The Free Republic of Texas 2015 (3 page)

We ate in quiet for a while then the conversation picked up again and folks just accepted that this was how it was but the phone lines were going to melt down very soon!

After we finished we walked out together and headed to my place, after putting on a pot of coffee we sat down in the kitchen and Jody and Sing looked around, I was very glad I had cleaned a bit better then my norm!

I asked Jody where he got his information on me and he very openly said he had connections in high places and also that Song whom I hadn’t met was a computer genius compared to none and could hack the White house if needed, I took that as a joke and really believe it was meant to be but Jody nor Sing gave so much as a smile, kinda thing that makes ya go..HUH… So while I digested that Sing jumped up to get coffee and I followed right behind her, she asked where things were and I showed her, after getting our coffee we sat back down and really got to it.

There is something coming at us at high speed Jody opened with, I don’t know what or exactly when but it won’t be more then a year and it will be bad and the loss of life throughout the world will be beyond belief he added.

The plan I have and that is still a work in play is to have an area that can support it’s self, food wise and act as a place to start the long road back to having a country again, he added that he had been working on this idea for most of his time in the Marines, but didn’t have a place in mind.

The Harmond ranch was like a sign from above so to speak, and while he had the basics of a plan and some of the money to implement It he knew he needed more then himself and the kids as he referred to them and so he started the search of the people he thought might be willing to be involved.

When I asked who he had found so far he said Miss Ellie of course, now that surprised the hell out of me! But he then added that Granny Harmond had been related to Miss Ellie who knew his mother from trips to visit when she was a girl, so when he called to introduce himself his mother broke the ice so to speak, then he came out here and had several visits with Ellie telling her the same story he had told me, Miss Ellie had given him my name and told him that I was not only wealthy but honest and a good man to have on your side, which surprised me a bit but then I remembered all the small chit chat I’d had with Ellie over the years, and hadn’t realized how much I had revealed to her, so much for being a fly on the wall !

He settled into his chair more comfortably and said his plan was to build the ranch into more of a place of refuge and a place to grow enough to feed as many as possible, while at the same time working with the folks living both on the ranch and around the country side, to provide plans for further food growing and storage and protection against the low life’s that would come out like roach’s into the light of day.

To educate the children, here now and those to come, to train teachers and mechanics, carpenters, all the trades, so man would not slip back into the caves while losing all that had been built in the past . As he talked I could see clear as a bell what he was talking about, the only place it was dim for me was the why of it, and how it would happen, how he knew so surly it would happen as he said.

I asked that very question and his answer was as straight forward as everything about Joe D. Brown, He said he knew for a fact but could not prove that there were forces within our own government that desired to be Kings and to run the country as a bunch of principalities, That they wanted to be Lords over all they saw within their own boundaries, that alone made me squirm a bit, how could this be? He said that was only a few who were in power, others wanted to have the entire world under their control, One World , One Government, One leader, one Church, “ONE PEOPLE” and all controlled by the central government. No more US of A, no more Germany or France etc. and there were other factions who wanted no government at all, no laws, the strongest will out, the lesser peoples to be serfs, some wanted race wars, religious wars, and in the middle of it all, the little people, the Joe six pack who just wanted a job and a roof over his head and a family.

Could all this really be true I asked and yes was the answer, he said “They” were divided on the how but not the why, except who’s fairytale would be the one?? And this was where the end would come, they would fight among themselves and it would roll over all of us, no country would be spared, none allowed to remain free…except one, this one because somebody, US were going to stop it here in this place by being more ready to fight them then they thought, from this area the people of America as we knew it would go out and stop these wanna be kings and Rulers. Thru it all Jody never raised his voice, his eyes never got wild looking, his ice cold reasoning was clear, somebody was going to destroy our country but we were going to stop them…it might take our lives or our life times and many more but in the end we would be a free land peopled by free men!

I sat there and for the first time in years I wanted to say…I need a drink!

After Jody and Sing left I sat for several hours and let my mind roam and in the late afternoon I got up and headed out to the ranch, As I got out of my truck, Sing greeted me with that 5000 watt smile and took my hand and walked with me to the door, I will say, I would have followed her to the river and jumped in for another of her smiles, Now what in the hell is wrong with me? I’m acting like a moon struck teenager and at a certain level felt like I was betraying the memory of my late wife, but I never felt like this when I went to the big city for R&R, Then it hit me, I was not looking at her as a possible R&R companion, I was looking at her as a Man looks at a Woman he wants to spend a long time with….boy oh boy!!! This is getting deep and I’m lost, now that’s a lot of thinking in a 20 yard walk!!

We went into the porch area and she excused herself as Jody came out the door and offered his hand, we shook and I said I’m in! Just like that I joined Jody’s army; I figured it might be strange but never boring!

After Sing returned with iced tea, and sat down we got to it…

Jody showed me the deed and latest appraisal for the River Bend Ranch and said I propose to sell you 50 % interest In the ranch with only one condition, that we both agree that neither of us will ever sell our share to anybody else and that as co owners we jointly follow the plan to build it into a retreat against whatever may come to disrupt life as we know it, that it’s a haven against the darkness to come.

I looked at the figure I would be putting into the first phase of the plan and said I agree, have the papers drawn up as you like and I’ll sign, Jody said The papers will show only that we are each half owners in the ranch, period, the court house has no need to know what we plan” and I fully agreed with that.

The figure was less then the interest paid on my money in the last 5 years of doing nothing with my life, I had nothing to lose and a lot to gain, and looking at Sing I really hoped there would be more to my future.

It took a Lawyer about an hour to do the deed work and Jody and I to sign the papers and for me to hand him a check. We were now co owners in what we both hoped would be the light in the darkness we both knew was coming full speed.

Jody wanted to stop at the local bank to set up a drawing account for the expenditures that would be going out over time, surprising me a lot he set it up with both Sing and I as co signers on the account, Sing was the book keeper and any 2 of us were required to sign checks, as Jody put it, now if one was on the road looking for equipment we were covered.

The plan as Jody laid it out was many fold. His main idea was that most of the work required would be performed by those who were permanent personal at the ranch, I asked who and where these folks were?

At this point Sing took over and laid it out, it seemed that she had been very active in looking over the grad students who were finishing up in collage this year, Agriculture and Mechanical as well as Veterinarian and Medical Doctors fresh out into the cold world and had used her brothers skills as a Hacker to look at records and other things that would show how they thought.

As she explained, we needed good people but not somebody who was only in it for the money.

She had set up interviews in Tyler TX to look them over and feel them out as to which might be what we wanted, their expense’s were being covered by the LLC that was set up at the same time we signed the papers on the ranch, the idea was to look them over but not give out too much information as to why of it all, just yet.

Jody took back the meeting and explained that the place would have ponds for raising fish, green houses , fruit and nut trees, all the things it already had except in larger quantity, the surplus would be sold to cover some of the expense’s that occurred .

The green house roofs would be built on top of 5 ft walls made from earth bag construction using the sand and red clay from here on the place, after compaction, the walls would be almost 3 ft. thick with wire and concrete stucco on the outside, I asked why these type walls and he said without smiling “Bullet proof “I knew then that he had put more thought to this then I knew and that the days to come were going to be real interesting.

As for the ranch, it was in an almost enclosed horse shoe, the road in passed thru the narrow land bridge so to speak, it was about a quarter mile wide maybe more, the river while not deep in the summer still had a good flow and the course was cut deep around the ranch leaving high banks dropping right down to the water.

We talked about security and Sing asked if it would work to plant brambles on the facing edge of the river bank and then plant blueberry and raspberry’s in from the bank edge back about 10 feet as both an intrusion barrier as well as provide their fruit to the ranch larder, well both of us looked at her and she laughed and admitted she had been reading a lot of survival stories on the net…

I agreed with her on that for sure as I had taken many a walk in the woods around the area, between the brambles and such things and the heavy brush you didn’t get far real fast and you didn’t get there without bleeding a good bit. That project was the first we all voted on and we guys dumped it on Sing’s pretty head, it was her baby.

She also said we needed to think about all the work needing done and if we were going to hire outsiders to do any of it and if so we might want to bring in workers from outside the area as a security thought, this too was passed by the 3 person committee as we started calling ourselves.

Sing said she would start on the bramble wall right away, using a nursery from a city 75 miles away; she would call them the next day.

We also talked about how to close off the front of the ranch between the river bends, while not open by any means it was a way onto the property, we decided to plant the fast growing pine trees the area was known for after clearing out the brush in a 50 yard corridor across the front leaving all the trees already there.

With the ranch entrance being a road that zig zaged into the place, easy but slow access due to the turns, each would act as a choke point to stop intruders if needed, as we all knew it would be.

While Sing was looking to dinner Jody and I took a walk around the ranch house area, there was a nice barn built with the same logs as the house though several years later, a few of the usual out building, some old chicken houses and stock pins, no longer in use and in truth needing replacing, this was another project, what kind of small live stock would work best?

From having been in the area so long I knew a lot of the folks with small acre homesteads had Goats , because they were small, easy to handle, ate less then cattle and goats milk was good right from the goat to the table, no pasteurizing needed but the fat didn’t separate as with cows milk so no butter, So goats we would have and a few young milk cows and a bull to start a small dairy herd with the intent to sell the surplus milk locally “ As pet food only” this brought a laugh from us both.

We wanted a lot of chickens; all free range but in an area fenced to at least slow down the chicken eating critters which the area abounded with.

There was no need to have hogs as Texas had about 5 million wild ones running all over tearing up the country side, in fact they were breeding faster then shooting and trapping could control them so we wouldn’t lack for pork, all we had to do was shoot a few when it was time to fill up the freezers.

While Jody and I both loved Horses we agreed that only a few would be kept on the ranch simply because they ate way more then they were worth if not used all the time, That discussion brought up the idea of farming with horses and mules, another note on the rapid filling note books we both carried. So several of the bigger draft horses and a few riding horses which could be very handy if used enough to pay for their upkeep. More internet time looking for draft animals and harness for them, and the tools to go with them, plows and wagons and all the other things needed for an operating 1875 ranch. IF it came down to that, we had no intention of not having electricity and all the many uses for it, but we would need to create our own, not relay on the power company’s in any way.

I think we were both just starting to see the size of the task before us when Sing clanged to old triangle calling us to dinner, Jody laughed and said she had just been dying to use it for It’s original purpose , and it still worked as well as it had when it was first hung long ago.

Dinner was once more outstanding, I was looking at a big weight problem if I hung around here much, which was the next subject after dinner, over a pair of tall Beam ditch’s Jody brought up the subject of my moving out to the ranch, an involuntary glance at Sing showed she was waiting for my reply as well, after stuttering a bit I said well it would be handy and all but the old house was pretty small, Sing spoke up and said no, in fact there is a very solid well built basement under this place, which surprised the hell outta me! But Jody nodded and said because of the rise in the land ground water wasn’t the problem it usually was around these parts and that Sing had staked out one  of the bedrooms down there so I had my choice of taking one up stairs or the second basement bedroom, well this caused some really wild thoughts to pop up in my head and I took a quick drink and choked on it, if you have never had the pleasure of squirting Jim Beam thru your nose, please let me say….DON”T !!!!! After both of them pounding on my back and laughing so hard they had tears we all settled down again… I was trapped on the back of a run away dilemma , being that close to Sing was a wonderful thought but I sure didn’t want to screw things up, Sing spoke up and said “Dad“? Well! That surprised me to no end, but Jody looked at her and smiled and then looked at me and said, when she wants to get her way she uses the “Dad” thing, the rest of the time I’m just Jody. Sing rolled her eyes and said that is not only so untrue it’s also unkind, then burst out laughing. She then reminded him that the idea was to set up the second upstairs bedroom as a computer/communications room with a bed for Song ( Who still had not made an appearance)  Jody nodded and said well that is settled, your bunking down stairs. I wasn’t sure if I had slid into Heaven or fell into Hell, but whichever I was pleased.