Calamity in America (36 page)

“Why don’t you just buy one of those big shipping containers and set it here for extra storage?  With the economy so bad you can now buy a nice one for very little money.”

It was an excellent idea and we both told him so and thanked him.  It took little time to find a good deal on one of the containers that was in excellent shape.  The guy we bought it from said he would even deliver the thing for only another thirty bucks.  We ended up buying two of them.  And our storage problem was solved.

We were able to place a much larger order of the storage food and got a big break on the price that way.  We decided to store all the guns inside the shop for more security but were able to move enough of the other stored items into the containers, so it worked out fine for us.

My birthday was during the winter and, even though we had agreed to buy each other nothing for gifts throughout the year (birthdays and Christmas), Jack got me two presents for my birthday.  Both were used items that he got bargains on (of course).  One was an AR-15 rifle with many accessories that the shop had purchased from someone down on their luck.  Jack had bought the whole package deal from the guy at almost pennies on the dollar.

The second gift was a used treadmill that he bought, I’m sure, for a song because used exercise equipment was now worth almost nothing.  Jack had previously turned one spare room in his house into an exercise room with mostly weight training equipment, but he knew I would get a lot of use from the treadmill.  He really is nice to me in so many ways.

With the coming of spring (just like in previous years) the economy bumped up just a little.  Just enough to give everyone a little hope for the future.  I guessed it was just a temporary boost and because we had plenty of space outside at home I had Jack work up a space for me to plant a garden.  Even though he told me we had enough money to buy food I still insisted on having my own garden.  He really did not put up any real resistance to this particular demand.

I had the garden planted just as soon as the weather warmed enough.  With the warm weather came a rash of more yard sales with everyone trying to sell anything that they did not absolutely need.  We often checked out a few yard sales on our way to and from work.  We did not buy much but we did pick up a few things now and then.  There were also occasional going-out-of-business sales at stores in town with huge savings where both Jack and I would buy things we could use, either now or looking ahead to the future.

There were certainly fewer and fewer stores that were still open in the city.  Even a couple of grocery stores closed down.  The grocery stores which were still open (like all stores) seemed to have limited stock on the shelves.  In some cases the stock was very limited.  Groceries had been going up but now the prices seemed to level off some but were way high compared to a couple years back.  Part of the problem was that now you had to pay sales tax on food, just like everything else. 

Both the state and the city had decided to include food (and everything else) in the base for sales tax.  Granted, government entities were in desperate need for money, but taxing food was a pretty low blow to the citizens.

No one knew where the slow economic slide would end.  I guessed we had to be getting close to the bottom.  After all, just how much worse could it get?  I guess only time would answer that question.

Over winter we had cut way back on the hours that the store was open and when spring came we never changed the hours back.  Jack said we should just close the store because it was not even breaking even anymore.  But neither of us wanted to close up.  For one thing, we could never hope to find jobs.  For another, sitting around doing nothing was not an option for either of us.  So the gun shop remained open.

While summer should have been the time of plenty, this year it was not.  Food supplies were very low and even Jack admitted that it was a good thing I had insisted on having a garden.  Our food that we had for sale in the shop all sold out and we were unable to restock.  The food companies we dealt with were accepting backorders but they had no idea when they would be able to ship.  We kept a good supply of the LTS food at home for our own use just in case.  By the end of summer we had used a little of it too.

My garden grew fine and I wished that I had made it bigger.  Everyone was growing a garden this year it seemed, and the local farmer’s market was always a busy place.  It was often about the only place that you could buy food.  I never heard of anyone dying of starvation but I did see more and more skinny people.  I don’t think it was just my imagination either.  The news stations never even talked about the food shortage. 

This was an election year and normally there would have been a huge amount of advertising for all the candidates but this year was different.  The candidates that had enough money to advertise were careful not to flaunt that fact. 

The nation was in bad trouble and the population was mad at all politicians, from the local level all the way up to President.  Many Congressmen announced they would not be seeking re-election and many were resigning early.  It looked like almost all of Congress would be replaced with this election.

State and local politicians were in the same boat with most not seeking re-election and many resigning their posts.  I think many people wanted to tar and feather most of the politicians at all levels of government and that likely was a big part of the major change that would take place after this fall’s election and was certainly the cause of many resignations.

Many people had totally lost faith in all the elected officials and I did not blame them at all.  Even if we did get an almost complete change in elected positions I wondered if it would really make any difference or if it would just be more of the same again, only with fresh faces.

Only time would answer that question.

Chapter 13

By the time fall came we had shortened the hours at the shop even further.  We were now open only three days per week.  As soon as small game season opened both Jack and I spent our free days out hunting.  Game was not very plentiful.  Though no one had really talked about it out in the open it was common knowledge that many people were poaching all matter of game just to try and stay alive.  No one blamed them either, but now that Jack and I were out hunting we had a tough time finding either birds or small game.

When duck and goose season opened we spent a lot of time hunting those birds.  Local numbers were way down but the northern birds had started coming down so there were those birds around and we tried our best to get our share of them before they moved on farther south.  I was not all that fond of either duck or goose meat but it was available so I kept trying different ways of cooking them. 

Then, it was Election Day.  I think the turnout all across the nation was pretty good.   When the results were in we had mostly all new people that would be taking the offices.  Most of these new people I don’t think had ever held office before.  These were fresh faces and we all hoped that they had fresh ideas to save this once-great nation of ours.  Overall, people once again had hope that the coming year with all new elected officials would see the nation turn around.

Deer season opened and we both hunted very diligently to try and get a deer this year.  We certainly were not alone in that thought.  Deer numbers were way down due to the all-year poaching and the fall woods were full of hunters.

I was rather proud of the fact that I shot a deer before Jack.  It was a small buck but it was deer, and we could certainly use the meat.  At the close of season Jack still had not shot a deer, which surprised neither of us.  It was something of a miracle that I had managed to bag one.  

With getting only the one deer we still needed meat, so we stopped at a farm that had cattle and asked about buying a beef.  We negotiated with the farmer and ended up buying half a beef.  We had the time so we did the processing of the beef ourselves at home.  We had done the same with my deer.  My deer we had made mostly into jerky but we cut, wrapped, and froze most of our half of the beef we bought.

Going into winter we were sitting much better than most of the US population.  We had a fair amount of meat in the freezer (and the venison jerky) along with what garden produce I had canned, and we still had a very good supply of the long term storage food we had bought when it had still been available and the country’s situation had been better.  That had been the advantage of the long term storage food; you could buy it and keep it for a long time until it was really needed without any worry of it going bad.  

That winter was very hard on most all of the population.  Rich and poor both had problems.  Food was just very hard to find at most any price.  Most people had little or no money.  There were shortages of almost everything, not just food.  The long, drawn out downfall in the economy had closed so many businesses and manufacturers and producers that it finally led to all these shortages. 

People moved in together so only one house had to be heated instead of two or three.  I think some houses ended up being packed pretty full of people living together. 

And there were deaths.  Many tried different, cheaper ways to heat their homes and this led to many house fires.  There were also many people who succumbed to carbon monoxide due to improper installations, using unvented stoves and burners, or using heaters not designed to be used indoors.  The list was long because people were desperate.

And there were still many deaths due to violence.  Here in the northland that death toll was reduced somewhat with the winter cold, but there was still violence.  And then there were many suicides.  People just lost all hope and took suicide as an easy escape.  Sometimes it would be murder suicides that would end with a whole family dead.  There was a lot to be depressed about.

The government tried setting up soup kitchens in many cities.  This was a big help to many people.  The food was mostly bland but it was filling and hot.  There was no doubt on anyone’s mind that these soup kitchens saved many lives that long winter.  But like many things the government does, the soup kitchens were slow coming and had many faults.  But it still saved lives. 

In many of the northern cities people were found frozen to death.  Sometimes it appeared these bodies were of people who had gone out and braved the cold in an attempt to get to one of the free soup kitchens.  I don’t think there was hardly any public transportation running anymore.  Cities were broke.  Everyone was broke.  And most everyone was suffering, at least to some extent anyway. 

There were people like Jack and myself, too.  We had a sturdy home with heat.  We had jobs, even if it provided almost no income.  We had enough good, nourishing food to keep us well fed.  And we had each other.  

But time always marches on.  Winter slowly gave way to spring.  When I told Jack I wanted to double the size of our garden he put up no protest.  I had plenty of seeds.  I had leftover packaged seeds from last year plus I had saved seeds from most of what we grew last season. 

We had run out of potatoes to eat over winter but I had set aside many to use for seed potatoes for this year, just in case we couldn’t buy any in the spring when we needed to plant.  Potatoes are good producers here and I hoped to grow a lot of them this season.

All the newly-elected officials were supposedly working on solutions to all the problems across the nation.  The new, local politicians really could not do too much.  Few people were paying their property taxes, sales tax revenue was almost non-existent, and extra taxes like the bed tax on motels were now just a joke, so these local politicians basically had no money to work with. 

The one thing most of them did was trim more people off the payroll.  Before, when any public workers were laid off, it was always the workers at the bottom—you know, the ones that actually did the work.  This time the layoffs were from the top.  What money was left could then go to needed services in the counties or the cities.

This approach was also used at the state level, and even at the federal level.  The federal government was cut to a fraction of what it once was.  Whole departments and agencies were cut from the budget.  This produced many more unemployed people around the country but it was obviously something that had to be done and should have been done years ago. 

When the new President had taken office his first act was to send a proposal of changes to the new Congress.  It had included many cuts.  The new President had also publicly stated that if Congress was on the same track he would willing to work with them as much as needed to institute the changes they both thought necessary to turn the country around.  In that vein he had met with many members of Congress throughout the process so they could exchange ideas on how to effectively implement the changes. 

Bills passed through both Houses of Congress and were immediately signed by the new President.  All the new bills took effect upon his signature with no waiting period.  The old system of passing bills that took effect years down the road when many who sponsored the bills had retired was thrown by the wayside.  Changes were needed immediately.

Any money saved was used to put unemployed people to work and get some basic services back into operation.  The federal government also handed out free garden seeds that came with instructions on how and where to plant, how to water and nurture the growing plants, and how to cook and preserve the produce.

Federal funding was also used to get most of the tillable land across the nation planted and back into production.  The feds also supplied or made workers available where there was need to assist in the planting and, later, in the production and harvesting. 

Farmers and ranchers were urged to grow their herds and flocks as much as possible to supply the needed meat, dairy products, and eggs for a hungry nation.