Four Generations of Lucas

From Judy:

This is four generations. Great Grandma Sarah Lucas, Grandma Mary Belle Lucas (Webb), Grandma Agnas, and Martha (your mom) I look like her in my pictures at her age. I was really surprised how much. I will have to try and find my picture so you can compare them.

I always thought Martha & Eva looked a lot alike. Gladys had a different look more athletic, more like Grandma. Also notice Grandma's jaw. Some how it got passed through to me. RLR

Pictures from Judy Billbery

I will post a series of pictures I have received from Judy. This one is a picture or William and Agnas Moore on their wedding day. Judy says, "This is Grandpa and Grandma's wedding picture. They were married in 1914 if I remember right".

From Martha's list of dates posted earlier on the blog we have:

June 2, 1890 Daddy (William Moore) born in Brown County, Indiana
Feb 17, 1893 Mother (Agnes Lucus) born in Hoopeston, Ill
Dec 4, 1912 Mother and Daddy Married in Danville, Illinois
Nov 27, 1913 Martha born in Hoopeston, Ill. Thanksgiving
June 5, (1917) William born in Hoopeston, Ill Died that fall (Sept 13, 1917)
1918-1922 Martha attended Lincoln Grade School in Hoopeston, Ill
1921-1922 Martha promoted at semester from 3rd to 4th grade
Feb 21, 1919 Gladys (Esther) born in Hoopeston, Ill
Dec 23, 1921 Eva (Agnes) born in Hoopeston, Ill
Jan 1922 Moved to farm near Oxford & Uncle Kirts (Daddy’s Uncle)
Martha attended Oxford School – by bus
May or Apr 1922 moved to farm North of Boswell, Ind. On Rte 41 Martha attented Boswell School until May 1929
Mar 1929 Moved to Ambia area in Ill. 1 ½ mile from state line
May 1930 (Martha) Graduated from Ambia, Ind H.S.
Sept 1930 (Martha) Entered ISNU at Normal, Ill
Jun 1934 (Martha) Graduated with B. Ed from Normal
Sept 1934 (Martha) started teaching business at H.S. in Mt Pulaski, Ill

Building a Barn Part One

We were going to build a bar for two horses. It needed two stalls, a tack room, a place to store feed (hay, pellets, etc.), and a covered area out of the sun. The covered area is an Arizona requirement. The finished barn was 36' x 24'.

This is Dan the next door neighbor on his tractor. Dan used to have his own landscape business. During one of the housing busts of the boom / bust building cycle he was doing work for several builders who went bankrupt on him. He got caught by the IRS for late payment of employee taxes. Rather than let him work through it they stepped in and sold off all of his equipment. Dan now works for a company that builds swimming pools. They use his landscape license and he runs their crews.

The idea is to make a large flat spot. There are no flat spots on our five acres. We start on a place right below the garage. We had to cut about 5 feet in the high corner and fill about 8 feet in the low corner. I had 9 truck loads of fill brought in for the down side. Dan did all of the tractor work.

Here I am on the tracker. My assignment was to drive back and forth on the fill area and pack it down. Back and Forth, Back & Forth, maybe I found my calling.

We decided to get a county permit to keep everything legal. It cost me $481 and several trips to the county permit building. There were many different things that were needed.

1. Set backs drawing ( I did)

2. Cut and Fill drawing (I did)

3. Native plants ( Area of grading was small and there were no protected plants) this got OK based on the above drawings

4. Septic tank placement in relation to building (again used drawings above)

5. Review of plans building plans (Plans must be drawn by engineer licenced in AZ). The drawings were provided by the company building the barn.

6. Inspection of foundation forms prior to concrete

7. Final Inspection

Another neighbor Sergio is a supervisor for KGE a large Construction Company. He and one of his foremen did the concrete work on Saturdays and the day after Thanksgiving. He looked at the plans and said "Piece of Cake", He wanted $1000 plus material cost. I said "OK". I gave him $500 for materials. It turned out to be harder than he thought because of the ground. I loaned him my jackhammer and when it was over I I gave him and extra $200.

You will note the fence on the right. I had the fence built after we started working on the site prep. It runs along the front of this picture then over to Dan & Marsha's (the house with the pickup) then down to the left to another neighbors fence. We had to cut the fence during construction and once the barn was up I put in new end posts and re-stretched the wire. Amazing the things I was learning.

This story is to be continued.

Barn Part Two

The reason I broke this into two parts was because it was hard to load all of the pictures. If you want to load pictures load them from the bottom up. This is the finished froms ready for the concrete. You can see the well and water tank behind. Those cylindrical tubes are great they make it very easing to make concrete piles that hold every thing in place. Notice there is no re-bar. The concrete we used had special fibers in it which help to hold it together. That costs and extra $9 per yard.





This is the truck that brought the concrete. I paid this guy $1100 on Nov 22.

Here is the finished foundation.














The barn came from Riverside, CA on a large flat bed 18 wheeler. There is no way such a truck could get into our place so I had to rent a smaller flat bed. They rent a fork lift to put walls etc. up so they off loaded to my smaller truck and we did the last three miles with it. This is the complete load. The largest pieces were 8' x 12'. It is all steel construction and the pieces kind of slide together.









The construction crew was from Southern California. There were 5 of them and three spectators from the Phoenix Distributor. They arrived the night before and we all got together at 6 am the next morning at the unload point except the flat bed semi got lost. By 7am we were together. These guys work fast. In less than 2 days it was up and they were gone. They did a super job. Everything was square and level. As it turned out it was a cold 2 days. The night between it got down to 25 deg. F. and there was a cold wind. We tried to keep hot coffee and served lunch and breaks.






This is the crew at break. Notice they are all bundled up. A little cold for Southern Calif guys. The foreman is on the front right. The second on the left and the second on the right were two young men named Jr. & Jr. I don't know how the kept them straight.













This is pretty much the finished barn. It has everything except the roof cap. The one that shipped was the wrong color. The company shipped a replacement and the distributor came down from Phenxi the next week and put it on. Thats me in the orange down jacket.

This is it. Up and working. Salt block between stalls and a corner of the water tank on left.

e-mail from Corey

My youngest son Corey is in the Army at the Army Language school in Monterrey, CA studying Tagalog (The main language of the Philippines). I haven't spoken to him for a few months and got this email. He has three girls and a boy. I'm terrible with ages but I will try below in [].

... How is everything going? Things are going fairly well here. Chugging away at tagalog trying to do my best. The baby [boy 4-5 months] is doing very well and is very cute. The girls are doing well. Elise [oldest girl about 9] is doing much better in school. All high marks. Alex (girl about 5) basically taught her self to read with the help she gets at school... and she is just in kindergarten. Austin [girl 4] is doing well but I think she really wants somewhere to go like her sisters.

.....

I miss you

Love Corey

For Mary's Birthday

No, you climb and I'll watch

From the city of Jena in eastern Germany comes news that - after three years of experimentation - researchers reluctantly have concluded that their objective cannot be achieved. And it's all Mats's fault. Who is Mats and what has he done to blunt the advance of science? Well, ah, Mats is a sloth - one of the species of medium-sized mammals that are native to Central and South America and are best known for their lack of get up and go. Which is what
scientists at the University of Jena's Institute of Systematic Zoology and Evolutionary Biology were trying to overcome. Since sloths live in trees, they had hoped to observe Mats climbing a pole in their laboratory and then backing his way down again. But he wouldn't ... despite being offered such inducements as spaghetti and cucumbers. Sloths, you see, mostly eat leaves, digesting them so slowly that the process can take more than a month to complete. Result: an extremely low metabolism and lots of sleeping - as many as 18 hours in every 24. Said a spokesman for the institute: "Mats obviously wanted nothing to do with furthering
science." So he has been packed off to a zoo elsewhere in Germany, where he is said to be resting comfortably.
THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR http://www.csmonitor.com Feb 2,2007