* Chapter 166 -- Sweet Corn
By: Emmeran, 18 June 2021
Editor: 23 June 2021
Esther had brought Aunty and Matilda together.
Now I knew I was in trouble.
All extra-perceptional and sexual experiences aside, those two women were actually quite adept at controlling me. The only advantage I had was that I knew that fact...not that I could change it, but I wasn't simply a blind puppet. That, and the realization that I could still order them around. That wasn't worth much, but it was something. How's that old axiom go? 'When you see a man of power, look behind him to find the woman holding the reins.' Yeah, that was my life. Not a bad thing, but it's best to know where you stand.
I knew one thing for certain, I was very glad that I made sure that coffee, beer and bourbon were tops on our loading list coming out of St. Louis. I was going to eat, drink and then sleep; that was my grand plan for this Friday afternoon. Tomorrow would start a slew of meetings, followed by our 'Welcome to Rulo' party; Sunday would simply be a day of rest. Knowing that tomorrow would be a slew of reports and discussion about mundane things encouraged me to relax a little tonight.
I heard some musicians start to warm up somewhere in the background and was happy to see that Amos was on his toes. I also remembered to send a rider to Thomas, Martha and little Miss Daisy, to let them know we were having a party tomorrow. It wouldn't do to forget them. It was turning out to be very handy that I had added Clara to the assistant ranks; it meant there was always someone nearby to record things when I remembered them. In this case, I smelled BBQ coming from the pits and I knew that meant Matilda and her team had gotten into our meager tomato puree reserves. Our tomatoes were still small on the vine, so it had to be the last of our canned stuff. This meant we needed to add a focus on canning jars during our upcoming boat runs.
The tomato fields were still huge, but if we weren't able to preserve them, it would be wasted. There were a lot of options for preservation and we were going to try to use them all. All I had to do was note that out loud and Clara jotted it down. Now we just needed to organize a purchasing department for RT&T (Rulo Trade & Transport) and we'd be golden; however to make that work we'd need better communications.
Communication started with postal mail and while the pony express wouldn't work for me, we did have engineers and technology. What we needed was a fast mail boat. All we had to do first, was get our shops up and running. Then we could build the steam engine to power that boat upstream against the relentless current of the Missouri river.
What would we need make all of this happen? Well, bricks would be a good start. I wasn't anxious to pay men to attempt to pole a load of bricks upriver when we could make them ourselves. Basically I needed to get industry up and running, I really hoped my captains and council were ready for this push. We had a lot to do and a long way to go and I'd be gone for a lot of this effort. My next trip would be to finish my business with Henry Leavenworth. After that, I needed to head off to the Washington D.C. Patent Office to start making some real money.
We had a huge capital asset called information and I planned on taking advantage of that. To do so, I'd travel the East Coast and sell licenses for my ideas. Information was better than gold and I had a ton of it. I also needed to get to Europe and do the same, limiting myself to North America was foolish and I had a few people here in town now with European connections. Peter and Clara would be the toehold we needed to access continental wealth and industry. The continent would lead to England and so on. Patent licenses...that was the game we would be playing. We would take a tiny sales percentage of every little do-hickey sold. We didn't need much, but it would add up very quickly. Just ask IBM, HP and Texas Instruments.
All I could do right now was just sit, enjoy Mouse's company, and relax. I asked Clara to have the engineers meet with me first thing Monday morning, we'd discuss technology and they'd be in Engineer Heaven. With that sorted, I asked my sweet Mouse to get me some sweet corn and BBQ. It was time to relax and eat, and I was craving fresh sweet corn.
I sent sweet Mouse off to get me food, it might seem a bit crazy to send that lovely lady off, but it was also a chance to watch her walk and move. It's not often you find a woman who is 'just your type' and I had lucked into this one. She was long and willowy, with amazing legs and high firm breasts. Her gait was elegant, almost like a dancer. The fine and perfect features of her face were only surpassed by the power of her brain. Not to mention that she had character that went on forever. So, yeah, I liked to watch her move.
She brought me fresh sweet corn.
That was it. Just a simple wooden plate with an ear of freshly picked and roasted corn. It was done just the way I liked my early season corn, roasted in the husk and silk with butter and sides of spices at hand. Hot off the grill, you had to husk it yourself, and the aroma as you stripped that ear sent your taste buds and mind racing.
The first bite was always bare and unseasoned, I avoided the undeveloped nibs and went straight for the young kernels. There was time enough later for butter and other tasty additions. I wanted the clean taste of corn to start and it didn't disappoint. The rains had been good to us and the corn was incredibly juicy, not starchy in the least bit. The kernels exploded into your mouth spreading all of their sweet and savory flavor. This was the taste that said summer was truly here.
Fresh sweet corn served up by a beautiful woman.
All my troubles faded and life was bliss that evening.
* Chapter 167 -- Setting the wheels in motion

By: Emmeran, 20 June 2021
Editor: nnpdad 23 June 2021
The next day was exactly as I feared. A non-stop parade of meetings, reports and petty squabbles; welcome to governance.
I had woken up wrapped in the arms and legs of the beautiful Mouse, but it was very obvious that 'Hanky-Panky' hadn't been part of our bedtime ritual. Hell, I still had my pants on and it was starting to become obvious to me that 'consummation' would definitely not include intoxication.
I wasn't hung over, but I was close enough to it that it kept me from being a 'bright morning cheerful.' I did get a moment to visit with Brin and Lunch before the meetings started, but breakfast call was also the call to my first meeting of the day. A day of very long meetings and endless lists followed. I had to figure how to kill all reports and just get an executive summary from someone absolutely trusted. The meetings dragged on; I was buried in reports, verbal and paper. There were so many details flying at me that it was impossible to keep up.
Fun this definitely was not, I had to 'restructure management' to support the larger group that we now were. More importantly, we needed to focus on supporting our growth which explicitly meant self-defense and preparation for winter. We could spend time over the long winter arguing plans for spring the caveat being we had to survive that long winter if we wanted to see spring.
To get construction fully underway, we needed get our base industries working; lumber was already half-way there and bricks had to come next. We had a lot of folks who had made hand-made bricks before, but we needed a manufacturing process. I pulled in our three engineers and tasked them with sorting out the most efficient procedure to produce the most reliable masonry. We needed brick to build the efficient kilns to create iron and steel.
Once the masonry was running and we had reliable production, we could work on construction and start to build our town. Lumberjacking was an entirely separate effort and would employ a large section of our group just to clear the land for our homesteads and fields. Clearing and stump removal were brutal tasks, but we needed the land and we needed the lumber. Heck, we simply needed a lot of things and while buying them would remain an option we still needed to build for now.
The real fun was in knowing that a week from now I'd be hearing squabbles about staffing and who got who for what. I also knew I needed to focus on recruiting and gathering more talented people. Right now, I had a total of two people who might be able to do the patent work I needed. Without that work, we'd lack the long term cash flow we needed, so I'd have to run that team for now.
I laid that all out (well, except for the patents) to the council in as agreeable a manner as I could come up with. We did take several votes and the most important was that Commodore Timmons was to start the supply runs from St. Louis as soon as possible. We had a lot of stuff warehoused down there and we needed it ASAP.
I made hay-cutting our top priority. We'd be shifting most every person onto hay, for the first cutting in a couple of weeks. We needed that hay to survive the oncoming winter, every day that went by I felt the pressure of those icy cold winds blowing on my soul. I guess I was truly a child of the Great Plains.
Just as we went to close the meeting and get on with the party, Pete decided to remind us that the buffalo would be here soon and we needed to prepare for the hunt. I had to second that and then I sent for our butcher.
We finished up with what was meant to be a quick riding tour of the improvements that had been made in my absence. 'Quick' turned into kinda of a joke. Half the folks on the Council weren't horse savvy and just getting them all in the saddle took the better part of an hour. Lunch and I were ready to go in minutes, after that we merely pranced around waiting for a chance to get out together again. Lunch had two stages of happiness; unbridled and racing free across the open land, or saddled up and racing together for fun. Standing around waiting was not in Lunch's personal plan of happiness.
We eventually got on our way and I ignored all of the complaints and curses behind me. This was the 1820's on the frontier you know -- riding a horse is simply part of life. The reality is that most of the trade folk were town folk also, wagons and carriages were more their thing. I personally preferred a Ricaro racing seat in a high powered sports car; since I couldn't have that, I'd just enjoy my time with Lunch while we waited.
There were a lot of minor improvements to see, the Council had done a pretty bang-up job of keeping priorities on track. At the same time, there was a lot of detail to be finished and a lot of little, yet important, things that weren't being followed up on. What this really pointed to, was a leadership and management problem on my part, I had to make some changes and needed to figure out those changes first. But before that, I needed to see the Lumber Yard and Wood Shop, two areas that would be vital for our continued growth.
Both sites were high on my immediate need-to-see list. The amount of land that had been cleared in the downtown area made it obvious that they had worked from sunup to sundown in our absence but the scope of that effort became very clear when we reached the lumber yard. The wood shop came first on the street, but you couldn't miss the amount of wood stacked up and aging in the lumber yard. Holder was beaming with pride and it was easy to see that he had led this effort. The logs were only stacked three high but that couldn't have been easy without a gantry to help with the lifting.
We had at least two acres of logs and another acre of brush piles that had to be managed at some point. I knew for a fact that we had people in town who knew how to make something useful out of anything, so I wasn't too worried about that. The good news was, when it came to wood, we weren't in bad shape. The lumber would all take a while to cure and what we'd burn this winter wouldn't be the most efficient of wood, but maybe we could focus on charcoal to make up that difference. Regardless, wood kilns moved up on my 'must build' list.
While the lumber yard still had just a simple shack for shade, the wood shop next door was large and spacious, even if still under-tooled. We'd have our tools showing up soon enough, but for now this was a good start. They even had a small conference room to use as an office or lunch room, not bad thinking. Both sites had their own outhouses and wells were being dug, in the case of the wood shop, the well was being dug in the corner of the largest room in the shop. They had even set up a manually-operated lathe to start turning wood. It was crude but it worked for rough jobs. More good news.
The final stop on this whirlwind tour was the new boatsman lodge. It was a typical, if very large, Pawnee-type lodge. At the moment, it was cramped quarters with all the boatmen in town, but it was way better than tents and it was a place the single guys could call home. Everyone involved knew it was a vast improvement over sleeping rough.
Whirlwind tour complete, it was time for a party.
* Chapter 168 -- Mary *
By: Emmeran, 22 June 2021
Editor: nnpdad 24 June 2021
A party was a good idea. A lot had happened lately and everyone needed a little cheerful relaxation. Good food, good beer and decent music would help most everyone. There would always be the naysayer in any crowd to try and bring rain on everyone else's enjoyment; my task was to simply not be that person. The women always wanted a celebration of some sort, even if it were simply a pot-luck dinner after church service we all had to get together and someone had to speak.
In Rulo, that someone was always me. I'm not sure why my words would matter more than anyone else's; the only thing I'd really ever done of note was to buy a random winning lottery ticket after cheating on a woman who I loved. All things considered, I didn't consider myself to be a preacher of enlightenment or truth.
Still, that was in my path today -- I would make a short but motivational speech. I would also dress up for the part and try to act all stately. What made it worse was that, given the upcoming trips I had to make, I would be doing this a lot. I already had an appointment with our tailor to get the appropriate suits made, including formal tails for evening wear. Too many casual trail conversations with the Rabbi had led to my downfall there. Once he knew I intended to head to Washington and New York, he decided I needed to be decked out appropriately during those visits.
He was right in the overall scheme but that didn't mean it made me happy. I did have to learn to play that game if I wanted to take care of these people, but I didn't have to like it. So it was determined that I would practice here, there, and everywhere in between. I would be the perfect, well-heeled gentleman, in all the best attire, with all of the correct accoutrements. So much for my love of blue jeans and other rough 'n ready attire. To do what I wanted to do, I needed to present a persona, and it had to start now.
Still, today wasn't full formal yet, so I wiggled around it a bit and decided to have one last good time. I'd wear my best 'non-formal' attire but still try to act stately and mature. I'd rather just get drunk, dance and then get laid; the order of those operations was negotiable and repeatable.


Mouse was gone.
That woman who was glued to me since I got back had simply disappeared, without a peep. This was bizarre, she had been firmly attached to me and then she was gone. It's not like I still didn't have other people constantly orbiting around me, but I had been hoping for some delight a little later in the evening. I decided that she was simply getting dressed herself and that I would see her later.
I took my seat at the head table as required and had a coffee and a small snack -- yes it was sweet corn -- but it was still just a snack. There was our makeshift band starting up and they actually had a small stage now. We had gained musicians from both the new immigrants and the new boatmen, which meant the sound was a little discordant again. Ok, our band wouldn't be winning any Grammys or whatever in the future, but I did like both the pipe and fiddle sound; everything else was a mixture including spoons which were wooden and new to me, but nice. We had every type of string except the actual guitar, we even had a string bass of an odd sort. It was disjointed, but I knew that they'd figure it out as time passed, it was music and it was welcome.
The place was starting to crowd up and I had to step into my new role. I was still trying to figure out where Mouse had gone, when Sonya whispered in my ear. "Aunt Flo came to visit," was all that she said.
Well hell, there went my night. Apparently, Mouse intended to hole up in her abode until her 'event' ended and with as young as she was there was no bet on how long that would last. I'd been through this with girls when I was that age. They could be out of service for almost a week sometimes. Fuck me running.
So I focused on practicing my political game and enjoying the environment. I'd get drunk later, but in the meantime, I paced my eating and drinking and chatted with everyone I ran into. I got up and mingled -- seriously mingled.
Mingling and networking had never been and will never be something I enjoy. It was something that I had to get good at. Mary, of all people, joined me for half of my rounds; it was nice to have a well-dressed and well-mannered woman with me. It made all the conversations much easier, but it was also interesting to see that her eyes kept wandering towards one young man. Perhaps I'd escape her focus and be free of that onus that had been hanging over my head. Could this Mary problem actually be solved by someone other than me?
I couldn't hope for a better result, and I was amused by her target. The poor Rabbi would never know what hit him. I felt it would be a good match, however. She needed religion and a stable man in her life, and he needed a dedicated woman. I just got lucky in that she had an eye for him. My job was simply to stay out of the way. I did interfere a little by sending her to ask him about helping to set up our school.
It was a bit devious, but it worked. They were talking for the rest of the evening.
I heaved a sigh of relief.
* Chapter 169 -- Practicing the new role *
By: Emmeran, 24 June 2021
Editor:
The party had started and folks were gathering round. Matilda's cadre of chefs had been busy and the odors floating around were heavenly. I could smell beef and fresh corn, and there were other things I couldn't quite place as well, tantalizing, yet just outside my recognition range. There was also a poultry smell that I knew wasn't chicken, as our flock was too small and most of the birds too young for harvesting. It'd be late fall at best before we had fried chicken.
Fresh fish was being smoked and vegetables & fruits were in abundance, all prepared with aromatic herbs which were a slightly different from the commoditized versions I was used to in modern times. The poultry turned out to be passenger pigeons being roasted wrapped in fresh leaves and stuffed with spring onions and wild garlic. Those pigeons were extinct in modern time but in my current time they still darkened the skies with their massive flocks. Tiny but delicious and time consuming to eat, good food for summer eating: you didn't just quickly stuff yourself and fall asleep. The smoked fish, I think it was trout, was right on time as well.
The big surprise of the evening was the rum that Holder had made. I shouldn't have been surprised that Holder found my supplies of sugar and molasses in the larder and of course we had yeast. Every family there counted yeast as one of their 'must have' supplies; I was simply surprised how quickly he had fashioned a fermenting process. But yes we had rum, young rum and not the tastiest ever but it was made with black strap molasses and had the beginnings of that famous rum flavor. It was still a delight straight or in a fruity beverage -- and we did have plenty of wild fruit around.r"
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Pub: 22 Jul 2021 07:43 UTC
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