This is the third tale I wrote, trying to improve my character development. Those who prepare for the future will at some point have to figure out how to deal with those who do not prepare, especially family.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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."
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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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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 redneck 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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?
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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.
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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.
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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 could 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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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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"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.
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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.
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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.
________________
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."
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