# New: Told Ya So!



## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

This tale explores relationships in an economic collapse. I proofread 4 or 5 times, but please excuse the errors I missed. It will take a while to post it, but it is complete.


TOLD YA SO

Chapter 1

Traffic on the interstate was about normal for a Sunday, not quite like rush hour but bad enough with shoppers buzzing frantically in and out of the shopping district. I exitted, found the turnoff, and drove carefully into the parking lot and spotted a place near the entrance to the Western Roadhouse. 

My wife Brenda said, "Jack, you always find a spot close to the door. How do you do that?"

"Hey, I'm psychic."

"More like you're lucky."

"More like I'm farsighted and can see a spot quite a ways off. Come to think of it, I need to get new glasses. Either that, or my arms are getting too short to read a book," I told her.

"Sam's Club is open late enough to do that today. We should be out of here in a couple hours."

"It takes an hour to get the food in here. No. I takes 40 minutes for all your clan to get here and finish chattering, and another 20 minutes to get the food. Good thing I ate before we left home."

"You're like a baby. Have to feed you every 4 hours, around the clock."

"You should be used to it after 40 odd years."

Inside, our group was lining up. A waitress conducted us all to the side room we had reserved for the birthday dinner. I had no idea whose birthday it was, but there were enough of Brenda's siblings to do this every month of the year. I didn't care much for the gatherings, or crowds of any kind for that matter, but my wife didn't ask for much and she is the best friend I'd ever have, so she got whatever she wanted. 

I landed a seat next to Brenda's brother in law, Howard. He was retired, too, but in a very different style. Howard had a successful furniture store that he had turned over to his son to operate so he and his wife could do the travelling she loved. I learned that they had just returned from Greece and asked him if they had seen any riots like I saw on the news?

"Oh no. That's just in Athens in the poor section of the city. It's a beautiful country out in the smaller villages and there's no trouble at all. We enjoyed it. The food is marvelous and the people are very friendly. We stayed at a villa in a rural area and rented a car to see the sights. The little cafes have wonderful food and the people will help you find anything. Charlene loved it."

The waitress finally arrived and began taking orders at the third table from us. Brenda's family usually has 3 or 4 generations at these gatherings, so there were a couple babies making noise and a din of conversation among the 30 or so people. I turned to Kenny, my wife's nephew across the table and asked how he liked his new job at the insurance company.

"Pretty good. Everyone is working on how to deal with Obamacare when it goes into effect, so it's busy." 

"That sounds like job security to me."

Kenny grinned and agreed.

I did my best to keep up with the chatter at the table, but I was relieved when the food came so I could eat. It was hard to find topics to bridge the gap between the interests of these people and how we did things. I should say that we live conservatively, not hard up, but limited by social Security income and what little more we have. We weren't poor by any means because we had no debts at all. And we did a lot of things for ourselves, everything from home cooked garden produce to haircuts and rolling my own smokes, things this crowd would never do. I didn't say much about that. They knew how I thought and we stayed away from those topics. 

When we had finished eating and the visiting was over, Brenda and I shared what family news we had picked up. Two of the young women, girls really, at 18 and 20 years old were pregnant and celebrating it despite not having husbands yet. One did have a live-in boyfriend. The other had a boyfriend who had encouraged her to have an abortion, but she declined. Brenda's nephew Josh and his girlfriend had carried in the baby she had recently. We learned they were living with his mother Carmen and working a couple part time jobs each, so scheduling their child care was a nightmare. They had managed somehow to buy a 4 year old SUV with a rear window defogger and power everything. Carmen looked a bit frazzled, but her new hairdo and the makeup helped some. I thought maybe she had some concerns about her sales job, too, with business very slow.

Howard Robinson and his wife had bought a huge new house last summer before they sold the old one. Nothing was said about how that deal went, but he looked less strained than the last time I saw him. I attributed that to having finally sold the old place. Brenda heard her sister say that their furniture store sales were less than fantastic, but she was sure that their son had it under control. 

My lobster was good, and Brenda said the ribs were too. I hope so. The tab was as much as we spent on groceries for a week. 

I pulled out of the lot and headed for Sam's Club a few blocks away, each of us keeping our own counsel about how the family was doing. Brenda and I had always seen things very much alike. We didn't always communicate real well, but we had always made our life work together. 

I told her as we parked at Sam's, "I got the pick of the litter when I married you."

"I did too," she said with a grin. 

I only had one sister much older than I, so I was effectively an only child. It was an old joke with us.

Sam's Club was pretty busy, and it wasn't Black Friday yet. Most of the crowd was circulating in electronics and other imported junk, so we got served quickly at the small eye clinic. I got an eye exam and paid for the twofer deal on glasses, then we made our way out of the city, breathing sighs of relief when we got to the lesser travelled state highway. 

"Let's stop at the Dollar Store up ahead," Brenda said. "I want to look at their sale stuff." 

"Okay. I want a couple things there." They had a decent rolling pin and a plastic pastry sheet for $2 each. I knew Brenda needed those and might not buy them herself. Brenda picked up some extra meds in the pharmacy section and a sweatsuit on sale for $4. We were on our way in a few minutes. 
_______________

Our house didn't look like anything special and I liked it that way. It was just one more 40 year old ranch style along the highway. There were things out of the ordinary but they didn't draw much attention. Gardens and clotheslines are normal in our rural community, as are wood piles in the yard. Our gardens were bigger than most, and there were more small outbuildings, but it didn't really look unusual.  

You couldn't see the cistern under the back porch, or the shelves of canned goods in the basement. The work shop looked like an ordinary detached garage, except for the chain hoist on a pivoting I-beam I used for an overhead crane. I had done welding and machine work for folks from all over the county until I retired. The shop business was closed, but I did favors for a few farmer friends and neighbors once in a while when they were in a bind. At this point the shop let me make many things for our use and was an ace in the hole if we needed more income. 

I thought that having a backup source of income was prudent, with the economy swirling in the toilet and about ready for that gurgle of no return. At least it looked that way to me, and I had found several notable people on the internet that also held that opinion. My in-laws did not share my ideas, obviously, but the good part was that my wife thought a lot like I did. She paid close attention to different things, so that helped. Nobody can cover it all by themselves. I was glad for her perspective, especially on the medical and food issues that were becoming a problem. 

My wife understands business and clearly saw how the medical profession had gone from being patient oriented 50 years ago, to profit oriented now. In our experience, that meant it was a good idea for us to deal with all of our own medical needs that we possibly could. 

For instance, she had an asthma attack one evening, followed by an outbreak of hives that got pretty bad. She has allergy problems and experience dealing with them, so she took a Benadryl pill and laid down to relax as best she could. Before long, she was doing much better. She was up pretty late that night, but by morning she was fine. If I had talked her into going to the emergency room, they would have shot her full of Prednisone and she does NOT tolerate that well at all. She would have had a month of lingering side effects. Due to her having Multiple Sclerosis, and the general ignorance of doctors on that subject, she has to be very careful what she allows them to do to her. They are generally unaware of how their normal treatments would affect her. 

I don't have any real health problems, other than getting old. I keep pretty active, have good immunity, and a low body mass index. That means I'm sort of skinny, at 6" 1" tall and 158 pounds. I'm 68 years old now. I weighed 148 pounds in high school, so I guess gaining 10 pounds in 50 years isn't too bad, but it means I get cold easy in winter, not having much body fat. My joints complain some when the weather changes, and my blood pressure is a bit low, but I seem to get along pretty well. Being on Medicare now with an affordable insurance supplement means we don't have to go through the misery of dealing with the new GovernmentCare law. 

Social Security easily supports our frugal lifestyle, but I figured it could go away in an instant if the .gov got in big financial hurt and it looked very much like we are headed for that. Our finances were just not very good. Like a lot of other folks and some relatives, we lost our butts in the 2008 financial crash, including one pension fund that never recovered. We did have the good sense to not have everything in one basket, so we still had a little junk silver and some cash in the bank from one pension fund that paid out in a lump sum. Our problem was, there was no way we could see to make any earnings on that money. It was less than the price of a new car, so it wasn't enough to buy a rental house or anything like that. 

So my old work shop looked like a critical part of our financial position. It would be fine as long as I was able to do the work. The market was there, so I didn't worry much about it. Repairmen are nearly an extinct species, so competition was not a factor. 
_________________

I had been watching the financial markets for some years before we both retired. I didn't know much about how it all worked, but I had learned from an old friend who long ago had been a commodity trader, and another guy who had retired from selling investments. Both were what was known as "contrarians", meaning they typically bet against whatever trend was popular. They both made a lot of money, so they must have known something. 

Both of those guys had said to watch what economic policies were trying to motivate you to do--then do the opposite. If interest rates are high, most people would be saving money, but they said that was the time to spend money in order to hedge against the inevitable inflation that always accompanied high interest rates, or soon would. And conversely, if interest rates were low, it was time to save money, because it meant we were having hard times, or they were right around the corner. 

Another old auctioneer friend had said that the way to make a buck was to buy stuff where there was a lot of it, and take it where they didn't have any to sell it. Made sense to me, so when I saw machine shops selling out in the Midwest, I hit a bunch of industrial auctions and bought the cheapest stuff they had. At the time, the auto industry was on the rocks and sinking, so there was a lot available from supplier shops that had gone under. 

Some famous old investor said, "Don't buy until there is blood in the streets", meaning that the price would be the lowest when things were chaotic. I did that and bought enough to equip a pretty good machine shop for the price of a decked out pickup truck. I wasn't planning to sell this machinery, I was planning to USE it, so falling market prices were a good thing for me, unlike buying a stock when the price is falling, known as "catching a falling knife". 

When you get a business license it is a matter of public record and people watch that for potential new customers. Soon your mailbox will overflow with junk mail trying to sell you anything remotely related to your business name. We got so many ads that I could burn them in the wood stove and heat the shop from Fall until about Christmas. I didn't pay much attention to the ads for a few years, but by 2005, we got flyers showing a lot more machine shops going broke and it wasn't long until entire factories were being auctioned off. That meant those jobs were not coming back, so it was time to tighten our belts. 

We did okay because when times are tough, people are afraid to borrow money and buy new stuff. They would rather fix what they had and make it last longer, so they came to me. That worked until about 2008 when the credit panic hit and money got really tight. My wife and I said to heck with it, and retired. We didn't sell any machinery, there being no market for it. 
________________

We never borrowed any money in the business and our home was already paid off, so we had few bills. I began to work on how to get rid of more bills. Once the business was closed, the related expenses for power, insurance, and supplies went away. We had a couple old vehicles and looked at buying something newer for retirement, but the prices were pretty high and we couldn't find just simple, basic transportation. They all came with electronic everything, go-faster hub caps, and hot-and-cold-running-handmaidens to boot, adding up to twice what we paid for our first nice home. Not for us. 

We fixed up the 2 old small pickups we had, putting a couple thousand dollars worth of parts in each of them. At about 130,000 miles each, I thought they would both last us a long time, since we only drove about 5,000 miles a year now. They both got good gas mileage and were reliable now. License and insurance was cheap for them, too. 

Our house needed some work, so we had a new metal roof put on it. I was tired of shingles blowing off every time we had a high wind. There was an old tree in the front yard that had to go. It was beginning to die and it was too close to the house. I got a logger friend to cut it down and we made a lot of firewood out of it. Then I built a wood stove and added an all masonry room on the end of the house for the stove. That got rid of the heat bill. It also provided a sort of sun room where we could start garden plants. I put in a gas stove to do our canning and keep the heat out of the house like a summer kitchen. 

We had new gutters put on the house while me and a friend were overhauling the old cistern that came with the place when we bought it. The new roof meant the water would be clean and new gutters plumbed into the cistern ended the water and sewage bill. Funny how they could charge me for sewage when we had a septic tank. Oh well, that went away with the water bill. 

I expanded our gardens and rebuilt an old garden tractor, then got serious about raising food. We already had an orchard, some berries, and an herb patch growing. I went to work in the shop and made a pair of really strong clothesline posts and also made provisions for clotheslines in the room with the wood stove for winter time use. That was the end of the electric clothes dryer and its' big electric bill. More insulation in the attic and some new storm doors reduced the amount of firewood we needed. I built a 2 wheel trailer out of shop leftovers and bought a new small chain saw. Our kids had property with 30 acres of woods not too far away, so that took care of the firewood problem. 

Not many more projects were possible on our place, but I thought I could squeeze in some chickens. I added on to the little storage barn out back. I built their feeder out of old galvanized round furnace pipe and an oil changing pan that had seen better days. A neighbor gave me his old windows when he bought new ones for his place and I found a door at the county landfill. The metal roofing came from the junkyard so all I paid for was the framing lumber and the concrete floor. 

I bought shelled corn and wheat from neighboring farmers and stored it in barrels we got at the junkyard for a couple bucks each. I used the inert gas from my MIG welder to gas the grain in the barrels so bugs couldn't invade it. A heavy duty electric burr mill made grinding feed easy. We installed 6 Golden Comet hens and had all the eggs that we and our married kids could use for about 1/3 of store price. The chickens didn't get any of the noxious hormones and chemicals common to the industry, either. They got to pasture in the gardens after harvest and thrived. 

By that time, our grocery bill didn't amount to much. The only bills we had were license and insurance on the trucks, Medicare and supplement insurance, homeowners insurance, and the electric bill. I had bought some solar panels and gadgets to go with them, planning to put those up the next summer. We were feeling pretty snug with our one acre "homestead". That had all worked nice for a couple years. 
______________________


Chapter 2

"Did you see this Jack?" Brenda was on the computer while she finished her morning coffee. 

"What is it?"

"There is some bank stuff in the news. I know you watch this sort of thing."

I thought I had probably seen the latest on Zerohedge, a website I hit every morning with my first cup of coffee. They seemed to be ahead of everybody reporting financial news. But I went to look anyway. Sometimes she found some neat stuff. 

"Oh, crap," I said. 

"What's that mean," she asked. 

"Uh, it's complicated. This is bad news. We've got a big problem."

"What is bad news?"

I was reading the details on the crash of the 10 year T-bond, and trying to digest it. 

"Uh, we better do something pretty quick. I wish I knew better WHAT to do!"

"What are you talking about?"

"The ten year bond just went to 4% and is climbing. Let me see what Bloomberg says about it," I said and took her place at the computer. 

I pulled up the site and saw it was quoted at 4. 76% now. The graph looked like a hockey stick, headed straight up from yesterday. My face must have looked pretty bad, because it scared my wife pretty badly. 

"Jack Hesston, you explain to me what's going on!"

"Okay! Okay! Give me a second, all right?" 

I tried to collect my thoughts at the same time I was trying to both understand what might happen next, and also figure out what we needed to do before it was too late. When I looked up from the screen, my wife was pretty upset. 

"It's what I've been worrying about for the past several years. Unless they can pull another rabbit out of their hat, or someplace, the dollar is going to crash. I can't be absolutely sure yet, but we'd better go to the bank and get our money out quick. If this goes really sour from here, the bank won't be open tomorrow. Hell, it might close today. Get your coat if you're going along. I'll explain on the way. Make sure you've got your phone with you."

I grabbed the checkbook and my work coat and was out the door. 
_________________

I talked as I drove. 

"Remember the deal when the banks in Cyprus crashed a while back? They took money from depositors to keep the bank afloat. They called it a "bail-IN". They simply stole depositors' money and gave them worthless stock in the bank that was bankrupt. That little country is in a shambles now. People lost their retirement savings overnight."

"You said something about it, I think."

"Well, several countries passed laws to allow that since then. We're headed for big trouble in this country with Bond yields going nuts. There are huge bets made on interest rates, called derivatives, and they are all going to pop if this gets much worse. The banks can't make good on their bets, so they'll be broke in a matter of hours. Maybe less."

"So, you're going to get our money out, right?" 

"If I can. That could be a big IF. What have we got in checking?"

"I'll look. Uh, a little over $9,700. That's too much to lose."

"I know. That's why I'm not wasting any time."
_____________

I left $50 in the account and walked out with $9,714. The head cashier lady didn't like it at all, but she did give me the money. She asked me to come to her office to talk about it. 

"You know I have to file a Federal form when you take out an unusual amount of money, don't you? Especially this large an amount." 

"Yes, I know. Doesn't matter to me. "

"What are you going to do with the money?"

"If you must know, I'm going to spend it before the value of it falls too far. Not that it's anyone's business, it being our money."

I was not happy about this and I cared little who knew it. This lady was all right though, and was looking out for me. I knew her slightly and understood that. So, more politely I said, "You should give some thought to doing that yourself."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because the 10 year T Bond yield blew out close to 5% the last I saw and is going out of sight. That means somebody doesn't like US Bonds and that is about the same as Dollars. Before long the prices of everything you can think of will go crazy. I could be wrong, but I doubt it." 

"I hadn't seen that."

"That's what we saw on Bloomberg News a few minutes ago. Check it out. If this bank has any interest rate bets, you'd better get out while the getting is good." 

The interview got cut short because her boss came out of his office and beckoned to her. I thanked her and left, with the envelope full of cash in my inside coat pocket. My wife had been silent through all this. After we were inside the truck she asked, "What do you have in mind now?"

"We need to spend some money fast, but I'm not sure what all we should buy. Food is first, and while you are doing that, I'll be thinking. First, you should call any of your folks that you think will listen and tell them to go get their money. Actually, that may be illegal, because it could be called inciting a bank run. Better be careful how you say it. And don't say anything in public about it. People are going to figure this out soon and when they do all hell will break loose."
_________________

We decided to go to the Wal Mart in the next town 25 miles away. I turned on the radio and before we got out of town the Public Radio staiton was talking about this, saying it would all be okay and the newly appointed Chairperson of the Federal Reserve had noted that they would buy whatever it took to get Treasury Bonds stabilized. 

I told my wife, "Yeah, they'll do that all right, with money created by a computer keystroke. The dollar index will be off a cliff before they get done talking about it. We better buy another freezer, a cheap one, and fill it with meat. I need to stop at home and pick up a phone book. On the way to Wal Mart, you can call the LP gas guy and have them top off our tank. You got a piece of paper to make a list?"

"Yes, in my purse somewhere."

I chuckled at that. "Maybe I should find a pad at home and get it faster." 

She ignored the gibe about her huge purse and dug in it. Amazingly, she pulled out a small pad and began to write, then said, "I'm calling the kids."

"Good idea."

We made a fast stop at home where I got a phone book and a fast cup of instant coffee courtesy of the microwave. I made sure the dog was in the house while she picked up a bundle of bills and a calculator off the desk. We both made a stop at the bathroom and hustled out to the truck. She called our son and explained what we were doing and why. He snapped to it right away and said he'd call his wife and have her make a bank run, and he would call his sister. Brad said he would stay at work the rest of the day, it being a Thursday and he would get paid today. Then he'd cash his check and do some shopping on the way home before he and his wife went out to get serious about it. Brad and I had covered this ground a few times, and he was maybe more paranoid about banks than I was. I doubted if they kept much in their bank, which turned out to be true. Brad was partial to cash. 

Brenda was on the phone for the next 30 minutes while I drove. She talked to her younger brother and one sister and said they would pass the word along through the family. I had only a couple older cousins still living, so she looked them up and gave them a call. Carl was receptive because he had been burned in the 2008 crash, and Eugene had never trusted banks anyway, having been told by his Dad who lost his farm during the 1930's to a bank in a shady deal. Having known that uncle of mine, it's a wonder he didn't wring somebody's neck over that. 

Brenda smiled and said Eugene thanked her repeatedly for calling him. "I always liked him."

"It's not because of his looks, that's for sure. He was homely as a mud fence when he was young, and he didn't get any better looking with age."

"Yes, but he's a really kind person. And he's a marvelous dancer!" 

I suppose I'll never understand what attracts a woman. 
_________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 3

Brenda had quite a list for Wal Mart, and this one still had a decent fabric section. She came out with a cart loaded with fabrics and notions, while I had been loading up in Automotive with 5 gallon buckets of oil and wheel bearing grease. The pressure gun grease was cheaper at Tractor Supply, and they would be the next stop. We checked out what we had and went back for more, mostly canned meats and coffee this trip. Not wanting to make a big scene out of this, we didn't get ridiculous about the quantities, but we still got some looks. Brenda told the checkout girl she was supplying a sewing class at the Senior Center. I didn't say anything and got no comments. We used different checkouts on the second pass. 

At Tractor Supply, I bought a couple more 5 gallon buckets of Shell Rotella 15W40 motor oil, a dozen quart bottles of STABIL gas treatment, 3 dozen tubes of pressure gun grease, and a wide assortment of tire patching stuff. We stopped at the gas station and topped off the truck's tank then went to the Salvation Army thrift store where we each found 2 pairs of shoes, plus a pair of fleece lined engineer boots for me. We had a long list to go, but the truck was full, so we headed home to unload. 

I decided that we should get serious about this and suggested we take both trucks to Clarksville. My older one did not have a bed cover like hers, so we went together to Sam's Club and filled hers first with fresh meat, bags of rice, several 4 pound boxes of salt, large packages of pecans, jars of peanut butter, and a serious number of AA Lithium batteries. When that was packed away and locked in her truck, we went back and bought a cheap 15 cubic foot freezer. It did have an Energy Star label, and seemed to be fairly efficient. That got tied into my old truck with ratchet straps. We went across the street and down a few blocks to a restaurant supply store for the cheapest deal on spices. Maple flavoring for home made pancake syrup, cinnamon, chili powder, black pepper, pickling spice, ground mustard, and several others all got stuffed into her truck. It was still cold out in late February, so we didn't worry about the fresh meat in her truck. 

We headed for Rural King a couple miles away. They had a nice sporting goods section where I found a selection of steel traps and some cheap shotgun shells. I loaded up on #6 shot, knowing I could use a pocket knife and cut the shells above the powder charge to make a ******* version of a cheap deer slug. Their .22's were reasonable, so I got 4 of the 550 round packages of those, and my wife checked out with her share of the same stuff, plus 4 boxes of .38 Special semiwadcutter loads. We didn't go overboard on the .38's because in the words of an old writer in the preparedness field, how many gun battles do you expect to survive? I hoped like hell I wouldn't have to ever use any of them in self defense. My guns were most likely to be needed for putting food on the table, or getting rid of coyotes or stray dogs. I did buy mounts and a really good scope for my Ruger 10/22. That made it almost a hundred yard gun for small game, if I was good enough with it. 

I bought a few gallons of farm machinery enamel paint, some dog food that was on sale, and 4 big rolls of 4 mil black plastic sheeting. I planned to expand the gardens and the plastic was the fastest, surest way to kill the grass in that part of the yard. 

We made one more stop on the way out of town at Fastenal, an industrial supplier of bolts and screws, and other hardware. I ordered their assortment of grade 5 bolts, nuts and washers, minus the storage bins, since I had my own. They would have it on the truck Monday when it came past our place. I said, no, I wanted it now. The girl had to call a young fellow from the warehouse to load it for me. When she asked what was the business name I told her it was an individual, whereupon she added about 15% to the price, so I told her to have her guy unload it becaue I could do better at the hardware store. I would not pay a premium just because I didn't have a business now. It took a call to her boss, but I bought it for the discount price. 

We spent the rest of the evening unloading stuff into the basement, the workshop, and the small barn in the back yard, but by midnight, the new freezer was cold and we had the meat cut and wrapped and in there getting frozen. 

The gas man came the next day and topped off our 500 gallon LP tank for the price he had quoted Brenda over the phone the day before, $1.92 per gallon for 128 gallons. He said we were lucky to have called then, because today they were quoting $2.46 per gallon. 
__________________

Before we closed the shop, I had filled the steel rack back to capacity and resupplied with welding rods, torch gases, bandsaw blades and grinding wheels. There were still some odds and ends of hardware I had normally stocked but now need to be filled up again. It was all the little stuff that adds up in the repair business, from gasket materials to several kinds of keys, grease fittings, solvents, and snap rings. That was a long list, but a lot of it could be had at Harbor Freight. That meant another trip to Clarksville, but so be it. If I was right, and it sure looked like it, that would be a really good investment. Saturday morning I was there when they opened and hauled out a couple carts full of stuff. The shop was now stocked with hardware.

All the financial sites were full of bad news and dire predictions when I pulled each of them up in turn that Friday evening. The Chinese had said last year they wouldn't buy any more Treasury Bonds, and then they began selling what they had, or rather, trading them for anything they could get from other countries. That had kept from disrupting the bond market too badly as long as it lasted. But when Japan's Abenomics had failed miserably that caused the Yen to fall precipitously. The Japanese had been financially strapped by the cost of the Fukushima fiasco and their production of export goods being restricted by a shortage of electric power, so they had sold a massive amount of T-Bonds to fund propping their banks once again and to pay for their imported energy needs. That had dropped the selling price of T Bonds to create the first jump in yields. 

The yield of a bond equals the interest rate, which is the difference between what you pay for it and the fixed maturity value, divided by the number of years to maturity. Simply put, when things look bad for a nation's credit, nobody will pay as much for their bonds. When Greece had this problem, their bond yields reached something like 14% in a matter of a few days. The US was headed in that direction in a hurry. The bad part was, most of the money the government was running on came from short term bonds of less than a year to maturity. So, we would need to "roll over" those bonds by issuing new ones when these came due to keep going. When that happened, the higher interest rates would break the budget. There was just too much already borrowed to keep living on credit. 

But most investors had seen this coming a long time ago, so when the news came that Japan had dumped a pile of bonds, so did a lot of other folks. They were selling at fire sale prices now, giving yields as high as 7% , up from less than 3% in a few days. The Fed reacted in predictable fashion, buying them all back with "printed" money, which had led to a round-robin of discounting the US dollar which translated to even lower bond prices. The fat was in the fire now. The Fed was panicking. They had little choice. Congress had been issuing statements about cutting spending, but nobody believed them. The main effect of that was to raise the hackles of all those who got a government check each month. Because all of the recipients were registered voters, Congress wasn't likely to make any serious cuts in entitlement programs. The National Debt was so immense it wouldn't have made any difference anyway. The bond vigilantes were in the saddle now and not apt to stop their vengeance on the US Dollar. 
_______________


Chapter 4



Sunday morning we took a breather over breakfast and talked over what we had to do yet. 

"We're in good shape on food," Brenda said, "and we have water and heat. You have been working on shop supplies and we have gas for cooking. We don't really need any clothing, except maybe some underwear and socks. I don't know where to go from here."

"I don't either. How much money is left?" 

Brenda said, "I counted mine last night and got $2,200. What have you got left?"

"I've got about $4,800, give or take. Let's see, that comes to about $7,000, so we have done pretty well shopping. The next thing that comes to my mind is tires. I bought a manual tire changer at Harbor Frieght, and a little one for the lawn mower and garden tractor kind of things. I bought their cheap bubble tire balancer, too. It ain't great, but it beats nothing. I'm going to the tire shop Monday morning and get new rubber put on your truck, and save the old ones for mine. While I'm there I'll try to buy his old tire weights. I need an assortment to balance our tires with , and lead has a lot of uses besides that."

Brenda said, "Let's go to the army surplus store today. I want a couple knit caps and some of their good wool socks."

"That's a good idea. Let's do that. There's things I want there, too." 

"I have about $350 worth of bills to pay this month, so we need to keep some money, and property taxes are due, too. That's about $600 for the year."

"Okay, so say we allow a thousand for those things, and keep at least enough on hand for 6 months worth of bills at that rate. That would be another $2,100, so add the thousand and we get $3,100 we need to keep. That leaves us only $1,700 remaining to spend, and that would be pushing the limit in my mind. I want some on hand for whatever may come up. Let's not go too nuts about spending from here on. There are a few things I want to order for the shop, but that won't be much, maybe a couple hundred. I'd say we're about to get there, as far as we can with what money we have anyway. That gives me at least 6 months to get an income going again. If I can't be making money by then, I don't deserve to live." 

The trip to the surplus store was quite successful, we thought. I found some nice leather dress oxfords for $20 a pair and bought 2 pairs. Brenda got the black socks she wanted and a couple caps, then dug into their thermal underwear. I browsed around and saw a big pile of camo netting, briefly lifting it to see what was under it. It was a huge old canvas tarp, OD green, and faded, but it appeared to be all right. They hadn't made those things in fifty years, so I wondered if it was rotten. I lifted part of it and stuck my pocket screwdriver into it to test the strength. Seemed okay to me, so I asked the woman at the counter what they wanted for it. 

She said it was very heavy, so check that out before I bought it. What I thought was 2 big tarps was only one. It had to be a monster. I had a hard time keeping a straight face when she said it was marked at $40, but they had kept it for so long she wanted rid of it. Would I give $25 for it? I bit my lip to keep my enthusiasm under control. She watched me close, then said, "Okay, I'll take $20 for it, but that is as low as I can go." 

We paid the woman for our stuff and got out of there before she changed her mind. It took all three of us to get that tarp up on the truck bed. We had to drag it out of the store, then partly unfold it to put on end in, then fold the rest on top of that as best we could. You could see the relief on the woman's face when we got it loaded. 

On the way back through town, I stopped at the Goodwill Store and found a box of assorted old candles, about 30 pounds of them. They had all lost their scent and were pretty banged up. That was fine with me. I bought the box for $10 and felt like I had stolen it. Then I went to the hardware store and bought 5 gallons of Coleman stove fuel. I told Brenda I was going to recoat the tarp with waterproofing, but that would have to wait until hot weather. Meanwhile, I could spend some time melting the candle wax in a double boiler OUTDOORS (because this is a horrible fire looking to happen!) and stirred in some pre-warmed Coleman fuel as a solvent. I had to experiment some to get the soft consistency I wanted. I used an old electric deep fryer with water in it to do the melting in a number 10 tin can. It took a lot more solvent than I had expected to make it brush on easily but it worked. I would have to wait until a hot day to do the brushing on, but that was okay. I needed to cut the thing up in several pieces first and hem the cut edges. 

The tarp was a few inches shy of 30 feet by 60 feet. The best I could tell, this thing weighed 400 pounds or more, so it was pretty useless in one piece. I needed some grommets so I could cut the thing up into smaller pieces. Just down the road was an uphostery shop that could sew new hems on the cut pieces. This was going to take a while, but I had plans for that tarp. Whatever, I was retired so I had plenty of time, or so I thought. 

My old pickup was a 1995 S10 Chevy with a 6 foot bed and it wanted a tarp about 8' x 10'. My 2 wheel trailer wanted one the same size. A friend of mine that did some small farming had a couple hay wagons with 8' x 16' beds, so they would need tarps about 16' x 20'. He also had a couple small grain hopper wagons that wanted tarps about 8' x 10'. The remains of all that was 28' x 30', which I had cut in half for a couple 14' x 30' pieces to fit another neighbor's grain trailer's for his semi's. The old couple that ran the upholstery shop had it cut up and hemmed into the 8 pieces by Wednesday of the next week. The grommets I had ordered came in the day I picked up the cut tarps. I planned to do some trading after I got them all reproofed with the dissolved paraffin, but that could wait until summer. 

The waterproofing and grommets had cost me about $100, I paid $20 for the tarp to start with, and the cutting and hemming cost me another $220, so I had $340 in the pile and they were ready to use, except for doing the waterproofing. New, the pile was worth well over $1,000. It looked like I could make out on this deal. I bought 50 feet of 3/8" manila rope for tie downs and tossed it in a bucket of used oil I had sitting around. The next day I took it out and hung it over the bucket to drain for a month or so. That would take care of the two I kept for my own use. The other folks would have to take care of their own tie downs. 
_____________

There wasn't a lot that needed done on our place in early March, so I covered some big areas in the yard with the black plastic and weighted it down with some bricks and old boards. By late Spring, that ground should be ready to plow. Brenda helped with that awkward task. By the time we finished we were getting pretty good at handling the plastic. 

The trip to the tire store had worked out pretty well. Her truck now had a set of new 50,000 mile tires with all weather tread. I wrapped her old ones in plastic leaf bags, taped them shut and stuffed them in the barn loft for when I needed some on my truck. I planned to run my tires until they were bald. If the weather was bad, we would drive her truck with the good tires on it. The guy at the tire store had a 5 gallon bucket of old tire weights I bought for 55 cents a pound, the going rate for scrap lead. I had taken along a bucket of my own. We had to put half in each bucket to be able to carry them to the truck. It was a lot of lead. 

After the new garden spaces were covered, I got busy sorting the tire weights into size categories. When I had enough of the best ones in plastic bins to use for balancing, there was over half a bucket left of damaged ones. It was a breezy day that would keep the fumes away from me, so I began melting lead outside the shop with a weed burner torch I used to preheat stuff in the welding shop. I had it on a 20 pound LP gas bottle so it would make a hot fire for a long time. My old lead ladle got a workout. 

I poured the stuff into some old bread pans. By the time all 4 pans were cast, the first ones were cooled to where I could dump them out and keep going. When the lead was melted, I skimmed off the old steel mounting clips that floated on top, and the crud that always floats up. Then I put a gob of wheel bearing grease on a pine stick and stirred in into the molten metal to "flux" it. The grease acted as a deoxidizer, taking oxygen away from the old corroded lead. It burned with the oxygen it took from the metal and left it clean and refined. I skimmed it again just before I poured the bright metal in the molds. The result was 6 bricks of lead over an inch thick. My bathroom scale said the 6 bricks weighed 88 pounds. 
__________________

By Monday morning the TV news that week said the dollar had stabilized and all was well. I looked at the financial sites and learned that was not so. The dollar was relatively stable in terms of other currencies, but they were rotting, too. The real story was in the fact that the whole world was monetizing their debts and that showed in the rising prices of commodities. 

What got me going was that the Japanese had begun to have hyperinflation. The Yen was fast going down the drain, as their Finance Minister Abe printed Yen with abandon to pay off their maturing bonds, mostly to the Japanese citizens who had confidently bought them for savings. It was another week, in late April when I checked the financial sites and saw the dollar plummeting. The Fed had managed to stave it off for a whole month, but it was coming unwrapped as the Japanese offered US Treasury bonds at 13% yield and got no bids at that. China promptly dumped what they had for what they could get and the dollar tanked along with the bonds. 

The US was now almost into hyperinflation as the Fed bought the entire US bond issue and the government issued four times what they had the month before, just to pay the interest on the past months matured bonds, just like a past Fed Chairman had said, "the US won't default because they can always print the money". That was coming true. His other famous statement was that he could guarantee Social Security payments, but he could not guarantee the purchasing power of those payments. Our SS checks got deposited as usual, but prices we saw in town made them worth about 1/3 of what they used to be. That had only taken 10 days. It was early April, and it looked like it was going to be a tough year. 
________________



Chapter 5 April, 2014

We hadn't spent nearly all of what money we had. There was still the cash-stash I had always kept around for years. Old people tend to do that and I was no exception. Hidden pretty much in plain sight. I had several different antique tobacco tins that I kept around with my old ash tray with the miniature rubber car tire around it, an old corncob pipe, and some 50 year old beer openers. It was just a few old curiousities for all anyone knew. They had lain on my shop office desk for years where my customers all saw them. Nobody messed with any of it, but several commented that they brought back memories. I had a lot of antiques around, so nobody thought anything of it. But the tobacco tins were full of money, mostly hundreds, some 50's and some $20 bills. The total had been $8,400 before the money went bad. I had spent all but $2,000 of it on several truckloads of stuff over the past few days. There were some late nights involved in all that shopping. 

The important things were a load of dry charged solar batteries I had delivered from the city and a very good garden tractor I bought from a neighbor. I had not found the time to hook up the solar stuff yet, but I thought I had enough parts to get something going. I was really worried about what the next electric bill would be. I was thinking about that when one of our neighbor's showed up.

Stuart Young ran somewhere around 200 head of beef cattle and raised commercial turkeys. He farmed 400 acres he owned and he rented a couple hundred more each year. This area in Indiana could easily run over 2 head of cattle per acre on pasture. That left a lot of his ground open for raising grain. I had done a lot of repair work on his equipment in years past. 

"Hi Stuart! What are you up to today?" 

"Aw, just trying to stay one jump ahead of the devil. Have you got any steel left?" 

"I had a truckload brought in last week, just before the money went to hell. What was you looking for?"

"Boy, you done right on that! I bet the price is already up for that. I'm glad you got it, 'cause I need some angle iron to fix the legs on some feed bins. You got some 2" angle?"

"Yeah, 1/8", 3/16", and quarter inch thick. What will you need for this job?"

"Oh, the 3/16" is what is on there now so that'll be fine. That stuff is 20 foot long ain't it?"

"Yeah, but I'll cut whatever you want." 

"Awright. I just need to fix the bottom couple feet of them, and have enough to lap over and bolt on, so let's say we make 'em 4 feet long, and that'll come out even at 5 to the stick. I've got 4 of those bins, so that's 16 pieces."

I set to work with 3 sticks of angle in the band saw to cut together. It saved time. Stuart began to talk over the noise of the saw. 

"What's people goin' to do with these high prices? I can't see how they can get along. Nobody's wages went up!"

"We're all going to have to cut our expenses to the bone, it looks to me like," I told him. 

"That won't be easy! The poultry company just told me they will have to change my contract on this batch of turkeys. They want to pay a bigger price for when they buy 'em, but they want me to pay for the feed instead of them providing the feed, birds, and all. I don't think I want to stick my neck out on that, the way prices are goin' up, so I told the guy we'll have to start all over on that contract, or he can come get 'em today! He didn't like that much, but see, I paid for the building. Most people are under contract and the company pays for the building, then it becomes yours after several years. They put up a cheap building and by the time it's paid off it's junk. I didn't want to do that, so I paid for the building and only the turkeys are theirs. I told him if he breaks the contract, it's null and void so he can come get his birds or I'll turn 'em out to fend for theirselves."

"Sounds like you're in the driver's seat there."

"Right now, yes. I'll have to watch what I agree to, or they'll try to skin me good. I never heard of such a thing before. Nobody breaks farm contracts unless they go belly up."

The band saw finished its' cut with a clang as the pieces fell to the floor. I reset the saw and started the next cut while he continued to talk. 

"So, are you open for business again, or does this have to be a cash deal under the table?"

"No, I don't want to take any chances with what I owe for taxes. I had Brenda get our store license again and sign up to pay sales taxes. It's business as usual, except for the prices, of course."

Stuart nodded and said, "What's your shop rate now?"

"I'll keep my 30% markup on the steel and parts, but that has to be based on replacement costs so I can buy more. The shop rate has to be enough to pay for my supply cost, and pay my labor. I used to charge $40 an hour, but that has to go to $65 for now, until I see what I can do. I can do some trading, though." 

"Tradin' might be all right, but I don't know what I 'd have that you'd need."

"I can trade for my labor, at say $25 an hour, but I need the rest in money to pay for what I have to buy. I can use some corn for the chickens, and I'd like to buy a beef about next Thanksgiving, or whenever it gets cold enough to butcher." 

"I can't butcher a beef for you, or the health department would be all over me."

"No, I meant to buy it on the hoof and have you haul it here. We can shoot it in the truck and hoist him up with the jib crane, then I'll take it from there."

He nodded agreement and said, "Yeah, I can do that. I've got more work for you comin' up, now that I know you're goin' again. We can just keep a tab on it. That suit you all right?"

"Suits me fine. I just hope it's not anything too big for my old bones to handle now."

Stuart grinned and said, "Naw, I won't bring the big stuff down here. We'll take things apart at the farm and just bring you what needs the ugly fixed." 

He paid me for the steel and left. Sales tax had gone up to 8%, so I almost messed that up, but he had caught the mistake. I loved dealing with my neighbors. Honest people are a real pleasure. It would be fine deal on the beef, too. Beef had been running around $175/hundredweight on the hoof, but I had looked at farm market prices that morning and saw slaughter beef cattle selling for $267/hundredweight. That put the price of 1, 000 pound steer at $2670! We simply could not afford beef at that price on Social Security. I wondered how anyone working for a living could afford to eat now. 
________________

Brenda and I went to town the next Monday morning and saw some of the effects of what we had been reading about. McDonald's only had 4 cars in the lot at 10:00 AM, and that was probably the employees. The grocery behind it only had a dozen cars in the lot and the streets were pretty empty. The gas station price board told why. Regular unleaded was now $8.44 a gallon. All of a sudden I was real glad for that buried 300 gallon tank I had at home. It wasn't quite full, but that was where some of my cash stash had gone, with some Stabil additive to keep it good. 

I was real glad that our little trucks got 28 MPG, too. I started driving like I had a rotten egg on the gas pedal to get the best mileage I could. I had been seeing such prices on GasBuddy, but it didn't seem real until I saw it on the gas station sign. I had aired up the truck tires to 45 PSI before I left home to make it roll easier, and drove slow anyway. I had taken all the junk out of the truck and removed the tailgate, too, for less wind resistance. It had new plugs in it and I'd changed the oil about a month ago, so I was curious how cheap I could make it run. I'd filled up at home and set the trip odometer. There were 3 gas cans in the back to replace what I'd taken from our home tank. I dreaded what that was going to cost. 

Brenda said, "I've got the stops planned out to make one trip across town to the hardware store, then hit everything else on the way back."

"Sounds good to me." I turned on a side street to miss the stop lights. There was no traffic except for a car that stopped at the dentist's office. The big hardware store had a few customers, but only one clerk and one guy roving the store to help customers, instead of two of each. It looked like some people got laid off. There were new store hours posted on the door, reduced from 7 AM to 6 PM, to 10 AM to 6 PM. So, the help only got in 8 hours a day instead of 10 . The floor walker had his sticker gizmo and was changing prices while we shopped. We got the rat and mouse bait we came for before he got that far, but he'd already been through the paint aisle so I paid $47.98 for a gallon of machinery enamel for Stuart's next job. 

The inflated prices were killing the economy and it seemed like that had a good start. 

Our next stop was the discount gas station where we got 3 cents off the price per gallon for using cash. I paid $126.25 for just a tad over 15 gallons in my 3 cans. The attendant was changing the pump prices as we left, and another guy was climbing the ladder to change the price on the sign. Brenda looked back as we drove away and said, "It's gone to $8.56 now."

"This is really biting hard," I said. I parked along the street near the insurance office. Inside was a very glum looking lady we knew that had worked there for years, but she was the only one in the office. The other 2 clerks were gone and there was nobody in the back offices. 

She tried to look more cheerful as she said, "What can I help you with?"

Brenda said, "We need to drop the collision coverage on one truck, and cancel the homeowner's insurance."

That got us a sharp look. The lady said, "Homeowners is required if you have a mortgage on the property, you know."

"We don't have a mortgage."

"That is risky to not have coverage on your home," the lady said.

I told her, "It's a risk we have to take, or we can't afford to live there." 

The lady had a grim set to her mouth as she entered the data into her computer. She said, "You were paid up for the year, so you should have a refund check in the mail next week, for this amount." 

That was just under $500, which would help because the next stop was across the street at the Courthouse to pay our property taxes. They had gone up, as expected, so the total for the year was now almost $800. I wrote the check and asked the County Treasurer for the procedure to appeal our assessment, since real estate prices were falling like stones and our house wasn't getting any younger. She said to go see the Assessor's Office. We did, and it was not a pleasant interview for the guy. There were two other people that came in with the same thing in mind before we got finished. It took almost an hour, but we got the assessment lowered by 20%. It would not affect this year's taxes, however, taking effect after the payment we just made. 

"Good thing we allowed for that," I told Brenda as we left. 

"It sure is. We are going to have to be very careful from here on to stay out of money trouble."
_____________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Comments would be appreciated! I'm learning to write, and working on character development in this story. I tried to make this as realistic as possible, given what I expect could be reality before long, with the US National Debt at unpayable levels, and more giveaways being passed by Congress all the time. 

My assumption is that the only way out of this situation is to dilute the currency, bringing unprecedented inflation. With an already tight economy, that would really hurt.


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## Viking (Mar 16, 2009)

machinist said:


> Comments would be appreciated! I'm learning to write, and working on character development in this story. I tried to make this as realistic as possible, given what I expect could be reality before long, with the US National Debt at unpayable levels, and more giveaways being passed by Congress all the time.
> 
> My assumption is that the only way out of this situation is to dilute the currency, bringing unprecedented inflation. With an already tight economy, that would really hurt.


By the FED printing money and throwing it at all the economic problems to trying to solve them, that's the dilution that has been going on since the Federal Reserve Bank was started in 1913. Actually it goes back further, Andrew Jackson fought the central banking system that Jefferson had warned was more dangerous than standing armies. Most all of the FED chairmens use what's called Keynesian economics which is basically an idea to throw money at problems until they bury the problem with cash and they just go away. G. Edward Griffin, the author of "The Creature From Jekyll Island" said it best when he said printing money to solve problems was like continually adding water to the soup, it may smell and taste a bit like the original soup but the nourishment is no longer in it. I wouldn't be surprised to find that most all banks have a set trip level to close down in case of a run on the banks starts. And so what you've written is not so fictional, hopefully people will take it to heart as banks are no place to have any large amounts of money in. Just enough to meet minimums to keep transaction fees down and pay the regular monthly bills. If it's anything like our, what we call a good, bank the interest on any of the money you have in the accounts is so small anymore as to amount to only pennies a year.


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Yes! I got into studying this problem some time ago, and it looks to me like it is reaching critical mass.


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 6 Late April, 2014

I had the 3 old garden patches rototilled and planted. The new areas we had covered with black plastic were looking pretty dead under the covering. It had been a hot week so I had gotten the canvas tarps out and gave them a coat of the dissolved paraffin. I had to wear my organic vapor mask I used for spray painting because ot the strong smell of the solvent. I'd laid them out on the grass all the way at the back of our lot to avoid any chance of a spark that would cause a disastrous fire. That evening the smell was still in the air, but it was barely noticeable. I thought the vapors might kill the grass under them, but if it did, I would plow and plant that, too. 

I immediately knew Bill Woodruff's old farm truck when he drove in. There was a rusty 8 foot Bush Hog on the truck that looked like he'd pulled it out of the weeds and mud of a fencerow. I walked up closer and saw him backing it under my jib crane by the shop. 

"Looks like you want to unload that thing," I told him. 

"It won't work like it is, but you better take a look at it before we unload it. It might be too far gone to fix." 

"What's its' big problem?"

Bill grinned and asked, "Where do you want me start?"

"That bad, huh?"

He got serious and said, "The PTO shaft is bent, but it's one of the old square ones so you can probably straigten it in that big press of yours. The blades hang down pretty low, so the pivot bolts are wore out, but I got some new ones for it. I got new blades and the rest is just beat the shell back straight and weld up the cracks. As far as I know, the gearbox is okay. There's some grease around the bottom of it, so it was leakin' a little. I got a seal for it. You wanna tackle this?"

"Gotta make a living somehow. Let's get it offa there." 

When the machine was lifted just clear of the truck bed, he drove out from under it and we lowered it to the ground. I looked it over and said, "How good do you want it? Just enough to run, or do a whole job on it? That crazy wheel looks like it could use some bearings."

"Well, I'd like to have it pretty good, 'cause I got a job with the County to mow some roadsides. They can't afford to keep full time people on the road crew now, so they contract it out. You got any idea how much this might cost? I want to be sure I can pay for it."

"That's hard to tell until I get deeper into it, but it looks like a hard 10 or 12 hours of work. There's not much in the way of materials needed, so I'd say about $600 to $750. I think that's too much to put into it, don't you?"

"You seen what they want for a new one now?"

"No, but I thought an 8 footer went for around $2,000 the last I saw."

"That was a few years back," Bill said. "Last year they wanted $2,750 for one and it's over $4,800 now! It's been settin' for a couple years, 'cause of the blades draggin', but it worked okay. That's why I brought it over here. I can't afford to put that much in it."

I was pretty shocked at the prices. I told Bill, "I'll get on it this afternoon and let you know when I get finished. If anything is off from what we talked about, I'll call you, okay?"

"That'll work. I got to get busy. The cows want milked twice a day, you know." 

He left and I hitched the hoist chain on the front to stand the machine on end so I could change the mower blades and pivot bolts. Since I didn't have to save the parts, I got the cutting torch and burned the bolts off. Those things could take forever to get loose with wrenches. It went pretty fast, but the grease seal took the rest of the afternoon. The old grease in the gearbox was pretty thick and black, so I drained and changed that. I turned the garden hose on the underside to get rid of the dirt before I did any welding on the deck, then sat it back on the ground. It was sundown by then, so I left it set and went back to check on my tarps. They were pretty dry, but I decided to leave them another day in the sun.

When I called Bill a couple days later, he asked what I owed him? I told him if he could bring me some cow manure for a couple garden patches I could allow a hundred off, bringing it to $600 even. He said he'd be over in the morning with a truckload. 

He had a tractor with a front end loader, so it was no great job for him to load it. Unloading was breeze because his truck had a dump bed. The problem for me was getting the stuff distributed, since he couldn't spread it with the truck. It came off in two big piles on the new patches I'd had under plastic. Brenda and I spent the better part of 2 days getting it scattered with pitchforks, but we had a layer about 6" thick all over the new gardens. We put the plastic back over it to let it all bake for a while in the sun. A month later, it looked like 3" of black dirt, so I plowed it under and rototilled the whole works. It looked like it would grow something then, and there wasn't blade of grass to be seen. 
_______________

Brenda had been busy canning a lot of food that was in our freezer, mostly vegetables from last Fall. We had eaten some too, so when we got both freezers defrosted and organized, one was nearly empty. That was good, because we'd have a beef coming this Fall. Meanwhile, we finished off what was in the one and turned it off for now. 

I went in for a cup of coffee and Brenda was fit to be tied. 

She said, "Carmen called and she was crying. Josh and his girlfriend had both gotten laid off, so she had to support them and their baby. Josh had to let their SUV get repossessed, and her car has something wrong with it. It runs, but gets very bad mileage. The worst was, she had gotten laid off last month and they couldn't make the house payment until too late because of the delay getting her unemployment started. Then she learned that Indiana had just cut off Unemployment benefits for lack of funds. She had just gotten her first check and it would be the last one any of them got. They didn't have much in the way of groceries, and almost no money. There was no way she could make the house payment that was due 3 weeks ago."

Carmen was Brenda's baby sister, and about 15 years younger than us, if I remembered right, probably 52 or so. She was the nervous, emotional type, and that was likely what kept her thin. I asked, "What did you tell her?"

"I said I'd talk to you and see if there's anything we could do and call her back." 

Brenda looked at me without asking, but the look was enough. I simply asked her, "Do you think they will work for their keep?"

"You'd better bet they will, or I'll kick them to the curb! It's her own fault for spending herself broke, and she had a hand in raising Josh, before that worthless man of hers left. Then she had to buy that big new house! It's her own fault she's in so much trouble and I don't have any sympathy for THAT. But she's my sister and I feel like I have to do something. We do have the two spare bedrooms...." 

Brenda's voice trailed off. Her face was a study in frustration.

I asked her, "Can you put up with them here?"

"I think so, but there'd have to be some ground rules."

"Yeah, that's a fact. They'd have to learn quick how to live real different from what they're used to doing"

Brenda said, "I can make sure they understand how it has to work."

She paused, then said, "I can't just let her be homeless." 

"Call her back and tell her we have a big garden to plant. If they want to help take care of the place, we can put a roof over their heads and keep 'em fed. I'll be wanting help from Josh in the shop, and they get to do the laundry and keep the house clean. You'll be busy putting up food. Or, something like that. You work it out with them on the housework and food chores."

"That's pretty much what I thought. Okay. Let me collect myself and I'll call her back. She doesn't have many minutes left on her phone, so when can we go get them?"

"What do you think? We'll need to clear out the spare bedrooms and put that stuff somewhere."

Brenda was clearly upset with her sister for getting in this kind of spot. We both knew of her free spending ways, living at the edge of her credit limit. She thought on it for a minute and said, "They'll appreciate it more if they are hungry when they get here. I'll tell her it will be a couple days before we can get the rooms ready. " 

It turned out that they were already out of food, so we took both trucks and the trailer to get most of their stuff the next day. What was left wasn't too important, but we'd go back for it later. I helped get the rooms emptied, Josh and I carried a lot of stuff to the barn loft, and we got the beds set up that day. The rest of their stuff we covered with plastic tarps in the trucks and trailer for now. The weather was clear, so that wasn't a problem. 

Having a baby in the house with a couple old folks who are used to peace and quiet was a problem. The weather was beautiful, so we made sure that Tammy and the baby spent a lot of their time outside, or else Brenda and I did. It helped, but it still got on our nerves to be hearing a baby crying. We thought we were finished with all that years ago. 

I took a look at Carmen's car and found out it had bad spark plugs and plug wires. It probably needed a lot of other things, but that got it running decent again. Since she couldn't afford gas for it, it got parked in the back end of the house driveway. Her insurance lapsed a couple weeks later, so it wasn't legal to drive anyway. We let it sit there for now. It was an older Ford Focus and would probably get decent mileage if we fixed it up some. I thought that insurance wouldn't cost that much if we could get her a job somewhere. 

They were out of disposable diapers when we went to pick them up, so I bought big box. They were expensive and Brenda wasn't having any of that, so she headed for the Salvation Army store and the Goodwill, where she found enough old flannel sheets and other things to cut several dozen cloth diapers. I dug out an old plastic trash can with a lid to soak the dirty ones, and we initiated Tammy into how all that worked. She wasn't thrilled about it, but she did it. 

Carmen was depressed as hell and whining about it. Brenda's sympathy ran out after a day of that and told her to lay it down, we had work to do. I didn't say it, but putting her to work would give her something else to think about and be good for her. It took a couple days, but they got the house halfway organized and worked out a routine for fixing meals, cleaning, and taking care of the baby. By laundry day it was starting to function and Carmen's eyes weren't red all the time. 

Tough love, somebody called it, and Brenda had all the right motives to do that. 
_________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 7 May, 2014


Our family had grown from just the two of us to 6 mouths to feed now. We had a lot of canned goods put up from last year and some left over from previous years, but it would stretch what we could do to feed the clan now. We ate more potatoes and beans and less meat, more cornbread and biscuits, and eggs that we produced at home. It was working okay so far, but this summer had to be productive or it would be long hungry winter. 

Brenda got Tammy started making baby food in the blender. We bought the kid some liquid vitamins and got a bottle of baby aspirin, baby powder, and some diaper rash ointment. That had the basics covered for the moment.

Over breakfast, I asked, "Josh, have you ever done any gardening?"

"No, we never planted a garden. Our house in Louisville had a tiny yard, and there was that big tree back there. I've watered the house plants, but that's all."

"Okay, today we are going to plant late potatoes. I think we have enough left for seed in the cellar, but they are pretty much a mess. Some have gone bad and the rest have a lot of sprouts. Let's see what we can do with them, okay?" 

The young guy was willing enough, but I had to practically tell him every move to make. He did a lot better in the shop since he had done some mechanic work on his own cars, but in a garden he was about helpless. But he did try and he learned fast. We sat in the shade on the porch and cut seed potatoes for an hour and a half, all of us getting pretty stinky and messy from the spoiled ones. While the rest of them were finishing that up, I got out the garden tractor and shovel plow to lay off rows. We all got to do the planting on hands and knees. 

Thankfully, Tammy was breast feeding the baby, so we didn't have that to worry with, and the little girl was healthy. Thanks be to God for that. When we broke for lunch, the women went to the house first to get the food ready while Josh and I changed to the disc hiller on the tractor and covered the potato rows. After a couple hours on his knees planting, he was amazed at how fast that went. 

"I thought we'd have to cover them up with a shovel or something! I wasn't looking forward to it, either."

"There will be a lot of hand weeding and hoeing coming up, but most of it I can get with the tractor and cultivator. It saves a LOT of work," I told him and he believed it. 

"How many potatoes will that make?"

"If we are lucky and have a good season, probably 100 pounds. I put in a couple rows in the upper garden for us earlier, so that should get us another hundred if we're lucky, and they will be ready a lot sooner to eat on," I told him. 

"What gets planted in the rest of this?"

"A little of everything we can think of. I'll have to buy more seed potatoes and we'll put in a couple more rows, but we have enough new garden ground now to handle it all. We need to keep planting the salad stuff, lettuce, radishes, and other greens so we keep having a supply. The main crops will be producing pretty soon, the beans, sweet corn, broccoli, kale, early turnips, beets, and tomatoes and such. Melons will be later. I put in some sweet potatoes we started early this year. We didn't eat nearly all of them from last year's crop, so when they bagan to sprout I put them in a jars of water and got all those plants from them. I put 'em in early, so I had to cover 'em up a few times because of some late frosts, but they're going strong now."

Josh said, "I do love sweet potatoes! I'm glad you're growing them."

I corrected him, "WE are growing them. Your dinner is out here too."

I got a look from that remark. Maybe he didn't need that, but I wanted it to be clear how things worked here. Maybe I was a little hard on him, but we didn't have much of a margin for safety this year. 

Our meat supply would barely make it until Fall butcherng time, so we planned a fishing trip when we next got a free Sunday. The river was just over the hill about half a mile, and I had plenty of fishing gear. Sonny, my old Labrador had jumped a rabbit out the raspberry briars along the back fence, so we set about making two wooden box traps that evening after supper. I told my wife I needed some apples to bait the traps, so she thawed a bag and made a couple pies with Carmen's help. Carmen wasn't a gardener either, but she could cook, so that's where she spent a fair amount of her time. Once she had calmed down and got acqainted with what food we had, she did a good job of helping Brenda plan meals. 

For years I had bought wheat from local farmers and ground flour in our burr mill. Brenda regularly baked our bread. All the newcomers had some minor trouble from the real whole wheat because they weren't used to that much fiber, and it has a laxative effect. They all loved the whole wheat pancakes, but said the bread tasted sort of like a bran muffin. They got used to it pretty quick. Brenda and Carmen got their heads together about baking bread, and began to turn out 4 loaves about every 4 or 5 days. The bread, fresh food diet, and harder physical work got them all slimmed down and their msucles in better shape pretty fast. 

The next 3 days got us a fat rabbit each day, and then one the following week. It made for a nice change in the menu and got rid on the problem of our bean plants being eaten off at the ground. The chickens got the offal after it was boiled for awhile in a kettle with cornmeal. They ate it like crazy. 

I thought we were off to a pretty good start with this new crew. Time would tell how good. 
____________________

The money problem didn't get any better. That is, the dollar had sunk to about half it's value for domestic goods, but less than that for imported things and too many things were imported. The less we had to buy, the better, so we tried to supply everything we could at home. Life was going on more or less normal around us, until you looked a little closer. There weren't quite as many crops planted this Spring and there were a lot more vacant houses and empty business buildings around. There weren't many trucks going down the highway now, and too many young people hanging around on street corners looking hungry. 

Josh didn't have many suitable work clothes, so we did what we could for him. I had some shirts that would fit him, but he was enough bigger in the waist that my old jeans wouldn't fit. There was very little available at the thrift stores now, so we prowled the yard sales on Saturdays when we could afford to make a trip to town. One yard sale had some work uniforms that would fit him after the women hemmed the legs up shorter, and the same place had a good serviceable pair of work boots that fit him and a pair of decent dress shoes. We paid the lady $28 for the pile and got enough to keep him dressed for a while. He needed socks, and we had to pay retail for those, at $2.49 a pair for the cheap white cotton ones. The year before, I'd bought them at the same store, 9 pairs for 8 bucks. We still had a little savings left, but it had to stretch to pay the property taxes next year, and we didn't make all that much in the shop. Our Social Security was just not enough to go around for supporting 5 adults and a baby. 

The women's clothing was less of a problem. Brenda and Carmen were pretty much the same size, and Tammy could wear a lot of the same clothes.  When she lost a little more of the baby weight, she would fit them all. Brenda had gobs of clothes, so the women were pretty well set. The problem was shoes. Tammy's feet were bigger than the other women. Carmen could wear some of Brenda's shoes, but some were too narrow. We made it a priority to find them enough shoes, with emphasis on cold weather and work shoes. By the end of summer, we found some for every one, athough the styles weren't exactly what they might have wished for. Most of them came from an estate sale, and were the sort of thing an older woman would choose, more for comfort than for looks. 

Crops had been planted and it wasn't time for making hay quite yet, so the shop wasn't all that busy. We took a Saturday off and made a trip to Brownstown to the army surplus store, to outfit everyone with winter coats, wool caps and socks, and whatever else they might find there. We were a little short on blankets, so we bought some heavy wool ones there. They were the smaller ones, but the price was right and the women decided they could sew 2 together and make a full size out of them. 

They had a pretty good selection of BDU's, so Josh got some of the coveralls for working in the shop, and a couple caps to match. He found a Chinese copy of an old dress web belt for his work uniforms, and the women found some leather shoes that would endure the kind of work they were doing now. We bought some bandanas and light camo field jackets for Fall wear. On the way home, we stopped at the Dollar General Store and found some dark brown dye to use on the faded BDU's. That made them look almost civilised. 

Brenda and Carmen were teaching Tammy to sew and how to make patterns from old clothing, so baby Hailey got a bunch of new jumpers, shirts, and shorts made from whatever old clothing we found cheap. I had saved buttons for years, so they got used for baby clothes. Tammy got a little bit ahead of the game and began to make larger clothes, since the girl was growing fast. Carmen and Tammy had a time finding enough undergarments that fit without costing more than we could afford. It was time for a trip to Clarksville to see if we could find some things we needed. 
______________


Chapter 8 June, 2014

Our shop had a pretty profitable for the month in May, so we took a Sunday trip with both trucks to the city. The TV news didn't give much to go on about what to expect, so thinking things might be a little dicey, Brenda and I each stuck our old .38's under the front seat. We had carry permits, but seldom carried them except for such a trip. Brenda drove her truck with the extended cab. Tammy and the baby rode with her, since they needed some room. Carmen and Josh rode with me in the old truck, a bit cramped, but tolerable. Josh wanted by the window and I didn't ask why. Carmen was small like my wife, so she fit pretty well in the middle. 

The women hit every thrift store in town. We didn't want to get separated, since the city looked a lot worse for the wear of the past few months and there was strength in numbers. We had brought lunch with us so we parked in Goodwill's big lot and sat on the tailgates to eat. It was at the edge of a residential section and pretty peaceful there. There was another family eating in their car, too. I had noticed that the Western Roadhouse was dark and empty when we passed there a few minutes ago. Too many people could not afford to eat out now. There had been several dead restaurants along that main business district. 

The women were feeling pretty good about getting out to shop for a change and chattered like school girls. Josh and I were sitting on my tailgate and about finished eating when he told me he wanted to stop at Bass Pro on the way out of town. I agreed and passed along the word to the women. They agreed and went back to talking about the next stop at Wal Mart. I had begun to be able to pay Josh a little each week for his help in the shop, so I knew he had some pocket money and thought he might want some fishing gear or whatever. 

Wal Mart was kind of a disappointment with limited stock and high prices, but the women spent some time in ladies' wear and got what they needed. We were about finished when Josh said he needed to look in sporting goods. I fooled around in automotive until he came back with his package, all checked out and stapled shut, then we proceeded to the main checkout with the womens' things. I was astounded at what a small sackful of womens' underwear cost, but I had seen some of the prices. Josh said he got what he needed, so we didn't have to stop at Bass Pro. That suited me. It had been a long day and I wanted to go home. 

Brenda got their packages and passengers loaded up by the time Josh and I were squeezing in beside Carmen. I had the keys in my hand when a knife appeared in my face followed by, "GIMMEE THE MONEY MAN!"

It seemed like an hour passed as I tried to decide if I had time to crank the window up, but Josh didn't wait for that. His arm went across my chest like a fast punch. I heard a loud POP that hurt my ears, then him saying, "GET THE HELL OUTA HERE JACK!" 

I did. Apparently Brenda had not seen any of this. She had already backed out of her parking spot and was on the way to the exit. I backed out pretty quick and followed, seeing a young guy running fast around an SUV in front of our parking spot. He didn't look hurt, but he didn't want to see any more of us, either. I drove as calmly as I could trying to look normal, but I was shaking pretty badly. 

Josh was holding his mother's hand and trying to calm her down with soothing talk. I couldn't hear very well after that shot. I paid attention to the street and got us on the interstate right behind Brenda. We got out of town fast. Once on the state highway out where it was clear, I asked Josh, "Did you hit him?"

"Naw. He turned just as I shot and it hit his jacket. I saw the hole in the car next to us. I think we're okay, 'cause I looked at the cameras in the parking lot and there weren't any covering that part. The ones for that lane was busted and hanging straight down. That's probably why the guy picked that spot to try it. He's gone and we are too, so no problem." 

Carmen was sobbing softly between us. I told her to settle down, it was all over now. She tried to straighten up, then got in her purse for a hanky to wipe her nose. Her hands were shaking, but she got the job done. 

"I owe you Josh. Big time."

"No, I owe you for taking us in."

"You pull your weight. Call it even then, okay?"

"Yeah. Call it even," he said with the first real smile I 'd seen on him since they moved in. 

I thought about it and decided that he had been feeling pretty bad about having to live with us. The next day when the story had been beaten to death in conversation, Carmen was looking a lot better than she had before and Tammy was obviously proud of Josh. Maybe it hadn't been such a bad thing after all. Not that I wanted to do it again. 

Later I found out that Josh's purchase that day was more ammo for the little .380 Beretta that had saved my butt. I'd had no idea that he carried it, and neither did his Mom. He never said anything about a permit and I never asked. I found myself realizing that growing up in a rough part of Louisville had taught him some things I needed to learn about surviving in the big city. Maybe we could teach each other. 
_______________

I haven't said anything yet about our kids, but they were doing just fine so far. Brad still had his job as head mechanic at the telephone company's headquarters in Seymour. They had cut back from a crew of 4 mechanics to just him and one other man, so he did all greasy work now instead of just supervising, but his job looked stable as long as they had to keep their repair trucks on the road. His wife Stephanie was working part time for a vegetable grower near Brownstown so they could ride to work together for the summer. 

They had a garden growing and he had enough wood cut for next winter, so they were doing okay. They had their 20 acre property paid off a year before the money went bad. They had what they needed and their small SUV didn't have many miles on it, even though it was old enough to be paid off. It was almost 20 miles to where they lived on the other side of the county seat from us. With gas so high, we didn't get to visit very often, but we stayed in touch by email with photos added. Their small garden looked really good. They had added a woodshed this summer and had it stacked full, and on the back side was a small hen house with a few chickens showing in the picture. Stephie was bringing home damaged produce from work as it was available and canning at night. Their pantry was looking good. 

Our daughter Susan and her husband Arthur lived entirely differently, but they had the prepper gene also. Art was a little older than Susan and had retired from the Air Force after 20 years of doing airframe repair. He now worked for UPS at their new shipping hub in Louisville and supervised their maintenance shop. Susan was a computer geek. She had what she thought was a pretty safe job at the hospital in Jeffersonville. There had been severe cutbacks there, too, but she had a lot of job security since she was the one who kept their records system secure and running. 

They had bought a nice home south of us about 15 miles in the hill country above the Ohio River Valley where it was out of the smog and city influence altogether, yet within a 30 minute commute to their jobs. They'd had to prune their spending habits, but they had been very conservative and were doing okay. Mostly that meant they had cut back what they were putting into their retirement accounts. Susan watched their investments like a hawk and had managed them well. 

Brenda got a call from Susan one day who said they were dumping their entire retirement portfolio. She wouldn't say where she'd gotten the tip, but the word was that the government was going to "convert" all forms of retirement accounts into something like a Social Security fund. I had seen some specualtive posts about that on financial sites where they womdered why it hadn't happened sooner. What Susan said in one of her pithy short statements was to "get ready for round number two, coming soon". 

I listened in on the last of that conversation and asked her, "Does that mean another devaluation?"

She said, "Dad, you ain't seen a wreck like we're gonna have!" 

That was a reference to an old joke the whole family liked and had adopted as one of our shorthand code phrases. It meant that this was a life changing event coming up. 

She went on, "They papered over the financial crash in 2008 and they've had all their fingers and toes stuck in the leaky dike since then. The whole thing is ready to cave in now." 

We were all silent for a few seconds while that sunk in. Brenda said, "Are you going to be all right?"

"I think so. I can't tell yet. If it doesn't last more than a few months we'll be fine. I have a lot of work to do, so I'd better get busy. We're moving a lot of money around now. That takes time and we don't have a lot of time. I'll be in touch. Y'all take care, okay? And, Dad? Thanks for the heads up when this started. It saved us a bad day." 

"You take care, too. We love you," I said. Brenda said the same and Susan hung up. 

I had heard that a few banks had done the "bail-in" thing back when this began, but I didn't know it was anywhere close to home. Then again, it was hard telling where Susan and Art had their money then. It sounded like the Fed's successes so far were coming to an end. I didn't know what else we could do to be ready for it, but I would be thinking hard about it. 
_______________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 9 July, 2014



We would need income, no matter what. I would have to find some way to make enough to get by. Taxes had to be paid, and some things we could not produce or trade for. We didn't let any money sit in the bank. As soon as our Social Security deposits hit the account, we checked it out that day or the next, after paying a few bills online. Our small average balance caused us to have to pay a service fee each month, but that was okay. It was cheaper than driving around to pay bills, or taking the chance of losing a check in the mail. 

There was still the silver coins I had bought way back when, but the price of silver wasn't all that high now. I was sure that it was still being manipulated down by that big investor who had essentially cornered the market. Someday his luck would end and I planned to be ready when it happened. 

With what cash we had on hand, we could operate the business with its' separate bank account. Handling that money was what had us driving to town as often as we did. I tried to keep the business money flowing fast, spending what we took in as quick as I could on either more supplies for the shop or what we needed at home. The shop stock was in better shape than ever, including a lot of used materials I had taken in trade. There just didn't seem to be anything else I could do to be ready for a currency collapse, and I was sure that was what Susan was talking about. 

I wanted the best knowledge I could get, so I told Brenda we needed to go see Susan and Art. She called them and asked if they needed eggs of anything we had in the garden? They worked that out and we drove the twelve miles through the country to see them that evening. Josh and I had made a thin bracket to hang my clip-on holster on the inside of the door on my truck, and that is where it rode when I was in it. I was closing the barn door after the horse got out, but better late than never, right? 
_______________

My cell phone rang on the drive to their place. It was Devin, my cousin Eugene's son. He said that Eugene had passed away in his sleep apparently, and was to be buried in the family cemetery the next day. He had waited to call us so that we could make only one trip down for the funeral and he had business for us to attend to afterward. His Dad had left something for us. He didn't know what it was, but Eugene had left a locked metal box with our names welded on the top of it. I told him we would be there. He said his Dad had often said how we saved him a lot by our call one day and he would always be thankful for it. 

It was quiet in the truck so Brenda had overheard part of the conversation. My phone was turned up for my bad hearing.

She said, "I'm going to miss Eugene. He was always so nice to everyone."

"Yes, he was good people, for sure. I can't help but wonder what he thought we should have of his? All he ever cared about was his race horses. Devin will get those, since he knows all about them. Him and his brother will undoubtedly get that big farm since they ran it for a long time now. Eugene hadn't been able to do that much work for the past few years."

"How old was he?"

"Hmm. Well, he was the oldest, and he was grown when I was a little kid, so I'd say he was well past 80. It's a shame we never were real close, but we didn't have that much in common. We always had a good time together when we saw each other at reunions and such, though." 

We were getting close to Susan's driveway and it was a short turn, so I slowed down and paid closer attention to driving. The porch light was on as we got to the house. 

Susan gave her Mom a hug as we went in. I handed my box of produce to Art who said thanks and took it to the kitchen. We all congreagated around their breakfast bar where Art brought the coffee pot to fill the cups he had set out. 

I told Susan, "I just got a call from your second cousin Devin, down at Milltown. He said that Eugene passed away yesterday. The funeral is tomorrow, so we are going to that." 

"Oh, I hate to hear that," Susan said. "He was always so sweet to us kids. I remember he had this treasure hunt at a family reunion one time, where all us little kids got to dig in the sandbox for buried treasure! He gave us all pirate hats and told us where to dig. He must have put a ton of coins in there because we all came out with handfulls of money. He told this big story about some pirate that had buried it there, and we were all bug eyed. It was loads of fun!" 

"He loved kids, all right," I said, and got a little misty eyed at the memory.

It was quiet for a minute, then I broke the silence and asked, "So what's up with the warning thing?"

"I don't know much, but this girl I know at work has some family connection to a Senator from Kentucky. She just told me that the dollar was in big trouble, so to get our money of the banks and especially retirement accounts. She said it was something about gold, but she didn't know any more than that. I think she did, but that's all she would say. I asked if she thought gold was a good investment now, and she said no, but silver might be." 

"Sounds to me like something big is going down all right," I said. 

"You should have seen her face. She was pale as a sheet. I'm sure she was sworn to secrecy, but I had gotten her a promotion and she seemed to think she owed me. I didn't think so, because she's good and she deserved the job. She was trying to pay me back and serious as a heart attack." 

"Oh boy. What the heck do we do now?"

Art spoke up and said, "What we have done is cash out everything in our investment accounts since she heard this last week and had them wire the money to our banks. We bought some silver coins in Louisville and took possession of them. We paid off a couple car loans, and took the rest of the week off to buy what we thought it would take for us to live for at least 2 years. The basement is packed full. The rest of the money is in cash, and we plan to spend a lot of that ASAP. We have some fuel tanks coming tomorrow and a solar system to be installed the day after that." 

Susan interrupted with, "I can't be sure, but from what I've been able to piece together it sounds like maybe somebody found out the gold is not really in Fort Knox and New York like we've been told. If something like that got out, the dollar would crash, even though it isn't connected to gold, really."

I thought for a while, but didn't come up with anything. Finally I said, "Okay. Let's say the dollar goes to zero. Hyperinflation. Then what? Riots everywhere? Banks closed and no way to do business? What can we do to prepare for that? We don't keep any money in the bank. We don't have much, but what we have is in our possession."

"I don't think it will be so much about money, Dad, but more about people getting something to eat!"

"Yes," I said, "and just like we were thinking when we saw the first leg down last winter, it is imported stuff that will be the biggest problem. That's where we should concentrate, I think." 

Brenda said, "We need to go home. The funeral is at 10 o'clock in the morning and it's a long way down there." 

Susan said, "I wish I could tell you more, but that's all I know." 

"That's fine. You've done all you can. If we can help, let us know somehow."

We said our goodbyes and made our way home, feeling like we had more questions than answers.
_______________


Chapter 10


The family met at the funeral home and drove in procession to the graveside. There were fewer cars than I was used to seeing because so many doubled up to save gas, but there was a crowd gathered at the graveside to listen to the simple service. Eugene's brother Carl threw in the first handful of dirt, and his son Devin the second. We turned away and went to sit in our truck to let them have their time together. 

Devin came straight from the grave to our truck and said, "If you'll follow me to Dad's house, we can take care of things there." 

"Okay, I'll be behind you."

It was only a matter of a few miles on the quiet country back roads, an enjoyable drive on a fine summer day, except for the circumstances. I followed Devin's truck in to the parking area in front of the immaculate horse barn. Several beautiful Thoroughbred horses turned their heads to watch us make our way to the house. 

Inside, Devin went straight to a closet and pulled out a gray painted steel box with a padlock on it. He left it on the floor, because it was obviously heavy. It had what looked like fingernail polish painted around the lock where the bolt entered it, an obvious seal, undisturbed. 

"I'm pretty sure this is the key to it. He had it on his key ring, and it has your name on it."

I took the key and turned it. The lock was stuck a bit from the paint, but came loose. In the box was a letter and two big green plastic boxes with white plastic straps around them. I read the letter, written in the shaky hand of an old man. 

"This letter is to convey title to Jack Hesston for two boxes of silver coins herein and my Percheron mare, Julie. She is a good horse from the best registered bloodlines and her papers are under the coin boxes. Please give her a good home and the coins are to pay for her keep and yours. This is my small thanks for your timely warning about the banks. It saved me from losing most of what I worked for all my life, and let me give it to my son Devin. I will be forever in your debt. Thanks again, Eugene Hesston." 

"This is too much, Devin. You and Carl should get this."

"Not according to Dad. Maybe you didn't know it, but Dad had won a lot of money with his horses in the last few years. The farm is paid for and he gave me and Carl each 5 of those monster boxes they are called. There are 500 one ounce silver Eagles inside each box. If you leave the straps on the box, it is worth more because it proves they are uncirculated. It's not all that much money. The last I checked, each box was worth around $12,000 on the market, but that was last winter. It's probably higher now, but the money won't buy as much so go figure." 

"Dad knew you didn't have a place to keep the horse, so he put enough money in to let you get a couple acres for pasture and a small barn and help with the feed bill. The horse is the big money here. He gave $60,000 for her and she's bred to a stud that is worth more. The stud service papers are probably in there too, 'cause I know he was particular to have it all together."

"See, we knew you were getting the horse. Dad told us that. He just didn't say what was in the box. You can leave her here for the whole summer if you want to, or whenever. We all know you can't just take her home without a place for her. Whenever you're ready for her, just let me know and I'll haul her up to your place. She's due to foal in late February. Getting her bred to that good stud was one of the last things Dad did. You want to go meet her?"

"Sure do! I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I'd sure like to have that horse!" 

The mare was a real lady and dignified. Devin introduced us and it was love at first sight. She looked like she might be pregnant, but her lines were great. I had grown up around my uncle's horses and learned some from him, so I wasn't completely ignorant about them. 

"She has a set of show harness back in the tack room that goes with her. It's synthetic so you don't have to oil it all the time like the old leather stuff." 

I was pretty well speechless, as Brenda was, too. I had no idea what we could do with her, but I wanted that horse. Devin spoke again.

"She's trained to work, and we use her for kids' hayrides and such when Dad took her to those antique shows. She's real good with kids. She's 5 years old, and as far as I know she's in perfect health. Me and Carl check 'em every day, morning and night." 

Brenda asked, "How much does she weigh? She's huge!"

Devin smiled and said, "She's a little heavy right now. I'd think she's about 1,700 pounds. She'll gain another 150 with the foal, but don't let her get too fat." 

Julie nuzzled my shirt pocket, sniffing for a treat there. Devin handed me some horse cubes. He grinned and said, "She won't bite you to get them, but she's pretty spoiled."

We loaded the steel box and contents in the truck and bid Devin goobye, telling him we'd be in touch as soon as we could arrange something to board the mare. 
____________________


I looked long and hard at the barn next door to our place, wishing it was for sale, but I knew better. It would be perfect, a long pole structure built over a basement in the hillside. The pasture beyond it had a small pond halfway up the next hillside, and a good stand of Timothy and Orchard Grass, with a little Ladino Clover in it. That was perfect horse hay. The problem was, my retired neighbor Lester Martin would never sell anything he owned. He was past 80 years old now and hadn't been able to work his farm for several years, renting it out. Lester and his wife had no children, so I guessed that when they were gone some more distant relatives would probably inherit the place. It was just too prefect, though. I had to go talk to him.

Nobody answered the door when I knocked. The garden had been recently hoed, and the dog was in her pen out back. I didn't get down to see them very often, because their home was across the 40 acres from the barn and the opposite direction we travelled to town, but I had done some work for Lester a few times and we had always been happy to spend some time visiting when the chance came. Their old pickup was in the driveway, but his wife's car wasn't around. I supposed they had gone to town for something, so I'd have to check back later. 

The next day I walked back down there again, early in the morning, knowing they were early risers. Maybe I could catch them at breakfast, or soon after. Vivian answered my knock on the door promptly. I asked if I could talk to them about possibly buying some ground, since our properties joined on two sides of my lot?

"Come in and have a seat. I'll get Lester."

He toddled in from the living room with a drawn face he tried to hide behind a polite smile. He had lost some weight. That bothered me because I knew they always grew more than enough to eat.

"Hello, neighbor! How'ya doin'?"

I said, "Not as good as I might, but nobody wants to hear me complain."

"What's on your mind today," he asked.

"Well, I inherited a horse."

"You what? Inherited a HORSE?"

"That's right. My cousin down at Corydon passed away and willed this big horse to me. It's a registered mare and worth some real money, but I don't have a place to keep her. He also left me some money to make sure I could get someplace for her. It is a very valuable horse, and she's bred to an even better stud, due to foal in late winter. I'd like to buy your hay barn and a little hay ground there close to me, if you are willing to do that."

His jaw went a little slack and he shared a look with his wife. I couldn't tell if that was good or bad for me. She looked anxious and he looked down at the floor for half a minute before he answered me. I was prepared for the worst, and starting to wonder if maybe he would let me rent the barn until I could do better.

"Well, it's like this. You know I never wanted to sell the farm, but I've got cancer. The doc said it won't be long now. We can't make enough rentin' out the farm to hardly keep body and soul together now. We had a lot of money saved for our old age, but the crash back in '08 took most of that. What's left don't amount to much now that things have got so high. So, much as I hate it, it's prob'ly time to sell something so Vivian has some money when I'm gone."

I hardly knew what to say. After a pause, I said, "I hate to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help out?"

"Not really. Well, yes, if you want to buy that piece with the barn on it, that would help."

"Okay, I do. Have you thought about what you might want for it? If not, you can get back to me. There's no hurry on my part. My cousin's son is taking care of the horse for now. You take your time."

"That's the thing. I don't have much time."

I waited while he thought about what to say.

Lester perked up a bit and said, "Okay, we had the place appraised a while back, both as a whole and for selling parts of it. That 20 acres with the barn came to $40,000 then.  I know that money ain't worth near what it was, but we can let it go for less than that, if we allow enough extra to pay the taxes on that income. I'll be plain and say that we need the money and there ain't much chance of anybody else buying ground now, as hard as things are. An' I'd rather sell it to you as anybody, bein' a neighbor so I know about how you'd treat the place."

"What if I paid you in silver, and you can write down whatever price suits you for tax purposes?"

He showed the crafty business face that I was well acquainted with and said, "That would make a difference. What's silver worth now?"

He paused and said, "Viv, look up silver price on the computer for me, will you?"

I had looked it up before I left home this morning, so I knew about what to expect. The dollar was falling fast, with silver and gold going up just as fast. The spot price on Kitco before the open to day was showing $86 and change. My two monster boxes had 500 ounces each in them, so 1,000 ounces made the figuring easy. 

Vivian came back and said, "The dollar is going down and silver is going up today. Right now it's at $92.55 an ounce."

Lester thought for a minute and said, "Hm. It looks like the price in dollars don't matter so much as the price in silver. If I got $50,000 for it in dollars, I'd be happy. What's that come to in silver at $90 an ounce?"

Vivian got a calculator and pushed buttons. She said, "That right at 556 ounces."

Lester was a unsure how much I could afford, so I could see that he was torn between needing to sell it and how much he could ask for it. Finally, his fears for his wife won out and he said, "Could you give 550 ounces for it?" 

Knowing he was reaching for all he could get and more, I said, "I can do 500 ounces."

He frowned a little and said, "Give me 520 and I'll throw in the hay and straw that's in the barn, and all the old machinery in the basement. Would you do that?" He thought and said, "If you want to work that horse, there's some old horse stuff around here that I'll throw in, too." 

I thought it was fair enough and said so. I shook his big hand on the deal and felt the weakness in it. His eyes were clear, though, and there wasn't anything wrong with his mind. Lester smiled and told him I'd print out a Quit Claim Deed for them to sign and give him the silver. We would do a Warranty Deed when we could arrange a trip to town for us all. 

Two days later, on Wednesday, the Warranty Deed was recorded and the place was mine. When Lester saw the single tube of 20 coins his eyes lit up. I told him the big green box had 25 more tubes like it, and he was enthralled. I thought I had probably made a mistake by not showing him some coins before we agreed on a price, but whatever, it was done now. We had recorded his stated price for the property as "for $1,000 and other valuable considerations", so that became the property tax valuation, at least for the first year. 
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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 11, Late July, 2014

I was now the owner of a very small farm, so I called Devin when I got home. I had to do some cleaning in the barn and an arrange a stall for Julie, so we agreed for him to bring her to us on Friday. During our negotiations for the property, neither of us had thought to mention the small round grain bin behind the barn. It was old and the metal rusted, so it sort of slipped by us. I thought it would be a good place to keep some horse feed where the mice wouldn't get into it so bad, and went to take a look about cleaning it out. 

The door opened easily enough, but it was blocked inside by the familiar metal slats that held in grain when it was filled. There were only a couple missing at the top of the opening. I found them laying in the weeds nearby. With some acrobatics not suited to an old man like me, I put one foot on a door hinge and pulled myself up for a look inside. The bin was nearly half full of corn. I grabbed a handful. It felt hard and dry, not waxy, so it was at least a year old, probably 2 or more. Looks like I wouldn't need to buy any grain for a while, I thought. 

The bin was small by modern standards at 12 feet in diameter, and by counting the side panels, I judged it to be 16 feet to the roof edge. If memory served me right, that would hold about 1,500 bushels filled, or maybe it was 2,000. I had forgotten, but I thought that 700 bushels was a fair guess at the contents now. The pasture had not been cut for hay this year and there was at least 500 small square bales of hay in the barn on one end, and probably half that much straw in the other end. My first thought was that I needed some cows to eat all that before it got too old. 

I paced along the end of the barn to estimate its' size. Twelve paces meant it was probably 36 feet wide. The length came out to 20 paces. I checked it twice. So at 3 feet to the pace, that was 60 feet long. I was 6 feet tall, so estimating from that, the metal sided top floor of the barn appeared to be at 14 feet to the eave. There was a pair of rolling doors that would open big enough to get a farm wagon full of hay inside. This thing was ten times bigger than we needed, but we had it now, so I'd better figure out how to get some use from it. 

The basement was open on the East side with only wooden gates for keeping cattle inside. That wouldn't do for a colt to be born in cold February weather. AHA! There in the far end was a pile of old metal roofing and some sawmill lumber. I couldn't tell just how much was there, but it should be enough to at least enclose a big stall for the mare. The basement was set up for feeding cattle, with a long hay manger running the length of it in the center. It was dark behind that, but I went back to look around. When my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see piles of rusty machinery, the small stuff designed for horse farming. I could make out a walking plow, some spike tooth harrow sections, an old single section riding disc, a sickle mower, and something else I didn't recognize. 

I figured that Lester must have inherited those things from his Dad. Lester never threw anything away. Risking some scraped shins, I climbed over some things and got to the North end of the basement. In the corner was a stack of metal Tee posts, probably a hundred or more. Neatly lined up against the back wall were 8 rolls of woven wire fencing, slightly rusted, but not used. I knew each roll had 330 feet in it, so that would be enough to do some cross fencing if I needed it. Then, I could rotate pastures, or cut hay from part of it and graze the rest. That fence wire cost $395 a roll now. Lester had treated me right. 

I wanted Josh to get acquainted with this place, so I walked the 100 yards or so to the house to find him. I found everyone on the back porch breaking green beans we had picked that morning. 

"Don't be shy about it," My wife said, "Sit right down here and join us."

"Just a minute. I want to get a drink. Anybody else want something?" 

They all did, so Tammy and I went into the kitchen to fetch glasses and a pitcher of iced tea. We did the pouring and settled back down to the beans. There had been 4 buckets of them, but they were working on the second one when I got there. The canning would proceed as soon as we finished breaking them. 

Carmen asked, "Did you get a good look at the new farm?"

"Yeah. It looks like we need some cattle there. That's way more than we need for one horse. Lester used to cut early hay off that field and then pasture about a dozen head on it after mid summer. We could stand 6 or 8 head out there now with the horse and they would have grass until snow flies. I think we can make some money on the place, if we do it right."

Brenda said, "That means they would need feed for the winter and what else?" 

"Lester sold it as-is, and there is hay and straw in the barn and the old grain bin has a lot of corn in it still. If we could get water to them, there's enough feed there to run some hogs, too, but I don't want hogs in the pond. They would mess it up. Come to think of it, I remember Lester saying he ran water from the pond to that barn, but I didn't notice a faucet. I better look closer."

Brenda asked, "Where are you going to find cattle?"

"Maybe Stuart would sell a few," I said. "He owes me a little money anyway, and we agreed he'd pay me with a steer this Fall."

Tammy spoke up. "Dad used to give his cattle those brown blocks of salt and some brown mineral blocks, too. I wonder what they cost now?" 

"Probably a lot more than I'd expect," I said. "I'll look the next time I'm in town. We need some for the horse anyway." 

I'd almost forgotten that she was a farm kid. Tammy didn't say much, mostly being occupied with the baby and chores around the house. She was getting a little more comfortable now and beginning to take part in what we talked about. I still wondered how she got hooked up with a city boy like Josh, but I didn't ask.
__________________

Stuart Young's red pickup rolled into the driveway with something big and rusty in the back. I spoke when he stopped and got out. 

"It's too hot to be working today. I hope you've got something easy to do."

Stuart grinned and said, "It ain't too bad. Just some hay rings that's rusted off at the bottom. I put in some old parts to use for patches. I won't need 'em 'till this Fall, so no hurry at all. Do it when you feel like it."

We lifted the parts out, 4 half-rings for feeding the big round hay bales and one spare half for parts. 

"It doesn't look too bad," I said. "This will be a good job for Josh to practice welding on."

"He's a good sized boy. Is he pretty good help?"

"He's a good wrench guy, and he knows his way around the saw and drill press now. He's interested so I think he's going to work out good." 

Stuart lifted his cap and scratched his head, saying, "You know we got Sheila's sister and her husband at our place now."

"Hadn't heard that. Got troubles like a lot of folks, I guess?"

"Yeah," he drawled, "He got outa work an' they was rentin' a place an' didn't have nowhere to go. They're young and don't know much, but they're helpin' out some. Sheila had me plow up a big garden spot so that keeps 'em busy. Still kinda hard on the budget, though."

I nodded, "I know what you mean. I have to get something else going to make things work here, too."

"That why you bought that piece from Lester?"

"Yeah, sorta. It's a strange story. My cousin died and he was a horse man. Had a bunch of good race horses. He had this pet work horse for show, and he left her to me in his will. So, I had to come up with a place for the horse. She's bred, and she's worth a lot of money."

"Lester said somethin' about a horse. You gonna raise 'em now?"

"One colt, anyway, to see if I can make some money on it. But she'll need some company out there, or she'll get lonesome. I'm in the market for some calves to put with her and make the place pay some."

Stuart nodded his understanding. "How many calves you lookin' for? I got some I could sell."

"I was hoping you did. I think it would keep maybe half a dozen feeders the rest of the year with the horse in there, too. Do you have that many to sell?"

"Yeah, I got 58 head up to feeder size now. "I'd take market price, and bring 6 head down there if that's all right."

"Sure thing. My cousin left me the silver along with the mare, so that's why I had it. I never had that much money before. He was real grateful for me telling him the banks were in trouble and to get his money out. Saved him a bundle, I guess. Anyway, would you be interested in silver coins to pay for the cattle? I can sell it and get cash if you'd rather."

"I think I'd like that. I never messed with silver at all, but Lester said you paid him that way and he says it's been goin' up ever since! He's real happy with that deal."

"Really, it's the value of a dollar that's going down. The silver is still just the same thing it always was. It don't change, but the dollars do." 

"What's silver goin' for now?"

"I'll go check. C'mon in." 

The Kitco site came up quickly and showed the spot price at $103.12. We looked up feeder cattle and saw they had gone up some to $249.50. Stuart guessed that his calves weighed around 400 to 500 pounds now, depending on which ones I got. He'd take them to town to weigh them and we'd settle up. 

He unloaded the calves that evening into the barn stalls and gave me the weigh ticket. They averaged 450 pounds and came to 2,780 pounds for all of them. At market price that day it added up to $6,936. We divided that by the silver price and got 67.26 ounces. But he owed me a few dollars so we settled for 67 ounces even. I counted them out to him, and like Lester, he was fascinated by the bright shiny coins. 

"You gonna need some hay for this winter for them?"

"Not this year. There's probably enough still in the barn to take them through the winter. Some straw in there, too," I told him. "I think I'm good now. The horse will be here tomorrow, so I need to get busy and get a stall ready for her."

"Yeah, me too. I gotta go ride herd on that city boy brother in law of mine," he said with a grin. 
________________

Julie showed up the morning wearing her harness and looking like a million bucks. We walked her into the barn basement where it was cooler and took off the harness. I hung that over a divider gate and snapped a lead rope on her halter. She sniffed me and decided that she'd met me before, so I was probably okay. 

I spoke to her, saying, "How about a drink? Are you thirsty?" 

Her tongue went in and out once, then she sniffed around. I'm sure she knew exactly what I said. Devin walked along with us out to the pond, where Julie looked at me, then dipped her nose in and got a long drink of water. When her head came up, she tossed it just enough to get a few drops on me. Horseplay. It was time to show the stall to her, so I led her back to the barn with Devin alongside. I had told the family it would be better to let her get used to her new srroundings before we had too many new people around, so they stayed at the house, curious as a bunch of cats.

I had some fairly fresh hay in her manger and a can full of shelled corn nearby. She wasn't much interested in the hay, but smelled the corn and reached for it as I put a few hands full in the manger. Devin said, "Are you going to be happy here, Julie?"

She ignored him, but gave me a look as she crunched on the corn. Feed wins over friendship every time. Devin chuckled and said, "Looks like you have a friend now." 

"I'll look for some oats to buy. Somebody should have some around here," I told him. 

"I brought you part of a bag of the chunk treats to get on her good side." 

She was about finished with the corn, licking the manger bottom, so I picked up the lead rope and said, "Let's go meet the family." Her ears came up, curious as I led her toward our yard fence. We would need to put a gate in there. Brenda was on the porch and came out to see her, calling to the others. I let her sniff everyone in turn, then Josh and Tammy climbed over the fence to get closer. Carmen held the baby closer to the fence, prompting Julie to stretch out her long neck and sniff. The horse blew gently on the baby, who squealed with delight, then got nuzzled by the big nose. They were going to be friends, for sure. 

The calves were a little on the wild side so they had stayed by the pond, some distance from all this, getting acquainted with their new digs. By the time I led Julie back to the barn, they were getting a little more brave and came closer with heads up, necks craned and sniffing in our direction. I turned her loose in her open stall to go where she wanted. 

Stuart said the calves knew about feed buckets, so I had a bucket half full of corn in the barn. I made a show of banging it around to get their attention, then scattered the grain in the manger on their side of the basement. Julie was standing in HER stall, and making it plain to the calves that she lived there. She was big enough that none of them dared to challenge that. I gave her a little more grain so she wouldn't be jealous of theirs and walked back outside. It looked like everyone was settling in just fine. 
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Chapter 12 

Josh and I headed for town with a grocery list and one for the feed store. I stopped at the feed store first because it was closest, and while somebody might lift a sack of groceries out of the truck bed, they probably wouldn't steal 50 pound salt blocks while we got groceries. 

Salt and mineral blocks had gone up, all right. I about fell over when he warned me that the brown salt block for cattle was $18 and the horse mineral block was $37.50. I had taken a couple hundred in cash with me, but wrote him a check for it all so I had enough left to go to the grocery. He loaded 4 of the TM salt blocks for the cattle, 2 of the Molasses and Magnesium blocks, and one horse mineral block. Julie would have to get used to garden vegetable treats instead of those apple flavored cubes. I picked up a curry comb, a stiff brush, a hoof pick, and a hoof knife, but they didn't have any hoof nippers. The bill made me wince. 

I found the hoof nippers at Tractor Supply and again cringed at the price--$44.95. I might have to sell a few more coins if the expenses kept up. I looked over their vet supplies and decided that the prices were not going down anytime soon, so I loaded quite a bit in the cart. That about cleaned out the checking account. I had stuck a tube of silver coins in the truck before I left home, so we headed for the jewelry store next. He would only pay a little under spot price for silver, but he was convenient. He looked the tube over carefully and decided that the coins were indeed Brilliant Uncirculated. The tube still had the taped on seal, which helped I guess. Josh's eyes got a little bigger when he counted out the money to me. I left with just over $2,000 in my pocket. 

"That was a lot of money for just a few coins," Josh said. 

"Yeah, but money ain't worth so much now, and gettin' worse. Speaking of that, I need to pay you for last week, and you've been busting your butt in the shop, so take $200 out of that envelope. I wish I could do more, but that's about all I can afford and still pay for supplies."

"Thanks! Tammy wants some things and that will sure help." 

"You earned every cent of it. I'm trying to think of how we can make some more money on the place, so you can do better. The cattle will help, but that's about a year until payday on them. I haven't come up with anything yet, but you be thinking too, and maybe we'll figure out something." 

Josh said, "I can do mechanic work, at least the easy stuff replacing parts and I did a valve job on my old truck. Changed a tranny with a buddy in his pickup and put a clutch in it. You've got that garage in the basement of the house, so maybe we could get some work like that." 

I nodded and said, "That sounds all right. We'll have to make some room down there. Come to think of it, we have that big barn now, so a lot of stuff I stored in the basement could go there now. I think we could open up the garage bay and enough room behind it to get you room to work. I have that big floor jack to use, but there's not much room overhead in the basement. If you need to pull an engine, it would have to be outside and use the shop crane, or that hydraulic motor hoist I made."

"Is that what that orange thing is out by the welding shop?"

"Yeah. It's just taken apart to store it because once I got the machine shop stuff placed in the basement, I didn't need it. The jack for it is under that big metal lathe in back. I didn't want it getting rusty outside."

"Hey! If we could use that in the basement, I think there's enough headroom to pull a motor in there!"

"Yeah, come to think of it, me and a friend once pulled the motor out of his Ford Ranger in there. We had to take the radiator and grille out because it wouldn't go quite high enough to pass, but it worked." 

"That would sure beat working in the driveway like I always had to do it."

"If you're going to make any money for your time, you have to be efficient about it. Let's look this over good at home and we'll see what we can do. There's some stuff hid back there in the back of the basement. My cousin Jeff gave me an old Sioux valve grinder before he died a few years ago, and a Black and Decker Seat grinding kit. I bought that Van Norman cylinder head grinder when we started the shop so I could grind exhaust manifolds after I welded up the cracks. They always warp some, and that makes sure the gasket will seal up."

"I didn't know you had all that!"

"It's pretty well hid back behind that old freezer and the dead washing machine. I can make a load to the junkyard and make a lot of room in there so you can use the stuff. I don't have a brake machine, but I have ground flywheels on the surface grinder in the machine shop. I'll show you how that's done. It's real easy." 

I turned into the grocery and we left the rest to talk about later.
________________

Canning season was in full swing now. The early potatoes had done pretty well, so we were eating those and had a couple big laundry baskets full in the basement. It looked like the plums would make a good crop this year. In fact all the fruit looked good. It only does that about every other year, so we canned everything in sight. There was strawberry jam, blackberry and raspberry jelly and canned blackberries for pies already put up this summer. The pear trees were loaded so heavy we had to prop up some limbs to keep them from breaking. Our apples looked pretty good, too. 

The women had put up several dozen quarts of green beans and were making pickled beets that day. When we came in with the grocery load, they pounced on us for the vinegar, sugar, and jar lids. 

Brenda said, "We're cooking the beet tops for greens to can, but they won't make very much. I planned to pick the Kale in the morning if we get this done tonight. That will make a lot of greens. We're going to need more shelves in the bsement before long."

I thought about that and said, "Me and Josh were just talking about cleaning out the basement. Sounds like we'd better get on that. Can somebody feed Julie tonight and give the calves a little grain? I'm not trying to fatten them yet, but I want to keep them coming into the barn to get them used to people."

Carmen said, "I can do that. How much do I feed them?"

"There's an old 3 pound coffee can and a bucket behind the feed manger. Can you get the grain bin open?"

"I saw you do it. I'm sure I can."

"Okay. Feed Julie a can full and get half a bucket for the calves. I put it in 6 piles some distance apart so they don't fight over it."

"Yeah, I can do that. Hailey likes to see the animals, so I'll take her along. She loves that horse!" 

"You just be careful around those calves. They are pretty wild yet. Julie won't be a problem. She watches where she steps." 

They had rigged a playpen for Hailey with some old plastic trellis pieces to keep her from getting underfoot while they were canning and carrying boiling pots. Carmen put the kid back in it with some toys and went back to the kitchen. Josh and I went downstairs to see what we could do to make some room. 
______________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 13 

"Does that old washing machine work?"

"Nope," I told Josh, "it goes to the junkyard. Make a pile outside somewhere. That bucket of rusty parts can go, too." 

I looked over the mess and began to carry things outside, separating trash into one pile, another pile for things to store in the big barn, and scrap iron in a third pile. We spent the day at it and hauled two loads to the barn, then loaded the truck with scrap iron. By supper time we had a lot more room. Josh was ready for more after we ate, so we went back down and shuffled things around some. He had the cylinder head grinder and valve grinder along one wall and had made room to hang some things on the wall to get more floor space. It began to look like we could fit a car in there. 

A couple days later we had hauled the scrap metal to town and sold it, had the engine hoist set up inside and it was sporting a new coat of orange paint. Josh had scrubbed the floor down and wiped the dust and cobwebs off my big roll around tool chest, the floor jack, and jackstands. I showed him what I had in the way of car repair items--gasket material, spare bolts, sealants and solvents to clean parts. There were a lot of odds and ends from fixing my own stuff. I had spare engine oil and antifreeze, grease, antisieze compound, a roll of vacuum hose, a big battery charger, and quite a lot of test equipment. Josh looked happy. When I came down with a fresh glass of iced tea, he had found some rags and was wiping tools and arranging them neatly in the toolbox. 

"Just gettin' used to where you put stuff so I can find it. You've got a PILE of tools!"

"It was a lifetime hobby collecting them. I got most of it second hand so it didn't cost all that much. A lot of it came from the junkyard."

"I didn't see any gear pullers."

"Over in the drawers under the vise. There's a collection of 'em. If you don't see what you want for some particular job, we can likely make it. This is a machine shop, after all." 

"You MAKE tools?"

"Sure. You just ask yourself, if I could have anything in the world to do this job, what would it look like? Then, you go make that. There's a drawer full of slide hammer stuff in that other tool box. Most of it I made to suit some special job, but it gets used pretty often for a lot of things. So, before you do something the hard way, let's talk about it and maybe we can make something that will help." 

"I'll keep working down here, unless you've got something else for me to do, but I think I could do a lot of jobs right now." 

"I'll pass the word along to whoever comes in. I told Stuart the other day that you were a good wrench man, and he'll tell other people. Before long we'll have you some business."

"I could fix my Mom's car now. It has an exhaust leak and needs an oil change I know. It doesn't run too bad since you put plugs in it, but if I can get it in shape and make some money for insurance, we'd have something to drive besides your trucks."

"She'd appreciate that, I know. Get it in here and start working on it. It'll be good advertisement for you if people see you doing it."

He did. He patched the spare tire, gave it a lube job, changed the oil and filter, put in a new air filter, and gave it a good bath, inside and out. He wiped the tires with brake fluid to make them look newer. I showed him how to clean the engine compartment the old way. I had him warm up the engine outdoors and put some old cardboard under it to catch the mess. Then I used an old paintbrush to splatter kerosene all over the greasy parts and let it sit for a while to soften the old greasy dirt. I had made an old fashioned siphon gun for to use with compressed air. It had a tube that went into a bucket for soapy water, and a powerful air blast to spray it out. It only took half an hour to blast off all the old dirt and rinse it with hot water in the siphon gun. The engine looked like new. After he had scrubbed the floor mats and detailed the dash, Josh had it sitting in the driveway and went in to get his Mom. 

Carmen looked it over and asked, "What did you do to it? It looks like new!" 

"Start it up," he said. 

It started right up and ran smooth and quietly. We had welded a new section of pipe into the leaky exhaust. 

"How much is this going to cost me?" 

"Eighteen bucks, whenever you get it. That's what it cost for the oil and filters." 

"Lordy, I NEVER thought that thing would look and run like this!"

I told her, "He did all the work, and knew how to do it. I just showed him a few tricks they used 50 years ago. I worked at a Chevy dealer one summer as a kid, cleaning up used cars to sell. He did the polish and wax job, too. Clean shiny cars seem to run a lot better!"

Josh said, "I think I can make some money doing this kind of thing. As soon as I've got enough, I'll pay up the insurance and you'll have a car to drive again." 

I said, "I've been thinking about that and I think I should pay for the insurance if you'll let us use the car some to save on gas. It will run a lot cheaper than our trucks."

"Heck yeah! Drive it all you want. I'd love to have it going again!"

I paid up the insurance for 6 months the next day when I went to town for some other errands. I filled it with gas from our underground storage tank and she was ready to go. 
___________________


Chapter 14 August, 2014

Josh had finished replacing a blown head gasket for Stuart Young's brother in law and got paid for it. Our deal was, he could use my tools and the garage to make money, but if he broke something he got to fix or replace it. Prices for even the cheap Chinese made tools had gone ballistic, so he was pretty careful with things. When he worked in the welding shop, I paid him for the hours he worked when I collected for the job. He spent part of it on some good jeans he found at a yard sale, and gave the rest to his wife. 

Carmen was having some trouble with the idea of being broke all the time and often made comments about things she'd like to buy if she had the money. It got on Brenda's nerves when she did that. Somehow they kept things civil, but I felt the strain there sometimes. A 3 bedroom home is not a lot of room for 5 adults and a baby. Nobody got all the quiet time they needed, although Josh and I were normally outside making it easier on us. Tammy did more in the garden and handled the chickens, probably just to get away for a short time. 

The women basically earned their keep doing the garden and housework. They canned and preserved the food, took care of our clothes and did the chores, feeding my dog Sonny and a new barn cat that showed up one day, and the chickens. Josh and I did the heavy garden work and took care of the horse and cattle unless we were really busy in the shop. It was working, but Carmen and Tammy didn't have much if any money to spend. Josh was doing some business, though, and he was generous with them. 

Brenda benefitted by having a lot of help in the house, but she paid for that having Hailey underfoot and making a racket. The kid was cute, though, and Brenda got very attached to her. That made up for some of the bother, and we felt a lot more secure with more family around. Brenda and I weren't young and we had days that we just didn't feel like doing it all. Having help made life easier for us and we tried to make sure the others knew that we appreciated them. 

It wasn't all work and no play. Josh and Tammy made it down to the river on Sundays to go fishing a few times. We paid what it cost to keep tea bags and sugar on hand for iced tea, and made popcorn on cool evenings. Sonny and I walked the pasture with Julie pretty regularly to watch for fence problems, ground hog holes, and bushes starting to grow in the pasture. There was a strip of woods at the back of the 20 acres, fenced separately. The trees hung over the edge of the pasture offering some shade for the cattle on hot days. They kept the fencerow clean there, except for a bush or two. I noticed some hickory trees in there and thought I should bring the .22 in case a squirrel showed its' face. 

Julie had been loafing too long, so I dug around in the barn and found Lester's old potato digger. He had used it in the past and I had once sharpened the blade for him. I thought that as big as Julie was, she could pull it in our soft garden soil. Josh and I dragged it out where we could see better and oiled it up. It wasn't time to dig the late potatoes yet, but they would be ready in another 3 or 4 weeks.

I put the harness on Julie and hitched her up to it for a practice run. She was a really quiet horse, but she didn't like the noise behind her. I stopped her often and let her look back at what was making all that racket. She calmed down , but she laid her ears back when it rattled. I led her over to our garden with it to try in a clear place where the beans had been. We made a slow pass for a few feet, but she wanted to walk at her own pace, so I let her. She had no problem pulling the thing with the blade sunk in deep. We stopped at the end of the garden and raised the blade to turn around. She stepped back into the soft ground she'd dug up, looked down and snorted softly. 

"Okay Julie. You did good!"

Snort. Tail swish. Head shake. She turned her head and looked back at me. (Are we gonna do this, or what?)

I lowered the blade again and clucked to her. She walked off like she'd been doing this for years and stopped at the end where the grass began. 

I told her what a fine horse she was and led her up to the welding shop with the implement. It clanged and banged on the gravel driveway, but she knew what it was now and just made a grumpy face about it. I unhitched and left it there so I could work on the machine later. 

I asked her, "Is it okay for me to ride to the barn?"

I got a steady look, so I grabbed a hame with on hand, stepped a foot on the leather tug strap and swung myself up. She took that well enough, so I lifted the checkrein off the hame and used it to guide her up the driveway. She took it at a peaceful walk, letting her growing belly sway just a bit. She liked walking in the grass a lot better when we got near the gate. I called "Whoa" softly and pulled gently on the rein. She stopped and stood still while I swung off her back then followed me to the gate. I let her in and she waited for me to close it. We walked to the barn without her ever tugging on the lead. We got inside and she stood while I undid the buckles and removed her harness, then the bridle. I patted her neck and said, "Thanks Julie. You're a pro!" 

She stuck her head in the feed manger and looked back at me. No question about that. (I did my job, now you do yours.) I got the coffee can and gave her a measure of shelled corn. While she munched on it, I got the hoof pick and checked her feet for any lodged stones, then grabbed the brush and gave her a good rubdown. I patted her neck and said, "Good girl!" She whickered softly as I left the barn. "See ya tomorrow," I said and smiled to myself. This was going to work great. Julie had cast her spell on me. I could see why Eugene had been so fond of her. 
___________________

Our own kids had their problems to deal with and stayed very busy so we didn't see much of them. Susan and Art both had their salaries cut 10%, a growing trend these days. With the rising prices, it made for some pretty tight living to keep out of money trouble. Gas was up to $9.22, making commuting an expensive business. Art had started driving only to the shopping center on thenear side of town and taking the city bus from there into Louisville to his job. Susan had to drive to work, but it wasn't far for her. 

Stephanie's summer job had come to an end with the last of the melon crop, so they were down to one income, and Brad had his hours cut to 4 days a week. That suited him really well, because he had lots to do at home. He was cutting wood posts to fence an irregular plot on their woodsy place to keep some goats. Stephie was planning to make goat cheese when the milk became available. I emailed Brad that I had extra Tee posts he could have for coming after them, so they planned to visit the next weekend.

Josh and I ran the calves out of the barn and used the space to slop some paint on the rusty posts we found in there. We did 112 of them in two days and our backs were pretty tired when it was over. I could have set up a rig to dip them in paint, but it would take 2 coats if I thinned it enough for that. It was no more trouble to just brush it on thick. Those steel posts cost $7 apiece new, so we thought it was worth the work to make them last longer. 

Bill Woodruff had a pile of old galvanized pipe he'd found somewhere and offered to trade it for some work on his milkhouse feeders. We netted enough pipe to make four 12 foot farm gates and gave them 2 coats of aluminum paint. One of those immediately went into the fence between our yard and the barn lot. We planned to cross fence the pasture and fence the pond so we could let the stock get to water from either half of the pasture. The ground was too dry and hard for that now, so we'd wait on that job until the Fall rains came. 

Meanwhile, we dug some onions, picked scads of tomatoes, green peppers, and a little Cilantro for the women to make salsa and ketchup. The sweet corn was in full swing now, too, so we picked a lot of it and helped clean off the shucks and silks then cut it off the cobs to be canned. The pantry had filled up fast and I hadn't gotten any more shelves up yet, so that was next. Luckily for me, a small variety store had gone out of business in town, and I bought some of their metal shelving pretty cheap. It was standard retail stand-alone shelving, so it went together fast. Making room for it in our basement took a while, but Josh and I made a lot of points with the women when we finished it. 

We were just about out of canning jars. I knew they were going to be expensive, but it was still a shock to see them at $15.99 a dozen. The last we had bought were about half that much. I had gone to town alone for the jars and to get car parts for Josh, who was working on an engine job for Angie Boyle, the local librarian. Her old Chevy LUV truck was in the best shape of any I had seen. Must have kept it in the garage all the time, I thought. She refused to give it up when the old gas engine died. She was a stereotypical old maid, complete with old fashioned dress and hairdo, but she had been frugal with her money and seemed to be doing okay, despite the hard times. 

On the way home I stopped at the junkyard to browse and found a pile of old steam table pans. I guess some restaurant had gone bust and everything got junked out. Parts of old stainless steel cabinets, range hoods, and the like were everywhere. I got an idea and began to sort out what I wanted, a long tabletop with pipe legs, a rolling serving cart with lots of shelves, a long overhead cabinet with doors and a shelf inside, plus the steam table pans. 

I asked the junk yard owner, "What's that pile worth?" 

"Why, that's all stainless, so it's a lot more than steel." 

He hemmed and hawed for a few minutes, weighed it all on the small scale, and finally told me $150 for all of it. We dickered for a while until I agreed $125 and loaded it up. We were going to streamline our food processing. I was happy on the way home until I heard the news on PBS tell about a bill passing Congress that would absorb all pension funds into Social Security so they could be "guaranteed by the full faith and credit of the government". Wall Street was having a hissy fit. The stock market was shut down for the day after hitting down limits several times in succession. What had the markets in an uproar was that the Federal Reserve was going to absorb all the Money Market Funds! That was a whole new twist. Oh, crap, I thought. Susan's friend was right. Here we go again.
________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 15 


The next day I stared at the laptop screen and had trouble believing what I saw. The international markets had gone haywire overnight. They were all closed now for a cooling off period. Our Prez went on TV to announce that he was ordering all the banks closed for the rest of the week to allow international tensions to ease and calm the trading markets. The financial sites were in a dither, all telling different stories about why this was going on. 

The most prevalent was that gold stored in the US for other countries was being demanded to be returned to them. Only it wasn't there. US banks had leased, sold, stolen or otherwise disposed of it. Nicaraugua had gotten theirs early on, but when Germany had asked for their gold to be returned, they had been told it would take SEVEN YEARS to get it all together and back to them. There had to be something behind the scenes that kept them from raising bloody hell about that, but it had been very hush-hush until now. 

Nobody in the US seemed to know the truth of it all, or if they did they had good reason to not tell about it. Now Germany, France, Saudi Arabia, and several others were demanding that the US fess up with the gold. The stinky part was that the US purportedly had enough gold of it's own to make good on the deliveries, but nobody wanted to talk about Fort Knox, saying this was a private bank issue, not a government debt. As closely as they were interwoven, I had my doubts about that.

I couldn't make head nor tail of it, so I shut off the computer and turned on my little TV in the basement shop office. We kept it there in case of a tornado warning to monitor the weather. It ran on 12 volts with a couple old truck batteries and a trickle charger to keep them up. 

The TV news was worse. There were riots reported all across the country at banks and stores where credit cards, SNAP cards, Debit cards--none of them worked. A financial commentator on CNN made a remark about US gold bars that were sold to China and later found to have Tungsten inside them, but he got hustled off the stage in a hurry. 

I called Jerry Richards, a friend of ours who owned the garden center in town and asked what was going on in town. He said nothing much, but his electronic credit card approval wasn't working. I told him to turn on his TV and suggested that he be careful. 
_______________

Brenda had tried to warn her siblings about impending financial chaos to no avail. Being dyed-in-the-wool sheeple, they gave her all the standard excuses for doing nothing. She let it go and the predictable happened after the first go-around of inflation and economic woes. She learned over the past few weeks that her sister Charlene and husband Howard had all three married kids staying with them now in that monster house they bought. Come to find out, it wasn't paid for, either, even though they were a couple years older than us. Brenda hadn't talked to them this week, so it was a good bet they had even deeper problems now. 

Her older brother Jim had retired several years ago from his job supervising the city water treatment plant. They let him go back to work recently at age 72 in maintenance when Social Security and his pension couldn't keep up with rising prices for his more lavish lifestyle. But now, Charlene had said He might lose his job because the city was cutting back the crew at the water plant. From what I knew and guessed about Jim's finances, he would be in deep trouble if he lost his job now. His son Kenny was already out of work from his job at the insurance company who had cut their staff drastically. Kenny had moved back in with his parents, too.

I thought about Jim, knowing Brenda's family had been poor like me when we were all kids. I thought it was kind of a shame that he felt the need to do the conspicuous consumption thing. he could have been very secure now, if he'd approached things differently. 

The situation for Charlene and Howard was probably going to hit critical mass soon. Apparently, the only income any of them had was from Howard's retail furniture store, and that was sure to be a loser in a very tight economy. I asked Brenda what she thought about their situation. 

"I don't care a lot what happens to them. They were ready to brag about their high living all their lives and make sure everybody knew about it. They even taught their kids to do that! Now their kids have come home to roost and they can just live with it for all I care."

She was pretty heated about it. 

I said, "I never cared what they had to say. It was no skin off my nose how they thought."

Brenda said, "It's not the same with you. Brothers and sisters know how to bite each other so it hurts without anyone else knowing about it."

"I'm glad I escaped being from a larger family. I don't really know why I didn't go the consumer direction. Maybe it had to do with being very closely involved with my parents farming and finances as a kid. I pretty much knew the score all along back then and felt like I had a responsibility to help where I could."

Brenda said, "Mom and Dad never told us kids a thing about their money, except that there wasn't enough. We all felt like they would have been better off without us."

"We taught our kids about money, and you did better than I did with that."

"I tried to teach them responsibility, that there are consequences for your actions. If you spend all your money, it's gone. Then if you want something important, too bad for you. I wanted them to learn to save for the important things." 

"I hope I can get that across to Carmen and all her family now. Part of that is sharing successes together as well as the limitations of hard times. Josh seems to be getting it, but I can't say about Tammy. She's pretty quiet. Carmen's an open book emotionally, so it's easy to tell that she's beginning to feel better about what she does."

"Yeah," Brenda agreed. "She's proud of her cooking and canning, and she's taught Tammy how to sew baby clothes. That's a double reward for Tammy. She gets to see the product of her work and feel like she's providing for the baby, too."

I said, "I hope it's enough to keep her going. Everybody needs to feel like they are worthwhile. If they don't feel good about themselves, they're not much use to themselves or anybody else."

Brenda said, "Tammy's coming along. Sometimes she drives me nuts about taking care of that baby, but I try to bite my tongue and let her figure things out. It's not easy." 

I gave her a hug and said, "I better get back to work."

I left thinking that Tammy did a lot of the laundry, and there is not much glory in that. Josh was very neat about his work, so even though he got into greasy jobs, he stayed pretty clean. I'd found him two pairs of old denim coveralls for the really nasty jobs to protect his better clothing. Tammy had thanked me for that. Those kids were trying hard, so I'd have to do my part.
_____________


Chapter 16 September, 2014


After the dust settled about the latest financial panic some things began to be disclosed about what had happened. The derivatives market had blown out with the bond panic. The higher interest rates on bonds had triggered massive derivative bets to be called in. That left most of the world's banks insolvent, and the whole system had almost folded up in a matter of a couple days. Behind the scenes this was stopped only by making the derivative contracts moot and illegal. What cannot be paid, will not be paid so it wasn't. That left the system in a shambles and required some time to get new currency agreements in place. 

While all the US banks were closed for 4 days, commerce stopped. Nothing happened except for martial law being declared and troops stationed in major cities to maintain order. When people got hungry enough, they rioted and a few cities caught fire. Only the fact that groceries began to be shipped again calmed the mobs. Special "Relief Funds" were given to everyone showing an ID at the newly reopened banks. That got the people fed and calmed somewhat, then banks continued with limited business all financed with money created from thin air. We would pay for that down the road, but it kept the country from falling apart. It looked very much like this had been planned. Such things don't get fixed that easily without being set up ahead of time, I thought. 

It could have been a lot worse. Things got going again, but there was a noticeable lack of imported goods on the shelves for a month. When those items showed up again, the prices were a lot higher. Those of us who had some sort of income now were poorer by half. For the destitute and homeless, and there were a lot of them, there were the FEMA camps, hastily set up and less than fully functional. Nobody was herded into those camps. Only those with no other options went there for food and shelter. Food was available for most by way of the expanded SNAP program, but for those without a place to live, the camps offered shelter and sanitation. Like the other government institutions of military and prisons, the camps provided "3 hots and a cot", but that was about it. 

The government bought up massive quantities of foodstuffs at rock bottom prices from those producers who had no other markets to supply these programs. We were fortunate that we didn't have to sell our cattle to them, but many did who were facing the loss of their farms and ranches due to debts. A lot of those farms and ranches were lost anyway to leinholders who invariably sold them to a few huge agricultural conglomerates. They had government contracts to supply commodities for the FEMA camps, the military, and relief programs, so it wasn't hard to tell how all that worked. Not much farmland remained in private hands afterward. It took months to learn about all this. Meanwhile, we got along the best we could. 
______________

Susan called one morning and I happened to pick it up. 
"Hi Dad. How're you doing?"

"Good. What's up at your house?" 

"Well, we're still working, and it looks like we might even get paid next week!"

"That's good! I take it that you didn't for a while?"

"Right. Not for two weeks after the banks opened again, but they say we'll have an automatic deposit for the next pay period. But I called to ask if you had any problem with the bail-ins?"

"Never heard a thing from our bank. I guess we didn't have enough money in there to mess with."

"It depended on the bank, from what I've heard. Some of those little country banks were okay, but the ones in the cities practically all took half their depositors money, and gave them bank stock, just like Cyprus. We missed it by the skin of our teeth. We got the last of our money out a week before they closed, but I know people who lost money the next day. They were sneaky as hell about it. No notice of anything wrong, and then, BAM, they just took the money."

"I bet there is a lot of folks PO'd about that!"

"OH, Yeah! There's already some court cases filed and people demonstrating outside the banks. They limit withdrawals now to $500 a week, and that won't hardly feed a family, let alone buy gas. I heard there have been some bank officials murdered over this, but that's just a rumor. There was nothing on the news. Yeah, they are PO'd all right."

"Are you all doing okay?" Brenda had joined us on another phone.

Susan said, "Yeah, we're fine. We're just poor as Job's turkey, like everybody else. Are you okay Mom?"

"Yeah, we're poor dirt farmers now. You know we bought that 20 acres behind us?"

"Yeah, and you got that horse. Is she working out okay?"

"Oh, yes! Everybody loves her. Tammy and Carmen take Hailey out to see her and they have a great time. The baby giggles and the horses loves her up with her nose. You should see that!"

"That sounds great! Does the horse work?"

"Jack is using her a little in the garden. She's pregnant, and I mean REALLY pregnant, but she needs a little exercise, so he's cultivating with her and pulling up some dead tree trunks for firewood. Just something to keep her a little busy. Oh! And we've got cattle, too! Jack bought 6 calves from the neighbor, so we'll have beef next year."

"That'll be nice! You know what beef sells for now? I saw cheap hamburger for $6.99 a pound ON SALE! I was afraid to look at steaks. A cheap roast with the bone in it was $5.29 a pound, and it looked like a tough cut. You'd have to cook it for a week to get it tender."

I spoke up and said, "Slaughter cattle sell for close to $3.00 a pound now, and they'll only dress out about 60% meat, so figure from there." 

"How are Brad and Stephie getting along? I can't get through to her cell phone."

"Their reception is no good," Brenda said. "We just email or text to stay in touch. They're fine. He's still working, since the phone company is still doing all right. Nobody can afford to drive, so they call, I guess. And they are supposed to get some goats as soon as they get some fence built. They have that pond for water and plenty of grass for them. Stephie wants to make goat cheese."

"THAT will be good! We don't have room for any animals here, and there's nobody home during the day to watch them, either. But I thought we might get some chickens. They can eat grass and bugs in the summer time. Art is working out a way to make a little coop for some on the back of the garage. Say, how's everyone else working out there, or should I ask?"

Brenda said, "It was tense for a while, let me tell you that! But it's going pretty well now. Hailey is growing like a weed and Tammy has plenty to do with her, besides trying to work around here in the garden and kitchen. Oh yeah! Carmen found a part time job! Our neighbor, the one we bought the land from, he's got cancer and is getting pretty bad. His wife is old, too, and she wants some help in the house a couple days a week."

"I bet she'll be glad to have some money again."

Brenda said, "Yes, she sure will! It's been eating her up that she's always broke and she's been driving me nuts complaining about it. I can get her distracted sometimes with things to do, but she needs a job bad."

I said, "Josh is doing good. He's been getting some mechanic work and helping me in the shop, so he and Tammy have a little money to spend. He's a sharp kid. He just needed a place to get started. But still, everything costs so much that we have to squeeze a nickel hard enough to make Jefferson cry." 

"Everybody's that way. It's the imported stuff that kills us. We need to make stuff in this country so we can afford to buy it."

I said, "That would be nice, but there is no money for a start up. The bankers stole all the business capital. I hope they all go to jail for what they did."

Susan laughed. "Fat chance of that when they own the politicians!"

"Yeah, I suppose so."

Susan said, "I'd better go. I have to get something going for supper. Say hi to everyone for me."

Brenda said, "Will do. Love ya!"

"Love you too. Bye now."
_______________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 17


Carmen continued to work two days a week for Vivian after Lester passed away the 3rd week of September. Vivian was getting pretty feeble and had arthritis in her hands that made it hard for her to do much. Carmen said she wanted the company more than anything, and she was an interesting old lady to talk to, so she enjoyed the time with her. 

Near the end of the month, Vivan decided to get rid of a lot of Lester's things. She didn't have the pack rat tendency Lester always had and wanted to clear out a lot of stuff. After thinking on it for a while she decided to sell most of the farm things, too, since she wasn't able to use the tractor. She and Carmen talked about it at length and they began to work toward having an auction sale. It would take a lot of work to get ready, so Carmen suggested getting Josh and Tammy to help for a few days. 

Vivian had no trouble making decisions. The farm machinery would all go, all of Lester's clothing and personal stuff, plus a lot of things they had inherited from relatives. She would sell Lester's tool collection and his old pickup truck. Her car she would keep as long as she was able to drive it. Now that Lester wasn't here to object, her dog Sadie had become a house dog so her pen and dog house could go too. 

As fast as Josh and Tammy could get things moved into line for the sale, Vivian thought of something else. They emptied the garage of tools and put the lawn mower and small tools she wanted to keep in a small shed. They took the picnic table and some improvised tables into the garage to hold all the clothing and household items to be sold. Farm wagons were piled with things from the various outbuildings and left inside the machinery shed for now. Carmen and the young couple were busy for several days.
_________________

Carmen came home one day with news.

"Jack," she said, "Vivian said wants to sell the farm and just keep the house. She said I should tell you about it, in case you were interested. Stuart Young wants to buy the part across the road from her house. That is 80 acres she said, and it is all farm ground with only that cattle feeding shed on it. The part she is offering you is the other 39 acres behind the house and up to what you have now. That includes the farm buildings behind the house. She says an acre with the house on it is enough for her."

I said, "Wow! That's a bolt out of the blue! I don't know what to think about it. I wonder what she wants for it?"

"She didn't say. She just said it wasn't worth a lot because it is all hilly pasture ground, it has that sinkhole in the middle of it, and the back 15 acres is woods. I don't think she is expecting much." 

"Brenda," I asked, "Are we too old to get into raising more cattle?" 

Always going to the heart of the matter, Brenda asked, "How much money to we have?"

I did some fast figuring in my head and said, "After buying the cattle and cashing 20 ounces for expenses, we have 397 ounces of silver left from what Eugene left us. And we still have $750 face value of the junk silver coins I bought way back when. I don't know what it would come to off the top of my head. I'd have to look at current prices and then I could figure it up."

She said, "That might do it, but we'd have to see if there would be enough left to buy cattle for it and make it until we could start selling some." 

"We'd need enough machinery to make hay, too. I don't know if it would work out. I don't know if I want to do that, either. I need to think on it for a while."
_______________

When we were ready for bed that evening, Brenda said, "I think we should try to buy that ground. We're going to need the income. Social Security isn't worth much and half the country is out of work so we can't get jobs. If we don't invest that silver we have, we may end up just spending it and then have no savings. We need for it to earn some income. I can't work in your shop because I don't know anything about that, but I can feed a cow. If your health gets bad, I need something I can do."

"Yes, we need to make some money, and with times even harder now the shop won't pay as well. I'll have something to do, but there won't be as much money in it."

Brenda wasn't finished. "What you need to do is teach Josh what he needs to know to do the welding and machining, then he can handle about anything that come along. You've said yourself that beef cattle is an old man's job. All of us can help with the hay and then you'd have it easier as we get older. We're going to have to keep working as long as we can to live, so we might as well have it our way."

There was no way to argue with her common sense. I didn't disagree with her. 

I said, "I think you're right. I just want to be sure I don't do anything wrong and lose any money, because we can't afford that."

"You've got good judgement."

"You think so, huh?"

"Most of the time. If you mess up, I'll straighten you out."

I was glad she was smiling when she said that. We sealed that deal with a kiss and went to bed. The details we'd work on later.
________________

I got quotes on the computer for the silver Eagles at $165.62 each at Monex, and the 90% junk coins at $101.50 per dollar of face value. We had $750 face value of the junk coins so that came to $75,600. The 397 Silver Eagles came to $65,751. That all totalled up to $141,351. That sounded like a lot of money, but the dollar had gone down by at least half, depending on what you were tryng to buy with it. I wasn't sure how we could come out on this farm deal. 

Back a couple years ago, good tillable farm land around us had been selling for around $2,500 an acre. It had come down some from previous years for lack of demand and a couple bad drought years. It had been overpriced anyway. What we were looking at was marginal land at best, but it did have the buildings on it. 

The price of silver had finally escaped control by the manipulators and reached what I thought was close to its' peak for a while at about 7 times what it was last year. So we were far ahead by having bought our junk coins when we did, and the silver Eagles had fallen in our laps. I was thinking the land might be worth $1,200 an acre, so 39 acres would be $46,800. The big machinery shed, a couple grain bins, and a pole frame garage would have added at least $20,000 to it, so the place could have brought $65,000 back in better times. Allowing for the value of a dollar dropping by half and it could now be twice that much. The other factor was, nobody had any money to speak of, and a bank loan was unheard of now in farm country. I didn't know what to expect. 

I decided it was time to ask Vivian what she wanted for it, so Brenda and I went to see her the next day. We let Vivian tell us what she was thinking and it sounded pretty good to us. She said the woods wasn't worth much because nobody was buying timber now, and the ground wasn't suited for cropland, so she wanted $35,000, or that amount in silver. And she'd rather have the silver. That came out to a little over 211 ounces. We made up the difference in change from our junk silver and she called the surveyor out to get his work done. The surveyor wasn't busy, so we got the paperwork finished before Vivian had arranged her auction. 

Our original one acre lot had been cut from the corner of Lester's farm back in the 1970's. We now owned what had been his rectangular 61 acres, roughly 1/4 mile wide at the highway, and 3/8 mile deep. The one acre for Vivian's house was cut from the opposite corner. The only drawback, if any, was that the machinery and buildings were all located on her corner. That was less than a quarter mile from our house, so it was no big deal. 
_____________

When the auction was over, we had bought the old John Deere tractor and JD hay baler, the small manure spreader, 2 hay wagons, the sickle mower, hay rake, and a small hammermill to grind feed. Vivian was a stickler to make sure that all the spare parts for the machinery was sold with the machines it belonged to. The auctioneer said he could get more for it all separately, but she was cranky about some things and he gave up arguing about it. We bought the diesel fuel tank, too. It was the next week before I had sense enough to check and found out it was almost full. I bought some fuel preservative and dumped in it, just in case. No telling how old it was, but it worked fine in the tractor. 

I loaned Josh $1,800 and he bought Lester's old Ford pickup truck. It went cheap because nobody thought they could afford to buy gas for it. We had spent a total of $23,000 and I paid her with 139 silver Eagles. We still had 47 of them left and almost all of the junk coins. We'd spent roughly half of our silver for the property and the machinery. It was all bought really cheap, but the fact was nobody had much if any savings right now, and farm credit was a thing of the past. The weren't that many bidders for the machinery, and they had stopped pretty low. 

Vivian talked to Carmen the next week after the sale and told her to have Josh come down and get the old horse trailer in the cattle barn across the road. She had forgotten to put it in the sale and she wanted it out of there before she closed the deal on that part of the farm with Stuart Young. No, she didn't want anything for the old trailer. It was rusted out and not worth much. Josh had been a big help to her so she wanted to give it to him. He went after it that evening and thanked her prettily. The old lady was happy with that. 
____________________

Stuart Young had bought a few things at the sale so we ran into him when he came to pick them up. 

He said, "Looks like you're gettin' into farmin' a little bigger now!"

I told him, "It's not much, but we're hoping it will help take the place of what retirement money we used to think we had."

He grinned and said, "Heck, you bought about the whole place over here. You don't even have to move anything! Now that's a pretty good deal."

"I'll be moving it plenty when hay time comes around next year. Say, you want to sell some more calves?" 

"You got more silver you want to get rid of?"

"I think we can work something out."
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Chapter 18 November, 2014

Carmen and Tammy had volunteered to paint the old grain bins and the diesel tank. They said it was easy work, but they would have to let their hair grow out before they got the aluminum speckles out of it. I got the John Deere 3020 tractor running and did some mowing around the farm. It began to look better just about the time we got the first light snow. The tractor had a front end loader on it, so we used that to lift the beef when we butchered the 2 year old steer I got from Stuart. We didn't have a lot of money left, but we were in good shape to raise the cattle we had now and the pantry was full. After we butchered the beef, both freezers were full. Tammy had landed a couple big old lunker catfish from the river in late summer, so those and the meat from a big snapping turtle I caught were in there, too. I had shot some squirrels back in late summer, but they got eaten immediately. 

Julie was getting bigger by the day it seemed, so Brenda and I went to work getting her stall closed in for winter. It was just framed up and covered with metal siding, but it stopped the wind. I dropped a lot of straw bales down through the hatch to the barn basement and stacked them around the outside wall for insulation, leaving a walkway to get all around her stall. That would keep the freezeless faucet protected, too. I had found it behind all the old machinery. The water didn't run very fast, being gravity flow from the pond, but it sure beat carrying it in buckets. 

There was a small watering trough in the barn that we patched up and put where the horse could get a drink come cold weather. I bought a floating electric tank heater for it and spent some money getting power run to it from our house. Julie was growing a heavy winter coat, so we let her go to the pond for now. We had gotten the pond fenced with a gate on each side of it, and put a fence the length of the pasture, so we could open a gate in the barn lot to choose which half the stock could use. 

It was a long walk from our house to the buildings by Vivian's house, so we had bought an old bicycle to run back and forth. When one of us was down there, we always found time to mow Vivian's lawn the rest of that summer, which she appreciated no end. She liked to sit on the porch and watch us mow, or work on the place and usually offered us sonething to drink. Carmen was there a couple times a week so she had someone to talk to pretty often. Stuart had the field across the road sowed in winter wheat that was turning green, so she had good things to look at any direction. On Sunday she'd drive her Buick to church and see some of her old friends there, and get some groceries on the way home from town. 

The shop wasn't all that busy in late Fall. All the crops were in, so only livestock equipment got any attention then. I had never got anything done with all that stainless steel restaurant stuff I bought at the junkyard. Now that the summer kitchen wasn't being used so heavy, I decided to get on that. I had brought in the table when we butchered the beef and the rolling cart. Those helped a lot but we needed storage space. Big pots and pans were stacked on the floor. Little Hailey had pulled on a handle trying to stand up and tipped the stack over once. It scared the dickens out of everyone, but no harm done. 

It was not easy to hang a cabinet on a masonry wall, so I made brackets and hung the overhead cabinet from the ceiling. When I got the dents out of it and shined it up with Barkeeper's Friend, it looked pretty good. It went right over the gas stove and on to the end wall, a full 6 feet of it. That got the kettle mess stored, but we needed counter space, too. There were some leftover pieces and parts I cobbled together to make a base cabinet, then had to form up a top for it using more leftover sheet material. It was a passable job and something we really needed. Even with the extra counter space, when you are cutting up a quarter of beef, it gets spread out into the kitchen and dining room table, too. 

I had planned to sell or trade off the tarps I got from the army surplus place, but now we needed all except the big long ones. I folded the ones for the hay wagons and hung them on wires in the machnery shed to keep the mice out of them. I saw Stuart one day in town and asked it he needed tarps for his semi trailers, but he had some pretty good ones. So, I hung one of them in front of the open basement bay where the cattle came in to eat. It kept the wind out and was easy to pull up out of the way when it came time to clean the barn. The cattle looked a lot more content in there when the weather was bad. We had 14 head in there, all around 600 pounds now. They would be ready to sell by this time next year. 
______________ 

Josh had no use for the stock trailer he was given, but I did, so we made a deal. I'd give him $500 off his truck loan for the trailer, then I'd buy the materials to fix it up and he'd do the work. I pay him by the hour and also take that off what he owed me for the truck. He had spent several days that Fall cutting out the rusted panels damaged by manure and welding in new ones. He used my pressure washer to clean it up, then he pulled it to a man in town who did sandblasting to clean up the remaning rust. That guy sprayed primer on it and Josh sprayed on two finish coats of red paint. He rewired the lights, fixed the electric brakes, and replaced the rear door hinges. It was small for a stock trailer, only good for hauling 6 cattle at a time, but that was plenty to pull with his 3/4 ton truck. 

I took the $600 labor off his truck loan and told him that when we needed to haul the cattle to market I'd pay him mileage to pull the trailer. The trailer tires had been replaced not too many years ago, so it was ready to go. He had even painted the wheels 2 coats of white enamel, so it looked pretty spiffy. I'd spent another $600 on parts and steel, sandblasting and paint. $1,700 total was cheap for a like new trailer that size. We parked it in the upper part of the big barn away from the corrosive manure fumes. Come January I'd have to buy a new license tag for it, but it had a current tag on it. Vivian got a look at it and didn't recognize it until we told her it was the old one. She was proud of the boy and told him so. 

Josh had cleaned up his truck, too. It looked pretty good now, with a fresh polish and wax job on it. There was really nothing much wrong with the truck. It was old enough to vote, but it only had 68,000 miles on it. He changed the oil and did a lube job and it was in good running shape, but he didn't stop there. I had bought a pressure washer cheap at a Harbor Freight close out sale. Josh used it on the truck's underside, then brushed on some thinned out black roofing tar I had around for an undercoating. We had ratted around in the old sheds on the farm and found the bed mount toolbox for it. A coat of aluminum paint on that box, the step bumper, and the trailer hitch made it look really good. Vivian complimented him on the truck, too. 

Tammy was pleased that they had a vehicle again, with the sure knowledge that I would not repossess it. She wanted to do something toward paying it off, so I put her to work that winter cleaning out and painting the old sheds on the farm. I had work in the shop and I thought we could use the space. She spent a week at it and did a fine job, carrying all the odds and ends out to the machinery building and spreading it all out on the wagon beds for me to sort out. I found a lot of parts for the farm machinery, a collection of useful bolts, and a truckload of scrap iron. I told her if she'd haul the iron to the junkyard, she could have whatever it brought. She made a few bucks in cash, I took $200 off the truck loan, and I had 3 good looking useful buildings. Now they only owed me $500 and the truck would be paid for. 
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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 19 Thanksgiving, 2014

The last I heard, If you hunt on your own place in Indiana, you don't need a hunting license. I'm just enough of a rebel to not care about it, so whenever I went to check for ice on the pond, walk the fences, or whatever, I carried my .22 and took Sonny along. Like all Labs, he loved the water, so he'd take any opportunity to go for a swim. Even if there was thin ice on the pond, he'd do a belly-flop dive and crash through the ice. He'd paddle around a while, come out on the bank and shake real hard with his tongue hanging out in a big smile,ready to go run around in the cold weather. It made me shiver to watch him. 

That day when he topped the pond bank ahead of me, he froze on point. He was looking through the cattails in the shallow part, not moving a muscle. I crouched and crawled up to him where I saw half a dozen wood ducks on the pond, oblivious to us. I carefully sighted until one was in front of another and shot the near one through the head. Like I'd hoped, the bullet killed the first duck dead on the spot, and kept going to wound the second one in a wing. It gave me the split second I needed to sight on the second one and hit it again. All the rest of the ducks had flown by then. Sonny was in heaven. Into the water he went and grabbed the first duck bringing it to me like a champ. He shook and grinned great big while I told him what a fine dog he was. 

When he dropped it, I said, "Hey Sonny! There's another one!" His look said, "Oh yeah, I forgot!" I pointed at it and he was off like a shot to fetch the second one. He'd earned his dog food for today. I picked up the ducks and headed for the house. I put the ducks in the trash bag I always carried. No point in tempting fate I thought. I was pretty sure I should have bought a hunting license and duck stamps for these, but so what? I was feeding them, so they could feed me some, too. A lot of farmers take that attitude about game. It was Tuesday so Thanksgiving was day after tomorrow, and I had dinner for it. 

Not being fond of picking feathers, I went in the shop and skinned the ducks over a big plastic trash bag. That mess of skin and feathers got buried deep in the garden. I came back with the bag and used it to catch the innards when I cleaned them. A stop at the hand pump on the back porch got me a bucket of frigid water that I soused the ducks in before carrying them in the house. The cooks swarmed over them and began looking up a recipe. 

I went back out and took the innards to the garden and called Sonny for his reward. He got the choice internal bits, heart, lungs and liver, then the rest got buried like the feathers. He wasn't the best stock dog I'd ever seen, but he made up for it in hunting season. He was also the resident greeter whenever we had company. He was friendly as could be, but he was big and black and always opened his mouth to show all those teeth. An unfriendly stranger would seldom crowd it when he woofed at them. He knew all the neighbors and regular shop customers and bounced when he saw a friendly face. We loved him for a lot of reasons. Even the new barn cat liked him. 

The cat was your average looking gray striped tabby cat, looking even better now that she'd had a few square meals. She had begun to hang out around the back door at meal times, hoping we'd throw something out in the garden that a cat might like. The girls saw to it that she always got something. She'd taken to sleeping in the little storage barn in the back yard where I kept the chicken feed. It attracted mice and she'd learned it was good hunting territory. The women had started calling her Kitty when they had scraps, so she came when we called. She was a little standoffish yet, but she was learning to like us better. The way to a cat's heart is through its' stomach.

Now that it was getting colder, I felt sorry for her and got her a bag of dry cat food. It's not true that cats won't hunt mice unless they are hungry. They hunt because they are CATS, and that's what cats do. She slept on the straw bales I kept in that little barn to use for chicken litter. She had a nice nest made in there. I made sure there was water available for her on the back porch in a round metal pan. When it got really cold, I planned to put hot water in it a couple times a day and set the pan in a small box of straw to keep it from freezing too quick. Kitty was a quick learner and had it all figured out fast. 
________________

The ducks had been roasted in the oven until the meat fell off the bones. I'd ground some cornmeal made from the last of the sweet corn that got left on the stalks to dry hard. Someone threw in some Jalapeno peppers in the cornbread, just enough to give it an edge. There was also cornbread stuffing with Morel mushrooms in it, green beans with lots of onions and some ham scraps in them, glazed sweet potatoes, and a Waldorf salad made with our apples and walnuts. I didn't see it yet, but I could smell an apple pie somewhere, too. The salt, sugar, mayo, and coffee came from the store, but we grew the rest of it. I gave thanks when we all got sat down. I made it short.

"Thank you Lord for a great garden this year, and all the good help to get it to the table. Amen."

"Pass the sweet potatoes, please," Josh said. 

"You did say you liked them," I commented.

"After they worked so hard cooking this stuff, I don't want any of it wasted," he said. 

Tammy smiled at him and said, "Are you still a growing boy?"

"My belly is today."

She said, "Don't let him have any more or the truck won't haul him around."

Carmen said, "I gave up on my girlish figure. I'm eating all I want." 

Carmen still had a nice figure, but I wasn't about to touch that remark and besides, I was taught to never talk with my mouth full. 

It was snowing a little outside, a good wet snow that would make for good bunny hunting this afternoon. Sonny was laying on the back porch, undoubtedly smelling the goodies inside and waiting for his turn at the leftovers. Kitty cat was keeping him company, sitting on the porch railing and looking at the back door. They would get some table scraps, then if Josh and I had any luck rabbit hunting later they would get the leftovers from dressing those as well. 

Holidays don't keep you from having to do chores on a farm, so when we had loosened our belts a notch and had coffee, Josh went to feed the dog and cat, Tammy gathered eggs and made sure the chickens had feed and water, and I headed for the barn while Brenda and Carmen stacked the dirty dishes to wash. Sonny didn't go with me, being preoccupied with cleaning his food dish. Kitty cat was busy washing up after her meal. 

Predictably, Julie heard me come through the yard gate and stuck her head out her stall door to look. She had a full winter coat now and looked pretty wooly, the dappled gray being more blurred with all that hair. I tossed flakes of hay into mangers for her and the calves, which Julie nosed aside to make room for the grain she knew was coming. I gave her a can each of shelled corn and oats, then fed the calves some corn as well. 

Jerry Richards that owned the garden store in town did some farming on the side and had sold me the oats. He and I did some business and had been friends for a long time. I kept the oats and some corn in steel barrels in the barn to avoid having to tramp through mud, or ice, or other mess that Indiana was famous for. The critters were getting fed early today, so we could go hunting and not have to mess with it when we got back. They didn't mind that, and I left them enough hay to keep them until morning. 

When I got back to the house, Josh had his .22 ready to go and had put on his army field jacket with the thick liner. This old style had a light hood that would keep rain and snow off your head without interfering with your hearing and the pockets were big enough to hold a rabbit on each side. I had one and loved it, but these old ones were getting hard to find. I liked the black leather military gloves for hunting, too. They were warm enough for today without the wool liners and very soft so you could feel a trigger. 

Josh had bought his rifle, a Winchester 77 semiauto, at Lester's sale. Like most of the sale, it went pretty cheap. The stock being skinned up and some blue worn off helped make it cheap. Lester had carried it in his truck for years, but seldom shot it. Josh had refinished the stock and got a bottle of cold blue to touch up the finish, so it looked pretty good now. I had some 3/16" stainless steel rod and had made him a cleaning rod for it. I doubt if Lester had ever cleaned it, but after we got the leading out of the barrel it grouped pretty tight. It had only the original open sights, but that was what was need for a sitting bunny. I adjusted my scope down to 3X for a wider field of view and we were off. 

Sonny zig zagged in front of us, knowing from us carrying rifles what was up. I pointed him at the raspberry thicket in the back fencerow of the yard. He looked and sniffed it up good, but found nothing. He knew that rabbits had lived there, so he figured out what we wanted. We walked about 20 yards from the fence along the pasture and let the dog look over the weeds and brush there. We were halfway to the back of the field when Sonny pointed. I looked that way through the scope and finally spotted the back end of a rabbit beside a post. He was hunkered down so I couldn't see his head. Josh saw it and was ahead of me about 30 yards, so he had a good angle and shot him in the head neatly. 

Sonny retrieved it and brought it to me, but I said, "No, that's for Josh." 

I didn't know if he'd do that or not, but he did go to Josh who thanked and petted him. Josh stuck it in a coat pocket and we went on. We turned at the corner of the field and went along the wooded part, then sat the guns down and climbed over the fence. Josh was getting better at scissoring over a fence. Rifles in hand again, we walked near the fence and let Sonny do the work. He pointed at a deadfall and Josh walked to the other side of it. I called Sonny to heel, not wanting him to run the rabbit. I held the dog by his collar while Josh tramped the far side of the fallen tree. The bunny ran 20 yards in a semicircle and stopped near the fence, thinking he was hidden. I shot him in the neck, the nearest I could see to his head. Sonny took off like a shot and brought him to me, all happy again. I petted the dog and we walked on around the fence boundary near Vivian's house in time to see a pair of Coyotes loping across the wheat field beyond. They were too far away for a shot, so I told Sonny to heel and we wandered back to the house. 

"It's real peaceful out here," Josh said. "In the city it's never this quiet."

"Yeah, I think that can be hard on your nerves. That's why I like it out here."

We were coming past the barn when Susan's car pulled into the driveway. It made me curious because she had planned to have dinner at home. As expensive as gas was, nobody went anywhere without a very good reason.
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Chapter 20


"Let's throw these rabbits on top of the porch roof for now," I told Josh. "That'll keep Sonny from being tempted to eat 'em. I want to see what's up with Susan."

We wiped the mud off our boots in the grass and finished on the door mat, then went inside. Susan was hugging Brenda who was a little teary eyed, Susan being the stronger of the two. 

"We had a home invasion, Dad," Susan said. "They tried but they didn't get in. I just had to get somewhere else for a while."

Art said, "We had the door bars up, and it's a good thing because they were trying to batter the door down with a big post. It held until I got a gun and shot into 'em and they scattered."

Susan said, "There were 4 or 5 of them, and they were big guys. I knocked the glass out of a window and shot one of them I'm pretty sure. And Art hit at least one through the door glass, but they all ran and got away. Can't shoot 'em in the back and get away with it so we let 'em go with a few rounds to speed 'em up. We heard their car start up out on the road and we followed out there to make sure none were laying dead somewhere. They're gone and I don't think they'll be back. They tell me that a .40 caliber hurts."

Art said, "We found a blood trail, but it was just a few drops. Probably not too serious or they would't have been able to run like they did. They didn't do too much damage. The door is okay. It's steel and it's just battered up some. The locks are still good. We just have some glass to clean up and we taped some cardboard over the windows for tonight." 

Josh said, "I'll go take care of those rabbits."

Carmen's face was pale and she shivered as she said, "That sounds like those gangs in Louisville. That's why I moved out of the city when I got divorced. They scare me to death."

Art and Susan both had military experience in the sandbox. They looked hyped up and mad as hell. I noticed that both of them had pistols on their belts. 

Susan said, "I don't think it was a gang. I think it was just a bunch of punks from New Albany who thought they'd find an empty house and an easy score. People are hungry out there now. But we need better security. That's what we came to talk to you about Dad. We have that farm fence around the lot, but we need a gate at the driveway. We want something strong enough to stop a truck. Those things they sell at the farm stores are flimsy. If you'll build something, we'll pay you for it."

"Sure. I'll get something going tomorrow. But you need to get some posts set right away, before it gets too cold for concrete to set up. Get some 4" pipe, maybe at that junkyard in Clarksville, and put at least 3 feet in the ground. I'd buy a couple pieces 8 or 9 feet long. I can weld hinge pins on when I bring the gate over."

Susan said, "I know just the guy for the job. The guy next door could use the work and he's good at that kind of thing."

"Okay. After you get the posts set, measure carefully between them and call me with the dimension. Keep it under 16 feet. I'll build a gate to fit."

"Yeah. I can do that. Art has some other things in mind, too. We're not putting up with this, ever again."

Brenda asked, "Do you want to stay here tonight?"

"Oh no! Nobody is running me out of MY house. I'll kill 'em if they ever come back. I swear it'll be all head shots. This is coming to a stop, right now," Susan said. She had her war face on. 

Art didn't say anything, but his face was co-signing her attitude. When they got in their car to leave, I saw a pair of AR 15's in the seat. They would clear the house when they got home like the professionals they were. Woe be unto anyone who should not be in there.
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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 21

The next day Josh and I took his bigger truck to the junkyard and bought a pile of 2" pipe. It was painted bright OSHA colors, red, blue, and yellow, indicating to me that it had been various kinds of gas lines in a factory somewhere. There was a big pile of it and the price was right, so we loaded the truck. Some of it was so long that we had to tie it down on the front end. A red rag on the overhanging ends made it legal to haul. We hustled home and began to sort it out. 

Susan called and said the posts were in and she had measured the space between them at 14 feet and 2". "A shorter gate is stronger, right Dad?"

"Yep, you did right. We'll get right on it." 

"We bought used pipe from that guy in Jeff that welds on tugboats and stuff. He always has a big pile of steel. I had Angelo dig the holes 4 feet deep and about the size of a bucket. He had to mix a lot of Sakrete. When the stuff set up some, he mixed more and poured the pipes full, too. He said that would make them stronger."

"That's perfect! He knows what he's talking about."

"Yeah, he's good. He used a level and got the posts about perfectly plumb, too."

"Great! We'll get busy cutting and welding today. Should have something in a day or so. I'll call you."

"M'kay. Bye Dad."
__________________

We finished the gate in a day, but we waited another 10 days for the concrete to harden around the posts. Thankfully, the weather warmed up for a while so the concrete could set up. Angelo had banked some dirt over it to keep it warmer, too. I put some gas in Josh's truck and loaded the portable welder in it with chain hoist. We put the gate on my 2 wheel trailer and piled the truck full of the necessary tools and parts. 

I had welded hinge pins to the gate, then on site we welded the hinge plates to the posts. I did the one pin up, one pin down thing to assure it could not be lifted off the hinges. It was there to stay. I welded on a shelter box for the lock so it was impossible to get bolt cutters in there. It kept the rain off the lock, too. They put a serious padlock on it and Susan began to touch up the paint on things where we had welded and made a mess of it. 

The gate was actually held shut by a 1" diameter hardened pin with the padlock in the bottom of it. So, If a truck ran into the gate, the 1" pin took the hit, not the lock. The gate was built with 6 horizontal pieces of 2" pipe and 4 verticals. I had steel brackets on top with 3 runs of barbed wire angled out along the top to make it hard to climb over. That gate was not going anywhere.

Art had been busy, too. He had strung 2 runs of barbed wire above the woven wire farm fence that enclosed the property. One wire on each side of the posts made it hard to climb over without getting skinned up. If they did make it over, there was an electrified barbed wire running 3 feet inside the fence and about knee high for another surprise. It would not stop a determined effort, but they would have to think about it. 

He had also added infrared sensors that activated a buzzer and a separate light for each sensor to show location. They expected some false alarms from deer and other wildlife, but those animals would run into the dogs to discourage their visits. 

That would give time for their two German Shepherds to get there and investigate. They had bought the pair from a security company who had them train with the dogs for a few days before they took the dogs home. They were not pets. They were working dogs and were still getting used to their new place, so they stayed in the basement while we were there working. The dogs would sleep in the house, but had their own doggy door to use if they alerted to something outside. Susan and Art did not intend to be surprised again. 

Susan added one finishing touch to the gate. It's hard telling where she found the official looking sign. It read, "QUARANTINED-DO NOT ENTER-ANTHRAX". It had the CDC logo and everything. 

Once we had their gate finished, I built on one for our driveway. I had enough 1/2" square stock to make grilles for all the house windows, so I put Josh to using the scroll bender so we could pretty them up a bit. I planned to mount the window grilles on plastic insulators. I really liked the electric fence idea and I planned to make use of it in creative ways. We had other work to do, so I kept plugging along at the security things as I had time, but we painted the decorative window grilles white like the house trim and got them up quickly. I also saw to it that we had drop bars installed for both entrance doors on the house. Our doors were wood, so I made two drop bars for each door. It wasn't perfect, but it would make enough noise getting through that to wake me up. I planned to have the shotgun handy, too.
_______________

Brenda didn't like the looks of my gate much. We figured out that it was just a reminder that the world wasn't a nice place now. I think Josh carried that little Berreta of his all the time. I had taken to carrying my old .38 most of the time, too, after the home invasion deal at Susan's. Tammy and I were outside clearing off the back porch one morning and putting things away before bad weather came in earnest when I asked her if she wanted a pistol to carry for personal protection? 

"I've shot Dad's rifle and shotgun, but not a pistol. I'm not very comfortable with them."

"Talk to Josh and if you decide you want one, I have Dad's old .32 revolver in the closet. I think there is even a box or two of shells for it. You're welcome to use it if you want. You just have to learn how to be safe with it, but we can teach you that." 

"I'm afraid Hailey would get hold of it."

"That is a very important point. You would have to work out ways to make sure she doesn't. That's why we keep all the guns out of her reach, or on our person at all times. The purpose of a handgun is protection when you need it. When you decide to carry one, there is a big responsibility that goes with that. Anyhow, it is there if you want it."

"I'll think about it. It's not like you can feel safe now."

"I think we're pretty safe here at home. There's always several people around and that helps. We know about everybody for miles around with the shop business going. What I worry about now is the business could draw undesirables in as well as the good folks."

Tammy was sweeping the porch and I had the last armload of plant pots and garden tools to put away. As I left for the storage barn by the gardens, she said, "I'd like to try shooting that gun of yours. It would be nice to know I had something, just in case."

"Okay. Tell Josh and we'll do some target shooting together."

What I had was Dad's antique, an H & R top break, hammerless 5 shot "Police Safety" revolver. It had a round butt and would easily fit in a big coat pocket. With no hammer to snag, it would come out of a pocket easily. The .32 cartridge probably wasn't much more powerful than a .22, but the bullet was a little heavier providing some thump. When Tammy tried it, she liked it. It was double action only, so there was no forgetting to cock it. It was simple-point and pull the trigger until it goes bang. It was not an accurate gun, but she could hit a bucket with it at 30 steps and that was good enough for what she needed. Josh thanked me, saying he'd been worried when she went somewhere alone and this would help. 

There were some things happening with gun laws that had us worried, so the couple talked it over and decided not to try for a carry permit. It would just draw attention and we didn't need any of that. She made a spot to stuff it in her big purse where it would be handy. Her winter coat would hide it easily as well. She began to carry it around at home, to get the feel of it, but she always put it back in her purse on the high shelf in the closet. We all felt a little better now that all of us had something to carry. It was an uncertain world. 

I would have offered to get Carmen a gun, too, but I knew she would never go for that.
__________________


Chapter 22 December, 2014


Elvis was crooning Blue Christmas from my truck radio as we rolled downhill into town, slowing to allow for the slush on the street long before the traffic light. The antilock brakes did their chattering anyway. There was ice under the slush and it was getting colder. I got stopped in time, half a length behind the little car in front of me. Brenda was insistent on getting a few presents for the family at home, or I'd have vetoed the trip. 

We found a really nice old hooded parka with a real fur trim at Goodwill. We knew it would fit Tammy and she needed it. It was high priced at $40, but far better than the new cheap things and it looked good. Goodwill's prices were way up. The bad part was, so was everywhere else, and worse. A cheap imitation of that coat at Wal Mart would be $125 on sale. Several higher priced stores in Clarksville had closed. Wal Mart had become the high priced place. We took the coat and some work socks she'd gotten cheap to the truck. As soon as we were seated, a young guy came to my window. 

"Hey man, could you spare some change? I ain't had nuthin' to eat for a couple days now."

He looked to be about 25 years old and didn't look like the winos I used to see panhandling in the bigger cities, and this was small town USA. I had an idea.

"Want to come with us and let me buy you a burger?"

"That'd be great! I'll ride in the back."

Brenda said, "No, you get in on this side. There's room."

Over a cheap lunch at a local diner we let him eat until he was slowing down. He was pretty skinny. The lunch there was heavy on mashed potatoes, gravy, and vegetables, but light on meat. The burger was small and not the best beef, but he ate it like it was a good steak. Brenda gave me that look that meant she was on board with me. 

I asked him if he had a place to stay?

"I'm stayin'with my brother. It's cold 'cause they got no heat 'cept the livin' room an' kitchen where we all sleep. We ran outa food a couple days back."

"We don't have a lot of money, but we've got food. Would you want to cut firewood for groceries?"

"Heck yeah, man! I don't care what the work is, I'll do it! I got no car, though. If I can get a ride, you tell me where an' I'll be there. There just ain't no jobs nowhere."

"Any kids live with you?" 

"Nope, just my brother an' his girlfriend an' me. My brother got some day work when they was cleanin' out that old Armory building. Some guy had a business in there went bust and they sold it off. Donnie helped sweep it out and scrub the floors and stuff, but that was a couple weeks ago. None of us got anything since then." 

"I'm Jeff Hesston. We do a little farming out south of town, and I have a welding and machine shop where we fix some farm equipment. What's your name?" 

"Ansel Deckard. Pleased to meet ya."

He offered his hand and I shook it. 

"That's not a common name around here. You got family nearby?"

"No, we're from Paoli. Me an' Donnie worked at the ski place until they closed last year. Then we came here because his girlfriend got Donnie a job at the Fairgrounds last summer. That didn't last long, so we've been gettin' day work when we can. His old car quit so we can't get anywhere else now."

"What kind of work have you done? We can use a hand now and then around the shop and the farm." 

"I worked for a Carnie once, helpin' him keep his rides goin', an' I was in maintenance at the ski place. Mostly I've done labor for construction before that."

"Tell you what. How about we take a ride out to our place and get some groceries, then I'll take you home so I know where to pick you up. I'll have a few days work cutting trees and making firewood. You ever drive a tractor?" 

"I've drove a backhoe and the lift machine for a roofer once. I ain't good at it, but I know how they work."

"Good deal. We'll find you something to do for a while, okay?"

"Man, I owe you. I was real hungry. I'll work, you show me what you want done!" 

I paid our bill and we drove home to load up some things. I got him a bag of potatoes and had him dig a few carrots and turnips from the garden. He was amazed to find them under the straw. I pulled the straw back and cut him a head of cabbage, too. We went to the henhouse and gathered 8 eggs. While he was stowing all that in the truck, Brenda went in and got a couple quarts of canned green beans and a quart of canned soup meat from the beef we'd butchered. I ground about five pounds each of whole wheat flour and cornmeal and gave it to him in a couple gallon plastic bags. He said they had a gas stove to cook on. If they could pay the rent and the gas bill, they'd be okay for a while. 

When we dropped him off where he lived, his brother looked out to see who it was. It was a small old house that needed paint. We got introduced when we carried his stuff inside. Donnie was a little bigger, but his clothes were too big for him. We talked and I told him I'd pick them both up early the next day, about daylight. Ansel said he had an alarm clock so they'd be ready by 7:00. 

Ansel followed me to the truck and said, "I really appreciate this. How come you didn't blow me off like ever'body else does?"

"I'd rather hire you and feed you than shoot you when you got desperate. People shouldn't have to get that hungry. I'll see you in the morning. Don't worry over it."

He waved as we left.

Brenda said, "I wonder how many more there are like him?"

"Way too dam many," I said. 

We finished up our shopping and got home well before dark. I told everyone we'd have help tomorrow for wood cutting, and to plan on 2 more men for lunch. 
_____________________

By lunch time the next day, Donnie and Ansel were both pretty tired. We knocked off a little early and walked from the woods to the house. The men were both wearing worn out sneakers so I knew their feet were cold. I told them to warm up by the wood stove after lunch, I'd be back in a minute. I went to the storage barn and dug in the loft for a tub with old things in it. I thought I could guess their shoe sizes, but we'd have to try them. 

My old work boots fit them both close enough. I gave them each a pair of thick socks and told them we couldn't have them suffering from the cold and expect to get a day's work, so call it part of the deal. That let us work a little longer in the afternoon, so we had at least 3 cords of woods loaded on the 2 farm wagons by evening. 

I gave each of them $20 and asked if they thought what they'd gotten so far was enough for the work they'd done?

"We never expected no money," Donnie said. "You give us enough groceries for a week." 

I asked, "Can we call it even for today then?"

"Heck yeah! We did good!"

"Okay, then tomorrow we need to split and stack that wood at the house. I've got a hydraulic splitter, so that helps, but it's hard on your back. You guys game for that?"

"Sure thing!" 

"Good deal. Just so you know what's coming up, those logs we cut today are for farm lumber. I know a man with a band saw mill that is going to saw it up for me. There'll be some work for you then handling the lumber. Until he gets here, we need to cut more logs and make firewood out of the tops like we did today. We'll have at least 3 more days of that before we get to sawing. You guys talk it over how you want to be paid. I can pay each of you $40 a day in money or some combination of that with food we have. You decide and tell me later, okay?"

"Ansel said, "That's great. We'll be ready in the morning when you get there."
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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 23 


I had a couple jobs to do in the shop so after the guys got started splitting and stacking wood I let them do that while I did work that paid me better. Josh had a car in the basement shop, so we each did our thing. It was working out pretty good, giving us time to cover all the bases in our operation. 

When we went to dragging logs a few days later, I took Julie out for that and the 2 young guys were pretty bug eyed about her. It was easy work for her, which was good because her belly was getting huge. I never asked her to pull much of a load, but she got around in the woods much better than the tractor did, and it was all downhill pulling to the lot by the machinery shed. She was loafing more than half the time.

There were 31 logs of various sizes in the lot when the band mill showed up. He kept the 2 men busy for a couple days sawing while I dragged in more logs. I had him saw me some spacer sticks from the rough parts of the logs. The men used the tractor and wagon to haul the sawed lumber to our big barn and stacked it in the end where I planned to build a hog facility. With spacer sticks between each layer, it should dry well this winter. 

I had warned Ansel and Donnie that my work was about to run out, so be on the lookout for anything else they could get. They talked to the sawmill man and found he could use them for a few days, if they had transportation. Josh looked over Donnie's car and found the bad starter relay. He had a used one laying around and gave it to them. Ansel knew how to change it, so we loaned them enough tools to do that one evening. For part of their pay the next day, I gave them 5 gallons of gas. The gas in my storage tank was getting old so I needed to rotate it. That evening, Donnie said his girlfriend Megan had got a job stocking at the grocery where she had worked before. It was just until the end of the month, but it would help. She hoped they would keep her on longer.

Hiring the 2 men had been a good deal for me. I got some cheap lumber out of the deal and enough firewood cut for the next winter without interfering too much with my shop business. It hadn't cost me much, either. They didn't know many folks here, but they now they knew the sawmill man and our neighbor Stuart besides us. Stuart had been down one day when they were splitting wood and told me he needed a hand sometimes. That was another prospect for them. They had some groceries stocked ahead now, a little pocket money, and their car was going again. I thought they had a good chance of getting through the winter now. And I had some good help available if I needed it. 
________________

Business hadn't stopped entirely, it was just running about half throttle. Several retail stores had closed, mostly the ones that sold imported junk, along with several restaurants. There were a lot of enpty houses in town now, a lot of them with foreclosure notices stuck in the front windows. One truck service place had closed up, but there were a couple mechanics like Josh that did work at home if you knew where to find them. The car dealers were in deep trouble. They ran on credit and credit was very tight. 

The best I could tell from what I read, the problem ultimately came from what they called debt saturation. Paper, or "fiat" money was only created by creating debts. We had hit the point where there was too much debt to be paid back because there was no growth to pay the interest on it. They had kept the game going by having governments borrow when nobody else could afford to borrow more. When the government debt load hit the wall, people lost confidence that it would be paid back. They might pay it with more paper money, but it would not be worth much. 

Our problem now was to invent a real economy that did not depend on debt. Any money generated by what little business existed now was being taxed away to pay off those old government debts. People hid what they could from taxation by producing for their own needs, but that wasn't enough to live on. Governments had taxed away the money needed to form new productive businesses. That had to end and it did on the day the 3 biggest banks in the US folded up. There was a plan among nations to deal with such things, but it had not worked. Adding more of the same debt-money to the equation had made things worse. Nobody wanted to use the fast depreciating dollars that were being diluted daily to be worth even less. Imported items now were almost unaffordable. I was glad we had bought a lot of teabags and instant coffee before the prices went out of sight. 

We were trying to live now on about 1/3 or maybe 1/4 of what we had been used to having. Our Social Security checks kept being deposited, but we had to really scrimp to keep from dipping into our silver savings. The shop income was good in summer, but less in winter. I had been using out of the steel rack and hadn't bought any for a while. I hadn't been able to save much business money back for steel, either. That was worrying me because our electric bill had gone up with more winter lighting and some shop use. We needed to get the solar system operating to reduce that electric bill. The problem was, cold weather would make it tough to be climbing around on the roof putting up panels. 

I built mounting racks for the panels like I planned to do. I had lucked into a load of steel angle last year that I would use for the panel mounts. I made them adjustable for the up angle for better output in winter and I could lay them down a bit for summer use when we used a lot in the shop. Our few panels would not begin to power the shop, though. They were on;y for lighting in the house, the basement garage area, and running the freezers and fridge. If we could get a freezer emptied that would leave more power for other things, like shop lights. 

Welding is not something you even consider for solar power. When electricity had doubled in price, we had cut back on it everywhere so we could use the freezers and run some things in the shop. Gasoline had not gone up nearly as fast as electricity, because of some government subsidy deal, so I told shop customers that if they needed welding done they should bring me some gasoline for running the old Miller portable. It did a lot of welding on a gallon of gas, an hour or two, depending on how much time it was idling between welds. I didn't have to tell people to bring steel if they had it. They did that to save buying any more than necessary. 
________________________

We put up our eight 200 watt solar panels on a cold day in January. At least there was no wind to speak of, but it was hard to get small bolts and wires installed with numb fingers. There were 16 Trojan T-105 batteries already at full charge that we hooked in through an MPPT charge controller. It did some magic that allowed it to use whatever voltage the panels put out without wasting hardly any. That covered one freezer, the fridge, and a bunch of lights in the house, plus whatever little use our 12 volt TV and radios got. 

One freezer was still on the grid power, but we were emptying it as fast as we could. The women got busy canning what meat was still in it and finished in less than a week. That was a good thing because our power went off a couple days later. 

We seldom watched TV unless the weather was threatening, but it was on the 12 volt solar system so it worked with the grid power off. There was a special report going about the power outage, saying it was done as planned, coordinated with other portions of the Midwest power grid. There had been short notice because it was prompted by failures at two nuclear plants that had to be taken down for repairs. A third plant was also being shut down for preventative maintenance, being of the same age and design. That left a shortfall of power for the whole Midwestern part of the country, but some power was being shared from other main sections of the system to keep disruption to a minimum. The announcer talked about conserving power and how to do that. He said this could take several weeks, so get used to it for now, and so forth. They had decided to switch us on for 4 hours then off for 4 hours around the clock. We had to wait and see when the times would come for us.

Brenda said, "We knew the grid was in bad shape. You said that power company guy told about shoddy maintenance last year. I wonder how bad off the rest of the system is?"

I said, "Yeah, he told me they never fixed anything right. They were told to just patch it and get it going again. Been doing that for years. It looks to me like it's not going to be reliable now. Good thing we have some backup power, but it's not enough."

Carmen said, "But it runs everything now, except that one freezer and we emptied that."

Josh had been in on the installation and we had talked about our solar power at length, so he knew how limited it was. He said, "Mom, it doesn't run the water pump, or any of the shop except a few lights. We'll have to hand pump water until we have power again."

Carmen said, "You mean we don't have water?"

I said, "We have over 8,000 gallons of water in the cistern under the back porch. The problem is getting it out of there. The electric pump in the basement uses way too much power for the solar system, so it stays turned off. We can drain water in the basement by gravity flow from the cistern for use in the laundry there, but for the house we'll have to use the hand pump on the porch."

Brenda said, "It's no big deal, just a pain in the butt. You've used the pump when we wash vegetables out there."

Carmen had a hard time getting her head around this. She was used to turning on a faucet and having water come out. She was bright enough and understood the pump system when Josh explained it to her. She just didn't like the idea of a "primitive" hand pump. 

We immediately began to use the hand pump on the back porch. It was a chore to carry water for flushing the toilets, but it worked. We got frugal with water real fast. It got pretty frosty out there in cold weather. Thankfully, the pump didn't freeze up. It drained back down into the cistern automatically when you weren't pumping water.

Our electric bill the next month showed an emergency rate increase to pay for the repairs being done. We paid about the same amount as when it was on all the time. The 4-on, 4-off schedule let us do a little work in the shop, but we had to watch the clock carefully, or be caught in the middle of something when it went off again. That played hell with our business and everyone else's. I thought that only a bureaucrat could hose up the works this bad, but I was wrong. The central bankers were worse.
______________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 24 January, 2015


"OOOF! Dammit! That was bad. I never saw a pothole like that before," Brenda said.

I pulled the truck over to check for damage. A walk around didn't show anything, but I worried about the tire that had hit it and wondered if the front suspension was okay. 

"I don't see anything, But we'll be careful from here and take a better look at home," I told her.

"You can't see very well on these back roads, either, because they don't mow the edges now. What are we paying taxes for anyhow?"

"To feed the politicians. It's not like they do much good with the money," I said. "They are letting everything go to pot. That's another reason I don't want to go to Louisville. I don't trust the bridges."

Brenda said, "It's not just the roads and bridges. I talked to Marge Sanders the other day in town and she said they are on city water and it isn't fit to drink. It makes suds when it comes out of the faucet, and it never gets clear no matter how long you let it sit in a glass. Tastes terrible, too, so they buy water at the grocery and pay a lot for it."

"A lot of this is because the money went bad," I said. "It means the City and the State are just as broke as we are. There's not much they can do but keep trying to patch things."

We were almost at Susan's driveway, so I stopped talking to pay more attention to the sharp turnoff into their driveway. I stopped at the gate and called their house on my cell phone to let them know it was us at the gate. 

"C'mon in Dad. I shut the alarm off and shut the dog door.

I had a key for the gate and gave it to Brenda. She opened it so I could drive through, the locked it again. She got in and said, "That quarantine sign looks like the real thing! Where did they get that?"

"I don't know, but I bet it makes people think twice about coming in here!" 

I parked by in front of the garage and got out, picking up the foam cooler in the back of the truck. Susan came out and I said, "Here's the beef!"

Brenda gave Susan a hug then went inside. 

"Where do you want this?"

"Put it on the counter here and I'll put it away, Dad. Thanks for bringing it over."

"There's another cooler in the truck. I'll go get it."

When I got the second cooler inside, Art came up from the basement. 

He said, "What do we owe you for all that?"

I told him, "I weighed it at home and got 54 pounds. At $7 a pound that's $378. It's pretty well all boneless, too."

"That's pretty cheap for beef. Is that enough?"

"We can raise it for a lot less than that. We bought this one for $3.28 a pound on the hoof, and it dressed out right at 65%, so we have about $5.84 a pound in the meat. All we did was butcher and package it, then freeze it. That pays us a little for the work and it got our second freezer empty so we could shut it off to cut the electric bill."

Art shook his head in dismay and said, "The cheapest we can find beef in town is $7.99 for ground chuck, they call it, but it is tough to chew, even being ground. This will last us a long time, too. We sure appreciate this."

"We'll have pork before long, if you want some of that. I'm buying several hogs from a friend of ours and we'll butcher one of them before the weather warms up too much. We have some room in our main freezer now after they canned up some stuff and we've used a little out of it. It won't take much freezer space, because we're going to dry salt and smoke most of it. There should be room to freeze the tenderloin chops and the bulk sausage we don't smoke of fry up."

Susan said, "YES! We want some! You let us know what you have and we'll come get it. Do you want help with the butchering?" 

"I think we'll have plenty of help. The house isn't that big, so any more help and we'd be getting in each other's way. I'm going to feed that hog for a while. They are up to maybe 280 or 300 pounds, I'd guess, and I'd like it bigger. I'll pick it up next week and start feeding it some of that corn I got when we bought the farm. I know a guy who is making biodiesel out of soybeans, so I can get the leftover soybean meal cheaper than the feed store. That will make a pretty good mix for the hogs with some oats thrown in."

Art said, "Pork is outrageous, too. If you can do as well on selling it, we'll buy our share."

"Okay. We'll get back to you on that."

Brenda asked, "Have you had any prowlers lately?" 

Susan laughed and said, "Yeah! We had one! Some guy might have been rabbit hunting for all we know, but he came up to cross the fence and had to have seen the No Hunting and No Trespassing sign, then started across the fence anyway. I saw him out the kitchen window when the alarn went off. He had just got on top of the fence when he must have touched the elecrtic wire and threw his gun. He fell off into the INSIDE electric wire and was fighting it when the dogs took off for him at a run. You should have seen him getting back over that electric fence!" 

"He got away then?"

"Yeah, but he lost his shotgun. He ran off before I could get out there to talk to him, so we have a nice Remington shotgun now!" 

I take it he didn't try to come back and get it?"

Art laughed and said, "NO, he was moving pretty good when he went out of sight!"

Brenda said, "I'm glad it worked."

Susan said, "I'm sure he was hunting. He wasn't trying to rob us. He had an orange hat on and the gun was loaded with #6 shot for rabbits. But it serves him right, because he had to see the No Hunting signs. Art nailed those to every third fence post."

Art said, "It's a nice shotgun. It just had a little mud in the barrel from when he threw it. I cleaned it up. Do you need a shotgun?"

"No, I like the one I have, but thanks anyway."

Brenda said, "Josh could use a shotgun. What do you want for it?"

Art said, "It didn't cost us anything. You can have it. You've done us a lot of favors."

I said, "Okay, but I'll get you a good deal on some pork, okay?"

Art said, "That works for me!"
__________________

"What do you mean, a free gun?"

"Art and Susan gave it to us for you Josh," I said. Then we told him the story and we all got a good laugh out of it. 

"Besides, they appreciated your work on the gate installation. They haven't had anybody try to get through it without permission. Art rigged a hot wire on top of the gate, too, so you have to know how to get past that. Oh, yeah. The shotgun came with 8 shells in it because it has that magazine extender. That's not legal to hunt with, either, so he wasn't what you'd call a well mannered hunter. That's a 26" modified choke barrel, so it will be good for birds and rabbits. It's not the best for ducks or geese, but we'd go after them sitting anyhow, so no matter."

"Man, do you know what these things cost now? I saw a new 870 in the Rural King ad paper for $889!" 

I smiled and said, "It's about time you had a break coming your way, don't you think?"

Josh spent the next day making himself a simple but nice wood gun rack to hang his .22 and the shotgun up high on the wall in their room. I went to the storage barn and found him a box of #6 shells so he had some extras. We'd look for a deal on ammunition later. 
________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 25 February, 2015


Our rebuilt stock trailer got used for the first time hauling the hogs home. The big barn had a ramp for unloading livestock that fit the trailer, since Lester had built it himself, so unloading the hogs was a simple job. Julie didn't seem to like them much and did some snorting, but she settled down. We got the hogs in their pen, then Josh and I fed and watered them, so they quieted down pretty fast. There were four sows, a boar that went in his own pen, and 2 barrows we planned to butcher. The sows were bred and supposed to farrow sometime in April. By that time, the cattle would be outside on pasture so we'd have plenty of room for separating the sows into individual pens long before then. 

Tammy had come out to do the feeding and said, "Jack, take a look at Julie. She's about ready to foal, I think."

I had noticed the day before that her udder was filling up, so I knew it wouldn't be long. When I looked closer, I saw that her vulva was swollen and she was a little nervous. We talked to her and I got more fresh straw for her bedding. She snuffled at it and pawed it around some. 

I said, "I think you're right. She's acting like it, kinda making a nest there." 

I spoke to the horse, "Julie, are you okay girl?"

She nickered at me and went back to pawing the straw into a heap. I watched her belly for a while and said, "I think I saw the foal move in her. She may be having contractions. We'd better keep an eye on her tonight."

Tammy said, "I'll stay here for a while. You two can go get something to eat and I'll come in later." 

"Okay, we'll see you later." 
________________

When Josh and I went in for supper I said, "It might be a late night for us. It looks like Julie is ready to drop that foal. Tammy stayed at the barn to watch her."

Carmen was elated. "Oh, I've got to see this! I'll take a turn at the barn with her. We get along good." 

Brenda said, "I wouldn't volunteer if I were you. It's pretty chilly out there tonight. But if you're going, I'll make another pot of coffee and bring you some."

The power was off right then, so there was no electricity in the big barn. I hoped the utility power would stay on enough through the winter to keep the water tank thawed.  I found a battery powered lantern to take out there since it was past sundown and would be dark in the enclosed stall. I took it and a cup of hot coffee out to the barn so Tammy could come in to eat. I got there just in time to see Julie lay down in her pile of straw and saw obvious contractions. She picked her head up for a couple minutes and looked at me, then laid it down again as I hung up the lantern. 

Tammy said softly, "There it comes!" 

The foal had just been born when Julie got her bulk up off the floor and turned to it. She cleaned it's nostrils and face, then rooted it in the belly until the new foal gave a grunt and was breathing fine. Julie went to work cleaning the foal which soon had it's head up looking around at its' new world. it was soon struggling to stand and Julie was helping, pushing it with her nose to help it gain its' balance. The little rounded hoofs got some purchase on the floor so it got up on wobbly legs. In a matter of a couple minutes, it was nursing. 

"We need to stay and make sure she passes the afterbirth. If she doesn't clean herself out, we'll have to call the vet," I told Tammy. 

I frowned when Julie pulled away from the nursing foal then turned and laid down. The foal wasn't finished yet and wobbled over closer to her. Julie paid little attention. I was worried until I saw another contraction and decided she was passing the afterbirth, but then I was astounded to see another little head coming out. 

I said, "She's having twins!" 

Tammy squealed a little and got closer. The second foal was born quickly. Julie was tired, but got to her feet and dealt with the second one. We watched as she cleaned the newest foal and got him on his feet. This one was male, a "horse colt" was the old term, or just "colt" now. He began to nurse as his sister went to the other side to finish her first meal. I hugged Tammy and said softly, "She did good! A good mother and doing all the right stuff. Now we watch to make sure she gets cleaned out and that everyone gets bedded down tonight."

"They are small, aren't they, for such a big horse?"

"Devin told me that Percherons have smaller foals. It makes for easier births. They grow fast, so don't worry about that. We'll have to feed Julie really well while she's nursing both of them," I said.

"She can do it. Her udder is big, almost like a cow," Tammy said. 

Carmen couldn't stand it any longer and walked to the barn. She came in quietly and spoke to us,

"How's she doing?" 

About the time I said, "You missed it," Carmen saw the stud colt nursing and exclaimed, "Oh, isn't it cute!"

Tammy half hid a smirk and said, "You ought to see the other one."

"Huh?"

"Over here," Tammy said, and pointed. 

"Omigosh! She had TWINS! Oh, Julie you did great! I'm proud of you!"

Julie wasn't paying a lot of attention to us. Her head was hanging low and her droopy eyes showed she was exhausted. I told the women, "I'm going to leave the lantern on in here tonight. With two of 'em to watch out for, she needs to be able to see 'em." 

The filly had all she could hold and had laid down in the straw pile. The colt finished soon after and joined her, looking sleepy. Julie nuzzled them both and snuffled at them, like an experienced mother. Before long she laid down near them and passed the offal which we cleaned out of the stall immediately. I bagged it up in plastic to hide the smell of blood. I didn't want the odor to attract any coyotes. We could lock up her stall, but she didn't need the stress of predators around. 

We set up a schedule to have someone there with them all night with a gun and spare batteries for the lantern to make sure the new family was not disturbed. Carmen volunteered for the first shift, so Tammy and I went to the house so she could eat and we could tell the family about it all. The only thing that bothered me was that Carmen refused to have a gun with her. 
__________________


Chapter 26

There were coyotes around the neighborhood, but they must have been more attracted to the commercial poultry houses up the road from us because we weren't troubled by them. The next day I went to work doing a better job on individual feeding pens for the hogs. I hadn't planned to buy that many hogs initially, but thought it would be better to breed and raise some. The Amish man had needed some money, so he made me a good price on them and I couldn't pass that up. By late Spring, we'd have a lot of little pigs running around. 

That meant we would need a lot of feed by next Fall, so I began to think about growing some corn. We'd discovered an ancient moldboard plow and a small disreputable disk in the weeds when we were cutting logs and firewood. They were very rusty, but seemed to be intact. It was a pretty day so I got the tractor started with the help of a little ether and lifted the old plow out of the dirt with the front end loader, then hitched it up and took it to the shop. I worked on it with the sanding disc on my angle grinder until it all 3 moldboards were shining. It was worn but would do for a few acres a year. 

The disc was more trouble to get cleaned up, and the blades were badly worn. It was all I had, so it would have to do. I didn't have a corn planter, nor a cultivator so I'd have to look about getting something. Money was getting very tight, so I was getting discouraged when it occurred to me that the garden tractor had a cultivator and I had a little push planter I used in the garden. If I spaced the rows wide enough to let the garden tractor through the middles, I could do it with that. After all, I was only thinking about 2 or 3 acres of corn. It would take some time, but I had plenty of help. 

What I had in mind was to just raise the corn, but not plan on picking it. I'd let the hogs do that themselves. We'd have to put up a fence to keep them out of the corn until it was ready, but that was no big deal. Looking over the place I decided I'd plow up the flattest part at the back end of the pasture. My plans made, I set to work on the disc and got the old bearings taken out, washed and greased. They should have been replaced, but this was a low budget operation. In the days that followed before the Spring rains began, I got some of the rust cleaned off the old implement frames. I hauled them to the big barn and Carmen got some paint on them. Meanwhile, Josh and I worked on setting fence posts when we had time between other jobs. 
_________________

Now I had a problem. It was time to butcher those two big hogs before the weather got any warmer, but the smell of blood would drive the other animals nuts. The last thing I needed was a panicky horse around two little foals. Since it is nearly impossible to drive hogs across an open field, I decided to load the two up in the stock trailer and take them over to the big machinery shed for butchering. 

"Ladies, we need a lot of pans and buckets cleaned up to put meat in," I told everyone over a very early breakfast. "Unless you'd rather load and haul hogs, that is."

Brenda wrinkled her nose at me and said, "I'll get some water heating on the wood stove. It's going to take a lot of hot water."

Carmen said, "I'll clean up after breakfast so Tammy can help you getting ready."

The loading and hauling was easy enough. I got the tractor started and Josh shot the hogs in the trailer, then I used the loader to lift them one at a time for butchering. The tractor and loader made easy work of hauling the offal to the woods and burying it. Since meat was precious, we saved the hearts and livers to eat or sell. The kidneys and other organs we would grind like sausage and freeze it to make dog food later by cooking it with some ground cornmeal. Sonny would love it. There would probably be enough to add some to the chicken feed, too. Waste not, want not. 

Josh took Vivian some fresh liver to cook, which pleased her no end. It was pretty late when we sat down to eat supper. We had the mess cleaned up and the hogs shaved and hanging in halves to get cold back in the upper floor of the big barn where it would be safe from predators. Tomorrow would be soon enough to begin cutting meat. We were all worn out. 
________________

It was two weeks later when I took down one each of the sugar cured and smoked hams, shoulders, sides of bacon and jowls from our improvised smokehouse in a shed at the farm. Brenda and I wrapped them all in some old pillow cases and sheets she'd saved for the purpose. The rest we left to hang there for storage. I put a stout padlock on the door, we loaded the truck with the wrapped meat and headed for Susan and Art's place with 140 pounds of cured pork. That was half of one hog. We hadn't weighed them, but the hogs must have been close to 400 pounds each when we butchered them. 

I had also put a bucket in the truck that contained fried sausage patties preserved in lard. We still have 3 buckets of lard at home, one with sausage in it and the other 2 plain. The hot lard was perfectly sterilized and now hot packed and sealed in the buckets. That would all stay good until hot weather if kept cool. 

"Oh good! You brought lard. Nothing makes a pie crust like lard," Susan said. 

Art said, "I'll help you carry the meat. It goes in the back room of the basement. Don't worry about the dogs. I put them in the the garage."

"It's heavy. The ham and shoulder are probably over 40 pounds apiece. I had to split them open to be sure the salt and sugar cure got all the way through the meat. That's why there are so many pieces."

"This is enough meat to last us a year, with what beef we have," Art grunted it out as he struggled with the awkward shaped chunks. 

"It won't keep forever just cured and smoked, but it will be good for a couple months at least, probably more. You'll have to freeze it after that," I told him. 

"We have freezer room now, but I want to keep it as-is for a while so we don't have to slice and package it, and we can just cut off what we want to use without having to thaw it out." 

"Okay. Keep an eye on it, and if you start to see any mold on the surface, just wash it with strong salt brine and then rub more dry salt on it. Remember you have to soak it overnight to get some of the salt out of it before you cook it and make it moist and tender."

We had it all hung on nails in the overhead joists. Susan knew all about this process and had given us some thin aluminum pie pans, the throwaway kind. We tied a short wire to each piece of meat and poked it through a pie pan upside down over the chunk. The wire was hung on a nail overhead, so it a mouse managed to get up there, he'd fall off the slick pie pan to the floor. We'd done that for a lifetime and never had a problem with mice. 

I sold them the meat for about 2/3 of store price, and we made enough on the deal to pay for the whole hog. The rest of the meat from that hog was our profit. 

Back upstairs with the women I asked,  "How are things going for you?" 

Susan said, "We're doing good. Well, we're doing better than most. We're both working. My job kinda sucks now, because they have cut back so many people I'm doing about 3 jobs in the Records Department. The hospital isn't getting near the business they used to, probably because people don't have insurance and can't pay them. The emergency room is overrun with welfare cases, and the regular rooms are only half filled. The law says they have to treat emergencies even if they can't pay, so they aren't making much money. The stockholders are screaming bloody murder." 

"I thought that Obamacare made sure everybody had insurance."

Susan laughed and said, "It's so much cheaper to pay the fine than to get the insurance that almost nobody signed up for it. That's going to break the hospitals and doctors. The drug companies are sucking air, too, because nobody can afford their high priced drugs."

"What are people doing for health care then?"

"They're doing without, that's what. I hear that the animal vets are doing a good business, though. They are a lot cheaper because they don't have the malpractice insurance, and a bunch of other overhead. They get drugs for near nothing too, by comparison." 

"You mean people are being treated by vets?"

"Oh yeah. If they get caught, they go to jail, but they have to make a living, and people can't afford to take their animals to them now, so it's a big black market thing. All cash business, too."

"Sounds risky to me, for doctor and patient alike," I said. 

Susan shrugged. "It beats dying I guess. People are having a hard time of it, so they do what they have to do."

Art said his maintenance deptartment had been cut back so much that they had unsafe planes flying. They couldn't keep up with the workload and the company lied about the required maintenance checks and flew the planes without it. We agreed that this was not going to end well.
___________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 27 March, 2015


Julie was loving the grass that just turned green again with the warmer weather. I watched her and the 2 foals wandering the pasture with the cattle while I worked in the barn. I had turned the hogs out to the other half of the pasture so I could clean their pens. It would be a job to get them back inside with their noses in the fresh grass, so I'd wait until feeding time tonight then shut them in. The manure pile outside was getting big. There should be plenty for the corn patch I wanted to plant. 

I heard, then saw the EMT van go past and thought it was probably a wreck somewhere up the road, but I saw it stop at Vivan's house. Very soon it was heading to town. I was finished in the barn, so I went to the house to tell the family about it. 

Carmen said, "I saw the EMT's go past. It sounded like they stopped down the road."

"Yes. They went to Vivian's and I guess they took her to the hospital. They were just there for a few minutes."

Carmen said, "I hope she's all right. I was going down there later today to clean. I guess I could call the hospital and maybe find out what's going on." 

Brenda said, "She's getting pretty old. It sounds bad to me."

Tammy said, "She had to have called them herself, with noone else there. Maybe she just fell or something."

Later, Carmen said, "I called and talked to the emergency room. I lied and told her I was her niece and asked where she was so I could come visit her. They told me she was dead on arrival. They said Trask Funeral Home would handle the arrangements." 
___________________

It was a week later when Brenda got a call from David Martin, Vivian's nephew. He was the executor of her estate and said she mentioned Carmen, Joshua, and Tammy Ellis in her will and had given our address and phone number. I put Carmen on the phone.

"Yes, that's me. Okay, what time? Ten o'clock. Okay. We'll be there. Thank you." 

Carmen hung up and said, "We're supposed to go to the reading of her will tomorrow at ten. It's at some lawyer's office in town. I can't imagine why she'd leave us anything, but we'll go and find out I guess."
__________________

Vivan had left them $1,000 each and a letter of thanks for "being very nice to an old lady", in her words. She had left a bequest of money to her church. The house and lot and the balance of her estate was to be split between David and his brother however they saw fit. It was a week after that when we saw David moving in. Josh and I walked over to see if he wanted help moving things, since he seemed to be alone. 

"Hello. I'm Jack Hesston, your neighbor. You've met Josh, I guess. Want a hand with some of that?" 

"Yeah! That'd be good. The furniture isn't that heavy, but it's awkward for one man."

We carried in the bedroom furniture, a couch and chairs, and a dining table then stopped to rest.

David said, "I sure appreciate that. I had the devil of a time getting it loaded on the trailer. I feel like I know you, because Aunt Viv talked about you a lot. Said you were real nice neighbors."

"We liked her a lot. She was a sweet old lady."

"I have to make another load today if I can before time to run the school bus this afternoon. I'd better go get something to eat and get busy."

"You're welcome to come over and have lunch with us. It'll be pot luck, but there's always plenty. We'll just set another plate."

"I hate to impose on you."

"Not at all. C'mon with us over to the house. It'll be a good time to start getting acquainted."
_________________

We learned that David was a widower and had a small internet business besides driving the school bus. 

"My brother and I made a deal for my house. He plans to rent it out. Said that income would do him more good than having money with nowhere safe to invest it. I just didn't want to live there after my wife passed away. I always liked Aunt Viv's place and spent some time there as a kid, so it kinda seems like home to me."

"We're glad to have you as a neighbor. If you want, I can work up the garden space there when I work up a corn field. It's right there by the machinery shed, so it won't take a minute."

"That would be great! All I have is a tiller and that would be big job for it. I hope I can do something for you sometime., " David said. 

I told him, "We're just getting started at this farming thing. We'll need a hand when it comes time to make hay, so don't commit yourself too much here!"

Carmen said, "That's right. Be careful or he'll work you to a frazzle!"

David laughed and said, "I think I can still pick up a hay bale. I'd better get going. Time flies when you're having a good time, but I have to be there on time with the bus."

When David had gone, Carmen said, "He seems like a nice guy."

I agreed with her. I had noticed she'd paid close attention to him at the table, but I didn't mention it. He was about her age and she hadn't missed that, either. Anyone could see what Carmen was thinking, all the time. 
__________________

David hadn't missed it either. He walked over a couple days later and asked if someone had time to drive his pickup back for him so he could go fetch the school bus? I was busy on a welding job, and Josh had a car he was working on, so I went to the house with him. Tammy was cleaning up Hailey after lunch, so Brenda said, "You want to do that Carmen?"

"Sure! I can drive a pickup. I don't want to try the bus, though!"

David smiled and said, "I wouldn't do that to you. I could get my brother to help tonight, if it's too much trouble."

Carmen smiled and said, "No, I don't mind."

David said, "It would save me a trip if I don't have to take him home."

They left together and were back in an hour. When he dropped Carmen off, she looked happier than she had since she moved in with us. David was smiling as he waved goodbye, too.
__________________


Chapter 28 April, 2015

It had not been easy, but we had managed to load Julie and both foals in the stock trailer and take them to an Amish fellow I learned about. He had a really good Percheron stud. I didn't know who owned the horse she was last bred to, and I probably couldn't afford his stud fees anyway. This man's fee was reasonable and he would keep all 3 of them to keep the mare satisfied. He had pens that allowed the foals to be next to their mother while she associated with the stallion to get her in the mood. I left them all at his place for 3 days until she came in heat and the deed was done. He gave me papers to file for registering the foal when the time came. I had not known his stud was registered, but he assured me it was a very good bloodline. He had inherited the horse from his father who had paid a great deal for him. 

Green, really green grass made everyone feel better. The Daffodils had poked up their yellow heads. The colts were playing tag in the pasture among the cattle. Julie was grazing peacefully while she kept an eye on them. I had penned the hogs up close to the barn to keep them from destroying our pasture before it grew enough for them. 

Sonny had his tail in the air coming back from the fencerow. He had caught himself a rabbit for lunch and was proud as could be. My old hunting buddies would say that was a cardinal sin to let a hunting dog eat what he caught, but these were hard times and I was glad he was feeding himself part of the time. He brought it to me anyway. I told him he was a fine dog, and gave it back to him. he carried it off into the yard to lay down and have a meal. 

Spring rains had left the pastures soggy and too wet to plow. I had plowed 2 of our 4 big gardens last Fall, though, so two days of sunshine had those dry enough to disk and plant. The two new patches had cover crops of winter wheat that would need to be mowed off and plowed down when the ground was dry enough. The wheat would discourage grass from the old lawn there, due to some chemical that wheat produced. I wanted to add manure to enrich those plots and plow it down, too. 

All the farmers in the county were trying to get ready for planting season, so I was covered up with shop work. Josh had become acquainted with the garden tractor so he got the disking finished and helped Tammy set out the plants she'd started indoors. Cabbage, broccoli, and onion seedlings were all we felt safe to put out now, with the threat of frost lingering. They sowed seeds for kale, peas, radishes lettuce, endive, carrots, spinach, and I don't know what else. 

Tomorrow was Good Friday, the traditional day here to plant early potatoes, so Brenda was cutting seed potatoes today to give the piece time to dry on the surface, and "heal" as dad used to say. It was supposed to help prevent rotting in a wet year. Some onions had wintered over and I'd left a row of beets to go to seed near one edge of a patch where we could cultivate up close to them. We had saved seeds from everything we knew how to do, but there were still some seeds we would need to buy. Overall, I thought we were doing pretty well growing food for a very low cost. 

When Josh shut the garden tractor off, I could hear David's tiller running across the low pasture. Like us, he was getting an early start with cold weather crops. I went in for coffee and said to the women in the kitchen, "We've got an abundance of seed we had saved from spinach, kale and radishes. Somebody could take an envelope of each down to David."

Brenda said, "That's a good idea. Carmen, you want to take him the rest of that stew we had yesterday? It's not enough for a meal for us and I don't want it to go to waste."

"Yeah, I'll do that. I don't know if he can cook or not. I doubt if he's eating right since he lost his wife."

Later, as I worked on a big field cultivator, I heard the back door close and saw Carmen going towards David's place. I thought the least we could do was to give her some social opportunities.
__________________

Spring is a beautiful time of year and full of opportunities on a farm, but they come only with a lot of hard work. Everything wanted attention at once. I needed to clean the hen house and put that manure on the gardens. The pile of manure by the barn wanted to be spread on the fields and gardens. I had just finished some pens in the barn for the sows that would be having little pigs any day now. The yard was needing to be mowed, a useless task in my opinion. It made me want to move the pasture fence closer to the house so the cattle could do more of the mowing. Or maybe I should just plow it up and plant something. I wasn't sure which. Just then, I had to get the repair job finished and start on the next one. 

I finished the cultivator and a small welding job on a lawn mower and in the middle of that the owner had picked up the cultivator. We called and left a message for the owner of the mower, then Brenda, Tammy and I took off for town to get what garden seeds they wanted. We hadn't been to town in a while, so we all went together in Carmen's car and had plenty of room for Hailey's car seat. Carmen said she had a pie to bake so she was staying home with Josh. 

As we got to the edge of town Brenda said, "There's a lot more empty houses now."

"I saw that. More empty business buildings, too. It looks like that rent-to-own place is gone, and the video rental place closed last year. The only thing left in that little shopping center is the discount grocery and the dollar store."

Tammy said, "Josh told me the auto parts store on Main Street closed. There's just two of them now, Auto Zone and O'Reilly's."

I said, "There's not enough business to keep them all going, I guess. I hope we don't lose too many businesses."

I needed some things from the farm store and the whole crowd went in with me, needing the break from home life. There was only one other vehicle in the lot besdies ours and I recognized it.

Our son Brad almost bumped into me as I rounded the end of an aisle.

"Hey, Dad! How're you doin'?"

"I'm fine. Good to see you!" 

Stephie came up behind him with their cart and spoke to us. We all made the usual friendly noises and then got down to serious shopping, us for batteries, bolts, and garden seeds. Brad needed fence staples, barbed wire, and gate hinges for the goat project, and Stephie wanted some leather gloves for helping him. We got back together on the way to the checkout. 

Stephie said, "We're about done with the fence. We're supposed to get the goats next week. One is about ready to kid and the other is not far behind her, so we built a little shelter for them. The Billy is very protective they said, but we want them closed up inside at night because of the coyotes. It's just 12 feet by 16 feet, but it doesn't take much room for goats." 

Tammy asked, "Are you going to drink all that milk, or sell some?"

Stephie said, "Oh no, we're going to make cheese! I love goat cheese and it is far too expensive. We'll raise the little ones and see if they look to be good milkers, and butcher the billys and culls for meat. We need to clear some brushy ground and goats will work hard at that. If we follow them with a few pigs, they will dig out the roots and both will fertilize the ground. then we eat the meat and sow grass seed..."

In the checkout line Brad was turned toward the women to listen, but also heard the one guy in front of him say something that caught his attention. I saw Brad look over his shoulder at the man, but I couldn't see what was going on. Apparently the guy hadn't seen us walk up behind him, either. He was concentrating on pointing his pistol at the clerk and demanding money. Brad is thin and wiry, and very fast. He spun on his heel and whacked the guy a good lick sideways on the back of his hand with the foot long gate hinges he had. The gun clattered to the floor, and the man yelled in pain. 

"Ain't havin' that here buster, so get the hell out before I hurt you!" 

The young man stood there for a few seconds, obviously hurting, and Brad hit his other hand with the hinges and said, "I told you to LEAVE, and I mean NOW!" 

The guy screeched and ran. Brad was standing on the pistol the man had dropped. He bent over and picked it up saying, "I guess he didn't want this since he left it layin' here." 

Brad checked the gun's safety then put it in his pocket and said to the checkout girl, "Sorry about the disturbance Ma'am. I need to pay for this stuff."

He laid his hardware on the counter. The girl was stammering something, still in shock at the attempted robbery. Brad said calmly, "Ma'am, if you don't mind, me and the family have a lot to do today and I don't want to spend the whole day talkin' to the police, so if it's all the same to you, this never happened. What do you say?"

The girl was pretty pale, but she got it together well enough to say, "That's fine with me."

Brad asked if the store had cameras in it? She told him yes, but they couldn't afford the alarm service now so they didn't work.

Brad said, "Take your time and let your nerves settle down. We're not in that much of a hurry, okay?"

"Ye-Yeah. Okay." 

"Since you don't have a security service now, would you want this gun he had for your protection?"

"YES! This isn't the first time. I wish I'd had a gun when he was here! I could never afford one."

"Okay, here you go. D'you know how it works? How to put it on safety and load and unload it and all?" 

"Let me look at it."

Brad held it out holding it by , watching her carefully. 

"Yes. That's a .45 Colt. I've handled them before. My ex-boyfriend had one like that. This is the safety and it's on now, right?"

Brad told her she was right. and watched her drop the magazine out, flick the safety, and shuck the round out of the chamber. She picked up the loose round and stuffed it back in the magazine, then put the magazine back in it's well. Satisfied she wouldn't accidentally shoot somebody, Brad told her, "Don't point that thing at anybody you don't intend to shoot, okay?"

"I won't. I was WISHING SO HARD I had a gun when he tried that ----! Well I've got one now! And pieces of crap like him had better behave." She put the gun under the counter and said, "Thank you. Thank you so much." 

"No problem Ma'am. You just be real careful with that thing, okay?"

"I will. I know how it works. I'd better get busy and get you checked out."

The middle aged woman was lean and muscular. She had the tanned and slightly wrinkled skin of an outdoor person. I judged she had grown up with guns, from what I'd seen. She had calmed down pretty fast, which looked like she was pretty stable. She got us all checked out in businesslike fashion and we were on our way. She gave us a big smile and a wave as we left.

Outside, Brad said, "I hit that guy pretty hard. He won't be doin' much of anything but soaking his sore hands for a while. Probably broke a few bones in there. That generally takes the fight right out of 'em"

Stephanie said, "I didn't recognize him, so he must not be from around here."

I said, "Yeah and that worries me a little. We don't need any trouble coming to town."

Tammy said, "That one won't be any trouble. Did you see his face? He was hurt bad. He won't be back."

As we got in the car Brenda said, "I hope you're right." 

I said, "Anybody that tries something like that needs to get his head thumped and it'll slow down real quick. Changin' the subject, but do we need to make any more stops in town?"

Everyone agreed to a quick stop at the grocery and we were on our way home. 
________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 29 Early May, 2015


We told our stories when we got home to Carmen and Josh. Josh's look sharpened to alert status, but his mother got bugeyed. 

Josh asked her, "Mom, are you about ready to get a gun now?"

"Guns scare me. I don't want a gun." 

He said, "Better to be scared than dead," then turned and went back to work in the basement shop. 

Carmen didn't want to hear any more of that and changed the subject. She asked Brenda, "Didn't you get any celery?"

"The grocery didn't have any fresh celery," Brenda said. "I wanted it too for the vegetable soup." She was putting away the few things we bought there.

Carmen said, "We can use celery seed for some flavor, but it's not the same. They used to have celery, so I guess they just ran out."

"There wasn't much in the produce section. There were some nasty looking pink tomatoes, a few heads of cabbage, and some shrivelled green peppers, but not a lot else. I didn't see anything but the cheap white bread, and they didn't have much milk, just 2% milk and not much of that. Maybe we need a milk cow. Stephie said they would be getting goats soon."

I asked, "What would we do with that much milk? You're looking at 4 to 6 gallons a DAY!"

"Oh, I know,"Brenda said, "It's just so frustrating to not get what we want at the grocery, even though it's not much. And it keeps getting worse. They don't have a lot of spices, and sometimes they don't even have black pepper. I want to plant a lot of cayenne peppers this year."

The talk stopped when Josh came upstairs with a bleeding finger. He had it wrapped in a clean shop towel, but it was still dripping a little. 

"Get to the bathroom," I told him. "We'll get you fixed up."

"I was cutting out a gasket for the thermostat on that car and I slipped. It's pretty deep, I think."

I used the shop towel as a tourniquet to stop the blood flow long enough to work on it. I just tied a big knot in the towel on the back side of his wrist and told him to twist the knot tight. It worked well enough to let me clean the cut with Betadyne solution and then douse it with triple antibiotic cream. I cut 2 butterfly bandages from adhesive tape and stuck the sides of the cut together. It had made a mess in the sink , but he hadn't lost much blood. 

"Okay, let up on the tourniquet and let's see if that's got it."

He did and we saw only a seep of blood. I put a compress pad of gauze with antibiotic cream on it to prevent sticking. I dug in the first aid cabinet for a popcicle stick and taped it in place to immobilize the finger. 

"Now, keep that elevated for a while until it quits seeping. It needs to seal up naturally. You don't want to break that seal open either. That will be all of the wrench work for today, and probably a couple more days, or you'll screw it up."

Josh said, "I promised to get her car done today. She needs it to go to work tomorrow." 

"Okay," I said. "You relax for a half an hour and then we'll go see what's left to do. I can finish it up. We can get the women to pinch hit for me on the chores tonight if necessary."

"There's not that much to do. I can sit there and show you where I put everything. It's just do the thermostat and put the radiator back in. Then the hoses and antifreeze, and that's it. Well, if the used radiator I got was good. We'll have to start it up and be sure it doesn't leak, then put the grille back in. Maybe an hour and a half if you take your time. I told her I'd deliver the car and she's supposed to bring me home."

"Okay. You go sit in the kitchen and have some coffee and I'll see about getting it back together. Keep that arm propped up on the bar with your hand in the air for at least half an hour. Then you come down to the shop and I'll show you how to cut out a perfect gasket with a ball pein hammer."
____________________

When the car was finished, we left it running in the driveway for a while to make sure that used radiator was okay then shut it off. It was, so we ran my tractor in for an oil and filter change. It need the fuel filters replaced. I hadn't been able to find them in town, but Lester had a couple stashed. I'd need to find some soon. It was time for supper, so we went back upstairs and washed up.

Vegetable soup smelled really good as Tammy dished it up into bowls. She said Carmen had taken a quart of it down to David and would be back soon, so we sat down and got busy eating. Carmen came storming in the back door looking upset, but said nothing until Brenda asked, "What's wrong?"

"David pointed a GUN at me! I saw him in the kitchen, so I went in with the soup, then he turned around and was going to SHOOT ME!"

I asked, "Did you knock on the door?"

"What difference does that make? He had no business pointing a gun at me! He can go straight to hell! I don't ever want to see him again." 

Carmen stomped off to the bathroom and slammed the door. Nobody said a word. We could hear Carmen crying in the bathroom. The phone rang and I answered it. 
"Hello?"
"Jack?"
"Yes."
"This is David Martin. Carmen just left here screaming I was going to kill her, and that's not how it was."
"I didn't think so, David. She gets hysterical sometimes."
"I was cleaning up in the kitchen and when she walked in, I didn't know who it was. Could've been one of those home invasions we hear about now. I've taken to carrying my pistol at home because of that, and she took me by surprise. She didn't knock or say anything until she was inside. Scared the crap outa me, and then it went downhill from there."

"I thought it was something like that. Don't worry about it David."

"Look, I'm sorry I scared her. I wouldn't hurt her for anything. It's just the worry about crime these days, you know? Would you tell her I'm sorry about that and I apologize. I keep the pistol on safety and I had my thumb on the safety button. There was no chance I'd shoot anyone until I KNOW they are a threat!" 

"I'll explain it to her David. I can't guarantee that she'll listen, though. Carmen goes kinda nuts about guns."

Carmen had heard me say that when she came out of the bathroom. She came into the kitchen and said, "Who are you telling that I'm nuts? Is that David on the phone? Give it to me!"

I told David, "I'll call you later," and hung up. 

"Yes, that was David, telling me what really happened. You barged in and scared the hell outa him. You ought to expect to get shot doing that these days! You're real lucky he's a level headed guy!"

"So you say! He's just another gun crazy fool like you and Brenda and that boy of mine! You even gave one to Tammy! NONE of you should have guns! You're all a bunch of pyschos!"

Brenda started to say something, but I beat her to it.

"CAN IT, CARMEN! I've had enough of your liberal crap! Face reality for a change! The WORLD is a little nuts now, not us! We're trying to take care of you idiots that can't seem to muster the courage to do it yourself, so shut the hell up, okay?"

Carmen started crying again. I thought Brenda would go to her and sympathize, but instead, she said, "That will be enough of that Carmen! You don't live here and talk to my husband that way. You can shut up this minute, or you can pack your sh!t and leave. I don't care a lot either way!"

Carmen stood there in shock for a minute, then her face got pale and she went to her bedroom.

I said nothing, just looking at Brenda. 

Josh spoke from behind me and said, "We'll move out if you want Jack. You've treated us good, and she's got no right to talk like that. I won't put up with it and she's my mother, so you sure don't have to."

I had calmed down some, having gotten it off my chest. I said, "Wait and see what she has to say. You and Tammy are welcome as long as you want to stay here."

Brenda said, "I'm going to have a talk with her. Right now."

Her face told me to get out of her way, so I did. You don't mess with Brenda when she's on a mission. She went into the bedroom with Carmen and it got a little noisy in there for a while. I never cared to be around screeching women, so I asked Josh if we didn't need to deliver that car? 

Some loud boo-hooing came from the bedroom. Tammy rolled her eyes and said, "I'll get Hailey." 

Josh, Tammy and the baby got into his truck to show me the way and I followed in my truck. Josh had the woman drive the car and see that the power steering worked now, and it didn't overheat. She thanked him and paid him in cash, then they all piled into my truck to go back. 

When we went in the back door, Brenda and Carmen were standing in the kitchen waiting. 

Brenda said, "Carmen has something to say to all of you." She looked at Carmen who was pale, but calm and serious.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I'm really sorry."

She paused and searched for words, then said, "I'm...I don't know what to say. I need to go stay with Charlene and Howard. "I don't... I shouldn't stay here now."

"Tell him what we talked about!" Brenda was not taking any half steps.

Carmen's face got even more drawn, but she got it out. 

"Brenda said I always wanted someone to take care of me and I had to learn to do it myself now. She said..."

"Not what I said, Carmen! What you agreed to!" Brenda's eyes were flashing lightning at her sister.

"I wanted to move out tonight, but Brenda said no."

Brenda stood with her hands on her hips and said, "TELL HIM!"

"OKAY! I said I'd have you teach me to shoot a gun." 

I looked at Brenda and got a determined stare that flashed back at Carmen. Carmen looked utterly terrified. 

Brenda said, "AND?"

"We would start as soon as you got home..."
_____________________


Chapter 30

Brenda had already made Carmen call David and apologize for walking in without knocking. David was apolgizing too, so it must have been quite a conversation. 

I wasn't so sure I wanted to give that woman a gun at that moment, but Brenda had that figured out. It was to be only handling taught tonight, and probably for several days until we were sure she wouldn't do something idiotic. As it worked out, it was a month before I showed her how to load my revolver, and like Barney Fife, she only got one shell at a time. 

Carmen was getting bored by the routine of safety drills and said, "Why do we keep going over this? I know how it works now. I knew right away."

"Because it's not about how it works, it's about how YOU work with it. Since you had no idea about gun handling, we're going over it until you can do it in your sleep, or when you first wake up, or when you're scared to death because that's when you have to be able to do it right. It's about responsibility. You carry deadly force in your hand, you are RESPONSIBLE for what you do with it. No mistakes are allowed, ever. You make a mistake, and somebody dies needlessly. I don't want you to wake up and shoot one of us because you heard a noise and got scared, okay?"

She took the lecture better than I expected. Brenda standing there might have had something to do with it. 

"Put your ear muffs on. Brenda, show how it's done." Brenda put 6 rounds in the center of the straw bale in a spot the size of a baseball. I wanted Carmen to know how loud it would be to get that surprise out of the way.

"Okay, let's do it," I told her. We were down by the barn, and all the stock was in the other half of the pasture. There was a nice big hill for a backstop that had been explained to her in detail. I had put a bale of straw about 20 steps away and covered it with a sheet of newspaper. Carmen had dry fired at it many times, the last few with me thumping the gun to simulate recoil. Even with light loads, a .38 has some recoil and I didn't want her to get hit in the face with it, or worse. 

She had learned to hold it with a solid two hand grip with a passable Weaver stance. I had to keep telling her to unlock her knees. I'd never seen anyone so tense. 

She loaded one shell in the revolver and dry fired it at the target until the loaded round was next. We were doing it double action only, because that was what she would have to do if she really needed to shoot something. She tensed and squinched her eyes as she started the trigger squeeze. 

"STOP! Open your eyes! You have to SEE what you're shooting at!"

She trembled slightly, but she did it. Then she finally fired and looked pretty wobbly, but she kept the gun aimed in a safe direction. She missed the straw bale, but I expected that. 

I let her get her nerves calmed down some and handed her another round. She took a deep breath and loaded the round. I ran her through the 3 dry fires before the live round came up. 

"Keep BOTH eyes open. Breathe slowly. Sights aligned. Sights on target. Don't jerk the trigger. SQEEEEZE it slowly. The firing should be a surprise when it happens. The gun should come back down on target for the next shot."

She hit the paper that time. It was high and to the left, but it was on the paper. She took a deep breath and looked at that hole. I gave her another round. That one went closer to the center. She shot a few more and I called a halt to change the paper. 

I put a squirt of black spray paint in the center and went back to the women. We spent the next 2 hours at the routine. Fire 6 rounds, open the cylinder and eject the empties. Lay it down until I change the target paper. Reload and do it again. When she had fired almost 100 rounds, I called a halt. She was putting 6 rounds in a spot the size of a dinner plate by then. That was good enough for double action shooting, I thought. 

"I don't want you to wake up with sore hands and wrists. Even though those are light loads, they hit you harder than you might realize. Let's call it a day."

Carmen said, "My hands do hurt a little, but not too bad."

"We'll give it a few days and come back with this gun to just shoot a few every couple days. That will help burn into your memory everything you learned. Tomorrow, you get the .22 and before long you will learn to pot a squirrel."

Carmen ejected the last empty rounds and handed me the gun. I said, "How about you carry it to the house and put it away?"

"Okay." She sounded kind muted. I let it lay. I saw her look at the cylinder to assure herself it was empty, then carry it one-handed while I picked up the empty brass and the target papers. I handed those to Brenda and put away the now shredded bale of straw. 

I knew David had heard the target shooting, and probably saw who was doing it. I let nature take its' own course there. It was well into the second week when Carmen finally walked to his house and knocked on the back door with a peace offering of some fresh baked bread. 

It looked like things might be getting back on track. A few days had passed after our third target session when Carmen caught me alone in the shop and thanked me for teaching her to shoot. I just said, "You needed to learn. Are we good now?"

"Yeah. We're good."

I gave her a smile and got one back. 
___________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 31 June, 2015

Our early tomatoes had some big green ones on them, a few turning orange, but the red ones I'd seen were gone that morning. We'd been having fresh salads for a while now with lettuce and radishes, and some wintered over kale greens. Something had been chewing on the garden plants and had eaten part of a row of green beans. Carmen was planted those beans and was pretty mad about it.

I was in the shop one day and saw a rabbit hopping his way slowly out of the garden toward the raspberry briars at the back fence. We had cleaned the rabbits out of there with box traps last year, but some more had moved in. It was time for a break so I went in for afternoon coffee. 

Carmen was busy cutting up a tomato on a bowl of lettuce. I said, "I know what's eating the beans."

She gave me a sharp glance and said, "What?"

"Rabbits. We've got some more in the fencerow. I saw one leaving the garden."

Brenda must have made quite a point about Carmen taking responsibility for herself. Carmen started to say, "You're going to..." Then she stopped and said. "Show me where you saw it."

We walked out to the back porch that overlooked the lower gardens. "Just about where that big wild cherry tree is in the fence row is where he went in."

"Okay. I'll watch for him," she said. 

We went back inside and she went back to fixing the salad. I noticed she glanced at my 10/.22 that I kept hanging over the back door. It was the only way I could assure that Hailey couldn't get to it. Carmen could barely reach it on tiptoes. She'd had plenty of bench time and was pretty good with it. I got myself a cup of instant coffee and went back out to work, wondering if Carmen was serious about rabbit hunting.

It was a warm day so we had the windows open to let the cooking heat out. After supper, Carmen was washing dishes and Tammy was drying while the rest of us began putting things away. Carmen left the sink, drying her hands. She got the .22 off its' hooks and had Tammy raise the window screen. The rifle barrel went out the window and rested on the window sill. Everybody got quiet while she sighted through the scope, then the rifle popped and a shell ejected into the dish drainer. 

I looked out the screen door and saw a bunny laying dead in the garden. Carmen put the gun back on safety and hung it up, then disappeared out the door. In a few minutes she came back and laid the dead rabbit on the picnic table by the porch.

She said, "Josh, would you skin that thing for me? I need to finish the dishes. I plan to fry him for lunch tomorrow and he needs to soak in salt water tonight. I'll learn how it's done on the next one."

I gave her a smile and said nothing. She gave me back a smirk with one corner of her mouth and turned back to the sink. That answered a question I'd had since we started the whole gun thing with her. I doubted if she was ready to kill a beef yet, but she had the general idea.
____________________

Brenda and I talked about it late that night. She explained how it was. 

"Our dad never let any of us kids touch his gun. He was paranoid about us getting hurt and kept his shotgun unloaded and locked away in the trunk of the car. There were a lot of us kids and I guess he thought that if one of us could get to it, it would be a disaster. He made sure we were scared of the gun so we were afraid to touch it. You remember how hard it was for me to shoot the first time?"

"Oh yes. It took forever explaining how it worked and exactly what was necessary to make it safe." 

"I had a hard time getting Carmen convinced that she could learn to shoot without getting shot. I don't think she would have tried, except that I told her that she could either learn, or leave right that minute. She had no place to go and she knew it. Once she made the decision, it got easier, but she was scared stiff all the way."

"I saw that and did the best I could with it."

"You did fine. She needed the authority you represented to get her over the worst of it. Now she's more confident than she has ever been in her life. She's made some dramatic changes. I wonder how that is going to work out with her temper."

I chuckled softly and said, "It reminds me of a sign I once saw over a secretary's desk at work. It said, 'I have PMS AND a handgun. What do YOU want?' " 

Brenda grinned and said, "Yep, that would be her." 
_________________


Chapter 32


Our hay ground was ready to cut, about 25 acres of it. I was sure this would be an adventure since we hadn't used any of the equipment yet. I had tried everything out the best I could, but the proof would be in using it. I thought it best to not bite off the whole thing at once, so I set out to only mow about 10 acres. I had been to town to buy baler twine, some spare mower guards, and sickle knife sections, but didn't get as much of any of that as I wanted and it all cost too much. The baler twine had been about $25 a roll, but had gone up to $44. I had spent over $300 and hoped it would be enough to get me by this cutting of hay. The woman who worked at the farm store was real nice to me, though, and said thanks for all our help--it had sure come in handy for her. We let the other folks in line wonder what that was all about. 

The TV had said the weather was supposed to be clear all week, so I began mowing hay as soon as the dew was dried off the next morning. I hit a couple dead limbs next to the woods on the back side, but I didn't break anything on the mower, so it went pretty well and I finished up in time for an early supper. Sickle mowers can't cut as fast as the new disc mowers, but they didn't cost the price of a new car, either. I'd let it lay the next day to dry out and then rake and bale the day after that. 

Brenda was talking on the phone when I came in, hot, sweaty, and dusty dirty. I got a glass of iced tea and went to the back porch hand pump to rinse off some dirt before I dared go in the house to wash. I used my bare hands to wipe the excess water off my face and arms, then stood there in the slight breeze to cool out and get dry. The iced tea hit the spot. 

Brenda came out on the porch after she'd hung up the phone.

"That was Charlene. They've lost their house," she said.

"Oh, hell. Here it comes."

"No, they're not coming out here. They're moving into the store building. I guess they had an efficiency apartment in it where Mark has been living, and the store building is paid for. They have something set up in the warehouse area in back that is next to the apartment, so they can all fit in there."

"I bet it's a mess in there with four married couples sharing the warehouse," I said. "They'll have plenty of furniture, I guess."

"The bad part is, they aren't selling hardly anything. She said they've been getting food from the church down the street, and she's worried about being able to pay the electric bill when it comes in. If they can't keep the lights on, the store is history."

"What happened to all that money they had invested?"

"Their bank went broke and somebody stole all the money. It wasn't a bail-in like you thought would happen. Some big shot just took it all and is gone. The FDIC has it closed down and is supposed to pay off their insured amounts, but they said it could be months before they see any money. Mark is working at day labor and that's what is keeping them fed right now while they mind the store."

"Yeah, that store that ain't selling anything. Do they owe on their merchandize, I wonder? Most stores do."

"She said they did, but it's a loan at the same bank where they had their money, and that will be in bankruptcy court for a long time."

"They might skate by on that, but I'd be afraid the Court would order all the creditors to pay up and let the FDIC settle with the depositors. That would mean they'd have to pay the loans without getting their own money out to do it. If they can't pay, they lose their merchandise and the manufacturers won't take it back. The lender will take it and auction it off to get what they can. I warned Howard about that. Of course HE said it would never happen." 

"I wonder how they've been getting along so far with litle or no business?"

"Charlene said they had sold some things, but she didn't say what. I'm betting they don't have much left."

"She couldn't talk very long because she was using a cellphone and it was about out of minutes. She just wanted to let me know where they were so we wouldn't think they were in a FEMA camp or something."

"They're liable to land there if things don't work out with the bank." 

We let it go at that and went inside, her to work on a meal with Tammy, and me to get a shower while the power was still on. She said Carmen was going to eat down at David's tonight. She'd gone to tell him we'd be needing help with the hay in a couple days, and he'd invited her for a backyard cookout. I thought that maybe those two could work out in spite of everything. Maybe I was being optimistic, though. 
___________________

I had Josh driving the tractor to rake hay while I worked on fixing another farmer's baler in the shop. I got that job finished and was back to start baling by noon. We got it all baled, but with only one tractor, we had to pull the loaded hay wagons in with my truck. David could drive it pretty well, so he backed the wagon up to the barn so he and the women could unload and stack the bales inside. I was steadily getting ahead of them and having to wait for an empty wagon, so we quit pulling a wagon behind the baler so I could keep going, dropping the bales on the ground. 

That meant double work because they'd have to pick the bales up off the ground and load them on a wagon later. I had to keep going because if the hay laid in the sun another day, the sun would bleach out too much of the nutrients, and there is always the chance of a rain shower that would spoil it. When you start making hay, you just have to keep going until you get it finished. 

When the baling was done, I put the baler away and used the tractor to pull a wagon to load. We had saved the steep parts to do that where the truck would lose traction in the grass with a big wagon load of hay. We got the last wagon loaded about 7:00 PM, and we were running out of daylight. I backed that last load in the barn to unload later and called it quits for the day. That wasn't too bad a day, considering we were all pretty much greenhorns at this. I was well satisfied with 12 loads of 56 bales, or 672 bales total. That was 67 bales per acre, not a bad yield for this poor ground. 

That would be plenty to feed our stock this winter, and I had hay left over from last winter, but if we wanted to really make the place pay, we had to get more cattle before these were sold so we would have some to sell each year thereafter. Besides that, I planned to raise the 2 colts and they would eat--like horses. The rest of our hay ground wasn't quite as good, so if we got another 600 to 700 bales off the last 15 acres, I'd be happy. I had been hearing that grass haylike this was selling for $4 a bale now, so If I had excess, I could sell the leftover old stuff cheap and still have more than enough. We could use the cash. 

I cut less acreage the second time so we could finish at a reasonable time. When the last part was done, we'd put 1,450 bales up this year. I put an ad in the paper to sell the old hay at $2 a bale and got rid of the last 320 bales of it fast. It wasn't much money, but it cleared out barn space and I would replace that with straw when Stuart combined wheat this summer. I wanted to have plenty of bedding in case we had a bad winter. 
______________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 33 July, 2015



The hogs were on pasture now, and enjoying it. I kept them out of the pond and continued to water them at the barn. That was for sanitary purposes, because hogs can make a muddy mess out of a pond. Their pasture would get bigger when the field corn was ready. We had put in a cross fence and planted 3 acres in corn for them. The hogs cast envious eyes at the corn across the fence, but we had built the fence, "horse high, pig tight, and bull strong", as the old saying went. They would have to wait until I opened a gate for them to get into it. 

I thought we did pretty well with our crude setup for the sows. It was just individual pens for them with a rail around the inside to keep baby pigs from getting trapped next to the pen fence when momma pig laid down. The four sows had farrowed a total of 48 pigs and raised 42 of them to weaning size. We kept the little pigs inside the barn when we weaned them onto ground feed, and turned their mothers out to pasture back in April. 

Now, the young ones were up to about 70 to 80 pounds now. We had castrated the boars at around 30 pounds, before they got too big to handle, and they were outgrowing the gilts now. We gave them all the ground feed they wanted and let them run in the pasture to eat whatever they wanted. Their pasture had the small sinkhole and was somewhat steeper than the other half. My Dad had always said that pastured hogs were healthier, because they got a better diet. These sure looked good, and because they spent their time in a large area, there was almost no smell from them. The 4 sows and the boar in the barn made a bigger mess and stink in there than 42 did outside. 

We had used some of the sawmill lumber from last winter to build a series of small hog shelters in the pasture, just big enough for 5 or 6 of them to get into. They had shade trees and a mudhole to play in down by the sinkhole, but they had to come to the barn for ground feed and water. We made that a regular thing, feeding morning and night to keep them coming to the barn. They were there early every time, squealing their protests that I was too slow. So far, they were all healthy. I had given them all a dose of worm medicine back when they were smaller, and they showed no evidence of any problems now. The level of corn in the grain bin had dropped noticeably, but we would a lot left over after feeding these out. I hoped it would keep until we could feed it all. 

The tractor made feed grinding easy enough, after I figured out how Lester had done it. He had a small elevator stuffed inside the grain bin with a gasoline engine on it. That made it easy to get the corn out and into the grinder/mixer. I had to use buckets to get the oats in the mixer from the barrels where I'd stored it, but it worked. Then, Lester had rigged a chute above a metal lined feed bin in the barn where we could use the auger on the mixer to dump it right into the feed bin. It went pretty fast, and we only had to grind feed about every two weeks. Kitty cat was hanging out in the barn now, and sometimes she didn't even come to the house to eat. She found all the mice she could handle around the feed bin. She was looking pretty big in the middle, so I guessed that there was a tomcat around somewhere and soon we would be blessed with kittens. We got along with her pretty good though, and she allowed most of us to pet the cat, unless she had other business. 

Because we had all that corn left, I had turned the boar in with the sows to do his thing the middle of June. We could expect another batch of pigs 114 days after breeding, or sometime in early December. I had to check out the market for hogs soon, because by the end of October, we'd have a bunch to sell. Taking care of the hogs wasn't much work in warm weather, but it could be a real hassle in winter when water froze in the troughs and we would keep them inside requiring daily mucking out of the pens. 

Josh and Tammy were helping with the chores, so I'd told them they'd get a share of the proceeds when we sold them. Josh would haul the pigs to market, and what cattle we would sell this Fall, too, so that would be applied to the last $500 he owed me for his truck. It was all working pretty well for all of us, but I had to think about what would happen when Brenda and I were gone. We wouldn't live forever, and we had two kids of our own that would inherit our place. Brenda and I had some estate planning to do. 

When we bought that additional acreage, we had filed and recorded an 'inter vivos trust' at the Courthouse, making Brenda and I Joint First Trustees, and Susan and Brad and their spouses Joint Second Trustees. That meant that legally they already owned the property, although Brenda and I retained all rights to do whatever we wanted with it during our lifetimes, even sell it. But if we owned it when we died, our kids would inherit equal shares in it. That was fine, but we had to do something to assure that Josh and Tammy got something for all the hard work they put into the place, too. Brenda and I had kicked around the idea of making up a tenant contract with them, but we hadn't done anything about it yet. 
There were lots of other things on our minds. The TV said that taxes were going up, and the announced that Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Health Care Act could no longer be funded as of the end of the month. 
______________________


Chapter 34 

The Federal budget cuts might as well have not been done for all the effect they had. They had cut the military budget in half, and most everything else, but it was a few years too late. The next day the dollar was rejected virtually overnight around the world. What federal budget remained was as good as nothing, since it wouldn't buy anything much, as prices began to go beserk. We had already seen a lot of problems, but things had been functioning, sort of. 

We saw the National News on TV at 6:00 PM and they had some video of rioting at practically every store on the East coast. The news broadcaster said they would not have any more aerial footage because they had no fuel for their helicopter. It had begun with an electronic run on the US banks, like back in 2008, but nothing the Federal Reserve or government did had any noticeable effect this time.

Carmen had just told us over supper that she and David planned to marry soon and she would be moving in with him. When she heard the TV news, she turned white as a sheet and asked me, "What does this mean?"

I had been trying to figure that out as we watched. I said, "I'm not sure, but I think it means we are all flat broke now."

Brenda said, "We were pretty close to broke anyway. We've been spending money pretty fast lately."

Josh said, "Good thing you did, 'cause it ain't worth nothing now. Tammy, how much money do you have?"

She said, "I still have a twenty dollar bill and some change left after we went to the store today."

"That's good. I've got about $200. I'm glad it ain't more," he told her. 

The news droned on, saying that banks were closed until further notice, but the government had planned for this eventuality and were on the job to implement a new currency, blah, blah, blah. 

The family talked on about what might happen next, but I sort of tuned them out for a minute or two, my mind racing doing an audit of what we had on hand. The livestock feed situation was good. I had just hauled home another big load of oats that I'd bought, and there was a couple tons of soybean meal on hand. I estimated that the grain bin still had over 400 bushels of the old corn. 

We had plenty of water for man and beast, although we might have to pump it all by hand. The pantry still had an excess from last year and we were steadily adding to that from the gardens. The freezer had enough meat to feed us all until we butchered again this Fall, and the solar system would run it. We had plenty of canning stuff on hand. 

The TV interrupted my reverie.

"Martial Law has been declared in all major cities in the US, and troops are being dispatched to enforce a dusk to dawn curfew..."

"Oh hell! That'll be a mess," Josh said. 

Brenda said, "I'm calling Susan." She went to the phone and when they answered she said, "Are you watching the news?"
Pause. 
"Okay. Call me back."

"She said they've been onto this for a while. She heard something at work. She's going to call back after while."

The TV news probram was followed by a News Special, explaining in more detail what was going on. When they got to the part about implementing Executive Orders due to the Declared Emergency, it had my attention. The government would seize control over all energy and fuels, food production, water supplies, transportation, mining, forestry, and on and on. I knew then that we were in for a civil war. You don't just take away everything people own and expect to get away with it. Not in the US.
______________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 35


Atlanta, Los Angeles, Saint Louis, Chicago, Louisville, Newark, Richmond, and portions of Dallas/Fort Worth, Washington D. C., San Francisco, and Seattle burned in the next 3 days. In the midst of the chaos, a military coup took over the Pentagon and what was left of DC. The President, VP, Secretary of State, The Speaker of The House, and all but 37 members of Congress (who were out of town) were charged with Treason and imprisoned at Riker's Island with Marines replacing the staff there. A five star Army General, an Admiral, and a General of the Air Force were now the Triumvirate leadership of the US. They had declared all orders of the old government null and void, and would administer martial law until new elections could be held. Those charged with Treason would be tried by a military court.

It may have been one of the shortest revolutions in history, but it would surely be one of the longest of recoveries in history, as the nation groped without a currency and without rule of law in most areas for the next month. 

After a week, the Triumvirate had a working plan in place to issue a new currency under the auspices of the Federal Reserve Bank, now nationalized and working diligently to issue newly printed currency within the next month to all banks in the US. The printing had been done long ago and the notes warehoused to be issued after a planned failure of the dollar. The difference was, the new notes were not to be pure fiat, but backed by gold on deposit at Fort Knox and in New York, the deep underground vault being fireproof and still secure. 

Casualties were high in most cities as water and sewage sysems failed for lack of operating staff in many of them. Some fared better than others. The National Guard was still charged with maintaining the peace in most cities, but so many had deserted their posts when the currency failed as to be largely ineffective. The cities continued to smolder. 

On the second day of the initial rioting, Howard and Charlene Andrews and their extended family loaded their remaining food and what belongings would fit into the furniture store's delivery truck and hastened across the Kennedy bridge as the National Guard was preparing to close the bridge to traffic. Howard drove steadily through the crowds gathered around shopping centers and on some streets toward his wife's brother Jim's place on the north side of New Albany. The truck had 3/4 of a tank of diesel fuel and was big enough to not be challenged by crowds in the streets. Their son Mark was in the back with the door raised a foot and lying prone with a shotgun to guard the people and contents. 

Approaching Jim's place from the county road, they found him and his son Kenny watching the road from inside the house, guns at the ready. 

Howard slowly got out of the truck, leaving the engine running. 

"Hello! Jim? Are you home?"

Kenny opened the door and said, "We're home. Come on in."

Howard went inside and saw Jim, shotgun in hand, sitting by a small open window still watching outside through the curtains. Jim said, "Good thing I knew the truck. We had some punks come by that thought they was going to come in and we sent 'em on their way. I put a few loads of shot into some of 'em. The world has gone to hell."

"They had set fire to our store as we were driving away," Howard told him. 

"You got nowhere to go, is that it?"

"That's about it."

"I can't feed you. We barely got enough to make it for a few days, until we get something out of the garden, and that isn't much." 

Charlene came to the door, spoke to Kenny and walked in. "Are you okay Jim? We almost didn't get away in time! They burned our store!"

"Yeah, I'm okay. But I don't know how safe it is here. Already had visitors."

" Maybe we should go see Brenda and Jack. They've got a farm now, so they have all kinds of room and they grow things to eat." 

"Jack already has a houseful. Carmen and Josh and Tammy are there, and their baby."

"I know, but everyone else we know is too far away or they live in the city. Who else is there?"
_______________________



Chapter 36



Carmen and David decided to go ahead with a simple ceremony at his home with his minister officiating. David paid the minister with 2 big sacks of food from his garden. David planned to spend part of the next week getting his Aunt's old wood cookstove reinstalled in the old farmhouse. It had been relegated to the garage long ago, but would be pressed back into service. David was unsure if he would have a job driving the school bus in the Fall, so when he had the stove installed, he would cut up some of his fresh early potatoes to plant and hope they would make a crop before frost. 

We had just returned home from the wedding when the furniture truck pulled into our driveway and Howard and Charlene got out. When I saw Mark getting out of the back and more following him, I told Brenda, "We have company. Lots of company."

Howard and Charlene came to the back porch as three more couples got out of the back of the truck. I knew deep inside I would have to feed this tribe somehow, but I didn't want to admit it to myself yet. Daniel and Heather, Ryan and Megan, Brittany and Kevin all came to the porch and gathered around as Charlene asked Brenda if we could possibly give them a place to stay? 

"We don't have room," Brenda said flatly.

"There isn't anyplace we can go," Charlene said. Her face was wide-eyed and stressed, her knuckle white as she clenched and unclenched her hands. She wasn't crying yet, but that couldn't be far off. 

Charlene said, "The furniture store was burning as we left. The mob had set fire to most of the block by the time we finished loading the truck and got away. All we have is in that truck. We have a little money but I guess that's no good now. We don't have much left to eat."

"We don't have beds, or room to put them if we did," Brenda told her. She told me later that she had been remembering how Charlene had said "If things get as bad as you expect, I'll just come to YOUR house!"

"We brought mattresses and bedframes and bedding," Daniel said. "We put in 4 chests with our clothes in them, but we didn't bring any other furniture because there wasn't enough room." He was their oldest son and had been running the store before things came apart. "All the rest is in boxes in there." 

Everyone else was silent, waiting on a pronouncement from Brenda or me, I suppose. It was her family, so I let her decide. She was upset and I could see it. I put my arm around her and knowing what she felt like she had to do, I said soflty to her alone, "If we could store our living room furniture in the truck for now, we could set up 3 beds in there. Howard and Charlene could have Carmen's old room. We'd have to eat in shifts, but we could do it."

Brenda didn't say anything for a couple minutes. She just looked daggers at Charlene. It was a near thing. Finally she asked Charlene, "Did you bring any dishes or kitchen stuff?" 

Charlene had been sweating bullets and it showed in her face. With great relief she said, "Oh, yes. We have all our things, service for 12 and all the cookware. and there's a lot more things..." 

Brenda looked at me with a mixture of resignation, frustration and who knew what else. To Charlene she said, "Let's get started then. The young people need to empty the truck of everything. When that's done, come see me in the house about clearing out some room. Charlene, you find the dishes and cookware and get that off to one side somewhere. We'll find a place for it later. I suppose you are all hungry, so Tammy and I and Charlene will get something started cooking." 

Without another word Brenda walked back into the house followed by Charlene. Soon I heard the clatter of pots and pans. I looked at Howard and said, "We're going to have to replant a lot more garden and we don't have much time to get it done. Let's you and me get started on that."

Howard hadn't done any manual labor in at least 50 years, so I didn't expect much, but he made an effort to keep up with me. I got him going on the garden tractor with the tiller behind it and showed him what needed worked up where early crops had been picked. He was a couple years older than I so I didn't want to overload him. I busied myself with finding seeds, fertilizer, and tools. We had some rows marked out with the push cultivator and were ready to drop seeds when Tammy called from the back porch saying supper was ready. Howard and I finished planting late green beans, sweet corn, kale, turnips, beets, and a lot more before dark. He was ready to fall over and I was too, but we got it in the ground before it began to rain that night. 
––––––––––––––––––––

Our living room furniture was all in the truck now, except for our bookcases and a couple of the smaller chairs. The living room was now a double bedroom. Ryan and Megan got one half and Britanny and Kevin the other half. I had used a spare clothesline strung across the long narrow space the short way and hung blankets on it so each half had some privacy. 

Carmen's old room was still furnished so Howard and Charlene got to sleep there as it was, and we left their bed in the truck. Daniel and Heather got put in the small den after we took a couple big chairs out to the furniture truck, and my computer desk got moved to our bedroom. Josh and Tammy stayed in the bigger room next to ours that had been designed for sewing. The built in cabinets and shelves all along the end wall had enough vacancies for the baby's things. Brenda's sewing machines were still in there, the new electric portable and the old treadle machine that had been her mother's. The whole house was packed with people like sardines in a can.

It was something of a race with the weather, seeing thunderclouds forming as it got dark that evening, but everything got put away before the storm got there. The people got settled in for the night, Brenda and I wondering if we had bit off more than we could chew. 
_____________________


----------



## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 37 Late July, 2015


Early the next morning I used my home made dipstick to check the cistern. I had drilled a hole in the concrete floor of the back porch that covered the cistern, and plugged it with a plastic stopper to keep dirt out. The dipstick was just a piece of slightly rusty steel rod marked at the full level. I'd made a ring on one end to hang it on a nail under the eave of the house. It showed about 3/4 full. I got the steel tape from my pocket and measured from the bottom end up as high as it was wet. 73", it said. I wrote it on the calendar in the kitchen, came back and plugged the hole, then hung up the dipstick. I was really thankful for the rain that had brought it up from 57", a good thing with so many people here now.

Figuring in my head, the cistern level had raised 16". Our roof collecting area was about 8 times as big as the cistern area, so dividing 16" by 8 meant that we had gotten about 2" of rain. That should get our late garden growing. 

The cistern was 8 feet deep, 96", so we had just over 3/4 of a tank. Filled, it held about 8,000 gallons, being 12 feet by 16 feet long, the size of the porch. I would have to watch the water level really close, because late summer was usually pretty dry here. We might not get any more rain for a couple months. Inside, I smelled pancakes frying and ham. Three women in the kitchen and one setting the dining room table had the place packed. Megan was fishing around in a big box of dishes in the sunroom/summer kitchen and Tammy had the breakfast bar set with plates and glasses. Brenda had a big saucepan on the stove stirring home made syrup. Brittany came out of the bathroom and I heard it flush. 

It was more than cozy in the house. It was crowded as hell. We only had 2 bathrooms, we would be stretching our cistern capacity to the limit, and there was no good alternative for a water supply. I explained the water situation and made a rule immediately. NOBODY FLUSHES until it is absolutely necessary, and ALL males would have to pee outside somewhere. There was no way that our cistern could support 12 adults who flushed every time they had to pee. The toilet used about 3 gallons per flush, so if all 12 of us flushed 4 times a day, that was 144 gallons a day, not counting what water we needed for drinking, cooking, and laundry. We could blow through what water we had in a month if we didn't conserve it. The septic system wouldn't handle it either. 

I made the ouside pee rule an Edict from King Jack and added that, "In bad weather we can keep containers inside at night for the men to use. A rich man has a canopy over their bed. Poor men have a can of pee under theirs."

I got a few mild chuckles, then things lightened up some as the young men joked about it and dug into the pancakes. 

Brenda said, "That's not good enough. I have a better idea. The women can do that too. There's room to put that camping pot we have in the bathroom to pee in and when it needs emptied, it goes onto the garden. It can use the nitrogen, and if we DON'T do that, we will run out of water. Y'all got that? If we begin to run short of water before the Fall rains, the offending parties will be carrying water from the pond to flush with. And don't be getting your clothes real dirty, either. You can wear clothes for a couple days with no problem, and it will save on laundry. Sponge baths will have to be the rule now, until the Fall rains come. If you need to shower, you can run the water to get wet, shut it off, scrub, and then rinse off." 

"Don't be rinsing dishes and letting the water run in the sink. Stack the dishes and we'll wash them all at once. We'll use the dish pan in the sink because it takes less water. Come talk to me when it's time to do laundry. There's a lot to know about that, too. I hope you all can do this, because this time of year it's important."

All heads nodded agreement. It looked like we were off to at least an agreeable start.
______________

It occurred to me that our gasoline tank wasn't quite full. Thankfully, I had recently had the farm diesel tank filled, and that had cost us a big chunk of our remaining cash. I'd even added a couple bottles of stabilizer to it. The 500 gallon LP tank for the kitchen stove was nearly full, too, at around 95%. Normally, that would last us for 5 or 6 years, but with so many to cook for, it would go a lot faster. We'd have to conserve that, too. The woodpile was in good shape, with about 8 cords stacked under some old roofing metal sheets in the back yard. That would be good for almost 2 years of cold winters. Then I realized we would be heating the whole house now, not shutting off some rooms as we normally did. We should cut some wood when it got cool enough to do that. 

I checked the little storage barn in the back yard and found that I didn't have as much 2 cycle oil as I'd like, and more bar oil would be good, too. I though we should risk a trip to town for those things and as much gasoline as we could get, or afford. I gathered 9 eggs from the nests and went back inside with them. Our 14 hens ha slacked off laying in the hot weather.

"Look," I told the group over a late breakfast, "We don't know how long it will be until the money gets straightened out, so we'd better think like it could be a long time. We could use some gasoline to fill our trucks and the storage tank. I need some oil for the chainsaw, and there are probably other things the women will think of. I don't have enough cash, if anybody will accept cash, to do much. If gas stations will still accept cash, we need to spend it now, because they won't be taking it for long. Any volunteers to help here?"

Howard said, "We have about $400 in cash to contribute. It's the least we can do." 

Ryan said, "I've got a little cash, maybe $30." He pulled a few wadded bills from his pocket and put it on the table. Kevin had $53, and Daniel came up with $165. Megan dug in her purse and came out with another $23. I came up with $284, and Brenda had $124 in her purse. Josh and Tammy put in $223. 

I counted the stack and handed it to Howard who counted it. We both got $1,182. Howard said, "I don't know how much that will buy, if it will even buy anything, but you spend it all. You know best what we need the worst."

"Who wants to go along and ride shotgun? I haven't heard of any trouble here yet, but it could happen any time." 
____________________

Daniel, Josh, and I got into Josh's truck and drove to town. We had filled our trucks and the garden tractor from what gas cans I hadn't emptied into the storage tank and had 8 empty 5 gallon cans in the back. Josh's truck had about 1/4 tank when we got to the farm store. The sign on the door said, "Cash only". Our favorite clerk lady was working, and nobody else was in the store. 

She smiled at me when we went in. She pointed to the hand written sign above the counter and said, "Prices are 5 times what is marked. The money just isn't worth much now. Sorry, but I can't do anything about that."

"I expected things would be high. I'm looking for chain saw oil."

"Back in the first aisle. We just got a pallet of bar oil there."

It was marked as "On Sale" for $5.99 a gallon, so at 5 times that it would be about $30 a gallon. I left that sitting and went to the 2 cycle oil. I could use regular motor oil for the chainsaw bar, or even used oil if I had to, but the engine oil had to be the right stuff. A 6 pack of bottles was marked $14.49, so that would be about $72.50 now. I picked up 4 of them and went to check out. The total was over $290 with sales tax. I paid her and she said, "I know you need some bar oil, too. There's a pallet on the dock out back that hasn't been officially received yet. Help yourself. I don't know nothin' about it."

I gave her a blank look and she winked at me. I said, "Thanks!"

She said, "Thank your boy for me."

"I will! Let's go guys."

We drove around the back of the store and stopped at the dock. I pulled out my belt knife and cut the plastic wrapping. "Load it up guys, this is a one time deal."

Daniel said, "What's up with this?"

Josh told him about the foiled robbery and giving the woman the gun. Daniel said, "And she remembered that today."

I said, "Small towns are like that."

We loaded about half of the pallet and called it good, since the little tarp we had would cover that much. The gas cans held down the tarp as we drove off. Only one gas station still had gas and it was the highest one in town, of course. The pumps said $42.29. I gave the guy $890 I had left and he began pumping. The truck took 12 gallons to fill it. He got one 5 gallon can filled and another about halfway when the pump cut off at $890. The guy said, "Be careful with that gas. I don't know when we'll get any more and we're about out." 

I thanked him and we drove home, Josh taking his time to conserve fuel. The folks at home had the TV on and were amazed that we got anything for the money. The news said that new currency would be issued at the banks soon at 100 to one for the old money. Nobody had any idea how that would work out with prices, so they had quit selling anything for the old dollars. 
_______________

That afternoon we spent some time getting everyone acquainted with the farm and how it worked. The livestock were shy around the crowd of new people, but came to the feed troughs readily enough. Sonny was beside himself trying to meet and greet all the new folks. Kitty cat was nowhere to be seen. We left her a bowl of cat food in the barn at her new regular feeding place, since she stayed in there most of the time. 

Looking over the gardens, I noted that it was about time to dig the potatoes as soon as the ground dried out some. We dug a bucketful with the digging fork and washed them at the irrigation tank. I explained how that worked, collecting water from the shop roof that we used to water the chickens and the gardens by gravity flow when they needed it. I made sure everyone knew to never leave the outlet valve dripping, or it would empty the 3,000 gallon tank in a few days. I hadn't made any effort to filter that water supply, so while we could use it for the initial washing of vegetables, we probably shouldn't drink it. 
____________________ 

Two days later we dug potatoes and I was thankful for a bumper crop. It was the best crop I'd ever had in 50 odd years of raising them, and it couldn't have come at a better time. Julie did her part perfectly, pulling the potato digger and the city folks were all amazed at how slick that went. All 12 of us were out there picking up potatoes, and I was scrounging for any container to put them in. The next hurdle was to find a way to store about 500 pounds of spuds. Temporarily, we put the hodge-podge of baskets, buckets and boxes in our basement, but it cramped Josh for room in his mechanic work area. For good or ill, he wasn't busy in there just then, but we had to do something better pretty quick. We needed a root cellar and we needed it fast. 
___________________


Chapter 38


"Howard, I appreciate how you're trying to make this work. I know it's all new to you and it can't be easy," I said.

"I don't have any choice," he said. "I don't want to ask for anything, but it was either here or some government camp. I'm not sure they even have room now."

"I wouldn't do that to anybody. That has to be bad in those places."

He said, "That's what we heard. Like the things we heard about after hurricane Katrina. People are getting beat up and killed in those places."

"We might have to defend our place. Depends on how bad things get, I guess."

We were walking to the barn to do the morning feeding. Howard had found some jeans and a tee shirt, but his shiny shoes would suffer out here, I thought. 

He said, "Daniel has his shotgun and I have my pistol I kept by the cash register at the store, but we don't have much ammunition."

"What caliber handgun," I asked. 

"It's a little one, a .380 automatic I bought years ago."

"Josh has one of those. I think he's got a box or two of shells for it. Is the shotgun a 12 gauge?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is."

"I have some 12 gauge shells. We'll get by if we're careful not to waste ammunition." 

The horses had come to their stall looking for their feed. I told Howard how we did it and let him meet the Julie and the foals. They were a rambunctious pair and messed with each other's grain, got bit and tried it again. Howard let them smell his hand and scratched their ears while they were eating. Julie liked him right away and stretched her long neck to sniff his clothes. He petted her nose and she trusted him instantly, from what I could tell. 

The cattle were shy around any stranger, but came in to eat without any trouble. The hogs were just hogs about eating and didn't care who supplied the feed. It went pretty well, so we walked out to the pond where we could see the whole fencing layout. I explained how we rotated the critters from one lot to another to keep grass from getting too short. 

Back in the barn, we shoveled out the manure for the day, and threw in a little fresh straw. I told Howard I was at wit's end wondering what to do with the potatoes so they would keep through the winter. 
"The basement is a little too warm and dry. They need to be in a cellar with a dirt floor so it stays moist and cool, but I can't justify digging a cellar when we have another hay cutting coming up, and gardens to tend and all the rest."

"How big does it have to be?"

I said, "It doesn't take much room for potatoes, but there are apples coming up and we could use it for a lot of root vegetables if we had enough room in a cellar. Most root cellars are about 8 feet x 12 feet, and maybe tall enough to stand up inside. That's a big hole to dig, and we can't afford concrete for the walls if we could even get it now." 

Howard said, "I saw a thing on TV about a guy who buried an old freezer to put his vegetables in for winter. It was one of those homesteading things about Canada, or Alaska."

"Hey! I've seen that too in magazines or something, but I'd forgot about it. Now all I have to do is find a junk freezer."

"Is there a landfill around somewhere close where you might find one?"

"Yeah, but they won't let you take anything now. Something about liability. Wait an minute! There's a shop in town that sells used appliances. The man that owns it lives on a county road not too far away. I'll call him. Thanks for the idea."

That idea got put aside when we got to the house. 
________________________

Brenda had covered all the big issues with one exception. Charlene had always been her big sister, so when they were kids she'd been able to tell Brenda what to do. I had seen that Brenda didn't like it then and she liked it even less now. As I went in the door, Brenda was making that clear.

"It might be a better place to put the the dishes, but I want them here in the cabinet. Okay Charlene?"

Charlene said, "I was just trying to help. I always do things in the kitchen the best way so it will be easier to cook for so many..."

Brenda interrupted, "CHARLENE! Here's how it is. I don't care how YOU did things in YOUR kitchen. This is not YOUR kitchen. This is MY kitchen. You don't HAVE a kitchen!" 

Lightning flashed in Brenda's eyes. 

Charlene's face turned red as she tried to think of a comeback. She started to say something when Howard, good old ever peaceful, henpecked Howard, said, "That will be enough Charlene. Let's go outside and talk about this."

"BUT SHE JUST.."

"CHARLENE! NOW!"

Brenda had a really big soup ladle in her hand and death in her eyes. I said, "Time to chill out Brenda."

She instantly turned on me and yelled, "Now YOU'RE going to tell me what to do? I don't think so!"

I was just trying to prevent an assault. I didn't say any more, but I stood my ground between them.

Charlene glared at Howard and said, "Of all the NERVE! This isn't your business, and you certainly aren't going to tell ME to go outside!" 

Charlene was so shocked by Howard's next intervention that she didn't think to resist it. He grabbed her by the shoulders and ushered her swiftly out the back door before she could protest. Howard was a big man, over 6 feet tall and well over 200 pounds. Charlene was much smaller and got propelled twenty feet before she could try to stop. The screen door slammed shut and I closed the inner door so I didn't have to hear them at full volume, then stood blocking the door. Brenda was more than enough to listen to.

"Jack you get out of my way right now! I'm going to settle this with her!" 

"Not with a weapon, you're not. Cool it! Okay?"

"I'm not listening to another word out of her! She does NOT run MY house! 

It stayed pretty hot for a while, but after Howard had stepped up to the plate, I thought we had a good chance of settling this down without bloodshed. Both of us listened to a lot of acrimonious talk for what seemed like an hour, but both women calmed down. Neither was happy. 

From the back porch we heard Howard say, "You are a GUEST here and it is time you act like one! We are lucky to have food to eat! Haven't you gotten that through your head yet?" 

Charlene preceded Howard back into the house half an hour later. Howard's blood pressure was still up in stroke territory and he had a grim set to his jaw. Charlene, under duress, told Brenda, "I'm sorry if I upset you. I was just trying to help..."

Howard interrupted her, "NO! You were NOT trying to help, you were being your normal overbearing, obstinate, bossy self! It stops now, or you will find yourself at the roadside. Alone."

"YOU don't talk to ME that way!" 

"I do now and I should have 40 years ago! I swear I will throw you in a roadside ditch as the rest of us leave, if you don't stop it this instant!" 

Howard punctuated that speech with a finger at her nose. I thought we'd have a brawl between them any second. Charlene broke first. Her face fell and her whole self seemed to shrink a few inches. She turned away and walked silently to their bedroom and closed the door. 

Brenda was so amazed to see Charlene's ego deflated that she stood there without a word staring at Howard. He didn't say anything , either, but followed his wife into the bedroom. Neither came out that evening until after we had gone to bed, and they were very quiet when they went to the bathroom. I didn't venture to say anything to Brenda that evening. She had a lot on her mind and didn't have anything to say, either. 

Josh and Tammy had been outside in the garden during the blow up, but the others were all someplace in the house when it had happened. Nobody said much at supper, and only Josh and Tammy and I seemed to have much of an appetite. Charlene and Howard didn't come out to eat.
__________________

I came out of the bedroom after Brenda and found that Charlene was up early and was talking softly to Brenda as I went outside. When I had finished chores at the barn and came back inside, all the women were busily making scrambled eggs and ham, and taking biscuits out of the oven. Howard had been to the chicken house and came in after me with the fresh eggs. He put them in the bowl to be cleaned and sat down at the table with a solemn look about him. The verbal fallout at breakfast was minimal, but it was a tense meal. 

In a matter of a few days, we were all getting along after a fashion. Each of us had reevaluated the others and come to a sort of detente, with Charlene not even trying to dictate the terms of that tense peace. Brenda was in charge in the house, and she let it be known that she would accept no question about that. She was a pretty benign dictator, but a dictator she would stay. I didn't question her authority there either. I knew she had to have room to make it work the way she had begun, so I let her do it, but I wasn't enjoying it a bit.
_________________


----------



## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 39 August, 2015

Charlene's perpetual smile was gone. In its' place was a rather downcast look with what I thought was fright in her eyes. Overall, I liked that better. Howard didn't say a word about his wife, and his expression had gone from his normal deadpan or ready smile to a look of grim determination. I let him have what space he needed. He seemed to relish taking over the evening barn chores. I wanted to do the morning chores to have a look at all the critters, in case there was a problem of any sort.

There was enough to keep everyone busy, but the young people didn't know what to do and were generally underfoot for the first couple weeks. I tried to find something for all the men to do each day, but that organization effort took time, and it took even more of my time to teach the guys how to do even the simplest of tasks they had never seen before.

Daniel and Ryan, however, had both worked as construction laborers and were familiar with the use of a shovel. Kevin took his turns digging and was a fair hand as a go-fer, so he got to do a lot of that and learned fast where we kept things. Josh helped show him where things were and told him why we kept things in certain places. Josh made sure he put things away in the right places, too.

I got the young men busy digging a hole for an old chest type freezer I'd bought from Billy Montgomery, the appliance guy. We put it in the hillside behind the welding shop, since that steep slope was pretty worthless for anything else. I planned to simply stack some straw bales over it for winter, and cover that with a tarp. It would keep it from freezing and make it possible to get into it even if we had a lot of snow and ice.

The young women got schooled on canning, drying, and preserving food. Tammy knew quite a bit and Charlene did, too, so that went pretty well. Brittany was interested in the herbs and had bunches of them drying, hanging from strings under the back porch roof. Megan had been the one to find a hammer and drive some nails to hang them on. 
_________________

The worst problem we had was sleeping space. Our house was simply too small. A three bedroom house is not enough for six couples. We had beds for everyone, but eating space was a problem. The dining room table was strectched out to the max with added leaves and could seat eight. There were only 6 matching chairs for it, but we used a couple steel chairs from the card table set to fill in. The table had drop leaves, so we could fold the 2 steel chairs and drop the table leaves for walking room between meals. That left 4 adults and the baby to eat at the breakfast bar.

Kitchen counter space had never been enough in the U-shaped kitchen, and always had women running into each other as they worked there. More than one collision resulted in spilled gravy or iced tea. When the weather was nice, some of us ate on the back porch where we had a round painted concrete table with benches that would handle another 3 or 4 adults. Tammy and Hailey often ate out there, since the kid tended to be messy.

There was little to no room for personal items, so we all had to be careful to keep our things put away as best we could. but things still got misplaced and lost. You had to be careful where you walked, lest you step on Hailey or some of her toys. Tammy did the best she could, but it was still a problem that led to short tempers. Most of us spent a fair amount of time outdoors to have more space. 
__________________

Carmen and Brenda had talked on the phone when the furniture truck arrived, but Carmen had wisely stayed out of the way until the dust settled a bit. Carmen and David came down to say hello after the crowd had been here for just over a week.

"Hi everybody! We thought it was time to come over. This is David Martin, my new husband."

Charlene said, "Congratulations! Sorry we don't have a wedding present, but you have our wishes for a happy marriage." She was her old smiling self again, rising to the social occassion.

It was getting close to lunch time and preparations were under way. There was something of an assembly line going from the fridge, to the stove then on to the bar and the table. Carmen said, "This reminds me of our old family holiday gatherings with people everywhere."

Brenda said, "That's what it's like, only 3 times a day."

Carmen was surprised when more young people came in the back door, some sitting down at the table, others off to wash up, and Brittany coming in with a big sack of salad stuff from the garden. She shouldered her way through the crowd to the sink and began to wash the greens.

Carmen told David, "Let's step out on the porch and give them room to work."

Once outside, I overheard her tell David, "We have to DO something! They've got a dozen people trying to live here, and they don't have room. We have that huge house and just us two in it. Would you agree to taking in some of them? You don't have to do it. It's your house, really."

David said, "We have the room, no doubt about that, but I don't think we can feed many more. We can't afford the food."

"What if Brenda and Jack do that? They're feeding them now. I can talk to him if it's all right with you."

David said, "I've been thinking about it since you told me your family all came here. I guess things are different now. We can't just let people do without. Yeah we can give them a place to stay, but we're for sure going to need some help."

Lunch was going when they came back inside. Carmen said loud enough for all to hear, "Listen up folks. We have a proposal to make."

As the table talk died down, Carmen began again. "David and I have this big house on the other side of the barn down there. We would like to invite Ryan and Megan, and Brittany and Kevin to come stay with us. We'll need some help with food, but we have a wood cook stove so we're not going to run out of gas to cook with, and there are plenty of bedrooms and closets. I guess if you four keep on working for Jack, maybe he can pay you with food or something. You'll have to work that out. What does everybody think?"

It got to be a family meeting then. Carmen was aware of the sleeping arrangements and knew it would help greatly to have our living room again if those two couples had somewhere else to be. Brenda was looking relieved. I saw that and said, "I'll go for that, if they want to do it."

Megan and Brittany looked at their husbands like they had better agree, or else.

Charlene said, "David, are you sure this is all right with you? Our family tends to look out for each other and we do things like this. Do you think it would be okay?"

David said, "Well, we have room and we can keep it warm this winter with the wood stove, but we'll have to come up with more groceries somehow. We can't buy groceries, even if the stores were open. We're broke like everybody else since the money went bad. I don't know if I'll have a job this Fall, either. I drive a school bus and I sell stuff on the internet, but that's no good since the banks are all closed."

Brenda said, "We have food. It might not be just what you want to eat, but we have a LOT of food. If you young folks want to move there, food won't be a problem."

Britanny was sitting by Megan and had been whispering to her. Megan said, "We can take care of the house for you. We'd love to have more room, if you're sure it's okay."

I said, "We'll get you enough groceries today that it won't be a problem. Carmen, you get with Brenda on that and we can move everything."

After lunch, other projects were let go so everyone could pitch in to move the two couples. It only took a couple hours to do it, including filling the pantry for Carmen and David. I had just ground corn and wheat, so we sifted out 3 gallons of white flour for them and some cornmeal. Biscuits and cornbread had taken the place of bread from the grocery, so those were needed. Our living room got restored to it's normal state, so the furniture truck was empty again. The extra chairs from my den were needed to seat more people. Life might get to be something closer to normal at our house.
__________________

Chapter 40

Our hay was ready for a second cutting, so I made plans with all the men to work on that. Not having a second tractor to move wagons, I decided to bale and drop it all on the ground until I was finished. We had enough help that it went fast picking up the hay and moving it to the barn, pulling one wagon with Josh's truck where the ground was level enough that traction wasn't a problem for it, and he could haul a few bales on the truck, too.

Fewer people in our house made meals much easier. Ryan and Kevin had the hand pump at David's place to wash up when it was over, so that took a load off our washup facilities, too. The electric power was out again that night, but we didn't mind. The freezer and some lights were running on the solar system. We couldn't power the fridge so we cleaned it out after supper and sat some dishes in it in pans of cool water. Supper was much more relaxed with less hassle in the kitchen and enough room to sit and eat. The house was still full, but it wasn't overflowing. I worried less about he cistern level, but we would keep up our conservation measures.

There was enough power to operate the small 12 volt TV, so we turned it on to catch the news. The announcer had a bright smile on.

"Something everyone wants to hear now. Banks will reopen tomorrow and the new currency is ready to be exchanged for the old dollars. The new bills will be worth 100 times the old ones, so coins will be more important. The old coins will be used, until more can be minted. A shortage of change is anticipated, but having the banks open means that checks can be used again. Debit cards will be back, too, but the credit card system will take a while longer, since due to the economic problems, banks are going to require a credit check before issuing new cards."

I said, "That's just peachy, but I wonder who has any money left now to swap for the old stuff?"

Brenda said, "Those gas stations that were charging an arm and both legs for gas should have a lot of money."

Josh said, "Yeah, if they're still in business. Most of them were closed the last time we went to town. Heck, almost everything was closed. I don't know how I'd get parts if I had car work to do. Nobody's driving anyway."

Howard said, "I haven't seen a truck go past since we've been here, except a couple farm trucks. Hardly any traffic at all."

Charlene said, "With gas over $40 a gallon, it's no wonder! Nobody can afford to drive, so I suppose they are just staying home."

Tammy said, "Yeah, it's kinda spooky to not hear any traffic. When something goes past now it's strange and we all look to see what it is."

I said, "What worries me is how we're going to pay our next electric bill. We had a few bucks in the banks, but we spent all the cash we had."

Brenda said, "Somebody will buy silver and we have some of that."

Maybe so," I said, "but I'd rather hang on to it unless we have to sell it. I'm afraid we won't get what it's worth now until things settle down."
____________________

Josh didn't need to worry about having something to do in the mechanic shop. Our old tractor decided to spit up a water pump and spew antifreeze all over the barnyard. I was thankful we had the hay in for the year before that happened, but we used the tractor to power the hammermill when we ground feed and flour. We couldn't stand for it to be down for very long.

I called the bank and asked for our balance. There was $44.12 left after they deducted "fees" of some kind from the $50 we had left in there. Converted to the new money, that was 44 cents. Oh joy, I thought. I'd have to come up with some money somewhere before we could do anything. Next, I called the jewelry store in town and asked him what he was paying for junk silver coins.

He said, "The silver market has been all over the place. I'm sitting it out until things settle down. I don't have that much capital to risk on it right now."

"I also have some silver Eagles. Are you interested in those?"

He paused and then said, "I could give you a dollar each for up to 20 of them, but that's about my limit."

"I'll think about it and let you know," I told him.

We drained the radiator to save what antifreeze remained in it, then removed the pump where it sat in the machine shed. The fan belt didn't look all that great either, so we took it home too, hoping I had a belt in my collection that would work. I pressed out the old pump shaft and bearing assembly and called the John Deere dealer. He had a rebuilt water pump and he wanted $21.40 for it, new money. He didn't have just the bearing to replace the old one and couldn't get one until they started shipments again.

"We've got to do something," I told Josh. "We need that tractor running. How about you press that old bearing out and I'll go dig in my bearing collection?"

He brought the dead bearing in the basement shop a few minutes later and we did some measuring. it was the standard cartridge type made only for water pumps, being one long bearing with a shaft made as an integral part of it. The old shaft came out with a solid hammer blow and bearing balls went everywhere. With that in hand I searched until I found a pair of standard single row ball bearings with the right outer diameter. Three hours later I had machined the hardened shaft to fit the new bearings I had. I hoped the seals were adequate as I pressed the modified shaft and new bearings back into the housing. We found an old cereal box I had saved for gasket material and used my small ball pein hammer to peck out a new gasket for the pump. Josh doped up the flimsy cardboard gasket with lots of sealant and we bolted it all back together. 




 (gasket cutting with a hammer)

We had only lost about a gallon of coolant which was good, since I didn't have all that much antifreeze to spare. Josh mixed up half a gallon of water with an equal amount of antifreeze and we started the tractor. He refilled the radiator with it running and we watched it until the engine got up to operating temperature.

Josh said, "Those bearings we put in it didn't look as heavy as the old ones."

"They're not," I told him. "They make the shaft as part of the original bearings so they have room for larger bearing balls. If these last for a year, I'll be tickled to death. That's why I removed the seals on one side of 'em and packed between 'em with grease. Maybe that'll help 'em live longer."

"What if they don't?"

"I've got 10 more of those bearings in the package."

We did find a good belt to replace the old one. I was thankful I'd bought that pallet of belts when an auto repair shop closed and had an auction a couple years before. I knew the repair was less than the best, but it worked and we had the tractor to use again. That was a good thing. 
_________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 41 Late August, 2015

"We're about out of dog food," Daniel said. He had been feeding Sonny and now had a friend for life. "Don't have much cat food either."

I said, "I'll get some corn meal and get Somebody to cook up a batch for him."

"You're going to make dog food?"

"He's gotta eat something, and we're flat broke until we can sell some hogs or something. This would be a fine evening to shoot a couple squirrels, or a rabbit to mix in the dog food. You want to do that? Sonny will be glad to help."

"Sounds okay to me. It beats a lot of other farm jobs," he said with a grin.

"Take my .22 rifle. I've got more shells for it than anything else."

He left to get the rifle as Bill Woodruff came in riding a very old bicycle. It was one of the old heavy single speed kind that would be tough going in this hilly country. There was something black and greasy in the basket on the handlebars, and a cardboard box in one of the rear baskets. Bill was tired, from the look of him, and he had worked up a good sweat pedalling the mile and a half from his place. 

"Whatcha got there?"

"The gearbox off my manure spreader. It's got a bolt broke off in it and I ain't had no luck gittin' it out. I brought 2 pounds of butter to get you interested in fixin' it, since I ain't got any money. The damn milk truck ain't showed up to pick up milk fer over a month now, and I doubt if a check from the dairy would be good anyways. Better get this butter cold a'fore it melts. I cooled it in the springhouse, but it's warm by now. If you want more than that, you let me know and I'll bring you somethin'."

I told him that was more than enough and tossed the butter in the freezer. I came back outside noting that the freezer had a lot less meat in it now.

Daniel came back with a small raccoon about the time I had drilled out the offending bolt end and cleaned the hole with a tap. I dug around and found an old bolt that fit, then cleaned it up with a die and gave it to Bill. He was delighted and pedalled slowly off towards home. 

Daniel and I skinned the raccoon and gave the liver and heart to Sonny for finding it. The rest we washed with cool water from the hand pump and took it inside to cook it off the bones. The stove was busy with the pressure canner on it and the women were busy tending that, so I got out the big old cast iron Dutch Oven and we went back outside. Daniel fetched the tripod we used for cooking down lard and I hung the kettle on it while he went to the woodpile. In half an hour the kettle was boiling well so we went to the shade to rest while it cooked. 

The women were delighted with the butter, having run out of what we'd had in the freezer some time ago. Our late sweet corn was ripe so we would have a treat for supper that night. It was late evening when we go the raccoon meat picked off and ran it through the hand cranked meat grinder. Sonny had been real interested in the project all afternoon and made a pest of himself. While we worked on the '**** meat I had a batch of cornmeal boiling in the dutch oven, and had Heather stirring it to keep it from sticking. It thickened up nicely so I added the ground meat a little at a time and a little mineral salt we used in animal feed. I kicked the fire out and put the lid on the kettle, then carried it to the porch to cool off. After a good supper, we packaged the dog food in portions and let it cool completely before putting most of it in the freezer. That batch would only last Sonny and Kitty cat about 10 days. This could get to be a real hassle, I thought. We could find ways to do without money, but it all took more time and work.
_______________

"Jack, we're running out of toilet paper," Brenda said. "We might have enough for a week, but then it will be the the old fashioned cleaning rag thing."

"Ugh. What a way to start the day," I said. "I have a few bundles of those red shop rags. They aren't new, but they're clean. I'll find those and put 'em in the bathrooms."

"So, look in the barn loft for something to put the dirty rags in, 'cause we're going to need it soon. Has to have a lid to keep the smell under control until we can wash them. We'll need one for each bathroom, maybe a just a plastic bucket with a lid? I could put some water and bleach in the bucket."

"I'll see what I can find. I may have to wash out an old oil bucket or something. The bathrooms are going to get crowded."

"We can set the bucket by the diaper pail in the bathtub, and in the shower in the half bath." she said. 

I found some buckets and put Heather to work washing the oil film out of them, then Daniel and I got busy on expanding the chicken lot. The more grass and bugs the hens ate, the less feed I needed to grind. While we did that, Ryan and Kevin were busy transplanting strawberry runner plants to expand the patch. Tammy was picking cucumbers while Brenda and Charlene cleaned some crocks getting ready to make pickles. 

I hoped the supply of sugar and vinegar held out until we could get more. We could make vinegar from the worst of the apples this Fall, but vinegar was cheap to buy while sugar wasn't something we could do. It made for some hard choices of where to spend our time. I was thinking about these things as I went to get more steel posts for the chicken pen and noticed something slide down inside my pants leg. My pocket knife had fallen on the ground. I picked it up and felt inside my pocket. Yep. It had a hole in it. I put the knife in the other front pocket and made a mental note to see about patching that pocket. 

Daniel was still banging away with the post driver. The ground was too hard and dry to be driving steel posts, but we had a batch of young chickens hatched out so they needed more room. I realized I should be counting the chicks as a blessing, but it was way too hot to be building fence. The garden needed watering, so when the boys finished with the strawberries, I'd have them do it from the irrigation tank. Thankfully, it was still 3/4 full. The house cistern was down to 39" of water. We needed rain. Heck, we needed toilet paper, sugar, vinegar, meat, and most of all, money to pay for it all. The hogs wouldn't be ready to sell for another couple months, and I was praying that there would be a market for them by that time. 

I passed by the garden on the way back with an armload of posts and noticed we had some cantaloupe that were ripe. That would be good with supper this evening, which was something to look forward to. I resolved to take my blessings where I found them. 
_________________


Chapter 42

I had seen Josh working on something that day in the basement garage but paid no attention to what it was. He knew what we needed done, so I usually left him alone to do it. I was surprised to see that he had found some old hinges and got the rust off of them, then gave them a coat of aluminum spray paint just in time to go on the gate for the new chicken pen. It was a small thing, but it was just what we needed right then. I thanked him and got busy on the gate. By supper time, we had a chicken pen. 
_______________

That evening I saw the telephone/internet and electric bills had come in the mail. I knew I'd have to sell some silver or do without both of them. We had 47 one ounce silver Eagles, and the junk silver coins left. The internet was working and the power was on that night, so I checked Kitco's site and found it was up and running again. The spot prices were given in the new currency values which looked really strange to me. It was hard to get used to everything being priced at 1% of the old numbers. So, even though in the past gold had sold as high as $1800 an ounce, it was hard to accept that at $29.94 it had gone UP in price, dramatically. Realizing that, I ran down the page to find silver spot was $1.86 an ounce and was thrilled. I needed to check around before I sold any. The whole currency mess seemed to be settling down now. 

The next morning I learned that our bank was paying spot minus 5%, so I called the jeweller again. He said he would pay spot minus 2%, so he got the bid. I took 10 silver Eagles in town and got $18.32. The electric bill was 84 cents, and the telephone/internet bill was 68 cents. I deposited $12 in the bank and mailed a check to pay the electric bill, then went to the internet office and paid that one in cash. Postage stamps were one cent now, which was outrageous, I thought. It equated to a dollar in the old money. I looked at the 16 cents I got in change from paying the phone bill and it finally hit me that we should look around home for some loose change, since it was now worth 100 times as much. Even a penny on the sidewalk was not to be ignored. 

I stopped at the grocery and bought a couple 10 pound bags of sugar for 8 cents a bag, and 2 gallons of white vinegar for 2 cents each. My bill was 22 cents, counting the 10% sales tax. It sounded so ridiculously cheap, but I figured out quickly that those prices were high. I used to buy 10 pounds of sugar for $6.29, and cheap white vinegar for $1.59 a gallon, so prices were actually up quite a bit. I got on the internet as soon as I got home and found that corn was quoted at 5.88 cents a bushel and hogs were selling for 94 cents a hundredweight. That sounded pretty good to me. A hog weighing 213 pounds would bring $2.00, so things weren't so bad for a hog farmer. We had 42 head of hogs that would be ready to sell by mid-October. 

The cattle market wasn't quite so good. Cattle had been over $3.00 a pound last year, but now were going for $2.62 per hundredweight. Still, a grown steer at 1,000 pounds would bring $26.20 now. We had 14 head that would be ready for market by late this Fall, so if we sold all of them, that would be about $105.00. More feeder cattle would cost a lot of that, but there was profit to be made. It was going to take time to get used to the new prices. 

I wrote down all the figures I had found and showed it all to Brenda. She said, "So, I just move the decimal over 2 places and that would the prices in the old money, right?"

"Yeah, that's right. It took a while for it to soak in my head. I'm still not used to it."

She thought about that for a while and said, "We're still poor."

"Yep. Really, our earnings are way down, and everything we need to buy has gone up. And, we have a dozen people to support. Bottom line is, we have to find some way for those people to make some money. Josh is off to a good start. When things get moving a little better he'll have enough mechanic work to do. I don't know what to think about the rest of them, though. Not much call for furniture salesmen now. The young people can work at labor jobs, but I don't think it will pay much."

Brenda said, "I meant to tell you last night that Susan called. She said they are both back to work, but their take home pay comes out to around half what it used to be when you get through all the changes to the money and prices of things. She says they can make it okay, but they have to be pretty careful, and they have good jobs. I wonder how the really poor people are going to live?" 

"Let's hope they can get by somehow. It's going to be tough."
_______________

That night the TV news said elections would be held for all Federal offices this year in November, just like always, except that there would be no incumbents allowed to run. The sitting Supreme Court Justices would not be charged with treason, but they were all to be removed and replaced by the normal appointment process after the new President and Congress were sworn into office. Campaign advertising would to be limited to equal shares of what was donated by television and other media as tax deductible expenses for them. 

This year only, there would be 10% flat tax on all personal income above poverty level and profits of businesses under the old tax code to fund the military government. For convenience, income would be reported on form 1040EZ, with no deductions for anything. The Internal Revenue Service would be subject to whatever new tax code was established by the new Congress, the old tax code was to be scrapped entirely. A list of abolished government departments followed, and I couldn't remember them all. It was all supposed to be published in every major newspaper, so I didn't try. 

The reporter quoted a statement given by the ruling military Triumvirate to the effect that, "We are giving the United States a second opportunity to have a Constitutional Republic. Some changes to Constitutional amendments will be necessary for that, but that is for the new Congress to establish. We encourage everyone to write to their Congressional representatives, and we encourage them to listen to their constiuents. We hope you get it right this time."
_______________


Chapter 43 September, 2015


I had traded 2 hogs to Stuart Young for 60 bales of nice clean straw and 30 bushels of wheat back when he harvested his crop in July. I still had the hogs, having agreed to feed them out to full slaughter size. Stuart would get them when they were ready to butcher, and hopefully the weather would be cool enough then. They should be close to 300 pounds each by Thanksgiving,instead of 200 to 220 pound size when they were normally marketed. The corn patch we had planted for them was still growing, but showing a lot of stress from the hot, dry weather with rolled up leaves. This was the time when corn needed moisture to fill out the grains on the ears and it wasn't getting it.

Our gardens were still looking good, only because we had been watering individual plants in the evening. That was more efficient than spraying the whole area. Our late crops of spinach, kale, turnips, beets, lima beans, and Great Northern beans were growing, but the beans had lower leaves turning yellow. I thought that was more due to maturity than lack of water, so I told Brittany to stop watering the beans and concentrate on the root crops. There wasn't much left in the irrigation tank. 

The yellow summer squash, green beans, and banana peppers were about finished for the year, so we picked the last of them, some cauliflower, and the last of the Brussels sprouts to make a huge kettle of vegetable soup. "End of the Garden Soup", Brenda called it. We had that for supper with the last of the cantaloupe for dessert. I was concerned about the long dry spell and checked the cistern. It showed only 21" of water in it. If we didn't get rain soon, we would be hauling water up from the river to drink and that meant filtering and boiling it to assure it was fit to drink. The pond where all our stock drank was getting pretty low, too. 

Grass in the yard had gone dormant, or died, a month ago. I didn't miss mowing it, which I saw as a big waste of time and gasoline, but I would much rather had enough rain to make it grow. I thought we should probably plow up some more of the yard and make it into garden next year. Grass just for something to look at was not important now. 

We didn't have all that much lawn. The 3 big garden areas took up most of the back yard, except where it was sloped and that had orchard trees in it, planted years ago. That whole hillside had fruit growing on it bush cherries that had been picked and canned some time ago, a couple gooseberry bushes, two Hazelnut bushes that had just begun to bear this year, 2 plum trees, 2 pears, and 4 large apple trees. The apples had been dropping a lot of green fruit to stay alive in the dry weather, so I had Megan gather them into buckets to feed to the hogs. Hogs will eat almost anything. 

There was some unused space around the house because of the steep slopes there that allowed us to have the drive-in basement. I thought maybe we could make some terraces along the front of the house and plant some kind of perennial there, possibly horseradish, rhubarb, herbs, or more strawberries. There wasn't much wasted space around the house now, but we would need to use every inch of it to keep feeding our clan. 

The little barn in our back yard that stored the lawn mower and garden tools, plus a fair amount of junk, could probably collect enough water for the chickens, so I thought about how to do that with some rain barrels. The big livestock and hay barn had no gutters either, so the runoff from that was draining across the barnyard and ultimately into the sinkhole in the middle of the pasture. It should be possible to shunt that into a small pond near the barn, if we did it right. That would have to be a project for next summer when there was enough moisture in the ground to do some digging and grading. It would have to be as far as possible from the sinkhole in order to have enough thickness of clay under it to hold water. Maybe if we did that and let the hogs use it, they would pack it bottom and get it to hold water. It was worth a try. We needed more water storage in case we had a bad dry year. 
_____________________

The TV weathergirl said there was rain coming from a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico that had been causing flooding in the deep South. That was supposed to reach us tonight and rain for a couple days before slowly making its' way on to the northeast. That evening I had Daniel help me clean all the house gutters of dirt and trash, and clean the screens that kept it out of our cistern. 

We got rain, lots of it. It came fast enough at first that the gutters overflowed, unable to conduct it fast enough into the cistern. It slowed down then and although the dry ground wasn't able to soak up all of it without a great deal of runoff, the gardens and cornfield were well soaked and muddy. Over the next two days the cistern was back up to 52" of water, over half full. The hot weather broke then, and temperatures fell back from the mid-90's to around 80 degrees. The world greened up as the short pastures grew and corn began to look healthy. Even the air smelled fresh again. 

A week later when the corn had greened up nicely, I opened the gate into the cornfield so the hogs could get in to eat it. They were overjoyed and didn't pick their heads up all day. 
__________________

"Jack, Stephanie called and said they had sold their place!" 

I said, "What's up with that?"

"Brad had 2 months notice that the phone company is combining their truck maintenance in Seymour with the shop in Corydon. They bought the old truck dealership at Palmyra for a bigger facility. They are keeping the most senior people, so Brad still has a job, only it's in Palmyra now, not that far from us. Stephie said they sold their place to that old rich guy who buys up all the land he can find. Now they are hunting for something to rent closer to his job."

"There ought to be a lot of places to rent now. Lots of empty houses around here," I said. 

"Yeah, they're going to look at a couple places this weekend. But her problem is what to do with their goats. Their neighbor across the road wants to buy the goats for some rough pasture he has, but Stephie's attached to them. I think she was hinting that we might keep them for her until they get a place that has room for them."

"Uh, no. Not just no, HELL NO! I won't have a goat on the place. I know what they do. We don't have fencing that will keep a goat in, and they would destroy our orchard, the gardens, and everything. No. It's not even feasible. We can't afford to lose what they can destroy in one afternoon. We've got enough problems without that."

"She didn't exactly ask me to do that, but it was a broad hint," Brenda said.

"Make me the bad guy then. Tell her like it is, that I won't have 'em on the place, or anywhere close for that matter. I don't want to hurt her feelings, but we can't risk it." 

"You may never get any more of her goat cheese."

"I can live with that."
_________________


----------



## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 44 

Josh heard from a customer that the farm across the road from us had been foreclosed by the bank that held the mortgage. The newly changed bankinng regulations required that it be valued at fair market value, or whatever it would bring on the open market. This was intended to put a end to "Zombie Banks" marking their assets at some fantasy price to keep the bank from failing. The property had to be sold within 6 months, or it would be declared worth zero on the bank's financial statement. The effect of that had been to tighten credit severely. Banks simply would not loan anywhere close to full price for real estate now. That in turn, dropped the selling prices for real estate for lack of buyers with a big enough down payment. 

This farm had not sold and time was running out, so it was to be sold at absolute auction in a couple months. It was marginal farmland on a hilltop, but also had some good tillable ground on both sides of the hill. The side nearest us had a good pond and was fenced for livestock. The barn was old, but there was a newer 3 bay garage built of concrete blocks that was probably 50 years old, although in pretty good shape. I wondered who might buy it, but figured it would be like others in the neighborhood that had been sold to an investor group that arranged for tenants to do the farming. 

There were two dwellings on the property, the original stone farmhouse and a fairly new doublewide modular home. The modular home had belonged to the son of the original owner and had its' own garage, a 3 bay pole building tall enough for the son to use for maintaining the semi truck he owned. When the original owner had passed away, the son's trucking business came to an end with the crash of the economy, then bankruptcy ensued. The property had been vacant since last winter and was grown up in weeds. Equipment, probably repossessed by the same bank, had been sitting in the weeds for some time.

I was surprised to learn that the property reached as far as the river below and was said to be "120 acres, more or less", on the realty sign in the yard. No matter to me, since we had no money to invest, so I forgot about it.
________________

Susan and Art came to visit one Sunday afternoon and had noticed the sign as they drove past it. 

"Dad, what's up with the farm across the road?"

"It's been foreclosed so the bank has to sell it," I told her. "New bank regulations," I added.

Art's ears perked up and he asked, "What's it worth?"

"It's worth whatever they can get for it now. The new Congress is hell bent on making bankers honest and real estate prices realistic again, according to what the news said. 'Cleaning out the barn' they called the new policies and regulations."

"There will be some big losers from that," Susan said.

Art said, "It sounds like there will be some big opportunites, too. We have been looking for a way to invest our retirement savings. We saved most of what we had from the devaluations by dumping our accounts ahead of the dollar crisis and buying gold. That has appreciated now, but we need to get some earnings from it if we can. Our jobs are just keeping our heads above water for now."

Susan said, "I will never, ever invest in stocks and bonds again as long as I live. I'd buy a farm in a heartbeat, but we still have to work because it would take too long for a farm to produce an income." 

Brenda said, "You need to talk to your brother. His job just got moved from Seymour to Palmyra. They sold their place and are moving into a rental next week just down the road south of us."

Art looked at Susan who asked her mother, "Can I use your phone?"
___________________

It was a busy month for Brad, Stephanie, Susan, and Art, but by then the farm had been bought by the two couples after forming an LLC to facilitate the process. It sold cheap enough, but it took all the two couples could scrape together to have enough for the needed repairs on the place and equipment and have enough left for operating money for the next year. Howard was an excellent business administrator, so he was drafted to keep track of finances. He had saved his business computer and set up records for the LLC. 

Josh and I put a lot of hours into fixing farm equipment, assisted by Tammy and Daniel. The labor required to get the old place in shape for the next season was immense. A plan evolved that made some sense. Susan and Art had no desire to move to the farm because it was too far from their jobs. They would be silent partners in the venture. Brad and Stephanie would move in as soon as possible, after some minimal repair work on the farmhouse. Daniel and Heather would move into the modular home, and work for the LLC as employees, taking advantage of Daniel's broad experience in business and construction. 

Most importantly to Stephanie, she got to buy back her goats and get them ensconced in the old barn before bad weather. She hoped the fencing was adequate to keep them at home. They borrowed our stock trailer, towed by Josh's truck to move the goats and haul what feed they had to the new place. Pandemonium reigned for a couple months in our respective households. 

Brad struck a deal with Stuart Young to do grain harvesting for the coming season, while Josh and Daniel concentrated on getting the tractor, plows, disk, planter and grain drill in shape to use. There was still time to plant some winter wheat, but their equipment wasn't ready so I used our tractor to do the tillage while the young men did repairs on their grain drill. As soon as I had twenty acres in the river bottom ready to plant, I mowed the 30-odd acres of pasture and hay ground to get the weeds out of the way for next spring. My supply of diesel fuel was getting lower than I liked, but the new government had cut fuel taxes for agriculture, so the LLC bought my fuel somewhat cheaper than we had expected. I made enough for my work to put 2 badly needed front tires on our old tractor and do the maintenance it needed. I got paid a bit more for fixing some parts for the grain drill. 

October 10th was the accepted date to plant winter wheat in our community, but we were almost a week late getting it finished. That was acceptable, and the Fall rains cooperated. Brad worked on equipment evenings after his day job and Stephanie had the goat dairy going again turning out cheese to age, while Josh wrenched on other equipment and Daniel did building repairs. 

Meanwhile, Ryan, Megan, Kevin and Brittany were cuttng firewood from last year's treetops for everyone. Brenda and Charlene were keeping all of us at our house all fed and clothed. Hailey was up and walking well now, in case the older women needed something to keep them busy. She had discovered a litter of kittens in our barn, and was always wanting to go play with them, so someone had to assure she didn't wander off while Tammy was getting greasy with Josh in the shop. 

Stephanie had managed to raise quite a garden this year and had moved her canned goods into their new place. She wanted some chickens, but that got put off so farm work could be accomplished in a timely manner. She did get her wood cook stove installed by threatening to offer nothing but cold meals until it happened. Their farm had a well that supplied the household needs of the two houses. It was an ancient hand dug well, laid up with stone and over 40 feet deep, complete with a hand pump on top in case the electric one wasn't functional for some reason, like during the ongoing power outages. Daniel and Heather had already been living with our hand pump, so they adapted quickly. 

Brad drove their big IH tractor out of the shop after they had finished with it and headed for the river bottom fields. It took less adjusting than he had expected so he got a decent start before dark that night. He wanted it all plowed for corn this Fall, if possible, because he knew the bottom fields would the last ones to dry out in the Spring. 
_____________________


Chapter 45 March, 2016


The winter had gone pretty well, all things considered. We had sold our cattle and hogs and had some cash on hand. Julie had dropped her foal on a warm morning the middle of March and it looked at least as good as her last two. Only nursing the one, he grew pretty fast. 

Hailey had a really high fever once, but some aspirin and ordinary nursing got it back down by evening. She was sniffling the next day, but up and going again. Little kids bounce back fast. Insurance for us poor people was a thing of the past now, so going to a doctor was reserved for desperate cases. I had heard that only a few insurance companies survived the crash. 

The lack of affordable health care meant that a lot of people died that might not have with decent care. One of the places that went out of business was the more expensive funeral home in town. Nobody could afford to pay for funerals, but the law said they had to be buried properly and that bankrupted a lot of poor families. The County was left to pay for the burial of indigents, and that cut deep into the County budget, leaving almost nothing for other things. The County road department was down to one man now and all he got done was patch a few potholes with gravel. They couldn't afford asphalt cold patching. 

Indiana still required vehicle insurance, but nobody I knew had anything except liability coverage and that was expensive. We decided to drop the license and insurance on my wife's truck at the first of the year and just cover mine. We didn't drive unless we had to, and my old truck cost less for the license. Hers was parked in the machinery shed in case mine crapped out. 

The property insurance had gotten very expensive, so after some debates, we decided to just drop it. If something burned down, that would be bad, but we simply could not afford the insurance. Other things came first. I put some effort into checking all the electrical stuff in the house and outbuildings to make sure we didn't have a fire hazard waiting there and replaced some switches and light sockets. Except for the shop needs, we would have shut off the electrical service, too, but it cost more to run the generator to power the shop. I had to up my charges a little to cover that, and it meant some people couldn't afford to get things fixed. 
_______________________

Howard got a call from an acquaintance in Louisville who owned property next to his old furniture store. A developer was trying to buy that entire city block, and the man wanted to know if Howard was planning to sell to him. They discussed prices and determined what their bottom price would be to sell. Howard was pleased to learn that his property was now prime real estate and sold out, as-is, for $3,400. That amount of money in the new currency was enough to buy a very fine home, or about 15 nice new cars. 

Charlene didn't feel well at the time, but went along to sign the papers at the closing. Howard said he was coming down with a bad case of the sniffles himself, and only got the check cashed then stopped at the emergency care clinic on his way home and got some medications. They both had a bad case of the flu that was going around, and spent the next week getting more sick instead of better. We took them both to the hospital and stayed until they were settled into the same room. Two days later they had both passed away from an extreme fever. 

Charlene and Howard were just two of the hundreds in our county that died from that virulent strain of flu. Their kids agreed to have them cremated, as had been reccomended to help stop the epidemic that was raging. We lost some neighbors and several acquaintances before it was over. Fortunately, none of the rest of the family was affected beyond some fever, aches, and normal flu symptoms. Still, it was after the first of the year before we all began to think we had recuperated. 

After paying for the funeral and other expenses, Daniel, Ryan, and Brittany each inherited $1,000 in cash from their parents. Daniel and Heather immediately talked to Susan, Art, Brad and Stephanie about buying the home they were living in. That deal went through fast, in order to get it finished before the end of the year for farm tax purposes. They got an acre lot that included the pole building shop and a driveway easement to the highway for $350 and had enough cash on hand left to live for a year. Daniel's job for the LLC did not change, so they lived where he worked. They decided to buy a small used pickup truck in good running condition for $48. 

When Howard and Charlene's household goods were distributed among their heirs, our house began to seem more like normal again. Only Josh, Tammy, and Hailey remained living with us. 
__________________ 

The heirs owned the furniture delivery truck jointly, and agreed to give it to Brenda and me in gratitude for living with us. I thanked them after they refused to take any payment for it, and pondered what to do with it. It had not been used in the 8 months they had been with us. The batteries were low, but it started after some charging. I had some ideas and talked it over with Brenda, then went to talk to Ryan and Kevin and their wives. 

"The farm is really more than I can do alone and you all know it," I said. "I have a deal to propose. There is a market for fresh vegetables here, now that shipping them across the country is so expensive. Only a few people had anything to sell at the farmer's market in town last year, so how about we get out of the hog business and plow up that better ground next to David and Carmen's here? The local groceries will undoubtedly buy some, and we can set up a roadside stand, too. That truck started out as a refrigerated van, and it still works just fine. We can remove that reefer box from it and use it to store vegetables. It will run several days on a gallon of diesel. Anybody interested?"

David said, "I'm interested, if nobody else is. Driving the bus this year barely kept us going after they cut the pay for it. But that much gardening is more than Carmen and I can do. It would take all of us to make it work." 

The young people discussed it and liked the idea. There was a lot to work out. We had to do some research on getting plants for the first year, decide what would be a fair rental for the ground from me, and for doing the tractor work. I offered to manure the ground and do the tillage, but I'd have to come up with a cultivator. The discussion went on late that evening, but we had a plan roughed out. 
_________________

Josh and I used some planks and the tractor to slide the reefer box off the truck, then lowered it to the ground with hydraulic jacks and wood blocks a little at a time. We got it levelled up on some timbers and called it a good job. We'd placed it in the shade of a big maple tree behind David's house, where it would be convenient to both the field and to the roadside where we would put a stand for sales. 

Josh said, "We'll need to put a battery on this thing to start it now that it's not hooked to the truck battery. Same with the fuel."

I told him, "I planned to just jump start it from whatever car or truck. Leave the battery cables hanging. I've got a 5 gallon fuel can we can put on on the cooler mounting. Need to keep that fuel line full so it won't be such a pain to start next time. It's a kinda ******* way to do it, but it's the cheapest I can think of. Don't have to have its' own battery."

We messed around a while getting those things done, but the little engine fired right up. 

"Let's let it run a while and see if it cools down like it should," I said. 

Josh nodded and began to pick up tools and leftovers from the job. "Put these long planks back in the shed?"

"Yeah. We need to keep 'em dry so they don't rot." 

We let it run for an hour and the box got very cold inside. No problem. We'd have to set the thermostat higher or we'd freeze the produce. In the shade we shouldn't have to run the cooler very much. 

Next we used the remainder of the sawed lumber stacked in the machinery shed to build a flat bed for the truck. There were some leftovers of steel pipe laying around the shop that we used to build a "headache rack" just behind the cab. The rough sawn oak lumber wasn't beautiful, but it was very strong. We used up what bolts I had building this much. I still had some paint, so we put a couple coats of black oil based enamel on the bed, the first coat liberally diluted with linseed oil to make it soak in deep. 

Josh said, "It would look better if we got the old store name off the cab doors."

"You want to sand it down? I've still got some white spray paint."

"I'll sand it down, but I'm not much of a painter," he said. 

"I'm not either, but this thing is going to live on the farm and the animals won't care if it has some runs in the paint," I told him. "I'd rather it didn't rust out, though."

Josh grinned and said, "Maybe I can do it good enough."

"If we could find time and materials to build a grain box for the truck with stock racks on top, that would make it a lot more useful, but for now if we just make some sideboards a couple feet high, it would be good. Then we could haul a little crushed stone to patch driveways and such things."

"Yeah, we've got enough to do that I think," Josh said. 

Hauling stone and other things for our use would save us enough to offset the cost of license and insurance, but I put off licensing the truck until we had a need to use it. Even farm truck license cost a lot. Sometimes you are just too poor to save a lot of money by spending a little. 

Meanwhile, it could stay in the machinery building out of the weather. With good white paint on the cab and the rest of it black, the old truck looked pretty good when we finished, and it didn't have many miles on it. I figured it would be useful for hauling hay for sale and whatever else came up in the course of farming our place and the kids' farm across the road. I even had a tarp that would fit it, left over from the military surplus tarp deal. It would have to be good paying work if we used it, though, because the truck's crappy fuel mileage would cost us a fortune to drive it with on-road diesel at 42 cents a gallon. I had an old solar battery charger I hooked to the truck to help keep it from going flat, and I parked it on some short planks to keep the tires off the damp dirt floor and help preserve them.
__________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 46 April, 2016


Megan said, "Ryan, I've never had this much money. A thousand dollars now is like a hundred thousand before. I don't know what to do with it. I'm afraid we'll just spend it and not have anything left. People who won the lottery did that and a year later they were broke."

"Yeah. I don't ever wanna be broke again. We could buy a house, but I don't have a job. I've gotta get a good job before we buy a house. Or maybe start a business, but then we wouldn't have enough to buy a house."

"We can't live here with your Aunt Carmen forever. We have to do something besides garden for them," Megan said.

"I think we can make money with the garden, but we need something of our own," Ryan said. "Like Daniel did buying down there with Brad and Stephanie. But he already had a job there. The job is the problem. It has to come first. Y'know Kevin said him and Brittany had this talk not long ago." 

"She didn't say anything to me about it. Have they decided what to do yet?"

"Nah. He just said they were kickin' it around. He thinks he wants to do blacksmith work. He helped Jack do some work in hhis shop and it sounds like he fell in love. He's always hangin' around Jack now, and he found an old forge in the barn over there. Jack said he could have it if he wants it, and he's pretty stoked about that."

"Can he work at that? I mean is there anybody needs a blacksmith now? I thought that went out with buggy whips," Megan said.

"Yeah, but Jack was showing him how to make stuff that way. Jack uses his forge some, to make things, and he told Kevin he could make some money at it. Heck, he made a poker and a shovel for Carmen's wood stove and it didn't take him long. Lots of wood stoves around now."

"What can we do, though?"

Ryan said, "I used to do some fix up on furniture floor samples and old stuff when Dad ran a deal for trade ins. He sold the old stuff to that guy who ran a flea market. I fixed up the loose legs and glued joints and fixed drawer slides. I got pretty good at patching the scratches in finishes, too."

"Nobody's buying new furniture now."

"That's right. They buy old stuff instead, and most of it looks like junk. I bet there's some money to be made fixing up junk furniture and selling it."

Megan said, "Heck I can do some of that. I always liked to help my Dad doing woodworking. I guess I never told you that."

Ryan was thinking ahead and said, "We need to buy a pickup truck. Something that runs cheap. Then we can look for some junk to try this. There's an empty shed out back that I bet Jack would let us use."
______________________

I heard a car hit the "drunk bumps", I called them, on the shoulder of the highway out front. It was supposed to wake up a sleepy driver and keep them from running off the road. By our house, it meant the mail had come. I remembered it was Monday. We only got mail on Monday, 
Wednesday, and Friday after the cutbacks at the Post Office. I left the garage to get it while Josh was putting brakes on a pickup truck. There was less junk mail now. I supposed they couldn't afford to advertise as much. The small town paper was there, so I went to the kitchen and sat down to glance through it. 

In the real estate ads was a picture that looked familiar. I read the ad and sure enough, it was located just off the highway on the next county road to the south of us, about a 1/4 mile from David and Carmen's place. I didn't know the folks who lived there, so the description surprised me that there was a total of 22 acres, all but 5 of it in woods. It had a small barn, no bigger than a 2 car garage, but it had a hay loft. I had seen a couple riding horses there until recently. The house was 1 1/2 stories, probably with those sloped ceilings in upstairs bedrooms. There was what I called a Model A Ford garage, the tiny old style with vertical board siding built back when cars were smaller. The whole place looked like it had been built in the 1930's, except for a pole frame hay barn in the pasture uphill from the pond. 

I mentioned it to Brenda and showed her the picture while I cooled off with a glass of iced tea. 

She said, "Brittany said they wanted to buy a place, and Ryan and Megan have been talking about it, too. I'll show this to them, because it's so close, and it looks like it might be affordable."

"Kevin said they wanted ot buy a place, but they were afraid to without having a better income."

"Yeah, Megan said something like that, too. I know they hate to live with Carmen and David." 

I said, "Maybe one of them will be interested. Looks like a good place to me."

Brenda said, "What are you doing this afternoon?"

"I need to harness a horse and go cultivate the truck patch down at David's today, but I'll wait until it cools down a little later on. I've been giving Josh a hand on that brake job. He'll need me to step on the pedal while he bleeds the brake lines soon. It needed a couple new lines and they are all full of air. I better go see him."

Julie had been loafing for a while, so I used her to cultivate the truck patch and she seemed to enjoy it. I had taken the paper with me and gave it to Brittany with the ad marked about the house.
________________

It was a month later when Ryan and Megan, Brittany and Kevin all jointly made an offer on the property. The two couples thought a lot alike, having all been through the same experiences. They had decided they could each afford half of the property and still have enough left to buy some kind of transportation and make repairs as needed. That would leave them with a comfortable level of savings. 

The property was empty, having been foreclosed, and somewhat overgrown with old tall grass and weeds, so I took the tractor and mower over and clipped the pasture. While I was mowing I noticed that there were at least two other empty properties on down that road. We didn't drive around much now, so that was news to me. 

It looked like the next neighbors might be Ted Hamilton and his wife, an old couple who had their farm rented to Stuart Young. Next would be Bill Woodruff who had the dairy farm some distance away. I couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the 5 or 6 families that used to live in the other empty homes back there. Probably the flu got some and foreclosures got the rest. A lot of families had their kids move back home these days, or the other way around, depending on who had an income. Stuart had a good corn crop growing in the fields across the road, but I could see over it to the Hamilton's house on the hill where a lush garden was growing. Stuart had told me the Hamiton's kids had moved in with them and were helping take care of the old folks.
_________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 47 June 2016

Josh had finished the brake job and other repairs a month ago , but the truck was still sitting at our place. The owner had lost his job and couldn't afford to pay for the work. Josh wanted his money and told the man they had to work something out soon. The owner said he'd have to sell it to Josh, because he had no way to pay him.

When the deal was settled Ryan bought the truck cheap, Josh got his money, and the owner got some cash left over. It was a full size half ton Ford with a small six cylinder engine and in pretty good shape now. It needed some tires on the back, but Josh had a pair of used ones he'd taken in trade, so they worked that out. The two couples spent the next two weeks getting moved in. We gave them a housewarming present of some spare canning jars, some of them full of our older stock, and an old but serviceable chainsaw I 'd had around for ages. They had their parents' kitchenwares and bedroom furniture and the house came with a really old metal dinette table and chairs. David gave them an old couch and some end tables and they were moved in.

The paper always had auction ads, mostly household goods. The two women went to auctions while their husbands were working the produce stand and tending the truck patch at David's. The women decided quickly that Brittany and Kevin should buy a small cheap car that got better fuel economy than the truck. They found one in a few days and had Josh give it a going-over.

Their driveway was nearly bare of gravel, so Kevin and Ryan offered to pay for me to license and insure my old truck if I'd use it to haul them some crushed stone. Unfortunately, the old furniture truck did not have a dump bed, so the stone had to be shoveled off, but the tractor and loader helped with that. I worked at it off and on for a week and got the driveway in good shape, then extended it to the pole building to use for a garage. It had a rough concrete floor and was in fair shape, although it was showing some rust. The women attended to painting the building and the men covered half of the open side with metal siding to create some dry storage space. While they were doing that, I hauled some stone for our driveway at our house and added some around the farm buildings in the bad spots.

The women continued to go to auctions and furnished the house pretty well. Megan had torn into an old closet and pantry and removed a thin dividing wall. She bought some shelving units at a sale and Brittany had the pantry organized soon after, then got busy with wall papering most of the house. There was only one small bathroom, but an old outhouse had survived and it was agood one with a concrete floor and good tongue and groove siding. Brittany wall papered inside that, too.

I went over to help one Sunday when Ryan and Kevin finally got time to tackle cleaning out the other buildings, and there was a lot of junk to be disposed of. I went over to help with that and helped them evaluate what they found. There was a lot of useful stuff, but none of it in useable condition.

"We need to load all this stuff in the truck and go to the junk yard," Kevin said.

I said, "You can fix a lot of this and save buying it new."

Kevin looked at me and said, "How can you save a busted shovel, or that rusty bucket?"

"The shovel just needs the rust rubbed off and a handle. You can cut a handle in the woods back there. You can soak the bucket in vinegar and get the rust out then give it a coat of paint. Not everything here is worth saving, but some of it is."

Ryan said, "Why not? You want to pick out what you think we can save? Then we'll load up the rest."

I agreed and we all got busy. I had a pretty good pile of hand tools, an old log chain with no hooks, 3 buckets, some rusty pipe, a roll of chicken wire, another of rusty but usable barbed wire, a hoe, some cans of bolts and screws, a can of old grease, some fence staples in a glass jar, an axe with a broken handle and 2 splitting wedges so far.

The boys had a pretty good pile of trash to burn, old cardboard, some worn out linoleum, a rotten chair, and paper trash. The truck had rusted stove pipe, old tin cans, dead paint brushes, a bucket of odd rusty machinery parts, and the old dinette table and chairs. Brittany had found a very nice dining table and 4 chairs at an auction cheap, so they were upgrading.

They drug out an old carpet and more cardboard boxes that had hidden everything beyond them. A white porcelain box shape showed under more trash. Once we got the heavy monster outside, I read, "Home Comfort" on the front. It was a wood cook stove. It was heavy. Behind that was a metal stand with a pair of galvanized wash tubs and a hand cranked clothes wringer. The wringer had a wooden frame and it was rotten. The wringers were warped and split, so it went to the burn pile.

More boxes of old newspapers and cast off clothing came out, and Brittany got into the act. She was oohing and aahing over the cook stove outside. She said it was a keeper. The young men carried out a wood box on a stand with a rusty cast iron thing bolted to the top and asked what it was.

"That's a hand crank corn sheller, and you'd better keep that, especially if you plan to get any chickens," I said.

Megan stuck her nose inside and exclaimed, "I want that!"

Kevin said, "What?"

"That wringer washing machine!"

It was sitting in the back corner and just showing under more trash. We moved more junk and got it outside. The small caster wheels were rusted and stuck, but the machine looked pretty good. It had a small gasoline engine on the bottom that was undoubtedly toast, from appearances.

"I have a good Honda 2 horse engine that would fit on that," I said.

Megan said, "You've got the job to fix it. I've used Brenda's old Maytag and it is SO much faster than an automatic that I would never have one again. It gets the clothes so much cleaner, too."

Brittany agreed and the guys just stared at the women, but they obediently carried the thing outside and put it in my truck. I loaded up the corn sheller, too. The men took my pile of saved items out to store in the barn for now and finished loading Ryan's truck with scrap metal. We all carried the items to be burned out to what had obviously been a garden spot and set it on fire. They had no electricity in the house yet, so we used the hand pump on the well and filled a couple buckets in case the fire wanted to spread, but it wasn't a problem.

They did have the LP gas stove hooked up, but everyone had griped about what it cost to get 2 tanks of gas. The group decided that the wood cook stove was fine idea, so it was thoroughy cleaned to get the ashes and old mouse nests out if it. It took all 4 of the young people to move it back into the house to what was clearly its' old spot by the chimney, defined by the tracks of its' legs in the oak flooring. The women would go to town the next day and sell the metal scrap, and get some stovepipe. The men were told to cut some dry wood ASAP. Cleaning out the barn would have to wait for another day. 
_______________

Chapter 48

The barn was relatively clean, compared to the rest of the place. The last residents had been horse lovers, judging by what we found in there. We found ots of worn out horse shoes were thrown about in one stall and we found a pair of hoof nippers, rusted solid and hanging over a stall partition. Kevin had in mind to set up a blacksmith shop in the old garage we had cleaned out, so he was delighted to find an anvil in the barn. There were no tools, not even a hammer, but the anvil was a prize. I guessed that it weighed 150 pounds or more, and was in pretty good shape. There were a few chips on the edges and dings in the horn, but nothing we couldn't grind or file away.

"Now all I need is a forge," he said.

I said, "We can make you a forge. I've got an old brake drum from a truck Josh worked on and there is a spare blower and a leg vise in my shed. If we get that much together and find you a hammer or two, you can make the rest."

http://www.ebay.com/bhp/post-leg-vise The Vise
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/how-to-plans/metalworking/4303543 Forge from a sink
http://www.stormthecastle.com/blacksmithing/how-to-make-an-easy-cheap-blacksmith-forge.htm Forge form a brake drum
http://www.oldfirestuff.com/misc/RoyalChiefcastironblacksmithhandcrankforgeblower.htm Cranked forge blower




 Forging a drawknife

"I think there's a couple old hammers in your machine shed, or maybe I saw 'em in one of the small buildings. No handles, though."

"You make yourself a drawknife with my forge and you can shave out some handles. There's some good hickory in my woodpile you can split out for handle blanks."

"You'll have to show me how to make a drawknife."

"I'll show you mine and give you that big old file I've been saving and you can figure out how to make it."

Kevin spent a lot of his spare time at my shop for a while getting some tools together and made most of them. Meanwhile, Ryan and Megan had collected a couple truckloads of old furniture and had them in the enclosed part of the pole building. They invested in some wood scrapers, sandpaper, steel wool, and cans of finish materials and worked on the pieces as they had time. They didn't buy anything that wasn't old, solid hardwood construction and only the best deals they could find. As exceptionally good pieces were finished, they got put in the house for use and display. Soon they had more that had to stay in the pole building, and put an ad in the newspaper. Money began to trickle in.

They had almost given up on having a garden on their place the first year, but I got it plowed and disked for them, so they planted it all. The vegetable stand at David and Carmen's place was doing a good business, and they had sold some quantities of things to a grocery in town, so that operation was making some real money. It wasn't nearly so much when it got divided up 3 ways among the families, though.

The young folks put up some chicken wire to enclose a stall in the barn and we gave them 4 of our old hens. They got by with a couple old pans for feed and water and some homemade wood boxes nailed to the wall for nests. The barn loft had a few bales of musty hay in it that they used for litter. The men helped me get a couple heavy jobs done in my shop and I paid them with ground corn and oats for their chickens. They had spent almost nothing to get that going. The hens got garden scraps and any food scraps from the kitchen, so they ate pretty well. The chicken feed attracted mice, so we gave them a young cat from our Kitty's last litter. They kept her in the house for a few days and then let her out on a weekend the first time. She had already decided she lived there and took up residence in the barn with the hens for company, but always showed up for breakfast and supper. 
_____________________

Kevin had his blacksmith shop operating, after buying a couple barrels of hard coal from a place in Palmyra, 12 miles away. He'd run a heavy 8" pipe out the roof and made a hood for the homemade forge out of old sheet metal he scrounged from a rotten shed they tore down. It wasn't perfect, but most of the smoke went out the roof. He'd already begun to watch for any useful scraps of metal for forging material and had a small collection. 
______________

David learned that he had a job driving a bus in the Fall, but the pay was no better. His internet business selling used books had dried up to nearly nothing, so he was looking to supplement his income after the last of the garden produce was finished with a crop of pumpkins and winter squash. The vegetable sales had done pretty well in the summer, but it was just enough to keep the family going, so he was looking for any other income opportunity he could find. 
_________________

Winter would come eventually, and the young people's old house had no heating except the cook stove. Ryan and Kevin decided to pay me to build them a wood heating stove. I used my last sheet of 3/16" steel to build it, a copy of an old commercial design, but more durable with the heavy material. The young men cut trees and let them lay to dry out, then cut some dead ones for immediate use. Their woodpile began to grow slowly. The women had lived without electricity long enough that they decided to do without it. They did buy one big solar panel, a couple deep cycle batteries, a 12 volt television and some LED lights. That was enough. They all were ready for bed soon after dark anyway. 
_____________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 49 June, 2016

Julie's two colts had grown to yearlings and were both looking good after shedding off their winter coats. They had the pasture to themselves for now. I was looking for a deal on more feeder calves, but prices were high. The truck patch garden we had going over by David and Carmen's place had begun to produce some early peppers, tomatoes, and salad stuff. The roadside stand had some business, and a half acre of new strawberry plants were growing like mad, setting on a few berries. It would be next year before the berries produced much, but we would have a few to sell soon.

Brenda answered the phone and said, "It's for you."

"Hello, this is Jack Hesston."
"You're the man who got Eugene Hesston's Percheron mare?"
"That's right."
"You ought to have a yearling out of her by now, right?"
"That's right, but she had twins, a mare and a stud colt."
"No kidding! Hey! That's great! Those are out of my stud, and I was wondering if you'd sell, well both of them?"
"I hadn't thought about it. I was going to work 'em. We've got a little poor farm here and can use 'em."
"That pair is worth more to breed, you know. I'd pay what they're worth for the good bloodlines."
"I have no idea what they're worth. I was never involved in breeding horses of any kind. Tell me what you think."
"Hmm. Well, if they're sound and good conformation like I'd expect, they should be worth quite a bit."
"Eugene's son told me that Julie, the mare, was worth over $60,000 when he had her. That was the old money, of course."
"I might buy her, too, if you're willing to sell."
"No, I promised the family I would keep her. It was important to Eugene."
"But the colts now, you'd sell them?"
"Yes, if the price is right. You want to make an offer?"
"I'd have to see 'em first, but yeah, I'll make an offer, and I'll bring cash money."
________________

Long story short, when I kept talking about working the horses, he said he had an unregistered pair that were 7 years old and broke to work. Both were Percheron mares, but being grade horses they had little value as breeding stock. We made a trade. I got the working team with their harness and he paid me $800 difference. I had a hard time believing how much the yearlings were worth, which he had taken as me being reluctant to sell for the price. My ignorance got him to raise his bid from $500 up to $800. We unloaded the team he'd brought to trade, and with some difficulty we loaded the pair in his trailer and off they went.

Maybe the best news of the day came when the buyer inquired about the foal with Julie. I told him it was out of a Amish stud and he asked to see the papers. That stud was a full brother to his, a couple years older. He said if I wanted to sell this foal next year to give him a call. I was delighted to hear that. I filed the registration papers.

Julie was bummed, big time, from her last colts leaving, but she had the new one to console her. She was still out of sorts and cranky, but she calmed down after a couple days. It took longer for the new team to sort out that Julie was, and would always be the boss horse. Once they had that settled, they got along good and we had a working team. They might even work three abreast, If I was that ambitious.

The $800 was taxable income, so I needed to have some farm expenses to offset that this year. I bought cattle. From a breeder near Seymour, I paid $350 for 10 purebred Angus bred heifers. They were due to calve next March. They had been bred to a high quality bull by the artifical breeder's service and had the papers and ear tattoos to prove it. It took 2 trips to get them home, but they looked good on the summer pasture and we had enough money ahead now to not be so worried about it. 
________________

The two new mares took some time to get used to me and be convinced I wouldn't tolerate horseplay while they worked. I dragged in some downed logs for firewood using them as a team and got the rough edges off their behavior. One at a time, they worked nicely to cultivate the truck patch. Lester's old one horse cultivator proved was more controllable than any tractor implement I had ever used. It saved days of back breaking tilling and hoeing. When everyone saw how easy it went, there was a lot of talk about expanding the project the next year. It had taken David a whole day to run through the 2 acres of garden with his rototiller. I did a deeper and more effective job of cultivating it in less than 2 hours from the time I left the barn with the horse until she was back in the pasture. A big horse walks fairly fast.

We did our home gardens that way, too, and when Daniel and Brad saw how fast it went, we did their gardens, too. 
______________________

A pair of Percherons plowing: ruralheritage.com/horse_paddock/percheron_roan.htm
Can your tiller keep up with him? Cultivating with Ozzie: 




Chapter 50 July, 2016

I had kept the old sows and the boar and planned at least one more litter from them, probably to sell as feeder pigs. We had some corn left in the grain bin and it was getting old and little buggy, so I couldn't get much by selling it. Better to feed it, I thought.

I had cleaned the barn and spread the manure heavily on the corn ground, so this Spring I had disked it up and sowed it in oats. I planned to have Stuart combine the grain and then bale the straw myself for our own use. Stephanie had spoke for some straw for litter in their dairy barn. The 3 acre field of oats was looking good, a deep rich green. It should be ready to harvest by the end of the month. Such a small patch was hardly worth the trouble to change settings in Stuart's combine, but he wanted some to feed some chickens, so he'd agreed to harvest it for a share.

Taking a look at the pond on my way back from the oat field, I saw the charcoal gray back of what must be a big catfish curl up and then down again in the shallows. It was time to get a better look at what fish we had in that pond. It was already a sultry hot July morning and a bit cloudy so we might be in for a shower of rain this afternoon. I had an idea and headed for the shop to find Josh.

"Want to do a little fishing?"

Josh looked up from sweeping up the garage and said, "It's too hot for 'em to be bitin', ain't it?"

I said, "I'm not planning to hook 'em. I plan to seine the pond and see what's in there. I just saw a monster catfish, or the back of one anyway."

"Seines are illegal. You can't even buy a seine in Indiana."

"That's for public places, the best I know. I could fish my own pond with a backhoe if I wanted to."

"Where you gonna get the net?"

"I thought we could try using chicken netting. There's a roll of it in the shed that's 5 feet high. I figure we put a 2 by 4 on each end and walk it across the pond. You game to try that?"

"Why not!? It's plenty warm to be gettin' wet."

"Okay. You find that chicken wire and I'll go get some more help. We'll need a barrel to put 'em in and the women on the dip nets. I'll see if I can talk 'em into it."
_______________________

By lunch time we had a barrel half full of fish and had thrown that many very small panfish over the bank to reduce the competition. I hauled the barrel to the house in the back of my little pickup and added some fresh water to keep the fish alive until we were ready for them. We missed that lunker catfish, but we had 4 or 5 very good ones that would go 8 or 10 pounds each.

I guess we didn't have enough scrap iron on the chicken wire net to take it all the way to the bottom where those big boys hung out. Or, maybe he snuck away when we got tangled in the cattails. We did get enough to keep all of us busy cleaning fish for the rest of the day and enough filets and catfish steaks to fill some empty space in the freezer. The gut bucket got dumped on the compost pile. I was given instructions to make sure I buried it deep, which I did, but not before all the cats on the farm had run off with their share.

Josh and I did our best to get the mud and fishy smell off at the laundry sink in the basement. The women wouldn't have any room to gripe about how we smelled, though, since they had been up to their elbows in fish all afternoon, too.

The sky began to get pretty dark about 4:00 o'clock with a big thunderhead cloud coming from the southwest. The closer it got, the worse it looked. The wind began to blow pretty hard so I went in to check the TV for storm warnings. The weather radio crackled then. Josh and I heard the computerized voice said we were under a tornado watch until 7:00 PM. I ran upstairs to tell Brenda and Tammy. They had seen it on TV and were busy closing up the house.

"You know the drill," I said. "I'm going to put the horses up. See you in the basement."

Sonny came with me and together we managed to get the cows all in the barn, too, but it took a few minutes. The sky was a little greenish under the thundercloud by then and the wind had stopped. For a couple of old dogs, me and Sonny made pretty good time getting to the basement. We got he garage door closed and bolted just as the wind was picking up. and the lights went out.

I was still catching my breath when Brenda said, "I called Stephie and Carmen. They were all running for their cellars, so they are okay."

"Good. Hope it doesn't amount to anything," I said.

Hailey put up a squall when the wind began to howl outside and the garage door rattled. I used my pocket flashlight to find the 12 volt lantern we kept down there and got some light going. Tammy held her and got the little girl calmed down, saying, "It's just the wind Hailey. Don't worry about it." Hailey was almost 2 1/2 years old now, and begnning to listen to her mother.

We all heard the roaring, sort of like a train up close, only this was coming from some distance south of us. There was no way to tell what direction it was going, toward us, away, or going past. It was an unearthly sound, with loud cracks almost lost in the overwhelming roar, mixed with unidentifiable sounds amid rain hitting the garage door like a fire hose. It seemed like an hour, but in a few minutes the din had died down to a distant rumble. The rain slacked off as quick as it came, but there was a puddle where it had blown under the door. The downpour continued for a few minutes, but it was coming more or less straight down.

Half an hour later, the sun was out again. The heat of the day was gone, but the humidity remained when I ventured outside. Josh had gotten the covers over the solar panels and shut up the chicken house. There were green leaves and twigs all over the yard and driveway, but I couldn't see any harm done, beyond some plants laying a bit sideways in the garden and a few small limbs blown off our shade trees. We all walked around the house to the top of the hill and to look at the neighborhood to the south.

Our barn was fine and there didn't appear to be any real damage at Carmen and David's place, except a big limb broken off and laying in their driveway. Across the county road beyond them, the soybeans were flattened halfway across Stuart's field. The rest of the field to the south was bare. The soybeans were just--gone. Likewise the old empty house across the highway from that field. It no longer existed. A foundation and some tattered bits of metal and brick were strewn around that lot. The trees on the far side of that lot were decorated with shreds of metal roofing, tar paper, and broken pieces of lumber. A styrofoam cooler sat in the middle of the highway near some unrecognizable trash.

We went inside, silently giving thanks we had been spared. The path of the tornado looked to be at least a quarter mile south of Ryan and Kevin's place, but we wanted to know what was going on there. I grabbed my chain saw, the fuel can, and it's tool can and tossed it in the back of Josh's truck with a couple log chains, a long pry bar and an axe. Brenda I got in the bed with the tools and the rest of them all piled into the cab. Josh drove slowly down to Carmen and David's and stopped at the end of the driveway. They came outside and helped as we began to cut up the limb blocking it. In a few minutes it was clear enough for them to get through.

"Glad you all are okay," I said. "We need to go check on the young folks, so we'd better run."
_______________

No damage was evident as we drove up to the farmhouse, but there were leaves and forest duff scattered everywhere. Brittany came out followed by Megan and the men.

"Looks like you're all right," I said. "Glad to see that."

Brittany said, "Yeah, we're fine. We hid out in the root cellar. It was great that we had it, but I can tell you that it is going to get a good cleaning real soon."

Kevin said, "Yeah, it's pretty bad down there. Got some mud on the floor and cobwebs everywhere."

Megan said, "Not now. All the cobwebs are in my hair."

Ryan looked at her and said, "I got as many as you did. We need to get a light down there of some kind, too."

Tammy asked, "You didn't have any damage from the storm?"

"Not that we know about," Ryan said. "The wind blew really hard, so we'll have to check on roofs and stuff."

Brenda said, "We should go back past Carmen's on that county road and see if anyone needs help back there. It'll be dark in another hour or so."
____________

Driving back the county road, we saw where a mobile home had been. It had been blown to bits and there was no sign of life around it. I didn't know the young folks who had rented it, but there was no vehicle there, so maybe they weren't home when it hit. We had to stop a couple times and cut up some branches and small trees to clear the road, then went on as far as the next county cross road. The tornado had evidently lifted up there, with only some damage to treetops, then hit again in the woods about half a mile away. It was getting dark, so we headed for home.

There was a Special Report on TV saying a tornado had hit the little town of Martinsburg and another had hit New Pekin--again. New Pekin had been hit hard by a really bad tornado 4 years ago. This time, a new factory had been damaged. It was built on the site of one wrecked by the last tornado in 2012.

"Sounds like that's a bad place to put a factory," Josh said.

The reporter went on.

"Volunteers are needed in the towns of New Pekin and Martinsburg. They should report to the churches in those towns where food and other aid is being collected. State authorities said they have emergency personnel on the way to the scenes, but their assistance will be limited to law enforcement, due to lack of funds. Local EMT's and firefighters are aiding in the cleanup efforts, and local law enforcement is on the scene. A spokesman for the fire department said everyone whose homes were damaged has been housed with friends or relatives, but they need donations of clothing and blankets for a few families who lost everything. Contact the voluteer fire departments who are collecting aid."

Tammy had a tear in her eye as she said, "I know how those people feel. I want to go help if I can."

Brenda said, "It sounds like tomorrow will be soon enough. Let's get something to eat and we can go tomorrow."
_____________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 51 August, 2016

"The state is broke and the county is too, so they won't be sending anybody out to clear the roads," I told Brenda. "We'd better do what we can to get the traffic hazards cleared out before we do much of anything else."

She said, "Those people in Pekin need help fast. Don't you think we should do that first?"

Tammy and Brenda had sorted out a pile of stuff to donate, mostly Howard and Charlene's clothing that didn't fit anyone we knew, and some of our older and less useful clothing and bedding. They had it all in old plastic grocery bags and were ready to go after breakfast. At the last minute they added 20 pounds of new potatoes, a few heads of cabbage, some fresh onions and 2 dozen eggs. 

"Let's do both," I said. "We can work our way to Pekin and clear the road on the way, then take it from there."

They agreed, so we loaded up and took off with tools still in the truck. Josh rode in the truck bed, in deference to my old bones, with the rest of us in the cab. As I turned off the highway onto the county road at David and Carmen's house, we saw them moving trash off the highway. We waved and kept going until we reached a small tree we had to cut away to get through. It went that way for the 5 miles to Pekin, clearing out one tree after another. It was close to lunch time when we got to the fire station and dropped off our donations. The firemen and their wives were using their half-barrel barbecue grills to cook on, and thanked us profusely for the food. An assortment of picnic tables were piled with donations where we put ours. The women had labelled tha bags with the clothing sizes. As people began to come to eat, we saw the haggard faces. It wasn't hard to tell who had lost a lot. 

We sat down and ate the sack lunches we brought while we talked to a young woman eating at the same table. Her house had a tree dropped on it, but otherwise was intact. She was going to take food home to her husband who was working on cutting up the tree to remove it. We offered to help and spent the afternoon getting the roof cleared so her husband could cover the damaged area with a tarp. Rain was predicted the next day, so they were really grateful to get that finished. The electric power was still off, but they had a gas stove that worked and had hauled some water home from downtown. Their yard and driveway was still a mess, but that could wait. 

When we were ready to leave the man said, "We never got introduced. My name is Randy Hartman, and my wife is Kim."

We shook hands and I said, "I'm Jack Hesston, that's Brenda, and our nephew Josh and his wife Tammy. Hailey is the one who carried all the little twigs to the pile. We live over on the highway south of Salem."

"Oh! You're the guy who does welding?"

"Yeah, that's me. Do a little farming, too."

"I work at the sawmill over there," he said and pointed across the highway. "At least I did. It's a mess over there. Looks like we can fix it, though. We might have something for you to fix."

"I do some machine work, too, so give me a call if you think I can help." I gave him a business card with our phone number on it. 

"Darn right I will. I sure appreciate the help here. I can sure get you some business and maybe that will help pay you for what you all did today."

"You'd do the same for me," I said, as I waved him off and we left for home. 
__________________

Randy called a few days later. 
"Mr. Hesston?"
"Yes."
"Randy Hartman. You helped me on the house last week over at Pekin. Well, I've got a deal for you."
"What's that?"
"Back on the county road across the highway from us, the tornado down a bunch of houses. There's one that the bank had foreclosed on, and they want the lot cleaned up. My wife works at the bank and they are worried about liability if some kid gets hurt playing around there. You can have anything you could salvage from there, if you're interested."
"What about the owners of the house?"
"The people that lived there got killed in the tornado. Found them way off in a field. The bank got it sorted out with the lawyer and they own it now."
"I'll sure come take a look at it. Thanks for thinking about me."
"The least I could do. See ya later."
__________________

Josh was covered up with work trying to get some damaged cars back in running shape after the storm. Our driveway was full of them. I asked Kevin and Ryan to go with me to inspect the job. We took Kevin's car to save gas, since this was only for a look-see. 

The mess was unbelievable. The whole house was gone, but part of a barn roof from somewhere had landed on top of the place. We decided there was enough useful materials in what was left to make it worth doing, bricks, metal from the barn roof, a lot of salvageable lumber, and a lot of scrap plumbing to sell. I went to the bank and made the deal.

The next day Brenda stayed home with Hailey and Josh, but Tammy went with us. I drove Josh's truck and pulled the stock trailer, and Ryan took his truck with Kevin. That first day we made 3 or 4 trips each to the landfill south of town just getting rid of dangerous trash. Broken glass, broken wood with nails sticking out, shingles with nails, household detritus, and broken bricks all went to the dump. There was a line of trucks waiting there, but it went fast enough. 

The second day we got most of the old barn roof torn apart and loaded in the stock trailer, and had both trucks loaded with bricks we could clean and use. A load of drywall and broken walls was next, destined for the landfill. As we pulled away what had collapsed on the garage, we hit pay dirt. The owner had been a woodworker and had the garage full of machinery. There was some damage, but most of it was intact, made of cast iron and too heavy to blow away, the older, semi-industrial quality kind. Tammy even dug out a beautiful wood chest of fine hand tools. The workbenches had been smashed, but we loaded them anyway with their vises and fittings. That whole load went to Ryan's furniture repair shop in their pole building. 

We spent the third day mostly cleaning up the small trash, raking the yard, and hauling it all to the landfill. Toward evening, I went to the bank and asked for someone to come out and inspect what we had done. A middle aged man went back with me and pronounced it a good job of clean up, whereupon I took him back to the bank. Tammy had been going over the lot with a big magnet on a handle I had, and got a bucket full of old nails and scrap metal. She had been sorting metal scrap and had their truck loaded with aluminum and steel scrap to sell. Kevin laid claim to some of the steel scrap for forge work, and the salvaged bricks. I got the metal roofing and the lumber. Ryan was the big winner with all the machinery, so he offered to clean up the lumber and roofing for me, and would help Kevin clean the mortar off his bricks and lay them up into a permanent forge and chimney. 
________________________


Chapter 52 September, 2016

I was going for things to make a buck pretty fast for our old age. Hogs would do that since they are ready for slaughter at around 6 months old, while cattle take 2 years from birth to market. My bred heifers would take even longer to realize income, but they were for the longer term. Income from the hogs looked pretty good when I had a dozen dependents, but now that the free labor had mostly moved out, having to tend 50 head of hogs was more than I wanted to do with everything else. We got enough for the yearlings to keep us comfortable for the year, so I moved back toward cattle that needed only minimal tending. I had the shop for immediate income, and it was mostly inside work that suited me better in bad weather. I would be 70 next month and I just didn't have the get up and go I once had. 
____________________

After supper we all sat around the table finishing our coffee and were talking about our day when Brenda asked, "What are you going to do with all that roofing and lumber you drug home?"

"Not sure yet. I thought it would make some good hog houses, but I don't think I want to get into hogs that big now. No matter. It will be good to have around if we need to fix a building."

Josh said, "Brittany might want it. She said they want to work on their barn and make room for more livestock. She's been watching what you did and said it looked like something they could do and still have time to do the blacksmithing and Ryan's furniture stuff." 

"I could give it to them, but they'd want to pay for it. We could work out something if they want it. I didn't work all that hard getting it." 

Josh went on, "They got a chimney laid up in the furniture shop, too. That was a lot of bricks you guys brought home. He has most of the machinery running now. They bought a little generator to power it. Said it's cheaper than paying for electric because he only uses it a little. He's got a nice shop set up."

"I'll have a talk with them and see what they want to do."
____________________

Estate planning had been on my mind. If something happened to Brenda and I now, it would be a nightmare. Our kids both had what they needed to get along now, but they also were the rightful heirs to what we had. We had our property in a trust for them, but that would leave Josh and Tammy out in the cold, and they were doing the lion's share of the work around our place now. That should not go unrewarded. They would need a place to live. And Josh had applied himself learning about machining and welding, too. He was a natural to take over the business I had started. I didn't know what to do about that and it worried me. 
____________________

Kevin was making money with the blacksmith shop. He had begun to turn out a lot of kitchen items at a profit. The women loved his stuff because it was so much more durable than what they could buy for the same price as shoddy imported things. He had to work to build up a stock of pokers, ash shovels, and fire rakes during the summer because he knew they would sell when cold weather came. Ryan added to the selection with carved wooden spoons that wouldn't break, and hardwood rolling pins and cutting boards big enough to slice a side of bacon, or roll out biscuits and pie crusts.
__________________ 


Chapter 53 September, 2016


Our county had a major budget problem trying to fund the schools. When Federal aid had stopped, they tightened their belts for a year, quadrupled class sizes, cut programs, and relied on State support from property taxes. Now all tax revenues had fallen so far that funding education was out of the question. Nothing had been decided while politicians dithered during the 3 months of summer vacation. At the last minute, school was said to be delayed until further notice. The County defaulted on its' bond payments for the school buildings and buses. Bondholders had no use for the property and there was no interest when the buildings were put up for sale. The schools sat empty. 
The county had tried to sell the buses at auction, but got no bid for most of them, so they were sitting on the old school property in town waiting for someone to make an offer. 


A week later, the governor announced that the State could not possibly fund education. The State had purchased rights to some electronic media home school curriculum and would make that available to parents for teaching at home. Communities were encouraged to band together and pay their own class monitors for directing the use of these programs. State law had been amended to allow anyone with a high school diploma to do that. The law requiring students to remain in school up to age 16 remained in force, but the burden for achieving that had been shifted to the public. 

Furious parents gathered in many places around the county and sought ways to get their children an education that did not require half of every day for one parent to teach them. The busy working lifestyles of parents could not allow that to happen. Information about the location of students was made available by unpaid local school board members as a public service, with suggestions for forming small community schools to reduce the need for expensive transportation. Most rural areas opted to teach their kids at home, since transportation was prohibitively expensive. Those in small communities soon formed their own school groups, often only 2 or 3 dozen students. Parents either took turns monitoring the classrooms, or, the larger groups hired a person to do that. Buildings were made available by the counties, usually those seized for unpaid taxes, often homes, or small business buildings. 

In our neighborhood, a group of families that lived within a mile of the next intersection south of David and Carmen's home had banded together to deal with the problem. The county allowed them to use, and maintain, a tax-seized convenience store at that intersection of highway and county road. A chimney was built, a wood stove installed, store shelving moved around and assorted chairs donated. By Thanksgiving, classes began there with David Martin as the classroom monitor/teacher. Parents contributed to his salary according to the number of their children attending. He had 23 students that year, ranging from first to 10th grade. His salary was less than it had been driving the school bus, but he was glad to have the work. 

What property tax was collected was put into the County's General Fund, per new laws allowing that. Public education became a thing of the past. 
________________

The TV news said that the University extension in New Albany would offer a much reduced curriculum this year, due to lack of applicants and most of the buildings being closed pending lawsuits over non-payment of debts. Two professors were engaged to teach a total of 58 students, down from over 7,000 three years ago.
_____________

Ryan and Megan had learned they were unable to have children and had long ago come to terms with that. Kevin and Brittany had considered having children, but the world had become a very difficult place to support them, so they had opted for birth control. That option became more difficult as time went by and finances made it even harder. Finally, they had decided on a permanent solution for that and gave up on having children. That decision was validated even more in their minds as they watched the education debacle. A declining birth rate was another factor that reduced the county population after the losses from the Flu epidemic and a higher death rate due to poor medical care. Census figures would not be available for some years yet, but from the number of empty houses I saw, we had lost roughly a third of the people in our part of the county. I had no idea how the bigger cities had fared, but from what we heard on the news it was not good there, possibly down by half or more. 
_________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 54 October, 2016

State fuel tax revenues that had funded highway maintenance were so low that many paved county roads had been allowed to deteriorate. Patching was done with crushed stone only, so many of them began to be mostly gravel. State highways were patched, but not even the worst of them had been repaved. Enforcing speed limits was no necessary, due to the rough road conditions of most highways. 

David dodged rough patches with his bicycle on the way to school, pedalling slowly up the long grade. His pistol was in the holster mounted on the handle bars in easy reach, in case he came upon a vicious stray dog. That had been a problem lately, but he saw none and got to the school 15 minutes before classes would start at 8:00 AM. A small group of students was in sight down the county road, walking together. One older girl carried a rifle. The dog problem had prompted that policy among parents, but nobody had reported seeing any but local pets for the past couple weeks. 

There were 4 young students walking in from the south that arrived as David stowed his bike and unlocked the door. Noisy students came in and put their lunches, firearms, and jackets on shelves, then found their chairs at the tables, slowly becoming quiet when it was time for class. The weather was pleasantly warm, a nice Indian Summer day. David left both doors propped open for ventilation and started classes with handing in of yesterday's assignments. When he had given out new assignments for the day, he began grading the last ones, interrupted now and then by a student with a question. 

At lunch time, the kids all grabbed their food and went outside to eat and chatter. David ate with them on a bench by the front wall and relaxed, listening to the soft rustles of small creatures in the nearby woods. He thought about his earlier life, with all its' challenges, excitement, and stresses. This was entirely different. There was no instant gratification, no stores filled with useless trinkets, no new fad things to buy and wonder how to pay for. Instead, he got to help some kids learn things, and set limits for their behavior so they could fit into society as it was now. He didn't make much money, but he thought that was all right because he had enough for his needs. He and Carmen were saving some money and reinvesting some in a larger garden operation at home. There was a little surplus that had bought him the new bicycle, some good clothes for them both, and other things they liked. He decided he was satisfied with how things were going. 
_____________________

I took advantage of the warm Fall day to work on tying a big seine I had begun to make when the last of the harvest was in. The sinkers for it were finished, cast from the old lead I had bought as tire weights some years ago. I had melted and cast the lead in an old muffin pan, then drilled a hole in each disc for the bottom net line. The top and bottom lines of the net were 1/4" nylon rope. I was slowly tying the body of the net using heavy nylon string. It was a slow process for a beginner at this, and one with stiff fingers, to boot. I am not good at tying complicated knots, but I learned to make this one after many tries. I had to re-learn it every time I stopped on this for a few days. I hate knots, but my idea of fishing was to be as productive about it as possible in the least amount of wasted time. Sitting on a bank with a fishing pole drowning worms is my idea of purgatory.

I had a picture printed from the internet and two trees in the back yard that were the right distance apart. I tied the top line about head high between the trees and began to follow the picture to make a gill net. Lines of string hung down at intervals that I was tying into a diamond pattern about 2 1/2" the long way. The net was progressing, now about 2 feet down from the top, less than halfway to my goal of 6 feet tall. I had been at it for a couple weeks now. I learned that a guideline string was a big help to keep the diamonds close to the same size. I wasn't all that picky about this. I just had a grudge against that lunker catfish in the pond and was determined to have him in a skillet next summer. 

I felt like I could take some time for this kind of thing now. We had a pretty good woodpile that was dry enough to burn, but so far the weather had not been that chilly. The corn crop had dried down early and was already shelled and in one of the new feed bins in the upper floor of the barn. The other bin there was filled with oats. That should take some handling out the feed grinding process. All that was needed was to open the chute and let it run slowly into the feed grinder. Ryan and Kevin had done most of the work building that in exchange for my extra salvaged lumber and metal roofing. They were well on the way to having a big shed built onto the side of their barn where they planned to have a few feeder cattle next year. 

Our pantry was full enough to do the 5 of us for at least 2 years. I prayed that we didn't have any more relatives descend on us like a swarm of locusts. I didn't expect anyone, since we'd heard that Brenda's brother Jim had passed away in the Flu epidemic, his son Kenny was working, and her other siblings were either doing okay, or were too far away to matter. My surviving cousins and nephews were doing fine the last I had heard. I fervently hoped so.
______________


Chapter 55 November, 2016


Horses are athletes, and need to stay in shape with regular workouts. Julie got some exercise taking care of our garden and wood hauling chores, but mostly she was a pet that raised some valuable foals for us. Our other pair got to work for the whole family doing gardens, hauling firewood and manure, doing cultivation, and other farm chores. They were never overworked, but they stayed pretty busy. This partiular day Tammy was helping me fork manure out of the cow shed part of the barn into the spreader. The team stood chewing on their bits and sometimes harrassing each other from boredom. 

Clucking to the team from the seat, I drove off to the corn field to spread that load while Tammy finished shoveling the last bit out and put down fresh straw. It didn't take long to empty the spreader and get back to the barn at a walk. I pulled the spreader under the broad overhanging roof for shelter and unhitched the team. They tossed their heads a little and went straight to their stall, expecting and early supper. I fed them, Julie and her colt while Tammy fed the cows, each one with calf nearby. The calves had their own creep feeder out under the roof overhang and went to that as soon as they heard the lid of the feeder bang closed, knowing the feed would be there. 

Tammy said, "It will be a long time before those calves are ready to butcher. Looks like we'll have lots of pork, though."

I had sold our boar hog to a neighbor with three of the old sows, already bred. The one remaining had not been bred and was destined for our freezer soon. 

"Yeah, we might get a little tired of pork, but there is some beef left in there, and a lot of fish. I'd go after a deer if I thought anybody would eat it."

"I don't care for it either. I don't think Josh has ever had any."

"I think it's an acquired taste. It would probably help if you were REAL hungry, if you're used to beef. Maybe I'll go after a small doe after we butcher that sow. There will be plenty of extra pork fat there to mix with the venison. That should help choke it down."

Tammy laughed and said, "Let's just not tell anyone what it is when we make those burgers. Or, we can make meatballs out of it and nobody will know the difference. Mom used to do that." 

"We've got plenty of garlic and Oregano we grew. That should work.

At supper that evening we told Brenda what we'd talked about and she approved. 

She asked, "Are you planning to feed out this bunch of calves?"

"I'm thinking that we'll keep half of them to feed out, then use one of those to butcher next year. Ryan and Kevin want the other 5 next Spring for feeder calves on their place. Their wives said they are saving money for that now and getting the place ready for it. They've got enough grass for that many up through next Fall. If they buy just a little hay they can have 'em ready to sell by this time next year."

Brenda said, "Megan and Brittany want enough solar panels to run a freezer so they can butcher their own beef and keep it. The men aren't convinced yet, but give 'em time and they'll come around."

The phone rang and Tammy answered it. "Yeah, here she is. It's Susan," she said, handing the phone to Brenda. 

Just hearing one side of the conversation, I couldn't make much sense out of it, but something was up, from Brenda's expression and the tone of her voice. When she hung up, I asked what was up?

"Well, they have an offer to buy their place, and they are thinking about moving out here. They want to come talk about it tomorrow." 
______________


Chapter 56


"There's a lot of rich people around where we live," Susan said. "This one neighbor owned a bunch of gas stations and I guess he was able to hang onto a lot of his money. We didn't go to him; he came to us. He wants to buy our property for his son. The old man likes the security features." 

Art said, "We don't have to take this offer, but there aren't many chances to sell now. The real reason we are thinking about it is our jobs aren't looking very good."

Susan said, "Yeah, my job is the pits right now. I could put up with that, I mean, everybody who has a job gets treated bad now, but I can get into the hospital's financial records, too, and it does not look good for them. The hospital in Clarksville is getting more business now. We're just not getting enough to make ends meet. It wouldn't shock me to see them close any time."

Art said, "It's about the same where I work. We have always been the number two package carrier and we are getting our butt kicked. There's not enough business to go around now and Number One is able to absorb the cuts without dying from it. I don't think we can make it very long. We've had two plane crashes and the FAA has said they were due to poor maintenance. The fines and lawsuits could kill the company."

Brenda asked, "Are you going to need a place to stay?"

Susan said, "It would help. The real problem is we don't have a prayer of getting jobs this good the way things are. We need to do something else. That's what we were worried about when we put money into the farm."

Art said, "Susan wants to get with Stephanie about working in the dairy. I think I could help in your shop, if that's a possibility."

I sighed and said, "That may be the best thing. At my age it's getting harder all the time to keep up, and Josh can't do it all." 

Susan said, "It's not like we're going to be broke. We'll have the money from the house, and w'eve been able to save a little after things settled down. We own half of the farm LLC, so what profit it makes is half ours."

"That's a big change in your life," Brenda said. 

Art nodded and said, "We've been worried for some time, so we've been thinking about that."
________________

Thanksgiving day they were moved in and pretty much settled. They had the 3rd bedroom, and the living room was back to normal, so we weren't unduly crowded in the house. Susan had grown up in this house so she knew all about it, and Art was no stranger to the place either. It went really well. I knew we would run short of meat before too long, so I had been worried about that, but Art and Susan had brought their freezer full. The big problem had been finding a place for it and all the rest of their stuff. 

A lot of it got stowed in the big barn for now. It wasn't exactly a panic move, but we didn't have a lot of time, either. Their buyer wanted possession as fast as they could get out, so we did our best. It was a good thing we did. The week before they got moved, Susan was out of a job. By the end of the month, Art's company had it's assets frozen by the Court in a multiple wrongful death lawsuit by the families of the pilots and crews who died in the plane crashes. He had taken his toolboxes home a week ahead of that. They were now in my shop and we were talking about adding on to the shop. The day after Thanksgiving, Susan announced that she was pregnant. Brenda was overjoyed. 
______________________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 57 December, 2016


Art and I went to a Sheriff's auction in town, where confiscated goods were to be sold, among which were advertised several old firearms and some reloading gear. True to form these days, the bidders were plentiful, but money was not. Brenda and I were in pretty good shape financially, compared to most, so I could buy what I wanted. Art began to bid on the reloading stuff and told me it was giveaway prices. Since it was mainly for shotguns, I told him I would pay for the lot of it if he would do the bidding and get the best of it. Shotgun shells were hard to find and expensive. 

I couldn't imagine what he wanted with the black plastic trash bags, but I learned later that both of them were full of the old plastic Winchester AA shotshell hulls. Somebody had been a trapshooter, he said. We went home with the back of my little pickup loaded with supplies and paraphernalia for the price of a tank of gas, $6.40. Shotgun shells cost 3 cents each for field loads and Art said we had enough to load a couple thousand of them. Then I thought about deer slugs. They cost over a dime each. I had a lot of salvaged lead at home. All I needed was a mold to cast some slugs, and I'd been a diemaker long enough to have no doubt I could make a mold. 

Butchering came first, so we spent a few days getting that old sow processed. Then it took me a while to make the lead mold and a couple other tools. I copied some old Brenneke slugs I had, sacrificing one to the cause so I could accurately measure each part of it. My mold duplicated the center post and hole for the tiny screw that held the cardboard base wad to it. I cheated and used a carpet tack instead of a screw, being cheaper. It only had to hold the thing on there until it was loaded in the shell. Some experimenting followed, making a special punch to cut out the cardboard discs and a hand tool to form the roll crimp over the slug. Then I had to come up with a fixture to trim the empty shells shorter for that specail crimp. I spent several days monkeying with it all.

"That looks pretty good from here," Art said, 

I had shot 3 slugs at a piece of paper draped over a hay bale. We walked over to look closer. At 50 steps away, the three slugs had hit within 2" of each other. 

"That'll do," I said. "Better'n what I got with the last cheap ones I bought."

Art asked, "How long does it take to cast those and make the wads and all?"

"I dunno, I might do a couple hundred a day. I goes pretty fast."

"There's money to be made at that," he said.

We got busy. I cast slugs for a couple days and began to trim the flash off them while he did the loading. At the end of the third day we had 500 loaded slugs. We thought we could sell them for a nickel apiece, easy, and with the old gun laws gone, it was legal to sell them. This was deer country, so there was a market. We could undercut the stores at 5 cents each and get $25 for 3 days work. Most labor jobs now paid $20, or less, a week. If you had a job, that is. 

Our supplies wouldn't last forever, but it was a good deal for now. I thought we should keep a lot of what we reloaded for our own use. After a month of fooling around at it part time, we had over 1,000 rounds loaded with #4 and #8 shot, and 1,200 with slugs before we ran out of hulls. There were enough other components to load that many more. 

Art and Susan each had a 12 gauge shotgun, and so did I. Daniel, our son Brad, David Martin, and Josh each had one, and Ryan had recently traded work for a good double barrel, too. We did some trading amongst ourselves. None of us would need to buy shotgun shells for a long time, and we sold enough to friends and neighbors to resupply the reloading setup. 
_________________

Art's thing was sheet metal work and TIG welding, although he had done a fair amount of welding fabrication. He took over those aspects of our shop business right away, and I began to teach him and Josh more about machine work and heat treatment of tool steels. The combination of services we could offer got us a lot more business. Josh did the wrench work on cars and was pretty good now at body work and spot refinishing. Art could make body parts and all the goofy sheet metal parts that held cars together, while I was good at making replacement machined parts and repiring old ones. That also applied to farm equipment, so our driveway stayed full. 

It got to be obvious that we needed more room in the metal shop. Business would pick up in the Spring when planting season came around, and winter was not the time to do construction, so any expansion would have to wait until next summer when our crops were laid by and the farm rush was over. We put out some feelers about finding cheap building materials for now. 

Stephanie was relieved to have more help in the dairy. She finally got some days off after two years of fighting it with only Heather to help. They were turning out cheeses at a pretty good rate, enough to supply one grocery in Salem and one in Corydon, plus whatever local sales they had. It was making money, but it was a 7-days-a-week job. They worked out a schedule to get each of them some time off on the weekends. With Brad's day job, he had all he could do to keep up with the grain and hay crops. Daniel did some of everything, besides keeping up with maintenance on machinery and buildings. 
__________________

Josh and Tammy went to have turkey with Carmen and David, while Daniel and Heather had Ryan, Megan, Kevin and Brittany over to celebrate the holidays. We managed to get our kids to our house for dinner on Christmas day. Brad and Stephanie, Susan and Art spent most of the day laying around with full bellies. Talk turned to business soon enough.

Brenda said, "We have to work out something for Joshua and Tammy's future. They have been helping us here for going on 3 years and they dont have much to show for it. They've been really good to us, but you two are going to inherit our place someday, then what happens to Josh and Tammy?"

Art said, "Josh is a big part of making the shop business work like it does. If I had to take over now I couldn't do it without him. 

I said, "That's how I see it. I want you and him to be able to take over when i can't do it any more."

Brad said, "I don't see any problem, unless Josh and Tammy want their own place. Susan and I talked about it and we plan to just keep things going like they are now."

Susan looked at Brenda and said, "If something happened to you and Dad, we could include your farm in the LLC and make Josh and Tammy employees if they want to." 

"We need to talk to them," I said.
__________________

Josh said, "That would be great! We've been really worried that if something happened to you all, we would be out of luck."

Brenda said, "You need some kind of security about having a place to live. We talked about that and we have ground you could have, but a house costs money. You could stay here as long as you want, but Susan is going to have a baby, and you might have more kids, too. It could get crowded." 

Tammy shook her head, "We're not going ot have any more kids. When I had Hailey we fixed that. Even then we didn't think we could support any more."

Josh said, "Having our own home would be great, but we just don't have that kind of money." 

I thought about that and said, "Maybe we need to take a hard look at that when the shop isn't busy. Art and I have been looking for cheap building materials to add on to the shop. If we find something, we can talk about it then. There's lot of empty houses around now, so you never know what we might run into." 
___________________


Chapter 58 



The US had effectively defaulted on its' debt by means of devaluing the dollar to virtually nothing, paying off debt with the worthless currency. The default had been baked into the cake long ago, with the formation of the central bank's fiat scheme. Many had believed that default would cause wars of aggression by creditors, but the fact that the US didn't have much of value left to steal and the existence of its'still functional nuclear arsenal, no such wars occurred. Other countries had their own problems to worry about and could not afford war. The crash of the dollar had taken its' toll around the world. 

Nobody would accept any fiat currency now. Settlement of trade debts was only done by the new Gold Bank formed by China, India, Russia, Brazil, and Dubai, with Australia and a few smaller countries joining it soon after. The death knell of trading in fiat currencies had come when Germany and Switzerland joined the Gold Bank, then France and the rest of Europe followed within a week. The US capitulated and rejoined world trade immediately. 

The BIS no longer existed. The game of living on money borrowed from the future was over, so everyone had to live on whatever income they had. World trade had fallen to an abysmal level, so the poverty in the poorest countries was horrific. 

The US dollar had stabilized again and was valued relative to other currencies based on the relative amount of gold backing each one. Although the US had the largest gold holdings, the US dollar ended at a much lower standing than others due to the massive issue of dollars, putting the dollar at #4, below Germany, China, and Switzerland's currencies. Italy and France had the same problem and fell further into poverty. 

Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, Federal aid to Education, Agriculture subsidies, the Oil Depletion Allowance, government research grants, education grants, grants for studying the sex life of mollusks, foreign aid to the dictator-of-the-week, and all the rest of the Federal handout programs were history. Unemployment rates soared, first from the millions of government workers who were out of jobs, then the trickle down effect of that to the goods and services businesses that depended on them. By the time the new Congress was seated and the new President sworn in, there had been a traumatic rise in the death rate, but no Census data was available. The next Census would resemble one of the first ones, only counting people and giving age, occupation, and marital status. As a result, GDP had shrunk to less than 30% of what it had been the previous year, but that calculation would not be made for years to come. 

State governments shrank about as much for lack of funds. Only the barest of minimum road maintenance was done, education had become the province of the individual family, and business regulation came to a halt along with 80% of businesses. Few larger corporations survived at all, and those were mostly foreign held. British Petroleum was now 80% of the remaining oil industry, with Dutch Shell most of the remainder and Exxon Mobil a distant third. 

The example of replacing the entire Federal government led to the same thing happening at the state level. An incumbent had virtually no chance of winning the first elections. Many state officials were subjected to recall votes and replacements as people learned that the new politicians were not any better than the old ones. Soon they began to get the idea and listen to what people were saying. 

US bankruptcy liquidation laws were changed back to what they had been originally, the US central bank was owned and tightly controlled by the new government, and the stock market was a shadow of its' former self. The FOREX no longer existed, but currencies were traded between nations as a means of settling accounts through the government controlled central bank. 

Precious metals and major commodities were traded by international agreements between nations only, and brokered to companies and individuals through the same means, leavng little room for speculation. The huge agricultural commodities companies were broken up as violating new anti-trust laws. Prices had varied wildly for the first year, then settled to trade within fairly narrow ranges. 

____________________

In the wild and crazy roller coaster ride of trade during the year following the election of the new government, death rates were high among the poor, the elderly, and others who had been dependent on government handouts. Only one television station remained operating in Louisville and was actually more reliable for news than the internet that was plagued by the most insane imaginings of posters purporting to be authorities or experts. Internet sales of goods had fallen to near zero for lack of counterparty trust and expensive shipping. Advertising, however, abounded on the internet, it being the cheapest means, but confidence in suppliers and payment options destroyed retail sales. 

Retail buyer considerations reverted to who had what in stock and the cost of transportation from the outlet for the customer. That motivated toward larger inventories and the warehouse idea came back into vogue, supplied mostly by a restructured railroad system and a much curtailed trucking system. Many more goods were produced close to the point of sale, due to the cost of transportation. 

The military Triumvirate had decided to stay in place for an additional two years to enable the new Congress and the country to acclimate to its' new methods and was still an informal disciplinary factor for some years to come. The President's Cabinet had taken on a whole new meaning as advisors. Incumbents carried the majority of the next 2 year cycle of congressional elections, apparently to give the legislators time to finish what they had begun. 

I didn't learn about much of what was going on in that world of politics and finance until several years into the future. Our personal lives resembled when my Dad once did some phenomenal driving to avoid an accident. The police came to deal with the wreckage around him and saw his tracks in the snow, going down a steep grade, up the other side of the deep ditch, back down that side and then back up to an unharmed standstill on the road. The officer asked him "How did you do THAT?" Dad told him, "I don't really know. I was too busy driving." Our farm and family had operated the same way, by instinctive reactions to whatever was the emergency of the day. 
______________


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

Chapter 59 March, 2017


Junk silver, the old US coins with 90% silver content, had been trading at face value again relative to the new gold-backed dollar. The old non-silver dimes, quarters, halves and dollar coins had been taken out of circulation by banks at the orders of the government when world trade resumed with gold. The difference was, those old silver coins would buy what they had over 100 years ago. 

I had been reluctant to sell what remaining silver we had until the dust had settled, so my $750 worth of the old coins were still in their 3 sealed bags. There were still 47 silver Eagles in the stash, too. With silver bullion selling at $1.25 an ounce, those were worth a slight premium at $1.32 each, or $62. We had some savings netted from the recent sale of Julie's last colt, for a total of $1452 in cash. There was another new foal at her side now, and she was bred again. This would be her last one. Raising an uninterrupted string of foals was too hard on a mare, in my opinion. We didn't need the money, and Julie was a friend of mine, so I didn't plan to get her bred again. She was getting old now, at age 16 and she deserved a nice retirement. 

Brenda and I had considered our fnancial situation and decided we could easily afford to help Josh and Tammy some when the opportunity came. They had been steadily saving money as they could. Josh had acquired more than one vehicle when the owner could not pay for repairs. He had sold all of them and socked away the cash along with what they could afford from his earnings. When we told them we would deed them 2 acres of ground behind Carmen and David's home, they had almost $200 saved. 

Part of their lot was wooded, so the first thing Josh did was call the man with the portable bandsaw mill to cut some lumber. He and I spent a few days cutting trees and dragging logs with the team. I plowed a clear area and levelled it with the tractor and front loader bucket. From there on, it was pick and shovel work to dig a foundation. What they planned was a modest 24' x 36' house with a separate root cellar to be added later. We did the preparation and got the foundation poured that summer, in between farm and shop work. I told the couple we would give them $200 toward getting the house built, so it was up to them to stretch that money as far as they could. They had earned the money. 

A newspaper ad for used building materials offered what Josh needed. That turned out to be our old friends Ansel and Donnie Deckard who were tearing down old houses for a local bank. We stockpiled what Josh needed in one of our sheds on the farm near the building site. 

The welding shop got an addition that summer, too, that gave Art room to work on larger fabrication jobs without having to do it outdoors. It would take another summer before Josh and Tammy got a well and a root cellar dug and the house built. 



Chapter 60 June, 2019
________________

I was beginning to feel my 72 years, so I came to the house early for lunch one day and saw Brenda on the back porch hulling peas with Hailey, now 5 years old. Our original Kitty cat was half asleep in the sun idly watching her latest batch of kittens playing with discarded pea pods. I sat down to help until the food was ready and looked over the fields to the East and South. A crew of school age kids was picking strawberries in the two acre patch with David supervising, while the Carmen minded the roadside stand. 

Daniel was disking ten acres of corn ground on Brad and Stephie's place with our team of Percherons, while their mother Julie was nursing another colt near the barn. David still had summers off from teaching at the one room school house a mile away. Those summer vacations were longer now, to allow the children to do farm work and to reduce school expense. Ryan and Art were busy welding up a tank for the neighbor's biodiesel plant while Josh and Tammy put the cylinder head back on a neighbor's aged farm tractor. 

Susan and Brenda were making lunch with Susan's 2 year old boy underfoot, while Megan washed canning jars and got a fire going in the wood cook stove I'd built. I had been pruning raspberries along the garden fence. Brad was mowing grass between the trees of their fledgling orchard with a small diesel tractor. Their herd of goats had been expanded to 36 head. They were pasturing in the field beyond the dairy barn and the cheesemaking building. They had a commercial milking setup and the proceeds were making a good profit to share with Susan and Art. 

Salem was functioning far better than at the low point, but things were much different. Instead of a fast food joint and a gas station on every corner, only one diner was still in business and two gas stations. One insurance agency remained with the guy who owned it only selling car insurance. The State had removed the 2 traffic lights and replaced them with stop signs that were much cheaper to maintain. 

I got up and followed the women into the house to get a cup of coffee, my one luxury these days. They had a nice salad made with lettuce, endive, radishes, chopped boiled eggs, and a dressing made of sour cream dressing from our community cow that resided at Brad and Stephanie's place. There were ham sandwiches to go with that, and all of it was grown on one of the family's farms, even the wheat that made the brown bread. 

I told Brenda, "We're still as poor as church mice."

She said, "Yes, we are, but we live pretty good."

I grinned at her and said, "Yeah, I think I can stand it." 

We dug into that salad. 

__________________


The End


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## txcatlady (Sep 26, 2013)

Read entire story! Loved it. This is what I am expecting. Okay on food but not financial. Can't do that. Great writing!


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## UniqueOldGal (Mar 7, 2012)

Whew,took me 4 days to get that read.  Machinist, you sure did an extraordinary amount of work! :congrat: That isn't a "story"; it's a combo of story,events timeline scenario With analysis,AND preparedness workbook of skills described in detail. I stand in awe of all your skills and knowledge. I particularly enjoyed you starting it in our current time frame and mentioning a financial graph I've Seen and "news" I'm aware of (I used to invest and got out Before the 2008 fiasco and got some PMs in 2005-6-7!!!) Anyhow, great effort! Thanks for the "read"!


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## machinist (Jul 4, 2012)

UniqueOldGal,

Thanks! I have another tale on here that gets into a much deeper collapse that calls for more extraordinary measures to deal with it.

http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/f55/dirty-money-12414/

Yeah, it's even longer...


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

Thanks machinist! I was totally engrossed.


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## Grimm (Sep 5, 2012)

I couldn't stop reading! I stayed up til 2am to read last night! Loved it.


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## k0xxx (Oct 27, 2011)

It was a great read. I had to take an unplanned trip out of town with only two chapters left. :gaah: I just got back this evening and finished them. Thanks for posting it!


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## tortminder (Oct 15, 2008)

*Thank you Machinist*

I started reading the story before breakfast this morning. Just finished it @ just before 6:00PM Got absolutely nothing done all day except read!

Thank you for a most well crafted and mostly believable story.

Tortminder


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## txcatlady (Sep 26, 2013)

I have not read anything for three days but dirty money. Wow. What a plot. Well written!


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## Foreverautumn (Oct 25, 2010)

What, no...no Nuclear War? No asteroid strike? No Yellowstone Caldera Eruption, or Nazi Biker Gangs, or even a decent ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE? vract: :gaah: Man, you are REALLY disappointing me, Machinist!  Turn in your Prepper card right now, darnit!


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## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

I'm still reading it! so far so good! this is the first book I've read from the forum so I'm encouraged to read more. I'm on post #13, forget which chapter that is, anyway, back to it! Keep it up, I like the story and appreciate the time you devoted to it!


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## Rain23 (Jul 18, 2011)

Wow, that was great. Definitely Kindle material, and I don't have a lot of disposable income so I'm careful how I spend it. I also really enjoyed the wholesomeness of the story, nothing that made me skip over or blush to have on my screen if someone looked over my shoulder. Thank you for a very enjoyable day's read!


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## BuggingIn (May 31, 2010)

Good read, machinist - thank you for taking the time to teach and entertain us.


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## bugoutbob (Nov 11, 2012)

Great read. Enjoyed it


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## canuck479 (Oct 19, 2014)

Just finished reading it thank you very much it was wonderful.


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## mariah2430 (Sep 19, 2014)

Great read. Wish I had a paper copy to put in my collection.


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