by Pete Thorsen
“These are for this current month. Next month you can come back and get more. It will go faster next time now that you are in the system. You will always have to have your driver’s license with you to get the food ration stamps each month.”
“Thank you, sir.”
I left and went into the Walmart. Along the way, I scanned the two sheets of instructions. It listed what the stamps could be redeemed for in the store. Rice, beans, flour, sugar, and a few other staples.
Inside the Walmart, I took a cart and went shopping. When I got to the food section, I noticed the first section was clearly marked “Food voucher items.” Each thing there was clearly marked with two prices. One the number of food stamps and the other was the regular price in dollars and cents.
The guy I talked to was correct. You got very little food for the stamps, and that food was expected to last you a month. The real prices appeared to have come down some in price which was a surprise. I guess if almost no one had any money anymore then you either lowered the price or didn’t sell the product.
I put more than enough of the stamp-approved food into the cart to use up my monthly allotment. Then I shopped for other items that I wanted or needed. One of the things I did stock up on was more salt. I would need more if I shot some deer and turned them all into jerky. And salt would keep forever.
The food vouchers did save me some money, and I accepted the free handout without any qualms. I was a US citizen, and if my government wanted to give me free food, then that was perfectly fine with me. I paid for the additional food that I had put in my cart and put it all in my truck cab. I did not get near as much food on this trip as I had in times past. I was running out of money.
On the way out of town I did stop and get my free two gallons of gas, and I paid to fill the five gallon can I had brought with me. I hoped I would not need to run my generator but wanted to be ready if I did need it.
Chapter 17
Back home it did not take long to unload and put away my purchases. I had stopped listening to the radio, but now I tuned it in again. I wondered what else was going on besides the free food vouchers. I guess I will have to suffer through the constant propaganda to get what small tidbits of truth that they might see fit to broadcast occasionally.
The bank had been closed when I had gone to town. I drove into the parking lot and saw the closed sign. I did not walk up and see if they were just closed for the day or closed for good. I will check again on my next trip into the town.
I waited another two weeks, and then I dug up the first of my potato plants. There were several average size potatoes under it. Judging by this one plant, I deem my garden a complete success!
I waited another two weeks plus an extra day and drove back into town. I stopped at the bank first, and it was closed. This time I got out of my truck and went to the door. They had cut their hours to just one day per week. The sign said they were open from nine to two on Thursdays only. Today was Wednesday; I was pretty sure.
The sign looked a little dated, so I still don’t know if the bank will be open on Thursdays or not at all at this point. I wonder with the way things are now just how much business they would do anyway. I would hate to lose that hundred bucks they owe me.
I drove to Walmart next. I parked near the doors and was relieved to see the military vehicles parked about where they were before. There were a few other civilians around and a few armed troopers too.
I walked over and had to wait in line for just a minute or two. There was one skinny older woman ahead of me. She was very skinny.
When my turn came, I handed the Army guy my driver’s license. He looked at me just long enough to verify from the picture that I was indeed the person on the license. He punched something in on the computer and soon handed me what looked like the same amount of voucher stamps as last time. I thanked him and walked directly into the Walmart.
Taking a cart, I went to pick up the “free” food first. I think the amounts I got for the stamps had changed. When I had enough to use up the stamps I could see that there was less in the cart than last time. I continued but only purchased a couple of other items that I had to pay for with real money. My money was running short.
I checked out and went and got the two free gallons of gas. I just put it in the truck’s tank. Getting two gallons free I figured was about what I used to get into town and back home again. So it cost me nothing to drive in for my free monthly food supplies.
The weather was cooling, and fall was certainly in the air. I still had some propane and plenty of firewood to make it over winter I figured. I doubted that I had enough food on hand to last me over winter. So I would be dependent on the free food in town and shooting some deer or elk.
I started eating my garden potatoes regularly. I had quite a few plants, and each plant produced several potatoes. They would keep quite awhile, but I saw little reason to save them. Other than plenty to plant again next spring. Even using them regularly the potatoes would last me awhile. I didn’t eat potatoes every day. I tried to vary my diet using what food supplies that I had on hand.
I still exercised every day. I was determined not to look like many of the people I saw while in town. They were skin and bones with no muscles left. With the image of those people in my mind, I went hunting as soon as I thought the weather was cool enough, so I had little chance of the meat spoiling before I got it processed.
Right away when hunting, I thought there were fewer animals. There was still sign but not as much as I expected from past hunts. Though I started about dawn, it was well into the afternoon before I saw anything. When I did, there were five mule deer. I was very careful and was able to get fairly close to the animals.
When I shot the first deer, I immediately swung over and shot a second. I would have shot a third, but by the time I shot the second the rest were out of sight. The first one I shot was down and appeared dead. The second was still trying to get away, so I shot it a second time. It went down, and I reloaded the rifle and waited for maybe twenty minutes or so while watching the ‘dead’ deer. Neither of the two made any movements during that time.
I walked up to them and verified that both were indeed dead. I quickly gutted the animals and was able to drive my truck closer to them. There were no rules I had to follow anymore. I loaded both deer and had an uneventful trip back home again.
At home, I hung both deer in the garage and skinned them both so they would rapidly cool. By that time it was getting fairly late and I left them hanging there until the next morning.
I had planned for shooting deer or elk this fall and winter. I had used my propane oven in the past for making the jerky, and it worked very well, but it used my precious propane. So during the summer, I had built a small smoker or smokehouse so I could use wood instead of propane to make the jerky.
What I made was very crude, but I hoped functional. It was made from reclaimed steel fence posts and some old well-used steel roofing. It was just a small shed made with no wood. The steel panels were wired to the steel fence posts. The door was just one of the panels that was only wired solid on one side. The door was held shut by leaning a standard cement block against it. The whole thing was far from being air tight. There was barb wire strung across several places in the tiny building on which to hang the meat while it was being smoked/jerked.
In use, I built a small fire on one corner inside of the building, and I had a hole on the opposite corner on top to allow the smoke and heat to escape. I had a piece of steel siding I could use to completely or partially close off the smoke hole. It was set up the same near the ground over where I built the fire. There was an air inlet near the fire spot that could be ‘dampered’ down to adjust how fast and hot the fire burned.
About halfway down the sidewall opposite the fire, I had a thermometer with about I six-inch probe that I had recovered from an old gas grill. That gave me some idea of the temperature inside the smoke house. After I had built it I had made a very hot fire inside to burn off all the p
aint or any residue inside the structure. Now with the deer meat sliced into strips and dipped in a salt brine solution and hung up on the stretched barb wire inside, I started a small fire from very dry wood for as near a smokeless fire as I could get. I gradually adjusted the fire while watching the temperature on the thermometer.
It was far from a perfect system, but by the end of the day, I deemed it a success. The small shed was big enough to hang a whole lot of meat inside to cook or jerk. The temps in different spots inside I’m sure varied widely while in operation. But I really only needed the meat dried and if some were over-done then so be it. I am not very picky with what I eat.
I was able to dry or jerk all the meat from the two deer in just the one long day using the shed. A small amount of the meat I did put in my freezer and some I cooked fresh and ate that day. The two deer would not be enough meat to last me over winter, but it was a start.
With the success of using my new smoke house and realizing that other people would be hunting along with some animals dying a natural death, I decided to try hunting again right away. This time I drove to a completely different area so I would not unduly deplete the animals in only one hunt area.
This time I drove slightly farther from my house and to an area that I hoped might still have some elk. It turned out to be an easy hunt. I was only out a couple of hours when I saw three cow elk. I would have rather shot a bull so there would less impact on the herd population but times were hard, and I did not hesitate to kill one of the cows. I picked the largest one and likely killed it with just the one shot though I shot it a second time, so there was no chance of me losing a wounded animal.
Unfortunately, I was not able to get my truck real close to the dead elk. I ended up skinning and quartering the animal on the spot so I could easier transport it back to where I was able to get with my pickup. It worked out fine and though it killed the whole day I was home by dark with a lot of excellent meat just waiting to be smoked/jerked.
A couple of days later when I had the elk meat completely done, I felt good about going into winter. I now had a good supply of food that should easily last at least to spring. And I didn’t scrimp or ration my food. I exercised hard every day, and I needed calories to fuel that exercise. And protein to keep and build my muscles. So I ate more than a normal person when it came to meat. A plus to me was that the meat was most likely a renewable resource. I added rabbit meat to my diet as often as I could also.
After another month had passed, I again went into town. I made sure it was on a Thursday when the bank was supposed to be open. I was disappointed but not surprised when the bank was closed. I now had to assume the bank was closed for good and would not reopen. I was just out that little over one hundred dollars. A couple of years ago maybe that hundred bucks would not have been a big deal but that was then, and this is now. That hundred bucks meant more food I could have bought which might be a life or death situation.
Chapter 18
Luckily the military was still in the Walmart parking lot when I arrived there. And I got the same number of food and gas stamp vouchers as the last two times. The only difference was this time I ‘bought’ only the food that I was able to with the vouchers. I spent none of my small amount of remaining cash. Same at the gas station when I put in the two free gallons of gas in my truck’s tank.
But the vouchers meant I got some additional food for free, and I drove home happy enough with the trip.
So went the remainder of the winter. The electric power never went off once all winter. Every month I was still able to go into town and get my month’s rations. Before the winter’s end, I went hunting again and was able to shoot another elk. This time it was a spike bull. I could have shot a couple of cow elk but I knew they would be carrying calves inside them and I would be killing two if I shot one. So I waited and kept hunting until I found a bull elk.
By the end of winter, I still had plenty of jerked meat, but my other food items were drastically reduced. To make it worse, Walmart never got in any garden seeds. I had saved some of my home grown potatoes over winter, and though they looked to be in poor shape, I thought it likely they would still grow if I planted them. I was certainly concerned about my food supply; even if I continued to get the rations every month at best by the end of summer I would end up looking like the others I saw in town and just be a lethargic bag of slowly walking bones.
The military fixed the food situation for me. When I went to pick up my ration vouchers for March, I was informed that I would be not getting any ration stamps. Instead, I would be put on a work detail because I was an able-bodied citizen. Their criteria for who they called able-bodied was pretty low because when I was eventually shipped off the rest of the workers in the truck with me looked like death warmed over.
My group was sent to Denver first. It was the closest large city in our state. We were all put to work, and that work was as awful a job as anyone could imagine. We were issued lightweight biohazard suits with respirators for the work. Our job was the removal of all the bodies in Denver. The bodies were in various stages of decay. I believe there were many crews working in and around the city at the same time with most doing the same job as I was assigned.
We were accompanied by armed troopers. They were not armed to force us to work but to protect us. There were dog packs and some individual dogs that would attack anyone they saw outside. Troopers killed every dog and cat they saw at first sight.
Then there were hostiles in the city also. Again the troopers sometimes shot first, but usually, they would try to get the hostiles to give up. Everyone who did not give up was killed according to what I saw or heard. Those that did give up peacefully were cuffed and hauled away to where and to what destiny I do not know.
The job we had was bad enough without the dangers. The troopers were kind to us, at least as much as they could be. They never beat us or anything. And many of the workers could do very little before they were just played out. Also, there were some workers who just could not do this kind of work. Those people were not shot or punished but just taken away. At first, none of us knew what happened to them, but later I did see one I recognized as a server at the lunch line. So apparently they were just assigned to different jobs that needed to be done.
The barracks we stayed at was always clean, so I knew some workers were given that job also. I assumed that there were many jobs around the country besides what I was doing. Some I assumed were farm workers and everything that went with that job. Truckers and workers at bottling, canning, and packaging operations to continue to provide food to all of us. Those on the crews talked naturally about this or that (at least it wasn’t just complaining about being short of money anymore).
One day when talking about where the food was coming from, a guy that seemed to know stuff said that luckily when this all started the nation’s grain bins were all full. He said there was actually a large excess of grain and it was being stored everywhere possible because there was so much. He said that there was enough grain to keep all of us fed for at least a couple years even if no more was being harvested. Everyone admitted to seeing grain bins scattered in many places; they just had no idea if they were full or empty.
We were all fed way more than the rations that the other workers had been used to eating. It was never gourmet food but just wholesome food in good sized portions. We all got three meals per day. Breakfast and dinner were hot meals served cafeteria style where we bunked. The noon meal was usually an MRE (meal ready to eat).
The job was an awful job, but it had to be done by someone. And like most jobs, after the initial shock wore off it gradually just became a regular job. We all assumed that the same job was being done in every city all across the whole nation. None of us knew where the bodies were being taken or how they were disposed of when they got there. We all just assumed it was either mass burial sites or large incinerators.
The military provided body bags for us to transport the bodies; it made the job much easier. I don’t unde
rstand where they got all the body bags from because I assumed they were being used nationwide. All I can say is that there must have been a huge supply of them.
Eventually, that job was done. And then the job changed to something else. There was no end of jobs to do it seemed. My next job was on a small crew that worked hauling cars. There were many cars that had ended up on highways and streets. Most I think were just out of gas. Some had been in accidents and just never moved. We hauled all of them away to clear the streets and highways.
We hauled the ones that had crashed to local junk yards. The ones that looked good were hauled to nearby parking lots and left in orderly rows in the lots. When done the parking lots looked like they used to in the old days when there was an event taking place. We never completely filled any lot and always started filling them way in the outlying areas first. When we left, there were always spots left open in the prime parking areas. We all thought this was so when things got better and started up again there would be places for workers to park. That was our assumption anyway. We were never told the why for anything, only what our job was to do.
The car hauling job did not last very long, and I was moved to other jobs. While working in and around Denver, we all saw other work crews doing other jobs. One of those jobs was boarding up broken windows and doors in buildings. Also, general clean up was being performed in the streets and on the sidewalks.
Besides the room and board, we were all paid. We didn’t get checks or cash. At the end of each month, we received a statement. The statement looked exactly like a common pay stub that would be attached to a weekly paycheck. It showed gross wages and deductions for taxes and such. The difference was it also kept a running balance of what money we had coming. I guess at some point we will get that money. The amount does not really mean much. There is no place to spend it, and none of us had any favorable outlook where we lived anyway. Plus none of us had any real choice in the matter either. Well, I shouldn’t say that. At anytime any of us could just quit and walk away. Of course, we had no place to go and no means to support ourselves. So we all stayed and worked every day. There was little complaining.