by Pete Thorsen
We gathered many acorns and after a couple soakings to remove the tannins we ground them into a meal that I used to make into interesting tasting pancakes that all three of us enjoyed.
The list of wild edibles was long and we gathered what ever we found in our area. Some were small and eaten on the spot like the small fruits on the pincushion cactus but some we gathered for future use like the tiny seeds from barrel cactus.
Over the summer we bolstered our food supplies with both domestic and wild foods. When we ran low on meat I took the pickup and shot a cow and we then had a lot of beef which would last us quite some time.
I saved the hide from the cow which became my first attempt at hide tanning. It seemed to work but I did not know if we would use it or not; it just seemed a shame to waste the large hide.
By late fall we were happy with the food we now had stored for winter use. Bev and I guessed we had enough to take us until we could again grow and harvest more along with forage for more.
Meat would always be a staple in our house though because it was always available. The cow I shot gave us quite a lot of good meat and there were many of them wandering around the area. With cattle, deer, rabbits, quail, doves, and if necessary javelina we would always have meat to eat.
In the early fall after I saw that we would indeed have enough food I decided to do something that had been on my mind for quite some time. I asked Bev to marry me. She said yes of course because I was quite a catch for any woman I’m sure, that is if there had been any women around. We found a nice ring that fit her mixed in with the jewelry we had acquired from the bandits that had attacked Bev so long ago.
Bev also told me about her past, something she had never done before. There was nothing bad or shocking of course because I knew Bev very well at this point and knew she was a great person in every way. She was born in Boston whose parents had her very late in their lives. They lived in the Boston area until she was in her early teens when her folks had moved to Israel to live the remainder of their lives.
When she was old enough she had entered military service with the Israeli Armed Forces and had stayed in for some time. When her folks passed away she moved back to the United States and was traveling the country deciding where she wanted to live when everything went in the dumper here.
We had both came to love Cindy and she had turned into the center point of our lives. We asked Cindy if we could adopt her so she would be our daughter and she thought that was a great idea.
Of course there were no courts or churches to do the adoption or our wedding but we all decided it was what we all felt in our hearts that was the only thing that really mattered anyway.
Epilogue
We were all happy and were a loving family without a government to watch over us. We got better at gardening and at gathering and had plenty to eat always. While the gas was still good in the pickups we had traveled back into town and gathered more supplies.
We got things that we needed that we could not make ourselves. A spare pump for the well and spare solar panels along with the other electrical components that allowed us to make our own electricity were put into storage at our place in case we needed them.
There were other things we brought home that we either needed or were replacements for what we already had.
Eventually the United States government came back again but it was not like it once was that had led to its own downfall. It was a gradual thing that started in the eastern states and finally covered all the states again. It was not the huge super power it once was but a very small government that really was ‘by the people and for the people’ like it was meant to be.
It mattered little to the small family in Arizona that now numbered four when Cindy’s little brother showed up.
The End
Just Another Day
Pete Thorsen
Originally Released on Kindle
February 2015
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Prologue
The older man snapped the binoculars up to his eyes when he saw movement in the distance on the highway. The binoculars were of excellent quality and were a god send in his current task as lookout. He had purchased the quality optics back when he spent his free time bird watching instead of now when he spent all of his time man watching. As the movement got closer and closer he could make out more and more details of what was heading his way. It was a quad pulling a trailer and it looked to include two men.
The man had hoped they would pass harmlessly on the highway but unfortunately the quad turned towards their camp at the windmill. Now closer yet the man smiled at the comical sight of the small quad loaded down with the two grown men pulling a much too large trailer.
He lost his smile when looking at the two well armed unshaved men. He squinted into the binoculars to try to make out every tiny detail of what was approaching. The man took his lookout job very seriously and knew the lives of those in his camp right now might be resting on his next decision.
He suddenly came to a snap decision and rose from his hiding spot and then waved to catch the attention of the two men approaching. This could very well be a bad decision but the man intuitively felt these two men were not a threat. He would risk his own life on that hunch as any shot now would alert the camp to danger. When he stood the two men saw him instantly and came to a stop.
The older man was relieved when the two did not remove their rifles from their shoulders where the rifle’s slings held them. The two just waited and the older man approached them. When he got close enough one of the two men spoke first.
“We are peaceful and only hope to get a fill of clean water here at the windmill.”
“We also are peaceful and will not turn away anyone who only wants to peacefully get some of our water.”
The older man walked up to the two men and when they dismounted all three shook hands and introduced themselves. All three seemed relieved to meet someone in friendship instead of the now all too often very violent encounters.
The older man found a seat on the trailer and they all advanced up to the windmill where there was a haphazard collection of tents and equipment. The two men stayed for a couple hours visiting with those souls camped at the only clean water spot for miles around and made a big hit with the few children there when they produced some candy that they freely passed out to the children and the adults alike.
Everyone exchanged all the news they possessed which as was the new normal was very little news indeed. The visit brightened the day for the campers and the visitors alike. Everyone waved when the two strangers pulled out a couple hours later after filling all their water containers and they continued their journey to a destination they never mentioned.
Chapter One
Pat really enjoyed his life now. Ever since he had quit his job and moved to eastern Arizona with his lifetime wife, Meg. Now he spent little time actually working at home (he was a day trader on the stock market) and much time out in the desert hills near his home. He had just turned fifty and felt that he was in great health with all his hiking keeping him fit.
When he had decided to move from his long time home in northern Wisconsin all the way to dry Arizona many of his friends were surprised to say the least and maybe shocked would be closer to the truth. Leaving a well paying job and all of his family (along with all of Meg’s family) behind to go to where they knew no one and had no job and no job prospects.
But Pat and Meg had money in the bank and were able to sell their paid off home in Wisconsin and buy a smaller new home in a small community in eastern Arizona and even had some money left over from the sale. Their two boys had left home and moved aw
ay earlier to southern Colorado anyway and now they lived much closer together though still a ways apart.
The recession was over according to the government and the media and the stock market was flying ever higher. Pat had dabbled for some time trading stocks and now with plenty of time on his hands and a fast internet connection he really got down to it and found out he could make some good money right from home. With the big down sizing to a small home and with only the two of them living in their house Pat and Meg found they could live on much less money than they used to in Wisconsin.
They spent the first few years in their new home state exploring all the surrounding area. It was desert like in their immediate area but fairly close the land changed to all pine trees. The little community where they lived had no stores for shopping except a gas station/convenience store but they found they now shopped way less than they used to do.
About once a month or so they drove just over a half hour to the bigger town of Show Low where there were plenty of stores for shopping. Between those shopping trips they sometimes ordered things from Walmart and took advantage of the free shipping right to their home.
When they moved they had also cut down to just one vehicle to save money and just because they did not need two rigs anymore. So they had sold their car and just kept their four wheel drive SUV. The four wheel drive had been very useful in Wisconsin’s winters but they found that at their new place even though they did get some snow in the winter the four wheel drive function was very seldom used anymore.
Sometimes when out exploring on some of the back roads they were happy to have that capability even in the summer though in certain rough spots and the higher ground clearance was necessary on the rough back roads and trails they traveled on.
They did end up buying one more vehicle. Meg liked flowers and soon was picking spots for flower beds and naturally wanted borders around each bed of flowers. Most of their neighbors had used natural rocks that were found everywhere in the area for borders and Meg decided that is what she would do also.
So Pat started hauling rocks using their SUV but when he saw an older quad for sale he bought that to use. The key component was the metal dump trailer that came with it. Pat got it cheap because the previous owner had never licensed it and had no title which was fine with Pat.
The owner did not remember exactly what year the thing was but did admit it was pretty old though it did still run just fine. Pat figured the few hundred the quad cost would be saved just from less wear and tear on their SUV and it worked well for the rock hauling.
Meg had made several friends in their community and she also spent some time doing local volunteer work. Meg and Pat were closer than ever and both thought the only thing that could make their lives any happier would be if their two kids would be living nearby instead of several hundred miles away.
They did make the trip a couple times a year to visit them both and often one or the other would come down on vacation to spend time with them in Arizona. Pat was making plenty of money trading stocks and life was just about perfect.
Trading stocks successfully required Pat to watch what was happening all around the globe. Everything, even things in countries a half a world away affected the price of stocks here in the United States. So he was always watching many news web sites in the United States and also some foreign news outlets.
He soon found that the worse the news the more the stocks went up it seemed which was just the opposite of the way it should work and used to work.
He researched and watched and read everything he could find. In the United States (and some other countries) the central bank (the Federal Reserve Bank in the USA) was printing a lot of new money.
Here in America they called it Quantitative Easing and its object was to ‘stimulate the sluggish economy’. The amounts of fresh money being ‘printed’ and injected into the United States economy was staggering and to Pat’s eye it seemed to be doing no good at all at boosting the economy.
His research was not just spent on news sites but he also read a lot of commentaries and opinion pieces too. This research really opened his eyes about some of the very negative effects that could result from the current quantitative easing policy. In fact many of the policies of our own federal government were very questionable. The more he read the more concerned he became about what was happening and what was being done.
One day he realized he had expanded his research to include several ‘alternate’ news sites besides the more main stream ones that he had always watched and monitored. Many of the things he found and read about were rather alarming if they had any truth in them.
He often talked over many things he found with Meg and sometimes talked to his sons about them also. His kids seemed almost relieved that he was finally opening his eyes to what was ‘really’ happening and not just assuming everything on the TV news was the ‘whole truth and nothing but the truth’.
Pat now often found what was regularly reported on the main stream media was just a portion of the news or just one point of view of the news. And at times it seemed to be almost a total lie with the way it was presented to the viewing public.
He knew enough about stocks to see that they were going up but the reason they were going up was rather cloudy. From the lowest low of the recession they had bounced back some and that was expected and normal but now they continued their rise and the sales numbers did not totally add up with the huge rise in stock prices.
Of course with the huge amounts of money being pumped into system from both the Federal Reserve with their quantitative easing policy and the government with their stimulus spending, all that money had to go somewhere and it appeared to be going mostly into the stock market.
With stocks constantly raising it was almost too easy to make money in the stock market. There were still many fluctuations among the stocks with them going up and down and that was when Pat made most of his money. Sometimes he would buy and sell stocks on the same day and sometimes he would buy and keep the stocks for several days or even longer before reselling them at a profit.
Chapter Two
Some of Pat’s research led him to certain survivalist and prepper websites. At first when he found himself on one of these web sites he promptly exited but later he actually started doing some reading at these sites. A few he found that he did not like but there were also a few that he found that made a lot of sense.
These were not over run by mercenaries or mall ninjas (a new term he had learned) but instead seemed to contain people just like him and Meg that were just regular people that were becoming concerned about stuff that was going on in the world. He read a lot on some of these more reasonable web sites and found himself learning quite a lot on many different subjects.
Eventually he even joined a couple sites so he had the ability to ask questions when he had them. Often there were news items listed on these sites (that was how the news searches brought him there in the first place) that members wanted to make sure everyone had a chance to read.
Pat discovered he and Meg were already preppers to some extent simply due to their monthly shopping trips forced them to keep a good supply of food and necessities on hand. After some reading he and later Meg came to realize it made perfect sense to have some things on hand just in case anything bad ever did happen.
They even put a backpack together with some essentials in it that they kept in their SUV because it just made good sense to do so. They did often travel back a fair distance on some of the rough back roads in the area and if they ever had a break down it would be a lot better to have some supplies with them.
Their SUV was in perfect running condition but any vehicle could break down. It was just like having any kind of insurance; you had it but hoped to never use it.
Pat and Meg also found themselves making other ‘what if’ preparations. They gradually bought substantially more food to have on hand. Then they bought a small compact water filter to add to the pack in their SUV, then another one that t
hey kept at their house. Pat had always been a handyman type guy and now found himself buying tools now and then to add to his collection. Never any electric tools but all hand operated tools.
Pat had been a hunter when in Wisconsin like many others there and had a few guns. Meg had even shot guns with him on occasion while in Wisconsin but had never gone hunting. Now both of them decided that while the guns they owned were fine for hunting they also wanted some more suited for defense. So they went shopping for a few guns.
After a lot of driving and even attending one gun show they ended up buying five new guns. They each bought a Ruger Mini 14 ranch rifle, Meg got a Ruger SP101 357 revolver (though they only bought 38 special ammunition for it), Pat got a Beretta 92 in 9 millimeter, and they also bought a Ruger SR22 pistol just to have fun with because they both liked it.
With the new guns they also spent considerable money on ammunition for the new ones and the guns that Pat had already owned. The two new rifles they also bought fairly low powered scopes for and installed and they occasionally went out in the desert and shot the guns to improve there abilities with them and keep them familiar just in case. Each of them also started to often carry a pistol when ever they left the house. Arizona law allowed all residents to carry a gun openly or concealed without a permit and it was not at all uncommon to see someone out and about packing a gun.
Pat was still making money on the stock market and they still were adding to their savings in spite of their gradual spending on their prep items. One other new thing they did was to start carrying a lot more cash than they used to and they also kept a wad of cash stored at home. Money in the bank was fine but for one thing they lived a long way from their nearest bank and they also were not as trusting in banks anymore.