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The HomestandersChapter 14 free porn video
"There is no doubt," Jason smiled. "This is the place."
"I guess," Emily laughed. "That thing makes it pretty clear. It doesn't look like a Civil War cannon, though."
"It isn't," Jason shook his head, looking at the yard art and the sign hanging from it. "It's a 105-millimeter howitzer, roughly World War II, although I think the Army may still have a few. And the name, Malvern Hill, if there were any doubt this guy is serious."
"Malvern Hill?"
"Emily, you know anything about the Civil War?"
"That was North versus South, right?"
"Right," he smiled as he pulled the pickup into the side yard and put it into park. "Maybe you better ask this Woodward guy about it, but if he doesn't tell you I will later."
In a minute the two of them were out of the truck, and heading up to the back porch, which was the only part of the house that had been shoveled out. They hadn't even made it to the door when it opened, and a tall, salt-and-pepper-haired man with an infectious smile stood inside. "Hi," he said. "Are you Mrs. Holst? I think I remember you from the township board meeting the other night."
"Please call me Emily," she replied. "This is a friend, Jason MacRae," she continued. "After all the snow we've had the past few days I wasn't sure how bad the roads were going to be so he volunteered to bring me out with his truck. Besides, he was in the Army and might pick up on something I'd miss."
"Jason MacRae?" Woodward frowned for a second as he held the door open for them. "Oh, yeah!" he said. "You're the knife and sword guy, right?"
"More knives than swords," Jason replied. "But I've done a few."
"I've been meaning to look you up. I hear you do some great work."
"I like to think I do better than average," Jason smiled, instinctively liking the guy already, and not just because of the praise. There was a jovialness to him that was infectious. "Thanks for having the road plowed out."
"I have to do it, the county never does," he shrugged. "Back on a dead end like this, it's almost a private driveway. But I knew you were coming, so that made me get around to it a little quicker. Well, welcome to Malvern Hill." He turned to a short, chunky gray-haired woman about his age, but with an equally infectious smile. "This is my wife Laura."
"Pleased to meet you," she smiled. Jason looked at both of them carefully. They were maybe his age, and they had the look of having money and being comfortable with it. "I suppose you've heard some of the stories going around about our little hobby."
"It'd be hard not to," Emily smiled. "Mr. Weber wanted me to thank you for letting me come out to do this story."
"It's probably better that people know what's going on, rather than have rumors," Woodward smiled. "Would you like some coffee? Or would you rather see some of the toys first, and then you'll have a better idea of what we're talking about."
"Actually, that sounds like a good idea, especially since we've still got our coats on," Emily said.
"Fair enough," he laughed. "I'll grab mine and we'll head out to the barn."
"I have to ask," Jason said, his resolve to keep quiet and let Emily take point eroding out of simple curiosity, "Is the 105 out front the real thing?"
"It is and it isn't," Woodward grinned as he headed for a coat hanging from a hook near the kitchen door. "It was the real thing; I bought it off an American Legion post that was closing. Some idiot welded the breech shut, and I don't think there's any way to fix it. I wouldn't want to try to fire it anyway; the tube is pretty pitted, but it makes a good signpost."
"Jason was saying he thought Malvern Hill meant something," Emily observed.
"It was a battle toward the end of the Peninsula Campaign of 1862, back in the War of Southern Arrogance," Woodward explained, and he pulled his coat on while Laura began to pull on her boots. "The Feds got their butts kicked clear down the peninsula, but the last defensible point was a place called Malvern Hill. They lined up their artillery wheel to wheel and when the Rebs attacked just blew them apart with canister. The Rebs called it "Artillery Hell." I thought it made a pretty good name."
"Sounds appropriate, from what I hear," Jason grinned.
"You know much about the Civil War?"
"I'm no great expert on it," Jason shrugged. "I've read a few books over the years. I know something about sabers from that era, though."
"Ever build any replicas?"
"A few," he smiled. "I lean more toward the ceremonial style than I do the field style. I've got a couple lying around."
"Great, I want to check them out some time. I have a couple field sabers from that era, but I wouldn't mind having a nice presentation saber."
"Well, if I don't have what you want, I can probably make it," Jason smiled.
A couple minutes later the four of them were walking across the farmyard, in just the remnants of snow that had been plowed out from earlier. Jason could remember back to when this place had been a working dairy farm; a friend had lived nearby. But, that had been long ago; his practiced eye could tell that this hadn't been a working farm in a long time -- there was no evidence of animals or farm machinery or the odds and ends that got left around the typical farm. Untypically, though, the outbuildings seemed to be in good shape; on non-working farms they were often just let go. While there was still a lot of farmland in the area, there were only a handful of working full-time farmers who owned or leased hundreds of acres in order to be able to get along.
Woodward led them in a side door. After the bright light outside, there were only dim shapes visible in the darkness of the barn floor, until he threw a switch, and Jason's eyes boggled, even more than Emily's because he had some idea of what he was looking at. "Jesus," he said. "An M4, right?"
"M4-A4 Sherman tank," Woodward grinned. "As far as we can tell it was in the Third Army when it rolled across France. It's not mine. I'm just storing it for a friend who's restoring it. He bought it in Israel, and they modified it quite a bit; we know it was in the Six-Day and Yom Kippur Wars, but he wants to get it back to original condition."
"Sonja's mother," Emily laughed.
"Huh?" Woodward frowned.
"We have this friend; her mother is an officer in the Israeli Army, some kind of colonel, I think," Emily grinned. "She was in the Yom Kippur War, I think Sonja told us."
"Probably not driving this tank; they didn't have women in tank crews," Woodward smiled. "I'm not a big World War II buff, but I have a couple pieces like that 105 out front." He turned and pointed at a small artillery piece, mounted on rubber wheels, with armor shields on either side of the barrel. "This is mine; it's a 37-mm antitank gun. It was a lousy antitank weapon, it just didn't have the punch, but it was a handy infantry support weapon in the early part of the war. It's in good shape, it could be fired, but the ammo would have to be custom made anymore, and then we'd have to have a special permit since it's fixed ammunition using smokeless powder. I don't want to try it until we get the museum pretty well established and people get used to us."
"Museum?" Emily asked.
"That's part of the long-range plan," he replied. "But the plan is to have a working museum where people can see this sort of thing. In the interim, it's going to be a place where we can do some re-enactments and shoot a little."
"Civil War re-enacting seems to be gaining popularity," Jason observed.
"Oh, yes," Woodward smiled. "This is going to be the home of Battery A, First Michigan Light Artillery. Right at the moment, I only have the one Napoleon here, but there's a friend who will have another one here in the spring, and if things work out we hope to have the full four-gun battery in a year or two. But I do things other than just Civil War re-enacting, or else I wouldn't have Big John over there," he said, pointing at a steel framework looking like a pair of A's sitting back to back near the barn doors. It was high, seemingly only barely able to fit through the tall doors.
Jason frowned for a moment; it seemed familiar, but there was something missing. All of a sudden, it hit him. "The lower part of a trebuchet, right?"
"Right, the rest of it is sitting around here in various places," Woodward smiled.
"Sir," Emily frowned. "What's a trebuchet? And how do you spell it?"
He spelled it out for her. "It's a medieval siege artillery piece. Even before medieval, it goes back to Roman times, maybe. This one follows the function but isn't intended to be an exact replica. It's really intended to see how far you can throw a pumpkin. We had it out back before Christmas, tossing a few around; we want to enter it in some contests next year."
"They have contests for throwing pumpkins around with these things?" Emily asked incredulously.
"Oh, yeah, it's popular in places. The record is about 1500 feet, but we haven't gotten that far with Big John yet. The accuracy stinks; you really don't want to be anywhere near in front of it, and it's a crapshoot where the pumpkin is going to hit. In the old days, they threw rocks and anything else within reach, usually trying to knock down castle walls. Another way you can toss a pumpkin is with an air cannon. We can get around three thousand feet out of the one in the back shed. The accuracy is a little better than the trebuchet. You can easily hit the back forty from here, but where in the back forty is anyone's guess. At this point, we're planning on having a few people in for a little pumpkin tossin' meet here next fall; we'll invite the public out of good neighborliness, and help people get used to us a little. We'll probably have a demo from Battery A, just on general principles."
"That sounds like fun!" Emily grinned.
"Sure sounds different," Jason grinned. "You're telling me you bought this place just to be able to have a place to shoot this stuff off?"
"Oh, yeah," Woodward smiled. "I bought it after I retired. It's a hobby farm, after all; I'll get a few bucks from raising alfalfa to help with the taxes. I've got about a hundred and thirty acres here; it's pretty much long and narrow since one side of it runs along the Interstate. That means we've got a clear mile. It gives some room to shoot; the Napoleon couldn't shoot that far on the best day it ever had, and it'll be a while before an air gun can get a pumpkin out that far. Not that I don't intend to be the first."
"Why do you use an air gun?" Emily asked.
"Can't use powder, you'd turn a pumpkin to pumpkin soup before it got out the barrel. It has to be accelerated a little more slowly, and compressed air works about as well as anything."
"How'd you get started in this?" Emily asked.
"I was in an artillery outfit in Vietnam, the early days," he replied. "105s, like the one out front. I was in the 82nd, so we didn't have the 155s. I just liked the shooting. I missed it after I went back to civilian life, but I didn't do anything about it then. Later I got to messing around with some guys who played with spud guns, and things took off from there."
"Spud guns?"
"Just a toy. A piece of pipe, you put some propane from an unlit torch down it, drop a potato down the muzzle, and set it off with a spark plug and battery. They don't cost much to make, and you can launch a spud a couple hundred yards with them. Then Laura bought me a yacht signal cannon for Christmas one time, and it sort of went on from there. I took early retirement so I could do some serious playing. Anyway, let's show you the Napoleon." He led them around the trebuchet, to the Civil War-style cannon sitting on the far side of the barn, beside a second pair of barn doors. "This is less than a year old," he said. "But it's about as exact a replica of an 1859 Civil War Napoleon as can be made. There's a guy down in Ohio who makes these things, and he really does a good job."
"You fire cannonballs and all, right?" Emily asked.
"Just cannonballs," he replied. "Technically you could fire canister or grape in it, but it's bronze and the steel ammo would tear it up too much. Sometimes we just fire blanks for the sake of the noise, but it's more fun to shoot at something."
"I heard you shoot at old junk cars."
"Yeah, they make good targets. If you hit one, you know it's been hit. Would you like to see us fire one?"
Mckenna
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