MICHIGAN BACK FORTY WHISKY STILL KEEPERS SEE BAD WINTER COMMING

By Mike Colin
The squirrels are plump this year and the old guys around town have really thick whiskers so it’s going to be a hard winter in Northern Michigan. The Lumberman’s Almanac predicts stuff is really going to get deep up here in Michigan. The head of the Back Forty Whisky Still Keepers Association said that he knows the upcoming winter will be long because when his still blew up last week he could not see his shadow. In fact, he couldn’t see anything until he came too after being in a coma for three days. The doctors said the still explosion didn’t cause the coma but it was what the guy drank before it exploded that caused him to pass out for three days.

The Back Forty Whisky still Keepers Association has issued a statement regarding giving out free samples of product to lumber jacks. It seems that back forty whisky and cutting down trees is not a good mixture. In fact there is a drink in Northern Michigan called the Flattened Lumberjack. One drink and you feel like a big pine tree that you felled wrong flattened your body. The good news is that after a drink of backwoods whisky even if a tree does fall on you, you won't ever feel a thing.

MOSQUITOES ARE GOING TO EAT YOU ALIVE

By Mike Colin
My grandpa lives out in the backwoods and he has all sorts of bugs that bite all around him. In particular he has some really large and vicious mosquitoes that will attack you as soon as you step outside. My grandpa always says that if you go outside “the mosquitoes are going to eat you alive”. I guess he lost his best hunting dog to mosquitoes one day. He said he had just gotten back from visiting his still and he saw millions of mosquitoes carry off his blue tick hound. He said they were so thick they looked just like a black bear.

Once when I was a kid the whole family was going to have their annual picnic at grandpa’s place. Well, my grandpa knew he had to do something about the mosquitoes so he decided he’d set some smudge fires all around his house so the mosquitoes would keep away. Now things were going pretty good for old grandpa as he lit the last smudge fire. Then, suddenly the wind came up and the smudge turned into a yellow wall of flames that completely encircled his house. Luckily, my grandpa’s roof had been leaking all winter and spring so the boards in the house were entirely soaked with water and would not burn even though his kerosene heater had also been leaking for months all over the floor.

Well, a serious township wide fire broke out and this got the attention of the authorities. It seems that one mans smudge fire is called a forest fire by local officials. Grandpa went off to the county lock up for two and a half years. He got six months for setting a forest fire and two years for having an illegal still. Grandpa said he set the fire for self-defense. He said that he set the fires in order to save himself and his family from being carried off by the mosquitoes. Grandpa also claimed that his still was there to provide a medical treatment for his glaucoma. He said he would have used legalized marijuana but he didn’t want to get addicted to smoking. After all, his dad had died of lung disease and that always kept old grandpa on the straight and narrow.

BACKWOODS KNERDS (NERDS)

By Mike Colin
Everyone knows what a nerd is. In cities and towns nerds are those whiz kids that are great with math and science and often times go on to become engineers and teachers. I never worried about being called a nerd although once when I was in high school I did have to sit at the nerd table at lunch time. All the nerds seemed to want to talk about was how they had solved some math equation on a calculus quiz or about some chemistry lab stuff. I didn’t understand anything they were saying. After all, I took mostly physical education classes and the only class I took where I even had to count was marching band. It’s hard to make those formations if you don’t count the right number of steps you need to make. My brother Tim got kicked out of the band because he kept ending up in the stands instead of in formation on the football field.

Now because I couldn’t really contribute to the conversation at the nerd table, I tried to change the subject to sports by showing them the scar I had on my foot from playing lawn jarts. They just told me I was really gross although they did seem to admire the webbing I have between my toes. I also showed them the gills I have at the base of my neck and I heard one of the nerds actually say the word “awesome”. I still was not accepted as one of them but after that day the nerds all called me “Fish Boy”. “Hi Fish Boy,” they would say when they passed me in the halls. Even though I still didn’t understand what they were talking about when it came to their nerdy math and science classes, I kind of felt like an honorary member of their group.

Now out in the backwoods my family has their own version of nerds. They are kids born with special talents for handling backwoods engineering projects like making lean-to’s strong enough to survive the heavy snows or, building machines that will split a tree all the way up the trunk before you cut it down.

My backwoods family calls these really smart kids knerds with a silent “k”. I think that the old timers who came up with the spelling must have been thinking of words like “knight” or “knock” when they first wrote down the word “knerd” to describe my family’s wunderkind. Of course these kids have no formal education since they are deemed too valuable by the people living in the hills, hollers and, swamps to waste their time and talents learning in the public schools. After all, everything anyone needs to know to survive in the wilds they can learn best by staying home with their folks.

My cousin Deuce was perhaps the smartest of any knerds ever born in the backwoods. His engineering prowess was especially sought after by the backwoods people since he was an expert at building stills. He could take the parts of any kind of abandoned vehicle and use them to make stills that produced the most refined and potent whisky in just a few hours. Deuce even had several genuine legal distilleries trying to sign him up to build stills for commercial production.

My cousin Deuce even invented a combination wood chipper/still. It was a marvel for all to see. The first whiskey that Deuce produced in his new invention he decided to sample himself. Deuce took a big swig of his homemade brew and said with a big smile on his face “Wow! That’s the stuff,” then he then passed out.

Deuce just celebrated his third year after inventing his wood chipper/still machine. It’s just too bad that he is still in a comma after sampling his product. He still has a big smile on his face but the doctors say he has absolutely no higher level brain activity. Deuce has been diagnosed with BDD (Brain Dead Drunk). It’s really too bad that Deuce didn’t have a little more formal education in the field of chemistry. It seems wood chips do not make very good drinking whiskey but, they sure make a really clean burning fuel for gas burning combustion engines.