CHAPTER FOUR – NEIGHBORS
The lights didn’t go out without a warning. Jake and Josh had stopped working. Their employers couldn’t pay them any more. Dad had stopped going to his job. His clients had no money. A couple of weeks before the lights went out, the gas stations closed. Up until that time, Dad had made sure that all our gas tanks were full, just so we had some fuel when the flow stopped. We spent the money that he had, knowing it wasn’t going to be useful to keep it. Fortunately, businesses accepted it until they had nothing else to sell. Some of the things Dad bought were two gallons of vinegar, some canned food, a couple of bags of chicken feed, seeds for the next year’s planting, some cleaning supplies, some medical supplies, and candles.
It didn’t take long for the grocery stores to empty and then most of the other stores closed up also. There was no transportation. With all the fuel that was available diverted to the military, providing for their needs and their food, there was no longer enough fuel to supply the rest of the country. No trucks to bring products in. So the shelves got empty and the stores closed.
Things were actually fairly peaceful around home. Contact was lost. There was no radio. No TV or phone. The government was still broadcasting. The only way we could hear it was using a car radio for short spells. The president’s message, broadcast occasionally, was that we were supposed to prepare for the worst. He didn’t pull any punches. He warned us that winter was only three to four months away. He reminded us that we had to help each other to survive, that he was engaged in protecting our country from outside forces and would not be able to help us at the domestic level. With no radio or TV, we also had no weather forecast. We didn’t really need one. The next day was very hot. Didn’t know what was coming later but we dealt with it one day at a time.
We knew with no electricity the freezers may not be opened. The longer you could keep the doors closed, the longer the food would keep. It gave us time to prepare. The refrigerators, on the other hand, started to warm up quicker. So we took all the food out of them, put it in coolers, and carried it into the ground cellar where we kept our eggs and where it was only around 55 degrees.
Our meals for the first couple of days were everything out of the coolers that had been in the refrigerator; things we knew would spoil the quickest. We opened no cans, used hardly any food that was still packaged. Opened loaves of bread, rolls or pastry were used, but even those if sealed up well would last pretty long, longer than some of the foods from the refrigerator.
It didn’t take long, we had visitors. We had running water, not ground water, however. Our farm had a water collection tank fed by tile lines that drained the fields around it and we had a line running from that tank to the barn that ran continuously. The water was fairly cool and clean but always had the possibility of contamination from manure or pesticides because the water was gathered so close to the surface. Over the years, we avoided drinking it for that reason but occasionally we did and it hadn’t had any ill effects.
That made no difference to the neighbors who came as they had no water. Yes, they were using their bottled water, soda, beer, and juice. They could drink those things but it was not an unlimited supply. So, they came with buckets and jugs and we shared our water with them, advising them to perhaps add a little Clorox, hydrogen peroxide or water purification tablets to the water that they were going to drink or boil it if they had a wood stove or an outside fireplace. It was fine to use to flush the toilets and even for washing, bathing or laundry. Marie and Bill from up the street came down for water, used a toy express wagon to bring their jugs and buckets. That was very ingenious. Jim and Hallie from down the road came up to get some water, carrying a few jugs. Norm and Janice came with them too with a couple of their kids to help carry everything. They noticed we were pretty busy.
Marie said, “You got fire going in the butcher house.”
“Certainly do,” Dad said, “we have a lot of food to preserve.”
“How do you mean?” Bill asked.
“Well what’s in the freezers won’t keep forever, so in a day or two, we’re going to open up and can or dry what we can’t eat.”
“Maybe that’s what we’ll have to do?” Hallie said to her husband Jim, “If I remember how to do it.”
Mom and I were busy gathering jars. Any place we could find a jar that could have a sealed lid. Josh was tending the fire. The stove had a nice broad flat plate on top. There was probably room for 5 or 6 big kettles on it. He and Mel were heating water and washing the jars, getting them nice and clean so that they would be ready.
Dad said to the neighbors, “We can cook on that fire too.”
Norm said, “We’ve been cooking on the propane grill.”
Jake jumped in, “But your propane is only going to last so long.”
“I’m aware of that,” Norm answered. “There’s enough wood lying around. I guess I’m going to have to switch to a wood fire sometime, make some sort of fireplace outside.”
“You can always use a grate from the refrigerator or freezer, if it’s not made of plastic; even better the grate from a gas grill,” Josh offered.
“Yes, I suppose that would be handy,” Norm responded.
Jake said, “We have a coal stove in the cellar but with weather like this, sure didn’t want to fire that up, so the outside stove is a blessing.”
“How long do you think your food will last?” Hallie asked.
“I don’t know,” Dad said, “three or four months, maybe a little longer; depends on what we can still harvest from the garden. By the way, there are plenty of tomatoes out there. You’re welcome to any of them, and string beans and a couple of zucchini. We can’t eat all of them.”
In fact, we were getting sick of them. Dad loved them. Tomato sandwiches. Enjoy them now, he had said at supper the night before, soon we’ll have no bread to eat them on. Soon we won’t have any salad dressing. So we “enjoyed them”, even if we didn’t like them.
“Thank you very much,” Hallie said. “I might take a few tomatoes. You say 3-4 months; I’m kind of thinking I only have food for a few weeks.”
“Well,” Dad said, “the fields are full of corn. You can scrounge if you have to and there are animals in the woods if you can catch or shoot one. Things are going to get tough. Listen, do I hear a generator running somewhere?”
“Yeah,” Marie said, “the neighbor up the road from us has been running it off and on since the electricity went off. Actually, he is selling water and ice offering it to the neighbors as his freezer and water pump are still working with the electricity he is making.”
Mel asked, “Won’t he run out of gasoline sometime?”
“Bill responded, “I guess he will, but he must have prepared a little bit and stored some up, so we sure do appreciate you giving us this water.”
“Yes, we do,” Norm chimed in.
“No problem,” said Dad, “you’re welcome to it any time.”
Just then, a truck came down the road. There hadn’t been any traffic for a day or two. It pulled in our driveway. It was John from the house running the generator. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“Not too bad,” folks answered.
“He looked at my dad and inquired, “Would you have any gasoline I can buy to keep my generator running?”
Dad said, “Buy? What would you use to buy it?”
“I got money,” John says, “I’ve been selling water and ice, plus I had some money saved up, so I can pay you for the gas.”
“Don’t need money,” Dad said. “Can’t buy anything with it, nothing I need, and besides, what gas I have, I might need at some critical time in the next few months.”
“I’ll give you $100 a gallon.” John retorted.
“Whoa!” Mom said, “that’s a lot of money.”
“Worthless money,” Jake said.
“I’m afraid Jake’s right,” Dad said, “Paper money, especially dollars, wouldn’t do us any good anyway.”
“I have some euros. A few guys at the office saw this coming, so we converted some of our dollars to euros. Would you be interested in swapping for some of them?” John asked.
“Hey,” said Josh, “that was pretty smart of you. Euros might be the next stable medium of exchange.”
“Very intriguing,” Dad answered, “Maybe a man could be well off one day if he amassed a barrel of them. But what good would it do him if he starves in the meantime? Are you sure you don’t have something else you could trade for gasoline, even though I really don’t want to get rid of it.”
“Gee, I don’t know,” John said, “Got a lot of stuff. What might you need?”
Dad thought a little bit. “A horse, solar panels, canning jar lids or rings, sugar, flashlight batteries, coal oil lantern, battery charger; do you have anything like that?”
“I have a kerosene lantern I’d trade. As far as a battery charger, do you mean for a car battery?” John asked.
“I didn’t. Although one might be useful one day. I was actually thinking of one to charge flashlight batteries. I couldn’t use it here, no generator, but you could plug it in every time you ran the generator. I guess I could trade a little gas for that if you had one.”
“No, sorry,” John said. “I don’t have one.”
Hallie said, “I do. I can put four D-cells in at a time and it recharges the batteries. I’ll share it, if John’s willing to charge batteries for us?”
Dad thought a little bit and said, “I could trade a little gas for that lantern and some battery charging. You’re running the generator any way. How long you think you’re going to run that thing, John?”
“Well, I really didn’t give that much thought. I’m trying to preserve the food I got, need water, although I see that there’s some water here.”
“Water that you’re welcome to,” Mom said.
“And another thing,” Dad said, “if I’m going to give you gas, I want you to stop charging people for water.”
“Well,” John said, “I guess your right: everybody down here is very willing to work together, so I ought to, too.”
“That’s great,” said Dad. “Jake, would you go in and get the dead batteries in that red shoebox inside the mud room?”
“Okay, Dad.” He answered.
Hallie said, “I’ll bring that charger up the next time I come up for water and some batteries that need charging.”
“I have a better idea,” Dad said. “Alyssa, would you drive your bike down the road with Hallie and bring back her charger and dead batteries? You can put them in those saddle bags we mounted on the bike for you. Norm, should she stop with you also; do you have some batteries that need charging?”
“Just two, I think. Might as well while we’re at it.”
“How soon do you need gas?” Dad asked John.
“I figure I have enough for two days, maybe three. Five gallons will give me another day if I run it intermittently.”
“You have a container along?” Dad asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“It won’t be easy getting it out of a vehicle but I’ll trade you five gallons. I’m glad we can work together on this.”
“So am I,” said John.
“Jake, take John up to the Ford and get the gas out of it. We won’t need to use that car much. Be darn careful siphoning it; there’s no emergency room to go to.”
When John and Jake had left, Jim looked at Dad and said, “that went pretty well. I thought you were going to be really tough on him.”
Dad said, “I thought I was going to be tough on him too, glad it turned out the way it did.”
Tune in next week for the rest of chapter four… Mort
The lights didn’t go out without a warning. Jake and Josh had stopped working. Their employers couldn’t pay them any more. Dad had stopped going to his job. His clients had no money. A couple of weeks before the lights went out, the gas stations closed. Up until that time, Dad had made sure that all our gas tanks were full, just so we had some fuel when the flow stopped. We spent the money that he had, knowing it wasn’t going to be useful to keep it. Fortunately, businesses accepted it until they had nothing else to sell. Some of the things Dad bought were two gallons of vinegar, some canned food, a couple of bags of chicken feed, seeds for the next year’s planting, some cleaning supplies, some medical supplies, and candles.
It didn’t take long for the grocery stores to empty and then most of the other stores closed up also. There was no transportation. With all the fuel that was available diverted to the military, providing for their needs and their food, there was no longer enough fuel to supply the rest of the country. No trucks to bring products in. So the shelves got empty and the stores closed.
Things were actually fairly peaceful around home. Contact was lost. There was no radio. No TV or phone. The government was still broadcasting. The only way we could hear it was using a car radio for short spells. The president’s message, broadcast occasionally, was that we were supposed to prepare for the worst. He didn’t pull any punches. He warned us that winter was only three to four months away. He reminded us that we had to help each other to survive, that he was engaged in protecting our country from outside forces and would not be able to help us at the domestic level. With no radio or TV, we also had no weather forecast. We didn’t really need one. The next day was very hot. Didn’t know what was coming later but we dealt with it one day at a time.
We knew with no electricity the freezers may not be opened. The longer you could keep the doors closed, the longer the food would keep. It gave us time to prepare. The refrigerators, on the other hand, started to warm up quicker. So we took all the food out of them, put it in coolers, and carried it into the ground cellar where we kept our eggs and where it was only around 55 degrees.
Our meals for the first couple of days were everything out of the coolers that had been in the refrigerator; things we knew would spoil the quickest. We opened no cans, used hardly any food that was still packaged. Opened loaves of bread, rolls or pastry were used, but even those if sealed up well would last pretty long, longer than some of the foods from the refrigerator.
It didn’t take long, we had visitors. We had running water, not ground water, however. Our farm had a water collection tank fed by tile lines that drained the fields around it and we had a line running from that tank to the barn that ran continuously. The water was fairly cool and clean but always had the possibility of contamination from manure or pesticides because the water was gathered so close to the surface. Over the years, we avoided drinking it for that reason but occasionally we did and it hadn’t had any ill effects.
That made no difference to the neighbors who came as they had no water. Yes, they were using their bottled water, soda, beer, and juice. They could drink those things but it was not an unlimited supply. So, they came with buckets and jugs and we shared our water with them, advising them to perhaps add a little Clorox, hydrogen peroxide or water purification tablets to the water that they were going to drink or boil it if they had a wood stove or an outside fireplace. It was fine to use to flush the toilets and even for washing, bathing or laundry. Marie and Bill from up the street came down for water, used a toy express wagon to bring their jugs and buckets. That was very ingenious. Jim and Hallie from down the road came up to get some water, carrying a few jugs. Norm and Janice came with them too with a couple of their kids to help carry everything. They noticed we were pretty busy.
Marie said, “You got fire going in the butcher house.”
“Certainly do,” Dad said, “we have a lot of food to preserve.”
“How do you mean?” Bill asked.
“Well what’s in the freezers won’t keep forever, so in a day or two, we’re going to open up and can or dry what we can’t eat.”
“Maybe that’s what we’ll have to do?” Hallie said to her husband Jim, “If I remember how to do it.”
Mom and I were busy gathering jars. Any place we could find a jar that could have a sealed lid. Josh was tending the fire. The stove had a nice broad flat plate on top. There was probably room for 5 or 6 big kettles on it. He and Mel were heating water and washing the jars, getting them nice and clean so that they would be ready.
Dad said to the neighbors, “We can cook on that fire too.”
Norm said, “We’ve been cooking on the propane grill.”
Jake jumped in, “But your propane is only going to last so long.”
“I’m aware of that,” Norm answered. “There’s enough wood lying around. I guess I’m going to have to switch to a wood fire sometime, make some sort of fireplace outside.”
“You can always use a grate from the refrigerator or freezer, if it’s not made of plastic; even better the grate from a gas grill,” Josh offered.
“Yes, I suppose that would be handy,” Norm responded.
Jake said, “We have a coal stove in the cellar but with weather like this, sure didn’t want to fire that up, so the outside stove is a blessing.”
“How long do you think your food will last?” Hallie asked.
“I don’t know,” Dad said, “three or four months, maybe a little longer; depends on what we can still harvest from the garden. By the way, there are plenty of tomatoes out there. You’re welcome to any of them, and string beans and a couple of zucchini. We can’t eat all of them.”
In fact, we were getting sick of them. Dad loved them. Tomato sandwiches. Enjoy them now, he had said at supper the night before, soon we’ll have no bread to eat them on. Soon we won’t have any salad dressing. So we “enjoyed them”, even if we didn’t like them.
“Thank you very much,” Hallie said. “I might take a few tomatoes. You say 3-4 months; I’m kind of thinking I only have food for a few weeks.”
“Well,” Dad said, “the fields are full of corn. You can scrounge if you have to and there are animals in the woods if you can catch or shoot one. Things are going to get tough. Listen, do I hear a generator running somewhere?”
“Yeah,” Marie said, “the neighbor up the road from us has been running it off and on since the electricity went off. Actually, he is selling water and ice offering it to the neighbors as his freezer and water pump are still working with the electricity he is making.”
Mel asked, “Won’t he run out of gasoline sometime?”
“Bill responded, “I guess he will, but he must have prepared a little bit and stored some up, so we sure do appreciate you giving us this water.”
“Yes, we do,” Norm chimed in.
“No problem,” said Dad, “you’re welcome to it any time.”
Just then, a truck came down the road. There hadn’t been any traffic for a day or two. It pulled in our driveway. It was John from the house running the generator. “How are you doing?” he asked.
“Not too bad,” folks answered.
“He looked at my dad and inquired, “Would you have any gasoline I can buy to keep my generator running?”
Dad said, “Buy? What would you use to buy it?”
“I got money,” John says, “I’ve been selling water and ice, plus I had some money saved up, so I can pay you for the gas.”
“Don’t need money,” Dad said. “Can’t buy anything with it, nothing I need, and besides, what gas I have, I might need at some critical time in the next few months.”
“I’ll give you $100 a gallon.” John retorted.
“Whoa!” Mom said, “that’s a lot of money.”
“Worthless money,” Jake said.
“I’m afraid Jake’s right,” Dad said, “Paper money, especially dollars, wouldn’t do us any good anyway.”
“I have some euros. A few guys at the office saw this coming, so we converted some of our dollars to euros. Would you be interested in swapping for some of them?” John asked.
“Hey,” said Josh, “that was pretty smart of you. Euros might be the next stable medium of exchange.”
“Very intriguing,” Dad answered, “Maybe a man could be well off one day if he amassed a barrel of them. But what good would it do him if he starves in the meantime? Are you sure you don’t have something else you could trade for gasoline, even though I really don’t want to get rid of it.”
“Gee, I don’t know,” John said, “Got a lot of stuff. What might you need?”
Dad thought a little bit. “A horse, solar panels, canning jar lids or rings, sugar, flashlight batteries, coal oil lantern, battery charger; do you have anything like that?”
“I have a kerosene lantern I’d trade. As far as a battery charger, do you mean for a car battery?” John asked.
“I didn’t. Although one might be useful one day. I was actually thinking of one to charge flashlight batteries. I couldn’t use it here, no generator, but you could plug it in every time you ran the generator. I guess I could trade a little gas for that if you had one.”
“No, sorry,” John said. “I don’t have one.”
Hallie said, “I do. I can put four D-cells in at a time and it recharges the batteries. I’ll share it, if John’s willing to charge batteries for us?”
Dad thought a little bit and said, “I could trade a little gas for that lantern and some battery charging. You’re running the generator any way. How long you think you’re going to run that thing, John?”
“Well, I really didn’t give that much thought. I’m trying to preserve the food I got, need water, although I see that there’s some water here.”
“Water that you’re welcome to,” Mom said.
“And another thing,” Dad said, “if I’m going to give you gas, I want you to stop charging people for water.”
“Well,” John said, “I guess your right: everybody down here is very willing to work together, so I ought to, too.”
“That’s great,” said Dad. “Jake, would you go in and get the dead batteries in that red shoebox inside the mud room?”
“Okay, Dad.” He answered.
Hallie said, “I’ll bring that charger up the next time I come up for water and some batteries that need charging.”
“I have a better idea,” Dad said. “Alyssa, would you drive your bike down the road with Hallie and bring back her charger and dead batteries? You can put them in those saddle bags we mounted on the bike for you. Norm, should she stop with you also; do you have some batteries that need charging?”
“Just two, I think. Might as well while we’re at it.”
“How soon do you need gas?” Dad asked John.
“I figure I have enough for two days, maybe three. Five gallons will give me another day if I run it intermittently.”
“You have a container along?” Dad asked.
“Sure,” he said.
“It won’t be easy getting it out of a vehicle but I’ll trade you five gallons. I’m glad we can work together on this.”
“So am I,” said John.
“Jake, take John up to the Ford and get the gas out of it. We won’t need to use that car much. Be darn careful siphoning it; there’s no emergency room to go to.”
When John and Jake had left, Jim looked at Dad and said, “that went pretty well. I thought you were going to be really tough on him.”
Dad said, “I thought I was going to be tough on him too, glad it turned out the way it did.”
Tune in next week for the rest of chapter four… Mort
And a Merry Christmas to all!
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