while we aren't sure if that wasn't just a ploy ta get past em, it shore did get their attention, and they forgot all about initiatin her inta their organization. Her appearance was Herolded as "the durndest thing I ever saw" by Ranger Keith who is chief of security at ol Ransom. He was immeditely taken by the FCM and showed her around the park on his moped.
Mz Jenni, as she has become known here, tol us all about the Pop Up Pals campin club an the joys of campin in sunny California. She was then treated to the "Chef's Surpise" right outta our own Road kill cafe. No wonder she is so trim an petite as she hardly touched a thang on her plate. She was enthralled by Chef's centerpiece for the head table, and couldn't take her eyes off the buzzard head in the bud vase strategically placed for artistic effeck. She graciously ended the evenin by thankin all as she ran for the back door.
Obviously a brave young woman she refused all offers ta escort her to her tent, which had a suspicious sound of snorin comin from it, and turnded in with no lights! She wuz obviously taken with our Head Ranger as we heard her sayin Keith! Keith! just after enterin.
A true naturist she was up an gone afore any one else had arisen and was gone. She even left her tent an gear, an three cases of furrin' bottled water! THey will be distributed to the folks still in tha infirmary from the banquet.
The town o Natalia, an especially Ransom Park, wish ta thank the Pop Up Pals club fer sendin their FCM down ta resent their club fer us!
I.B.HB.
And there you has it... all the scoop on our latest esitement around here. Come on out to the park and enjoy some recreationizing with Ranger Keith and the rest of the staff.
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