"Third Stool from the Rear"
By John Richard Jackson, writing as "J. Thundermug Jackson"
John Richard Jackson published this fourth collection of stories in 1995, the copyright date printed in the book. Prepared by B & B Printers of Gunnison, it is reproduced here, in sections, exactly as John wrote it, with his sister's blessing as his sole heir.
What follows is reproduced in John's own words, exactly as he wrote them: nothing edited, softened, or left out. Unlike his first three books, this one gives no chapter divisions; after a preface and a page of epigraphs it runs as one continuous sequence of roughly forty-five titled stories threaded through with untitled barroom vignettes, each headed only with the book's own title, "Third Stool from the Rear," as if overheard from a stool at the end of the bar. The book numbers its own pages 1 through 52 and gives no table of contents. For readability on the web it is split here into five parts of roughly equal length, breaking at whichever vignette falls closest to an even division of the book's pages; the part numbers and titles are ours, not John's. Numbers in parentheses are the book's own printed page numbers.
The book's dedication, "Because I Love You, That's Why!," addressed to John's wife Inez Schriver Jackson, along with a photograph of her and one of John himself at the Palo Alto tunnel in 1949, is printed on the book's final leaf rather than at the front; it is kept in that position here, at the end of Part V.
Contents
The book gives no table of contents of its own. The five parts below are this site's own division, with the stories and vignettes each part contains.
Part I (pp. 1–10): The Perils of Adolescence; Brotherly Love; "Sure He's Okay, I Saw Him a Couple of Months Ago"; The Last Straw on the Camel's Back; To Honor & to Cherish; Didn't Have to, the Boot Had a Hole in It; A Rude Awakening; with barroom vignettes throughout.
Part II (pp. 11–20): Lynn Rides a Hellcat and She Ghost Bareback; Board Stiff; Chalk One Up for Blackberry; Smiles Forgot to Smile; Fiddling Around with the Judge; Lou Oppey's Snow Bred Red McClures; Long Distance Indigestion; with barroom vignettes throughout.
Part III (pp. 21–30): Low Pressure Waterworks; Bernie Folds His Sails; Mine Is Not to Question Why; Bill Graduates to Higher Mathematics; with barroom vignettes throughout.
Part IV (pp. 31–41): Better Knock the Next Time You Drop In; Fire in the Hole and Marmot Burgers; We Remember Christie; I Just Put a Little Salt on His Tail; with barroom vignettes throughout.
Part V (pp. 42–52): Marriage is a Partnership; Two Tramps and a Dog from Silverton; Just One More Round, Dear Lord; a tommyknocker poem and two further closing poems; a roll of the top team miners of John's era; the Synopsis; and the dedication.
Front Cover
The cover reads "THIRD STOOL FROM THE REAR, by J. Thundermug Jackson," with the tagline "A riotous glimpse into the world of Hard Rock Miners and other animals..." beneath the illustration.
Copyright Page
Prepared by B & B Printers, Gunnison, Inc., Gunnison, Colorado.
Front cover illustration by Karl Nicholason.
Copyright © 1995 by John Jackson. All rights reserved.
Preface
Please, Don't Put It Down. It Will Get Worse
For 17 years running, as often as time would permit and mental gears would mesh, I wrote a column entitled "Once Around The Thundermug" for a weekly publication. A chubby little dough mixer around my house and other well intentioned persons pressured me into writing three small booklets employing the Thundermug moniker.
I was scared and embarrassed in presenting the first column to the newspaper. I still harbor that fear as I prepare, for a fourth time, to expose my ignorance over a broader area than the newspaper afforded. Fame is fleeting but failure is forever. I would like a brief fling with fame but I have begun to feel comfortable with failure and a change in this late stage of my life might prove disastrous.
In the first publications I struggled to stay within the guidelines of literature and real writers. I spoke of this with a friend so he could have some concept of the work involved and might offer some praise. "Oh horseshit," he exclaimed, "nobody reads that crap in the front of a book and you know it...you fan the pages to the first chapter and if a paragraph grabs you you might finish reading it...I don't look to see who the author is unless I really like the book...if you don't know the author personally it doesn't mean a damned thing."
That conversation was a little deflating but it is the truth.
We are going to change the format on this one in respect of my friend and his advice. We will number the pages for convenience and this page will be the only introduction to whatever follows. "All that crap" as he so aptly described it will be on the final two or three pages if included at all.
I have lived a good deal longer than I expected or deserved in the lifestyle I was destined for and it has been a very rewarding journey. My greatest disappointment is to have known so many wonderful persons who have drifted into obscurity and are only remembered when we feel duty bound to tidy up a grave on Memorial Day. Mining and miners have taken a bum rap over the past 20 years. We must remember that the metals refined from the crude ore cradled in Mother Earth helped make a better life for everyone in our country and were a vital contribution in winning two wars for freedom.
Mining was an industry that afforded those with meager or interrupted educations to compete. I received a note from a cheerful little guy working two levels down from my drift. It read "pleez sen chuk ranch to 7 levul." Pat had little formal education but he was a top miner and when television came to Creede he taught himself the basics of video reception, enough expertise to enable him to repair sets and help people bring the medium to their homes.
If you recognize a name in one of the stories take a moment to remember their contribution to our well being. I will appreciate that.
Printed page iii. "Chuk" and "levul" are printed as shown, part of the quoted note.
From the Barrel of Common Sense
"I ain't never had much but I guess I never wanted much except a warm house and good friends."—George Horne
"Never work with a man who wears gloves. He will spend half his time either pulling them on, taking them off or looking for them."—Al Turnipseed
"There are a lot of people I have respected in my life. I try to remember the qualities they had that made me respect them. It sort of gives you a guideline for the way you treat people."—Erick Nelson
"If your job interferes with your fishing you should look for a new job. If your job and your wife interfere with your fishing you'd be better off to give her your job and go fishing."—Horace Wheeler
"It's easier to fire a man if you're paying him more than he's worth."—Art Fairchild...explaining why Creede Transportation Company paid $5.00 per shift when the mining companies were paying $4.00 per shift.
"Tighten it just as tight as you can then give it one more turn."—Isaac D. Crawford on installing pipeline in a mine.
"Load the rear of the shovel and the front will take care of itself."—Kearney Higgs
"You can forgive a man for just about anything if he's honest."—Allen Hosselkus
"The good Lord never made anyone perfect but he could have tried a little harder with Les Turnipseed and John Jackson."—Mary E. Schriver
"There is no sound on Earth as pleasing to the ear as the laughter of children."—Josephine Jackson
"Respect is the most important and valuable possession any person can strive for, it is the ultimate compliment to tell a person that you respect him or her."—Dean Hammond
"A hundred years from now we'll see this in a different light."—Charles Steele
Printed page iv. Twelve people are named on this page as sources of these remarks, and Les Turnipseed is named within Mary E. Schriver's; each is indexed separately under this page's URL rather than under a specific story.