From The Bottom Up

[patience]

This is the second tale I wrote. It covers the quite different experiences of several families through an economic debacle and societal breakdown. I have been trying to learn a different aspect of what makes a good tale with each one. There are a lot of things to learn--style, plot, character development, backstory development, dialogue, setting, timeline, and getting all those coordinated without going nuts in the process. About the time I get concentrated on a couple those things, some of the others don't come out so good. Hope it is still enjoyable.



FROM THE BOTTOM UP

CHAPTER 1

So, for the first time in my life, I bought a nickel bag of pot. And I got caught. Dumbest thing I ever did. How was I to know the guy selling it was a cop? Then, they trumped up the charges to distribution, with two lying cops swearing on a stack of Bibles that I had said I was going to sell it, not smoke it. I was so broke at the time that I ended up with a public defender for a lawyer, and all she knew was for me to cop a plea. It was easier for her because she didn't have to prepare a court case. After a few weeks in the county jail with all the city drunks, wife beaters, and druggies, I was getting nowhere with this. They had me convinced to plead guilty to low quantity drug sales and I took the deal. That was the third dumbest thing I ever did, and cost me 5 years in the State joint.

I reserve dumb thing number two spot for marrying Joanna Potter, the prettiest girl in our small town. She's the reason I was so broke. After a couple years, her spending habits were driving me nuts, and that was the reason I had decided to smoke some pot for the first time in my life. Bad idea. Nobody to blame for it all but me, though. No matter what shortcomings I have, I take a little pride in trying to be a realist, so yep, it was all my fault, the result of my own bad decisions. I listened to the AA meetings in the jail for a pastime, hearing the men admit to being alcoholics. The thought went through my head then, "My name is Wesley Hardin Blake, and I'm a jailbird". Some shame in that, but I sure didn't plan to make a career of it like the druggies and drinking guys. I would have bet anything that as soon as they could find something to drink, they'd be right back at it. That was one problem I didn't have.

The time in the county jail was the worst of it. There was absolutely nothing to do except read the religious tracts that the do-gooder missionary sorts left there, and nothing to look forward to each day but the meals, and they were nothing to write home about. I did read a lot of those tracts, but they were all geared toward getting you to 'repent and seek God's salvation'. I had already repented. What I needed was something to look forward to. My future looked pretty sucky from where I sat. My wife filed for divorce as soon as I got arrested and I signed the papers a few weeks later. That happened a lot to guys who get arrested, according to what the guys in jail said. She ended up with our car and the household goods, including that expensive china she'd had to have. She got the car payments, too, so I guess that was alright. The last I heard, she went home to live with her parents, according to my sister.

Joanna was really an all right kid to start with, just spoiled. Her dad made a lot of money and doted on her. Back then, I was fresh out of the Army, after 4 years in the Motor Pool wrenching on trucks and Humvees. That had gotten me a good job as a mechanic at the Chevy dealership. I'd managed to get a good toolbox bought and paid for, then saved some money. It was hard work, but I enjoyed it. We had a great time for the first few months after we got married in 2001. We were both 25 years old. I just couldn't make money as fast as she could spend it. Other than that, we got along fine. We'd known each other all through school, and had always gotten along, even dated a few times.

My folks did okay, but their factory jobs didn't pay all that well, and I had no interest in going to college if they could have afforded it. I did enjoy tinkering with cars, and had a job through High School at a garage. I had started buying tools back then, looking for cheap deals and learned that good quality was worth the price, in most cases. At this point in my life, my tool box and a few clothes was all I owned in the world. My big sister, God bless her, had gotten those all from my wife and had them stored at her place for me. But I had no place to live when I got out, so I figured I'd have to take the Halfway House deal they offered, where I could work at some crap job until I got enough money ahead to live on my own. That would mean living in the worst part of Indianapolis, and it would be over 100 miles from home. That would be bad, but I'd have to do it somehow.

The penitentiary was rough, but life settled into a routine. Everybody had to have a 'job' of some sort in prison. Nobody really WORKED. They borrowed the Russian saying, "We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us". Most of them ended up in the kitchen, or doing housekeeping, mopping floors or whatever because they didn't know anything else. My mechanic's background got me a job in the General Maintenance Shop, which was some kind of salvation. At least the few men who worked there had a little something on the ball, and I could do something I enjoyed during the day. It was barely enough money to buy coffee, cigarettes if you used them, and some snacks from the prison store they called the Commissary. After work, it was back to the cell block and listening to the overgrown brats misbehaving, fighting over the TV channel, and yelling about whatever small issue they picked on, trying to give meaning to something in their life.

There are predators of many kinds in the prison system, but I didn't have any problem with most of them. I didn't drink, smoke, or gamble, nor was I homosexual, so those pitfalls were easy for me to avoid. I didn't have any big attitude about being a Macho Man or run my mouth, either, which were the other sources of trouble. I was basically a nice guy, and some of the cons did try to take advantage of that, but I dealt with that as best I could.

I learned quick that no matter what happened in there, I didn't see or hear anything. Some guys got stabbed over gambling debts, or other peeves, but you just walk your own way and if asked, you say, "There was a body on the floor? I didn't see a body". It saved all kinds of trouble, and maybe saved your neck. Ratting out another con was a fast way to die.

Most of the time, I could ignore the fence and the razor wire around the joint, the guard towers with their automatic weapons, and the nonsense of the people inside all that. After work, I could go to the library and find something to read, and my sister sent me a book now and then. I began to ask for her to send Haynes car repair manuals that she could get at the local Auto Zone store. She also subscribed me to The Mother Earth News magazine. It wasn't as good as it used to be, but it helped give me some idea about what things cost, and some ideas for cheap ways to live when I got out. May God bless my sister Gloria until the end of her days, and then take her home to heaven! Man, was I grateful. Gloria was 4 years older, and had always looked after her baby brother. I was really bummed with women after Joanna, but if I ever found one like my sister, I'd marry her in a heartbeat and do whatever it took to keep her happy.

At evening mail call, I got letters from Gloria about once a week, and one from my mother maybe every couple months, with check inside for a $100 that went into my Commissary account. That meant I could buy instant coffee, snack foods, shampoo and a few other things the prison did not provide, like thong sandals to keep from getting athlete's foot in the communal showers.

Mom and Dad just couldn't accept that one of their kids was in jail. But Mom said she felt guilty if she didn't do something for me. There was no chance of my parents ever coming to visit me, although Gloria came a few times when she could convince her husband, Bob Stowe, that there was no way he could talk her out of it. She made it a couple times a year, and that helped keep me grounded in reality about the world outside the fence. Bob never came. He wasn't a bad guy, but he always looked down on anyone that worked with their hands for a living, so he didn't think much of me to begin with. When I got locked up, I was anathema to his niche in society. Gloria gave him the blues about that, from what I could tell.

I got locked up in the spring of 2003, and had a 5 year 'bit' to do. I was focused on getting out. Unlike the professional and petty criminals around me, I had a real life to go back to, as little as it was. The men around me saw that, and pretty much left me alone, except for trying to get me do something for them. The penitentiary was not air condiditoned, and in summer the all masonry structure turned into an oven. They sold electric fans in the Commissary, but few had money to buy them. Old ones kept getting traded around as guys finished their time and got out.

I had a good side business going patching up the old fans, repairing eyeglass frames, and fixing radio headphones that had broken wires. I made not telling how many of those things to heat water for instant coffee, or instant soups they sold in the Commisary. It was just any old electric cord cut off of some junked appliance, then a couple pieces of metal with an insulating spacer between them. You just put the metal electrodes in the cup of water and then plug it in until the water was steaming. If you touched the cup or anything close to it while it was plugged in, you would be electrocuted. Nobody died from them, but a few got a lesson in electrical safety.

The cons took to calling me "MacGyver", and said I could fix anything. I got paid in coffee and snacks, and sometimes a favor, such as doing my laundry for the week, or bringing me a some fruit or a good sandwich stolen from the kitchen. The cops all knew about this sort of trade going on and generally ignored it. They couldn't stop it anyway. Their general take on it was that as long as we were messing around with this sort of thing, we weren't killing each other, or them. It meant that my Commissary account was steadily building up a balance of savings. At roughly $120 a month, my pay didn't amount to much, but I didn't spend much, either, after I bought a fan and a radio. I figured that by the time my out date rolled around, I should have at least $1,500 in there, and they paid that out to you in cash when you got out.

There were two cops who ran the General Maintenance shop. Bill Gibbons was pretty cool, for a cop. He was the senior cop there, and that was good, because the other one, Gary Pate, was a punk and aggravated everybody, especially Bill. Gary had a juvenile attitude and caused no end of grief for Bill by keeping his crew upset. He said things to deamean the inmates at every opportunity, probably to assuage his own poor ego. Bill was close enough to retirement that he didn't want anybody rocking his boat, and he had responsibilities to fulfill, so he tried to keep the peace.

Our shop took care of the kitchen equipment that kept everybody fed, a lot of the office equipment, the elevators, some stuff in the ancient steam heating system, and the vehicles. That included the 3 prison transport buses they used to shuffle inmates around between county jails for court dates, and between state prisons if they needed to break up a gang or something. They also had 4 pickup trucks, 2 of them equipped with snowplows for winter use, and there was a motor pool of cars for general staff use. By working on all these, I managed to stay somewhat up to date on mechanical knowledge. It beat the heck out of baking bread or making other food for 1200 men a day in the kitchen with a bunch of total idiots.

In the Fall of 2005, my parents were killed in an auto accident. According to witnesses, some idiot tried to pass them without enough room and took a header into an oncoming garbage truck. They died in the resulting pileup. Bob was good at administrative things, being the business manager at an investment firm. He got a law suit filed on our behalf for wrongful death against the guilty driver. His insurance finally paid off, after a long delayed court battle. To his credit, Bob had stuck with it and kept it moving. He knew that Gloria would benefit by half of it, so he was motivated. He couldn't have cared less about me.

When all was said and done, and the lawyers got their half of the settlement, the remainder did pay off the mortgage on Mom and Dad's old house, and a little left over. Gloria said the place needed some work, so they had a new roof put on it and got the plumbing fixed up. Bob didn't want to sell the house then because real estate values were going up fast. They had it rented out when the real estate bubble popped. Again, to Bob's credit, he tried his best to sell it, to no avail. It was too far out of town, it was an old ranch style built in the 70's, and there were thousands on the market when the real estate market began to run out of buyers with good credit. They kept it rented, but they had to drop the rate. Three months before I got out, they lost their renter and decided that I could live there and pay them rent at half rate, since it was half mine. It was the best thing I had going for me at the time.

I wrote to my old employer at the Chevy dealership about a job, but got turned down. I was pretty despondent over that, but Gloria convinced me to write to a private repair garage across town and that guy agreed to hire me on a straight commission basis. If I didn't produce, it was no skin off his nose, because I would be paid the "flat rate" commission based on what work I actually got done. There was no base salary and there were no fringe benefits. Whatever, it was a job.

Since I had a place to live, some money in my account, and a job lined up, I wasn't required to go to the Halfway House. I breathed a sigh of relief at that. Too many things went on in those places that got guys busted and sent right back to prison. They were full of drugs, and a lot of other things.

Eventually, my release date came around. Seemed like forever to me, but with a sense of something like disbelief, I found myself getting measured up for a pair of cheap jeans and a shirt, a pair of shoes, and a windbreaker to wear when I walked out the gate. A couple of sleepless nights later, I had one day to go.

I had never liked that Gary Pate. I knew better than to say anything to him, let alone give him what he had coming. If you are in prison and ever plan on getting out, you don't cross the cops. Still, he was a typical wannabe who never amounted to much until he got this job as a prison guard. Then he got enough money together for a down payment on that decked out pickup and mortgaged his soul to the finance company to buy it. He brought it into the prison maintenance shop to keep it tuned up and have the guys wash and wax it for him every couple weeks. After we got off work, he used the shop to change his oil and do a lube job on it. From what he said, it was a girl magnet. But he lied a lot.

His last job had been driving a bread truck and he had gotten fired when he wrecked it. Gary fancied himself a ladies man, having curly blond hair and looking a little bit like Alan Jackson, the country singer. He cultivated that look with a mustache to match, and wore cowboy duds when he was off duty. He generally made life miserable for us convicts with his attitude as a guard. Most of the guys said he wanted to be a cop, as we called the guards, because some little girl stole his lunch money in the 3rd grade and he wanted to get back at the world. "Too lazy to work and too scared to steal", was the general assessment that convicts applied to people who took a job as a prison guard.

I had one day left on my bit and I was going home. Nobody really believes that day will ever come when they are locked up, but it does, eventually. I had one more day to work in the maintenance shop, so I decided to make it count. There had been a lot of windy days that Spring, and it blew a lot of dust in from the sand pile they kept around for winter use on sidewalks and the occassional masonry repair job. We had been told to clean up the shop that day, so I swept off the window sills into a dust pan and dumped some of that gritty dust into an empty plastic oil bottle. I refilled it from the bulk barrel with 30 weight and cleaned the bottle thoroughly, then sat it back on the shelf with the full ones, in front.

Gary had me wash and wax his pride and joy one last time and ragged me about it, knowing I was getting out. I smiled at him and said, "Glad to do it one last time, for old times' sake!" The next morning, my sister picked me up at the gate at 7:00 AM in her nearly new Volvo, and off we went.

The next evening after work hours, Gary used the oil in the Maintenance Shop to do a change in his big Cummins diesel engine. I didn't know it, but Gary never made it home the next night. His 3 year old, out-of-warranty truck blew 3 connecting rods on the Interstate about 8 miles from the prison. His boss, Bill Gibbons, couldn't prove anything, but he had a pretty good idea what had happened. He chuckled to himself when Gary wasn't around. Prisons breed some hard characters, convicts and cops alike.


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CHAPTER 2

It was June 1st when Gloria took me home to southern Indiana. They still had the gas and electric turned on, and she had moved my clothes over to our parents' old house. She had saved their kitchen utensils, and most of their lawn and garden stuff, and a lot of junk. It was all still in the old detached garage in the back. The house had an attached garage, so they just locked up the old building and left the stuff in there, not being accessible to their past renters. All I needed was some groceries and I would be moved in. We attended to that, and she took me to the branch office to get my driver's license. I opened a checking account with $1,200 of what I'd saved in prison, which left $643 in my pocket. That went pretty fast, buying a few new clothes, a wrist watch, getting a decent haircut, and paying for the groceries. I was amazed at how much things cost now.

Being in my home town was blessing. Salem had it's warts and pimples, but it's a friendly country town, and being the county seat, it's just big enough to have most anything you might need. Retail prices are sometimes a little higher than at the Wal Mart in the city, but you can find a lot of good deals right here at home. It's not hard to get around because it's small, about 6,000 people, and that means most businesses cover several kinds of things. One hardware store has garden stuff and caters to the Amish crowd, while the other one has a big line of tools and a rental center.

Some things had changed in 5 years. There were banks everywhere and way more restaurants than I remembered. There was a new mini mall where the handle factory used to be. The handle factory and the furniture plant had been heavily damaged in a major flood, and both had closed down. But the people were pretty much the same. There was still a crowd at the tiny diner on Main Street in the morning, mostly farmers jawing about crops and the weather. Everybody still knew a lot about everyone else's business, and probably knew your family for a couple generations back. That was good and bad. It meant there was no such thing as privacy like in a big city, but it also meant that you automatically had a network of folks to hook you up with what you needed. I grew up here and I was comfortable with all that.

Wednesday morning of the next week, Gloria drove me to town so I could report to my parole officer as required. I told him I already had a job and I had been working for two days the past week. I would have to submit to drug testing, he would check on me at my job, and come see me at my home. I'd have to tell him ahead of time if I was going to be out of town overnight. Whatever. I signed some papers and left. I knew the guy slightly, and didn't expect any trouble out of him. We were getting along, and that was good. He had read my file from the prison, and didn't expect me to be a problem for him, either. He probably knew how I got shafted on the whole deal, too.

The $1,200 got spent that day. I couldn't have my sister running me around forever, so I hunted up a ride. I saw an ad in the paper and bought a 1978 Chevy 1/2 ton pickup that barely ran for $1,000 cash. It was not pretty. There was cardboard in the seat over some busted springs, and a back fender that waved in the breeze if I got it over 30 MPH. License, 3 months liability insurance, a tag, and a tank of gas had me nearly broke.

What the heck, I thought, it was a ride, and it was mine. I did have a couple hundred left in my pocket. That was good thing, because the battery died the next day. I was amazed that it cost me nearly 100 bucks for a battery and one new cable. I did what was needed to keep it legal, because even a small traffic infraction could land a parolee back in jail. I was bug-eyed scared about that, and took to turning off into a store or something if there was a cop behind me.

Work went pretty well after the first week of mostly doing oil changes and tuneups. The boss decided to let me try some better paying, more complicated jobs and I began to make money. I went to sleep at night reading repair manuals, because I still had some catching up to do on the newer cars.

I didn't really have any friends to speak of now, most of them having married, moved, or something since I got out of high school. Being pretty fresh out of prison, I was paranoid for a while about how people would treat me. It took months before I lost the feeling that I had "convict" tattoed on my forehead, or something. The fact was, only a rare few even knew who I was, and nobody put me down about it. It still took years to gain any self confidence. Having a job, relatives, and the people I worked with helped a lot to make me feel like part of real life again. The bottom line is, it's about how you treat other people that decides how they see you.

I did run into Barry Klein, our class nerd, when I dropped into the computer store one day to look about finding a used one. He was helpful and said the thing to do was look online at Craigslist. I said I can't do that without a computer.

He said, "Oh. Yeah. Well, let me look here for a minute."

He did his tappity- tap thing and said, "Here's one. It's an Acer laptop, and it's cheap. They want $100 for it. Here's the number."

He wrote it on a scrap of paper and handed it to me.

"Can I buy you lunch or something? You didn't make anything on this."

"Nah. Come in when you want to get internet service and we'll fix you up. The boss will be happy with that."

I thanked him and left. I called the guy and when I showed him $80 cash, he took it. A week later I had some money ahead and got wireless internet service. The package came with internet based phone service, for $70 a month and included unlimited long distance calls. Sounded good to me.

The computer would crash if I tried to watch videos on it. I finally figured out it was getting hot. Four pop bottle caps under it allowed more air to get through the mini cooling fan and the problem went away. Maybe that was why I got it so cheap, or maybe it was just because it was a couple years old. Computers depreciate really fast, I had learned. I spent some time learning how it worked, and with a tip now and then from Barry, I fumbled my way through learning how to use the internet. Prison really puts you out of touch with life.
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Mom and Dad's house had a two car garage on it, so I used that to work on my old truck some at night. In a few weeks I had found a better seat at the junkyard and gotten the brakes fixed. Donny Whitson was the old man who owned the junkyard. He remembered me from my high school days when I bought parts from him. He treated me right on the old parts I needed. The engine burned oil, but it started and ran pretty good. I had put some cheap new spark plugs in it and new plug wires. That got it running smooth again. I wired the fender down where a brace had rusted off, then put some STP in the engine and the oil pressure came up to something near normal. If I babied this thing, it would probably run for quite a while. The front tires were pretty bald, so I found a couple off a wreck at the junk dealer's for 20 bucks apiece and got them bubble balanced for another $10. They ran smooth enough if I kept it under 50 MPH.

I gave the thing a good bath and cleaned out the cab, then went over the inside with a scrub brush and some soapy water. When I put the better seat back in and added a cheap seat cover, it began to look better. The old 350 V8 was a gas hog, but at least it was a stick shift, so I was getting better than ten MPG around town. I could live with that no more than I drove. My boss came up with some old snow tires for the back, and I saved one of the old ones for a spare. It was August now, and things were looking a little better for me. I even had almost $1,000 in my checking account again, but I had learned how fast that could disappear with the high prices now.

As soon as I could after getting settled in the job and got my truck in shape, I had used Dad's old tiller to dig up their small garden spot. I had set out some tomato plants and put in lettuce, radishes, green beans, and two short rows of sweet corn. We had grown up with his gardening, and it just didn't seem right to not have it going. I even put in two rows of late potatoes. Groceries were getting more expensive, so it made sense to me. I didn't have any idea about canning food, but I could eat cheaper all summer, then put potatoes in the basement and leftover sweet corn in the freezer.

I began to think about paying Gloria and Bob for their half of the place so I could do what I wanted to with it, but I didn't have the money and my credit was shot. I felt like I was living somewhat at their mercy, and I didn't care for that with Bob in the picture. He liked to think he was a smart money man, and I knew he had wanted to sell the place and invest the proceeds. That would be all right with me, if I had some notice, but we needed to talk about that.

I was still having to tinker with the old truck regularly to keep it going, and that took some money. Sometimes I had to walk the mile and a half to work because the truck had problems. The shifter linkage, a throwout bearing, headlights, hoses, and belts all went bad, but I was gaining on it. I put a rebuilt alternator on it, and patched up some wiring. The floorboard had a couple holes that I patched with junk sheet metal and some self tapping screws. The cancer in the truck bed was too much, so I gave $200 for a used bed from Donny, and he had the guys help me get it put on with their big front loader. I gave the whole works a coat of Wal Mart's finest dark blue spray paint, over the rust and all. At least it was all the same color now.

When my Parole Officer came by the house to check on me one afternoon, I was picking green beans.

He asked, "Did you get a different truck?"

"No, I just got a used bed and some spray paint."

"Well, it looks a lot better. You doing all right?"

"Yeah. The job is making more money. Seems like a lot of people are getting their cars fixed now, instead of trading them in. We're busy. I put in almost 60 hours last week."

"Look, the reason I came out is, I'm going to cut you loose from parole early. You are established here, and have a good job, no problem with drug tests. I feel confident you will be fine, so I put in the reccommendation. Stay out of trouble until the end of August next week, and you'll be finished. I brought the paperwork."

He handed me my copy and we shook hands. "Thanks! I guess I'm a citizen again."

"I don't need to waste time on guys like you. There are a lot of people getting released from prison early because of State budget constraints, and I have a big case load. Most of them are problem children. You aren't."

"I guess that's a compliment."

"Yes, it's a compliment. Keep up the good work."

I thanked him again as he left. He wasn't a bad guy. I suppose we had been as near to friends as you ever could be with a parole officer.

When he was gone, I thought about what had happened to me and although I liked women as much as any young man, I had no interest in getting married again. I could run my life just fine without that. And a lot of girls my age were really selfish. They were just out for what they could get. I had been listening to stories from our customers and it did not bode well for anybody dating now. So far, since I had got out of prison I hadn't dated anyone. I wasn't sure I wanted to start.
_________________

I took a bread sack full of green beans and some nice ripe tomatoes over to Gloria. I knew she didn't have a garden, because Bob was NOT going to till up his acre and a half of grass. He probably spent more on that lawn than it cost me to live each month. My old truck did not complement the neighborhood very well, so I hadn't gone there often, but Gloria was my sister and I wanted to do what I could for her. She came out the back door and smiled at me, followed by her beautiful Golden Retriever. They didn't have any kids, so she mothered the dog.

"Hi Wes! How're you doing? Sandy, let him alone."
Sandy, the dog, was giving me a slurpy dog kiss.

"I'm fine. I brought you some veggies."

"Come in and we'll get something to drink."

"You all doing okay?"

"We're fine. Bob's business is falling off. With all the credit problems in the banks, people are scared to invest in anything and it has cut into our income. Things are getting tight. I wish we'd never bought this big house. Bob doesn't want kids, and we don't need 4 bedrooms. But he had it bought before we got married, and now it probably isn't worth what we owe on it. He was going to flip it and make a ton of money, but that isn't going to happen now."

"Are you going to be all right?"

"I think so. If we can get Mom and Dad's house sold, it would help a lot. That would pay down some loans for us and we'd be comfortable again. He thinks he might have a prospect for it."

"I can find a place to live, so don't worry about me in the deal. I could use my half of the money, too."
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[patience]

CHAPTER 3


I suppose I'm not a bad looking guy. I'm in good shape, just over 6 feet tall and a little over 170 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes, and kind of a bony face that can be a problem shaving if I'm not careful. I've usually got grease under my fingernails and grease stains on my clothes, so i don't make the impression that i'm told most girls are looking for. I do clean up okay, and I try to be clean if I'm going out shopping or to grab a meal. I got some looks from girls, but it always made me think about what happened the last time I fell for that.

I was going through the checkout at the discount grocery at near closing time when the checkout girl said, "You're Wes Blake, aren't you?"

"Yeah. Do I know you?"

"Don't remember me, I guess. I'm Ashley Kemper. We were in the same class in high school."

I finally could see the resemblance to the girl I had known slightly 8 or 10 years ago.

"Yeah! I remember you! You were the quiet math whiz that made us all look bad. You wore a pony tail back then."

"Yeah, and braces. I was so ashamed of them I wouldn't talk to anyone."

"I always thought you were nice. I should have asked you out."

"But Joanna had your eye then."

My face fell to the floor and she saw it.

"Sorry. I said something wrong, didn't I? I didn't mean to."

"That's okay. Me and Joanna didn't work out."

"That's a shame," she said and finished checking me out, handing me the change from a couple twenties.

"Over and done with now. How about you? Did you ever get married?"

"No. I came close, but glad I didn't. Me and that guy didn't work out, either. So, are you dating anybody now?"

"No, not since I've been home. You knew all about that, I suppose?"

She helped me sack up my groceries, saying, "I heard a little. The word on the street is that you got hung for dealing dope and you didn't do it."

"Oh, I bought some all right, but that was just possession. They lied and said I was going to sell it, 'cuz the cops and the prosecutor had this deal going, I was told. Nice little back-patting society they had to make each other look good. Trumped up a misdemeanor to a minor felony and I got 5 years."

She was pulling out her cash drawer as we talked, then said, "Follow me down to Taco Bell, and we can talk about old times over something to eat?"

"Yeah, I'd like that." I broke my vow to myself right there on the spot. I was afraid her looks had gotten to me, because she was really a pretty girl now. But it was what she had to say and how she said it that really got my attention.

I took my time getting my groceries put in the truck, and waited until she came out. She got into an old Ford Focus that had seen better days, and took off. I followed at a discreet distance.

She ordered a meal and had it paid for before I could say anything.
"I was gonna buy," I told her.

"I invited, so I'm buying my own."

We got our food and sat in a booth away from the counter where it was quieter. The cheap food attracted a lot of teenagers, and they tended to be noisy. The noise actually gave us some privacy to talk, since nobody could hear us. I started the ball rolling.

"What have you been doing?"

"I got a scholarship for a couple years at college, but when it ran out, that was it. I wasn't going to borrow money for school, and my folks couldn't afford it. So I went to work. I'd been dating a guy for a while and we had talked about getting married, but he got mad one night and smacked my face. That was it. I haven't seen him since."

"I got no respect for a guy who would hit a girl. That just ain't right."

"I hit him back. Pretty hard, too. I sprained my wrist, but I broke his nose, too. He couldn't see to drive with his eyes all teared up, so I drove his car to my folks house and got out. I guess he drove himself home later."

I looked her over a little closer and saw that she had a sturdy build. She wasn't heavy, but she was solid. She saw the look and said, "I grew up on Dad's farm and worked like the men. I was probably stronger than he was, just not as big."

I tried to change the subject. "You been working at the store very long?"

"Just since last year. What are you doing now?"

"I'm a mechanic. I'm working at John Wilson's garage now."

"Oh, I'm glad you got a good job. Jobs are impossible to find now. I had a job at the Title and Abstract Company office until they cut back last year. Real estate slowed down to nothing. I got my old car paid off at least, but it needs some work now and I don't know if I can afford it."

"Let me figure out what's up with your car and I'll make sure you can afford it."

"Oh, I didn't mean that. I'm not asking for favors."

"I know. I'm offering. I can do it at home, not at the shop. I'm living at Mom and Dad's old place now."

"Where is that?"

"Place where I grew up, just at the edge of town past the Fairgrounds on old Highway 160."

"That's not too far from me. I'm staying with my parents, too. Just can't afford to move out."

"My folks are gone now. They died in a car crash almost 4 years ago."

"Oh, I'm sorry."

"It's okay. What I meant was, it's just up to me about working on your car at home. I rent from my sister and her husband, Gloria and Bob Stowe. They own half of it since we never did get the place sold and the estate settled. Oh, it's settled on paper, but it's a joint deed to the place. I agreed to pay half rent until we can get it sold. I needed a place to live when I got out of prison. It's working okay for now."

"You sound really mature. It's in your eyes, too. Like you see right through people."

"Huh. Well, I guess I 've been a lot of places and seen a lot of things. First the Army I went to play in the sandbox, because I couldn't find a good job right out of school. That could have been worse. I was in the motor pool keeping the vehicles running. Then I got married, I worked until she spent me broke and I got sent to prison. Kinda been to see the elephant, as they used to say."

"That makes my life seem pretty tame."

"I'll take a tame life if I can get it."

It was getting late, and I had to work the next day, so we headed outside. She was off work the next day. I told her where I lived and she said she'd bring her car around for me to look at tomorrow. We traded phone numbers and said goodbye. I went home feeling better than I had in a long time, and hoping that I wasn't starting something stupid.
_____________

I worked a little late the next day to finish a valve job that paid me 6 hours for Remove and Replace, which meant that we had sent the machine work downtown. At $15 an hour that paid 90 bucks and I had it done in under 4 hours actual time. I would have still gotten paid $90 if it had taken me a week. Getting paid 'flat-rate' was sort of like being in business for yourself.

When I drove in at home, I called Ashley and told her I was ready for the car. She came in the drive a few minutes later. I was still grubby dirty from work and was ready to appologize for it. I was surprised to see that she was in dirty jeans and a Tee shirt, and wearing boots that had been in a barn. Her sandy colored hair was pulled back in a knot under a ball cap and she had a smudge on her chin.

"Looks like you've been working too," I told her.

She grinned and said, "Dad was moving cattle today. I live there, so I got appointed to help. Dad works for the County Road Department, and has to do the farming after work."

"What can you tell me about the car?"

"It gets crappy gas mileage and it doesn't run worth a darn. It used to do a lot better."

"Burn any oil?"

"Not that I noticed. Maybe down a little when it comes time to change it. I do that, so I check it."

"Had the oxygen sensor replaced since you had it?"

"I don't know what that is."

"It's a little thing that screws into the exhaust pipe and tells the computer how to mix the gas and air. I guess it hasn't been replaced yet. Let's listen to it a minute. Start it up."

It ran okay at idle, but most any engine would. I held my hand over the exhaust for a few seconds then smelled my hand. "Running a little rich, 'cause I can smell gas. Shut it off and I'll see if I can get the sensor out. I brought my top tool box home tonight. How does it run on the highway?"

"Okay, but it's doggy. No power to pass like it used to have. I hope I don't need an engine in this thing."

"I doubt it's that bad. C'mon in and let's get some iced tea. That's something I like, it's a lot cheaper than sodas, and I can make it easy enough."

The exhaust was hot, so we let it cool down a few minutes while we both got some cold tea out of the fridge. I looked under the hood and decided it could use a set of plugs and wires, too. It took about 10 minutes to get the sensor out, being rusty like they mostly are, and hard to get to. It had anti-sieze compound on it though, so it came out without damaging the threads.

"C'mon and get in the truck. Auto Zone is still open and they should have the part."

"I didn't bring any money. I'll have to go home and get some."

"I'll get it. You can pay me later. Besides, I get a discount."

The sensor cost $32, it was $4 each for 4 plugs, the best grade platinum tips, and $18 for the plug wires. It took less than an hour to get it all put back on and running again. I had to adjust the idle speed down a little after the tuneup.

"Take it for a drive and see if I did any good here."

I got in with her and she drove a mile down the highway, then turned off on a county road.

"Hey! This thing's got it's pep back! You did good!"

"I didn't think it was too bad off. How many miles are on it?"

"Almost 150,000 and that had me worried."

"It should run another 50K without any major trouble, since you change oil regular. Oh, it might want some hoses or a radiator, or some other smaller items, but the drive train should go a while yet."

"This is home," she said as she pulled in a lane and drove up to an old fashioned farm house. A neat set of old buildings lay beyond it. An older man was driving cattle out a corral by the barn.

"You get finished Dad?"

"Yeah. Ran 'em all through the squeeze chute and finished giving the shots. I hate buyin' shipped in calves. They always get sick." When the cattle were all out of the barn lot, he shut the pasture gate and came up to us.

"This is Wes Blake. I gotta go get money to pay him for fixing my car." She trotted off toward the house.

"I'm Joe Kemper," the man said, and stuck out his hand.

We shook hands and began to do the small town get-acquainted thing. I told him my parents' names and gave him some history. He caught on quick and said, " Yeah, I know who you are. Most folks around here think you got a raw deal. Sorry 'bout your folks. I knew your Dad a little, and always heard good about you all. What're you doin' these days?"

"I'm working for John Wilson's garage. It's flat rate, so I get paid for whatever I get done. I can do all right at that, but there's no insurance or anything, just Workman's Comp."

"When did you get home?"

"The first of June. I'm living in my folks' old place, until me an' my sister can get it sold and settle things. I'll have to find another place then, but I get half the money from the house. I'll find something."

We talked on for half an hour and got to know each other. I got a look at their farm operation. It was small by today's standards, but it was respectable. Finally Ashley came out again. She had washed up and had her hair in a ponytail and had on clean clothes.

"That's not fair! I still look like a bum," I told her.

"I decided I would cook your supper for a tip on the car work. You can clean up while I cook. You do have food in the house, right?"

"Yeah, I've got food. And that would be nice to not have to eat my own cooking for a change."

"I know the parts cost $71, or close enough, so what do you want for labor and I'll pay you now."

She had passed my little test with flying colors. I had been willing to gamble my labor and even the parts money to find out if she was going to try to get the best of me on the deal.

"Just pay me for parts and call it good. I haven't had a home cooked meal in years. That'll be enough."

"You said you get paid $15 an hour, right? So here's $90. You earned it and then some. You're honest and that is worth a lot to me."

Her Dad smiled a little and said, "Don't try to argue with her when her mind's made up. I never had any luck at it."

There were crinkles around his eyes when he said that. I decided I liked him. I rolled my eyes a little and pocketted the money. I grinned and told her, "Now let's see about that cooking thing. I'm anxious to learn about that."

"Okay, let's go do that."

We got in the car and were soon at my place. She was a good cook. I had some freshly dug potatoes that she peeled, sliced and fried in bacon grease, and she found my leftover green beans and heated them up, and had some ham slices frying in another skillet. She'd dug in the fridge and made a salad with lettuce, sliced radishes, and tomatoes. It all got to the table at the same time, as I was combing my wet hair from a shower. I had clean jeans and a Tee shirt now, so I looked more presentable. I made some instant coffee and we sat on the patio in back to drink it.

"You have a garden going."

"Not much of one, but that's where I got the green beans and potatoes and the salad. I'm not much of a farmer, but I can get a meal together if I have to."

"You are different. I haven't put it all together yet."

"No mystery about me. What you see is what you get."

"That's what's different. Most of the guys I know are full of talk about themselves and you don't say anything unless I dig it out of you, then it's the plain truth. It's nice to be able to talk to somebody who isn't playing head games."

"I've had enough head games to do me for a lifetime."

"I'll bet you have. You want to come to our house for Sunday dinner?"

"That sounds good. What are you having?"

"What do you want?"

"Peach pie. The rest is up to you."

"Call it a date."
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CHAPTER 4

That dinner probably sealed my fate. It was good. I met her mother Kate, and found her to be strong in many ways. Her dad and I talked shop a little, as men do, and in the process I told him I had in mind to watch for a deal on a car to fix up and sell to make a few extra dollars. He allowed as how he might know of something for me. Her mother was pleasant and friendly, but I could tell she was looking me over good.

My sister called the next day and said they had a nibble on the house. Would it be all right to show it to the people? I told here sure, come ahead. That was the beginning of a lot of trouble because the people decided to buy the place. It meant I had to find a place to rent within a couple weeks, because they wanted to get moved in before school started. Oh joy. I hate moving.

I did find a trailer to rent not far from downtown. It was cheap and it was close to work, but it had no outside space and no garage. Gloria convinced Bob to store the stuff from the garages that I wanted to keep. They had a big "workshop" building he called it, although he never did a lick of work in it. It was a place to store his toys, like the boat, his expensive zero turn mower, an ATV, and his motorcycle. Actually, when I got the stuff all stacked in the building in a corner and threw a tarp over it, he said it didn't look as bad as he thought it would. That's why I put the tarp over it all. I understood Bob's need for good appearances. It saved me renting some storage space. After I left, I remembered that the motorcycle wasn't there. I talked to Gloria on the phone later and she said he'd sold it.

Selling the place then was the best possible thing that could have happened for us, because a month later, nobody could find a mortgage loan anywhere for less than 25% down payment and nobody had that much saved. The real estate market fell on its' butt when the bank troubles were in the news in September. I got online and did some researching about that. At least the trailer park had internet service, and it was a fast wireless provider. What I found got me worried. It seemed that the banks had sent their man to Congress and told them they needed vast amounts of money to bail them out, or the whole system would crumble. They got their money, but nobody liked it much.

I had just a week of feeling very comfortable with $52,000 from the house sale in the bank, before I got really worried about whether the bank was a safe place to have it or not. I got online and found there were ratings for banks, and by dumb luck, I had picked the only 4 star bank in town. It was locally owned and that was a good thing too, but it still worried me. I had no idea how much worry it could be to have some money and not know what to do with it. I Googled like a madman and ran into financial sites, and then gold sites, and then some sites where the people called themselves "preppers". They scared the daylights out of me. The more I read, the more concerned I was. A lot of people were convinced that our money and banking system was ready to collapse in a pile. I had learned a lot, but had more questions than ever.

I tend to keep things to myself, so Ashley got to prodding me about what was on my mind. I finally told her and she said, "Let's go talk to Dad," so we did.

After hearing my concerns, he said, "Well, when I'm not sure what to do, I try not to do anything until I get it figured out."

"That makes a lot of sense to me, " I told him, "but I still need to figure out if the bank is going to be safe or not."

"Okay, in the meantime, hunt up a couple more high-rated banks and spread it around. That way, you've got a better chance if something goes wrong at one of them."

So simple. Why didn't I think of that? The old guy had a lot of common sense and it helped calm me down. We talked for most of the evening about what I wanted in the way of a place to live and how I might get there. Joe was a much better advisor than I had ever dreamed, and when he said things they were simple to understand.

He began with, "In hard times, prices come down, especially on big things that people have to borrow money to buy. You got lucky, it seems to me, getting that house sold when you did. The TV says that banks are hard up and need this bailout from the government. If that's so, then they're not going to be loaning money as easy as they have been. Most already want a big down payment they said, and nobody has any savings to speak of now. They all live hand to mouth. Looks to me like if you just hang onto your money for year or so, you'll find a lot better deal on property."

I decided he had the best idea. The next day I moved money to a total of four banks. They all paid a little interest on a passbook savings account, and I didn't want to tie up the money in anything like a CD.
_________________

Joe did find me a car to fix up. Some old lady at their church had it and would be going into an assisted living home soon. She had no use for the car since she could no longer drive. It was a 1998 Chevy Malibu with a crumpled fender and 56,000 miles on it. She was asking $1,000 for it. Other than needing a tuneup, I couldn't find anything else wrong with it and paid her in cash. She signed the title and I put down on the price line what seemed fair to me, and got it licensed in my name. I called the insurance people to get immediate coverage, and duct taped the tail light back on.

I washed my old truck, wiped the tires with brake fluid to make them look younger, and put a for sale ad in the paper. I got my $1,200 for it 4 days after the paper came out. I had about gotten my money back what I'd spent on the truck, and had driven it for 3 months. It seemed that used cars and trucks were in demand. People couldn't afford new ones.

It took a couple weeks to beat the Malibu's fender into shape enough that body putty would finish it. I never claimed to be a body man, but the result looked okay after some touch up spray paint. I put a used tail light on it, and did a detail cleaning job, then a tuneup. I bought a gallon of xylol paint solvent for $10.99, which is the main ingredient in fuel injector cleaner and a lot cheaper. I added some every time I filled up with gas. After a couple tanks, it was running smooth as silk. The hoses and belts looked old and dried out, so for the sake of preventing trouble, I went ahead and replaced them all. It took a while to replace all those little vacuum hoses, but it didn't cost much and made a big difference in how it ran. When the car was as good as I could make it, I still had spent only about $300 more than what I got for the truck, license and all. This car had 100,000 less miles on it and was 20 years younger than the truck.

I wanted to be able to haul things, so I bought a trailer hitch kit and installed that in my so-called driveway. The gravelled strip was barely longer than the car. I needed more room to do anything much. There was room on the grass beyond my parking spot to park something, so that's where the little utility trailer went. I had seen it sitting in the guy's yard with a for sale sign, and we made a deal. It turned out he needed money to fix his ATV, so I took a look at that and did the work as part of the trailer price. We were both happy. It was a 4' x 7', one of the smallest, but suitable for me. They sold at the farm stores for around $500 but this one had a little rust and was a little banged up. All told, I gave him $250 in cash and did a couple hours work for it. It wanted some new treated floor boards and a coat of paint, and it looked like new.

There were a lot of late nights for me on the computer, researching everything I could find about money, investments, and real estate prices. I desperately wanted to own a place to live, and what I was reading said I needed enough ground to raise some food, too. My thinking was, I needed a place to work on cars, or whatever else might come along. What I read about money said that the value of a dollar was going down. I knew prices on groceries and other things had gone up, but from what I saw, real estate was going down, so I decided to wait on buying anything.

I was making more than enough money to live on. The trailer rent was $200 a month. Water and sewage were included, but I had to pay for electricity and natural gas for cooking, hot water and heating. The utilities cost me about $90 to $100 a month. My take home pay had been running between $450 and $630 a week. I had been spending less than $400 a month for a gasoline, food, and eating out with Ashley. That even included some 'new' clothes at the Goodwill and Salvation Army stores. I had anywhere from $1000 to $1800 a month left over and it was going into cash savings, like, stuffed in the mattress cash. The natural gas cost more when the weather began to get cold, but only went to $130 a month at most. By Thanksgiving, I felt a little flush with cash for the first time in my life with over $4000 in my cash stash.

I was not a trusting soul, so I had loosened a piece of the interior panelling and removed some insulation from the bedroom wall. The old trailer was a little beat up so it didn't show, and I kept a dresser sitting in front of it. There were bundles of twenties in there, and a few fifties. I didn't want many big bills. I had mentally weighed the dangers of fire in the trailer, vs my car getting stolen if I kept money in there. I wanted a more secure spot, but that was the best I could do then.

My rented trailer had two bedrooms, and I only used the small one. The back bedroom was larger and had vinyl floor covering. I took the bed apart and set it up against the wall so I had more floor space for storage. I began to spend more on the tools of my trade, because the prices were going up. I learned long ago that those tool trucks that come around to mechanic's shops are a rip off. I could buy good imported tools with a guarantee at Auto Zone for far less money. If I broke it, they replaced it, just like Sears, but for half the price. A lot of my new tools got stored at home in the trailer, since I had what I needed at work. I was buying bigger stuff for working on farm equipment and trucks in case I could get a better job doing that.

An auction provided a bucketful of top quality 1" drive sockets. I found a 1" drive impact wrench at the dump that somebody had thrown away, the kind they use to change big truck tires. It had a 1/4" air fitting on the inlet, so I knew why they thought it was no good. It couldn't get nearly enough air through that. I took it apart and gave all the pieces a bath in gasoline with a brass wire brush, dumped the gas on some grass in the driveway, and put it back together with plenty of oil. I ordered some 1/2"air fittings from an industrial supplier, and 1/2" air hose from Harbor Freight online. When I took it to work and tried it out, I had only spent about $200 on the pile and had a good, made in the USA, Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that would twist off a truck axle. I didn't need it at work, so it got stashed at home. Retail, it would have cost me over $1,000 for the sockets and impact wrench.

The county landfill provided me with a very rusty old floor jack that turned out to be a Blackhawk 1 1/2 ton unit. It was stuck, full of water, and wanted a few repairs. I got it unstuck and got the water out of the cylinder, refilled it with oil and patiently worked it up and down dozens of times until it worked freely. I knew a guy who did sandblasting on the side, and had the jack and a whole pile of other tools cleaned down to the bare metal. I spent evenings getting it all a fresh coat of paint when the weather allowed.

The junkyard had a chain hoist that had a crack in the housing. I bought that and some junk log chains for $18 and gave them the wash and and clean routine, then sprayed them with aluminum paint to prevent more rust. The hoist I got fixed at the local welding shop, and when it was repainted, it looked like a new one. Harbor Freight had a sale going where I found a trolley for the chain hoist that fit an I-beam, and I brought it home. I dreamed of the day when I would have a place of my own to set it all up.
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[patience]

CHAPTER 5

Ashley and I had talked about this and she had been bugging me to set up shop at her Dad's place. She thought that would kill a whole flock of birds with one stone. Her Dad's stuff needed some work, for which he would provide space in his machine shed. I needed a place to put my stuff, and a place to work on vehicles to buy and sell. I hated to be beholden to my girlfriend's parents, but I finally decided it would be a good thing for now and made the move.

She was spending more and more time at my place, and her parents were surely aware of what was in store. We spent some afternoons together and more than a few nights. The times when I woke up from a nightmare ready to fight, she helped get me awake and then settled down enough to sleep again. It was less often now, but I still dreamed about war and prison every night, it seemed like. Although I didn't always remember the dreams, I knew the after effects well. I had never had a shoulder to cry on before. It made me feel an inch high to have her see me terrified and crying, but she made it go away. I knew I had found the woman I wanted. I couldn't understand what she saw in me, but if she was happy, I was in heaven. We made our plans to get married later in the Spring.
_________________

Joe's combine was old and needed work before next wheat season, so I spent many hours on it, under it and inside of it that winter. We had cobbled up a wood stove out of a barrel and got some heat in the drafty old machine shed. When we cut some firewood, Joe taught me how to use chainsaws without hurting myself, and I taught him how to keep them running. He was a steady old guy, never working fast, but always moving and making something happen. We got comfortable working together that winter. He got his machinery in good shape for the next season, and I made some money on a couple cars that I put through the shop.

Back in the Fall, I had read some things that made silver coins look like a good investment. I was brand new at investing of any kind, but I figured that I had to do some gambling at this point. What money I had wasn't enough to get me a place to live without a mortgage, and I had learned enough to know I didn't want to go in debt. My life had been a series of disasters, and I just couldn't see getting into anything like a 20 or 30 year mortgage with things as shaky as they looked to me. So, if I could make some money with something like silver or gold, I would stand a chance of having my dream. Still, I wasn't fool enough to jump in the deep water without testing it. I left the money from the house sale in the banks.

The last week of October I took the money out of the wall in the trailer and counted it up. I had just over $5,000 with that month's savings. I had talked to several people on some financial and homesteading forums about this, and got a reccomendation to buy old US silver coins, made before 1964 when they still had 90% silver content. I took my pile of cash to an old established coin shop in Louisville, and found that a little over $4,000 would get me two bags of silver, each with $250 face value of coins. The 'spot' price of silver then was $9.12 an ounce.

The bags were pretty heavy, and too bulky to fit nicely in the trailer wall, so I talked to Joe and we found a place to hide it in the machine shed. The bags fit into a couple old gallon paint buckets that we sat on the shelf with the grease and oil and filters. The next three months I made enough on the cars I fixed up and sold to get another $250 bag, but the spot price had gone up to $11 an ounce, so that cost me $2450. That meant my original 2 bags were now worth $4900, so that was okay with me. I kept watching the price of real estate on the Multiple Listing Service online and it was steadily trending down. Silver was going up, so it made sense to me to keep up what I was doing.


CHAPTER 6

Ashley had money sense, there was no doubt of that, so she really shocked me when she said she wanted a nice engagement and wedding ring set. I was shocked beyond speech until she called me over to the computer and showed me what she wanted. It looked like a million bucks, but it was a 1/2 carat Zirconia stone in a beautiful white gold ring setting she found on eBay for $62, with shipping. My confidence was restored.

I said, "That was rotten to do that to me."

She replied, "Yes, I know, but I hoped it would make you more secure about me when you figured it out. I didn't let you hang for more than a minute. I'm sorry if it really bothered you."

"Well, I wouldn't say it really bothered me THAT much, but I thought I was having a flashback for a minute there."

She got up from the desk and put her arms around me and said, "Let me make it up to you, okay?"

I had no problem with that.

We got married at the Courthouse in the Clerk's Office with the cheapest wedding I had ever heard about. She had things to do and so did I, so we did it on my lunch hour when she had a day off. Her parents came with us and John Wilson came to act as a witness. Joe and Kate took us out for a really nice dinner that evening at a fine restaurant and that was the extent of our celebration. Well, that's all that we were willing to talk about.
________________

It wasn't all work and no play for us newlyweds, although we spent 3 or 4 evenings a week at her folks place while I worked on whatever project I had going then. We made a trip to the city every two weeks, shopping for our needs and digging for bargains at the Goodwill and the big flea market in Clarksville. There was always a golden oldie movie on Hulu, and we picked up one now and then from the Wal Mart discount bin. We both liked popcorn made in a pan on the stove with real butter. Neither of us smoked, and what alcohol we drank didn't amount to anything. We bought a 24 pack of canned beer at the grocery when it was on sale, and it took us a month or more to drink it, but it went well with popcorn and a movie. Both of us hated crowds, so we never went to a theater. Worse than the crowds were the prices.

In February of 2009, the TV stations all went to the new digital signal, so our $5 set from Goodwill wouldn't work until we got a converter box a few months later when they went on sale. We seldom watched TV anyway. There was too much for us to do. In summer, there were the various small town festivals, the county fair, and holiday events. It all happened within a mile or less of our trailer, so we walked to most of them. It was less trouble than finding a place to park. We did each have a Tracphone, literally the cheapest cellphone around. They got used only when we needed to change plans or something like that. We just didn't have much need for a phone, not being into the social side of them. We spent something like $8 each a month to keep that going.

I had told Ashley that her money was hers and mine was too, and we opened a joint checking account as soon as we had gotten married. I never thought I'd ever trust a woman that much again, but she earned it. I told her that I'd never have married her if I had not been able to trust her with my money. She spent money on a few clothes at the Goodwill, mostly, and a little at Wal Mart, always from her own check. I had to nudge her to spend on anything beyond what she earned.

Her big interest for a while had been cast iron cookware, so she was delighted when I brought home some crusty-rusty skillets and a Dutch oven from the junkyard. They cost me an average of $2 each. She found a pair of old pots at a flea market in town, and got an old handsaw, a carpenter's square, 2 hammers and a wood plane at the same time. The guy must have needed the money, because he sold the whole pile for 20 bucks. We tried several things to get the stuff cleaned up, but I finally took it all to my sandblaster buddy and he did it all for $30. All we had to do was polish the stuff with sandpaper and put a finish on it. The carpenter tools got paste wax to prevent rust, and the wood handles got sanded and varnished. The cast iron cookware got bacon grease and an hour in the oven at low temperature, repeated until she was happy with it.

College had been a disappointment for Ashley. She had expected to learn something new and enlightening, but found she was bored by the content covered in the first two years. It hadn't done a thing for her job prospects, either. The internet was an entirely different thing, though. She spent hours in the mornings digging around and learning new things. She let me check the financial sites before I went to work at 7:00 AM, then it was hers until she had to go to work at 10:00. We read the world news together over supper, and then if we weren't going to work at the farm, we took turns reading the homesteader sites. Ashley really got into those sites after I showed her a few I'd found. That gave both of us the urge to get a place out of town. The trailer park was very confining at times, even though we could go to her parents' farm in 15 minutes.

Springtime brought the threat of tornadoes in south Indiana, and that made us very insecure. If there was bad weather predicted, we went to the farm and if there was a storm warning, we all went to their basement. Ashley and I talked about the shelves full of home canned food in their basement, and how nice it would be to have that. It got us thinking about property until it had become almost an obsession. I had kept adding to the silver collection whenever I had the extra money. Ashley contributed some to the savings sometimes. We thought it would take forever to save enough to buy a place. Then we discovered foreclosed properties.
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[patience]

CHAPTER 7

The online Multiple Listing Service had a search feature that could be refined to look at foreclosures only. It didn't take long to find some properties that we could afford, but none of them looked like what we wanted. Cities and towns had too many restrictions for me to start doing car repair at home. We needed something out in the county that was zoned for agriculture. In our lax county, that left the door open for almost anything within reason.

Nothing struck us as being close to what we wanted, so we bided our time. Real estate prices were still dropping. By the end of March, I had added another sack of silver to our collection. Spot price had gone up to $13 or more an ounce, so this $250 bag cost me $2,900. That made an even $1,000 in coins we had, that had cost me $9,350. It was worth $10,600 now. So far, this was beating the socks off bank interest rates on savings. I was scared to death the price would fall, but the investment sites were all saying it would keep going up because of all the money being printed and given to banks. I decided to hold onto it for a while. That cheap computer had been worth a lot, for what I had been learning with it.

Ashley saw a place she liked in the regular for sale listings and wanted to go look at it. It had 5 acres and a nice metal building behind a 3 bedroom ranch style home. They were asking $148,000 for it all, and I thought that was stupid expensive, but I agreed to go look at it. We rode out to see it with the agent and listened to her tell about how wonderful the place was, with the beautiful lawn in front. When I saw it, it looked like it would take all day to mow it. I thought maybe you could put a couple beef calves out there to eat some of that grass, but there wasn't a fence anywhere on the place.

After we'd toured the place, we asked the lady if she had anything that was nearer to being a hobby farm than a residence? Something with a less expensive home and some farm buildings? She thought a minute and said, well there's a fixer-upper out this way, but it's not all that nice. She drove about 5 miles from Cambellsburg across the flat farmland until we came to the long hill leading down to Cave River Valley. That hill is steep. It would be a pain to get out of there in snowy weather.

We looked at it and liked it. The house was old, a pretty standard old 6 room farmhouse, 4 rooms downstairs plus an added bathroom, and 2 bedrooms upstairs with the old sloped ceilings. There was a small barn, but it was in rough shape.

Several sheds dotted the hillside behind it where the trees started. There was a total of 24 acres, mostly hilly woods, but there was a field in by the creek out front of maybe 5 or 6 acres. There were signs that the field had flooded lately on one corner, but the house was on much higher ground so it looked to be safe enough. The driveway had a huge culvert where the little creek ran through along the county road. We walked over the place and saw the garden spot behind the house, obviously having been used for generations. A young couple owned it, apparently, because we saw some kid toys in the yard. There was no farm machinery around, but the field had last year's corn stubble in it, so they must be renting the ground to somebody.

They wanted $128,500 for the place. It had been on the market for a while, the agent said and hinted that the price was negotiable. I nodded and said we would have to talk to the bank and see if we could afford it, but I doubted it. The agent looked disappointed and wasn't nearly so friendly going back to town.

I did some research on the computer. The realty ad had a Google Maps birdseye view of the place, and it showed a lot when I looked over the area. There were only a couple houses anywhere close. Mostly, it was farmland in the creek bottom, with steeply wooded hillsides at the edges of the valley. I couldn't expect it to be a business location, because nobody could find the place, but it would be just fine for my hobby of repairing and selling cars. Nobody would compain out there. And there might be some farmer business for a mechanic. But, we simply could not afford it. We were both a little bummed about that.
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I was more bummed after I got to work the next Monday. John Wilson said he just didn't have enough work to keep me busy, and I knew it was the truth. I was the last man hired, so of course, I was the one to be laid off. At least I was off parole, so I didn't have to deal with the PO telling me I HAD to have a job. The truth was, I had enough money in the bank that if I didn't have a job for a long time I wouldn't go hungry, but that was savings that I meant to keep for buying a house. That day, I was really glad we hadn't taken out a mortgage and bought a house.

I went back home and hitched up the utility trailer. Some of the guys at the shop helped me load my toolboxes in it, and wished me good luck finding work. I took the toolboxes straight out to Joe's machine shed with my stay-at-home tools and told him what happened, and said that I was headed out to look for a job.

All the mechanic's shops were pretty dead these days, but I asked around anyway that morning. No luck that day, so I figured I'd do the unemployment thing ASAP. I didn't really expect to get hired anytime soon, so I wanted to keep working on my own for now. I had seen a pickup at Steve Young's junkyard out in the country. It didn't look too bad, except it didn't have an engine in it. It was another old Chevy, this one an early 80's model. It was a 3/4 ton, and still had the big 4 speed in it, and lots of springs in the back. The body was pretty good and the cab interior looked really good. I dropped by our trailer and picked up what cash I had there, then drove out of town the 5 miles to ask about the truck. Steve must have been slack on business too, because he sold it cheap enough. For $500 he even agreed to take it out to Joe and Kate's with his wrecker for the price and had it there well before supper time.

I thought I'd seen a wrecked Chevy truck with a 6 cylinder in it at Whitson's yard in town, so I went to investigate, still pulling the trailer. The wreck had been T-boned and was pretty well a goner. It took some fancy torch work, but they got the engine out, complete with the motor mounts and a chunk of frame on both sides. We set it on the trailer with his big loader that handled junk cars, and I was on the way for $200. No guarantee on the engine, because it could have suffered in the wreck, he said. I had looked at the odometer and saw 88,000 miles on it. It was a nice looking truck, so I thought the engine had probably been properly serviced. I got the clutch and pressure plate, too, so it should be drop-in job.

What I did not have was an engine stand, nor an engine hoist. I was afraid to lift a heavy engine with my chain hoist using the trusses in the machine shed. They just didn't look strong enough. When I unhooked from the trailer at Joe's, Steve's man had delivered the old truck, and Joe had directed him into the open bay I was using, which saved us a lot of trouble moving a dead truck around.

Ashley was working until 9:00 PM that night, so I made a trip to Harbor Freight in Jeffersonville and bought their better model engine hoist, the kind with a hydraulic jack that lifts an arm. By the time Ashley got off work, I had the project off to a good start. I figured I could have the truck on the road again in a week or two at the most, and ready for sale.
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I was reading the giveaway newspaper over breakfast and told Ashley, "Here's a maintenance job at that printing place in Scottsburg. I should go apply for that."

"I thought you didn't like factory work."

"I don't, but this isn't standing in one place all day doing the same thing over and over. This is fixing their machinery. I'll clean up and go over there today."

"I'm off today. Why don't I go with you and we can get some shopping done at the Wal Mart over there?"

"You'll be stuck sitting in the car while I fill out an application."

"That's okay, it can't take very long."

"Okay, let's do that, and go see their Goodwill store, too. It's right there by the Wal Mart. I should buy some engine oil and gear oil for that truck project. How about lunch at the Waffle House?"

"Good. I'll get ready."
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"They offered me the job, second shift and start tomorrow night. I turned it down. Not enough money."

Ashley asked, "What did they offer to pay you?"

"They said they start maintenance at $9.20 an hour, and after you're there for a year you get automatic raises up to their top pay of $10.55 an hour. You have to join some lame Union and pay them dues, too. I told him I made $15 as a mechanic and I was low man in the place. He said, 'I can get a warm body for this job for less than $9.00 an hour.' I told him, 'Yep, I bet you can. But if you want brains to go with it, it will cost you $15 and up.' I left and he looked unhappy. Too bad for him. "

"Jobs are hard to get, so I guess they think people will take less money now."

"I know. But I can make a lot better than that working on old stuff to buy and sell. I just hate that I have to impose on your folks for a place to work."

"Dad loves having you around, and Mom likes you, too."

"I like them, too, but it just isn't right to use his shop building without paying for it."

"But you have been paying for it. Dad said you saved him thousands of dollars doing the work on the combine and baler. That is worth real money, and he knows it better than anybody. Everybody thinks this is a great deal, except you."

"Well, I'm used to paying my own way."

"You are, so get that through your thick head. Oh. And Mom said she wanted you to look at her washing machine. It's making a new noise. Dad said he doesn't know anything about washers, and she refuses to take it to that guy downtown."

The washing machine just needed the feet readjusted so it sat flat on the floor, because one of the rubber footpad things was missing. I had glued a piece of rubber cut from an old inner tube on the metal foot, and that kept it from vibrating. Kate heard it run quietly again and gave us a cherry pie to take home. I finally began to see that they really appreciated having some help around the place, and felt a little less guilty about using the shop.
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CHAPTER 8

Our trip to Wal Mart had cost a lot more than I expected. Groceries and everything else were still going up. It was beginning to worry me about how much money I could make, compared to the higher prices. The boxes of food kept getting smaller, too. I was wishing I had room for a garden, but the trailer lot had no place for it. Gas was going up again. It had hit $4.12 a gallon in the summer of 2008, but then it dropped like a rock so that a year later, this summer it was under 2 bucks for a short time. Now it was inching up again and was around $2.66 where we lived. Everyone was afraid to buy anything big, especially a new car, thinking gas could go up again and it would be hard to make ends meet.

I looked at real estate ads for something to do, but I was discouraged about buying our own place now that I was out of a regular job. The TV had been saying that housing prces were falling, but I didn't see it in the ads for our county. Ashley didn't seem to be worried about it, but I was tired of living in the trailer park with no room to do much of anything I wanted to do.

On July 1st, 2009, the government started the "Cash for Clunkers" program. That threw a big wrench in my fixer-upper business, because within a couple months, almost 700,000 cars, SUV's and pickups had been destroyed to get the government rebate for buying a new car. What followed was a big price increase in the used car market, because not everybody could afford a new car, even with a four thousand dollar rebate. So many old vehicles were scrapped that it got to be hard to find one suitable for me to repair and resell. And they destroyed the engines in the ones the took in on the program. They had the junkers drain the oil, put in some silicate stuff and run the engine until it seized up. Couldn't even get those apart, let alone rebuild one.

I had just gotten the 1982 Chevy truck running when this made the news. I thought about it and the next day I talked to Donny Whitson at the junkyard. He said he had scrapped a hundred or more old cars under that program, and didn't have a rebuildable wreck in his yard. That bothered me a lot, so I talked to Joe about fixing farm equipment for his neighbors.

"Well, they's plenty of that to do, but it's mostly welding and such. Can you weld?"

"I did some in prison, but it wasn't real pretty."

"I got that old Lincoln buzz box welder you can practice with if you want to. Might have to go get some more welding rods."

"I'll do that, and I'll study up on welding, too."
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Ashley was working more hours per week, because they had laid off one of the checkout clerks at the grocery. She came home tired because they had to restock shelves when they weren't busy at the checkouts, but it meant that we had about enough money to live with her check alone. I was determined to make my share of the money, if I had to invent my own job. There sure weren't any jobs around town.

The '82 pickup I'd bought was up and running now, and it was a pretty good old truck. I put an ad in the paper to sell it, but got no response at all. I had put a couple new tires on the front, and the back ones weren't too bad. I'd also had to have new exhaust put on it, then with the title transfer fee, sales tax, license, and insurance, I had about $1,400 in it. I was asking $1,950 for it, and I thought that was cheap, but I didn't even get any lookers, so Joe and I began to use the truck around the farm. I couldn't afford to drop the price any more, so I thought we just as well get some use out of it. The old truck had a heavy receiver hitch, so we could pull wagons around the farm, or my utility trailer with it.

I wanted to get some money coming in, so I got busy learning to be a better welder. I bought some cheap welding gloves and a 9" angle grinder with grinding wheels and a wire brush for it at Harbor Freight. I got several boxes of welding rods at the welding supply place in Jeffersonville along with some new lens filters for the helmet. Ashley found a leather jacket at the Salvation Army store to protect me from sparks. I wore it backwards so the collar protected my neck and the back was open so it was cooler to wear. I picked up some scrap iron at the junkyards to use for patching materials. Even as cheap as I could do it, I spent about $400, but by the end of another week, I could do a respectable job of welding on most things, and I was learning more about it on the internet.

We didn't really want to make a formal business out of this, with all the licenses, taxes, insurance, and other costs, so Joe just put the word out that I needed to make a few bucks and could probably fix most of what a farmer would need done. The first thing that showed up was his neighbor's combine. He had managed to run one corner of the corn head into a post and wadded up the sheet metal. I got it apart and made a lot of noise beating the dents and wrinkles out of it. Some of the internal bracing cracked in the process, so I welded that back together and got him going again so he'd be ready for corn season.

I spent a hard day at it, and part of the next morning. I remembered a line from an old novel I'd read, where the hero commented that clean cars seem to run better, so I went downtown and found some spray paint that matched the faded red on the combine and put a coat on the repaired part. When the man came over to pick it up, he was delighted to pay me $150 in cash for what I judged to be about 10 hours work on it. He said new parts to fix it would have cost over $600. I only had a few jobs like that before my unemployment checks ran out, but it helped.

Billy James saw me in the auto parts store one day and said hello. We had worked together at John Wilson's, and he told me Wilson was barely keeping him and one other man busy, instead of the 6 he once had working. Times were tough all over. He asked if I'd applied for Food Stamps, and I told him no, I could feed myself just fine. I thought it was okay to get unemployment, since it was an insurance thing, the same as insurance on a car or a house. But Food Stamps I thought was charity like Welfare, and I wasn't going to do that. Billy allowed as how he would be first in line to get Food Stamps if he was out of work, but he was glad I was getting by without it.
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It was getting on toward time to start picking corn when Joe had severe chest pains and Kate rushed him to the hospital. He was in Floyd County Hospital in New Albany for a couple weeks before they did a catherization and then later, double bypass surgery. He came out of it pretty well, and was up and walking around by the first of October, but we all knew he had no business driving heavy equipment for the County Highway Department, nor doing the farming.

I had taken over feeding the cattle, hogs, and chickens while he was in the hospital so that Ashley could spend all the time she wanted to with him. I didn't have a lot else to do, except for an occassional welding job, and I even began to get acquainted with Kate's kitchen so I could have something ready for the women to eat when they got home from seeing Joe. For over a month, Ashley and I hardly saw each other except in passing on her way to work or the hospital. I did the laundry, and generally made like a housewife and farmer to keep things going.

At least Joe and Kate had pretty good insurance from his job for the County, but his paycheck had stopped, Kate hadn't had a job in years, and although the County gave him early retirement, that check didn't amount to nearly what he had been making. Joe had 40 acres of corn standing in the field, and the doctor had ordered him not to pick up anything heavy from now on. They had done what they could for him, and he could live a long time, but not doing any heavy work. Kate was worried sick. She had dark circles under her eyes and had lost some weight.

Ashley told me she had to do whatever they needed, since she was an only child and there just wasn't anyone else to do it. I agreed and told her I'd do whatever I could for them. They had treated me as well as my own parents, and besides, I liked them a lot. We all talked it over and decided it was foolish for us to keep paying rent on the trailer when we spent most of our time at the farm and the farmhouse was huge. We moved. Should have done it when I got laid off, I suppose, but it just didn't feel right at the time.

Moving didn't take long. All my tools were already at the farm, except for the pliers and screwdriver in the kitchen drawer. All we had there was our clothes, a few groceries and the household stuff. It all sort of disappeared into the collection in the farmhouse. We had the entire upstairs for ourselves, 3 bedrooms and a smaller room that had probably been the nursery when the place was built. We put the computer in there on a cheap computer desk we'd found at Goodwill. It had some chips off the corners where you could see the particle board under the plastic fake wood veneer, but it was sturdy enough, and it gave us a place to park our important papers too.
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The next few weeks flew by me. When I wasn't on the combine, I was feeding livestock, or cutting firewood. Joe had a good stack of wood already cut and dried for the outdoor wood furnace, but they had not been heating the upstairs, so with us in residence, it would take more fuel. I cut wood like a madman. Joe had a hydraulic wood splitter, so that took a lot of drudgery out of the job, but it was still a workout. By Thanksgiving, we thought we had it under control. With Joe's careful guidance, I had learned a lot about farming in a very short time. I could see that there was much more to know about it, though.

Gloria called the second week of November and said I needed to come get the stuff I had stored in Bob's workshop. On the phone, I didn't ask why, but just apologized for leaving it there for so long. I took my old Chevy pickup across town to the exclusive subdivision on the hillside. I thought about it and decided that I didn't much care what the neighbor's thought about my old truck. This one looked a lot better than that first one, but it had barnyard mud on the tires and looked like a farm truck.

I hadn't seen my sister in several weeks, and was shocked at how strained she looked. Not wanting to pry in her affairs, I said, "Hi Sis. What's up?"

"We lost the house, that's what."

"You WHAT?"

"You heard right. Our house is in foreclosure. Bob's company first laid off most of the sales people, then he was told they would close the office this month. His pay had been mostly commissions on what investments his people sold, and it had just dried up to nothing. He's been losing money driving to work for the past 4 months."

"How come I never heard anything about this? Can i help some way? What can I do?"

"Not much, unless you've got $360,000 laying around you don't need. That's what we owe on the house and the car. Bob sold the boat at a loss to get rid of the payments, and he let the lawn mower go back to the bank. He thought he had his Mercedes sold, but it didn't pan out. He's trying to trade it in for something cheap to drive, but not having any luck at that. We sold my Volvo two months ago, but we've been living on that money. It's bad."

She cried on my shoulder for a while and all I could do was hug her and let her cry. I didn't know what to say. Her dog Sandy was worried about her and was leaning on her leg. It took a while for Sis to get calmed down. I was thinking furiously while she was letting out all the stored up grief and worry. It all depended on what Bob was able to do. So, I asked her about that.

"What's Bob up to now?"

Gloria got a decorator print paper towel from the kitchen and blew her nose, then said with a stuffy nose, "I don't know. He went out this morning with his Mercedes to try to trade it off, or sell it someplace. I don't even know where he went. He said something about a dealer in Louisville that bought cars. Let's hope he can get it done. He doesn't talk to me much now."

"Let's go get my stuff out of the workshop, and think about this," I told her.

"Okay. Yeah, I need to get some fresh air." She reached down and petted Sandy on the head, then told the dog, "Come on girl. Let's go outside."

The dog beat her to the door, smiling and wagging her tail. We followed her across the back yard to the workshop building and went inside. The place was pretty bare. Bob's toys were gone. There was a cheap riding mower in there, but that was about it, beyond the rake and shovel sort of things. I hit the button by the garage door and the opener kicked in. I went out the big door and backed my truck inside to load up. It didn't take all that long until I had the tarp over the load and was ready to go. I'd been thinking while I worked.

I asked, "What happened to the money from selling our parents' house? You got $52,000 out of that."

"I paid off the Volvo, and Bob invested the rest in something, but he's already sold that to keep up the payments on his car. He lost a lot on the investments, some kind of foreign bonds, so there wasn't enough left to pay off the Mercedes."

"So it's all gone."

"You were talking about buying silver coins back then. It sounded good to me, so I bought a bag of quarters at that place in Louisville you told me about. It cost me about $2,500 and something then. I didn't tell Bob about that, for some reason. I put the bag in my cedar chest under my wedding dress. I suppose it is still there, if Bob hasn't found it."

"Good. Silver is up now. It's worth twice what you paid for it, so you're not flat broke."

"I'm going to keep it, too. Bob has lost everything we had and all the rest of what I inherited from the house. He won't get a chance at it from here on. I think I've had about enough of him. He's hard to get along with and treats me like dirt since things started going bad. Sometimes I don't care if he comes home or not."
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[patience]

CHAPTER 9

I heard later that Bob came home that night, and he had traded off the Mercedes for a much older VW Jetta, free and clear. He wasn't happy, though. He started ranting and raving about how Gloria had to have this fine house and that had been his ruination. Actually, she had tried to talk him out of buying it before they got married, but he had convinced her it was a great investment. She told him that, and I guess they had quite a fight. He made the mistake of slapping Gloria's face, and that did the job, right there. She picked up a big stainless steel skillet and smacked him right upside the head with it. Knocked him colder'n a wedge. Gloria never did take any sass from anybody. She called me and said she thought she'd killed him.

I drove over there faster than the law allowed, and found him sitting up on the kitchen floor, still groggy. One side of his head was swelling up and his eye was swelling shut. She must have slung that skillet for all she was worth. But he was alive. She had a couple bruises starting to show on her face, too, but she looked a lot better than he did right then.

Bob asked what the hell was I doing there, and started to get up. Gloria told him to stay where he was, or she'd knock him back down. She had the skillet in hand, and he thought better of it. I told her to get her stuff and put it in my truck, because she didn't have to put up with the likes of him. Our Dad had made her cedar chest, so I helped her carry it and the contents out to my truck. She got some trash bags and emptied her closet into them. Next, she cleaned out the kitchen of cookware, including her big skillet and all the silverware, then went to work on her bathroom. She double bagged that stuff, because it was heavy. There was her nice laptop computer that went into a suitcase with all her backup discs, and I lost track of what was in the rest. The truck bed was pretty full when she went in the kitchen the last time.

Bob was sitting at the breakfast bar on a stool and had ice wrapped in a towel on the side of his head. Gloria was in fine form by then. She walked over to him and said, "That's it. We're finished. You get to pay the bill for the divorce because you took all my money. I don't want to hear anything out of you, ever again. At least the house is in YOUR name, so you enjoy it. You make any complaints about your little accident of falling down the back steps, and I'll see you in court for spousal abuse. Don't forget, I have Wes for a witness to you hitting me, then falling out the back door when I ran away. You got all that straight now?"

He nodded slowly, his eyes looked a little dilated to me like he had a concussion. Remind me to never make my Sis really mad. Not a good idea. She'd thumped me pretty good when we were kids and I needed it. Sis and I got in my truck and left him sitting there. I told her we had a room for her, and we were going home, so just relax now. Bob knew I would swear to whatever was necessary to take care of Sis, so I didn't expect any trouble out of him.

It was pretty late, but the lights were all on when we drove in to the farm. Joe and Kate knew Gloria fairly well from a few visits, so they were pretty upset when they saw her face. It was beginning to color up a little by then. Kate and Ashley fussed over her and gave her the first real sympathy she'd had in a long time. Joe and I went off to ourselves in his den. I told him what really happened and he got a good laugh out of it. He'd met Bob a time or two, and said he was pretty stuck up.

"He had that coming. He better not try to give that girl any grief about it, either, or he'll find himself in a worse pickle than he ever dreamed about. Gloria is smart. She'll fix his wagon if he doesn't leave her alone."

I agreed. "Yep. He best let it lay."
I changed the subject. "I hate to bring my family trouble to your house tonight, but I didn't have anywhere else to go with her. I'll find her someplace...."

Joe interrupted me. "You'll do no sucha thing. I like that young woman and she's family now, same as you are, so you just don't go rockin' the boat, you hear?"

"Uhh. Yessir. I hear just fine."

'You've been a lifesaver for us Wes, and don't think we aren't grateful. You just do whatever makes sense for Gloria and that'll be fine."
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Gloria had some ideas of her own on that score. She and Ashley used makeup to cover the bruising where Bob had slapped her. When they came to breakfast, Gloria looked pretty good. Kate bustled about the kitchen and got a meal on the table. While we ate, Gloria told what was on her mind.

"Wes, I need a ride to Louisville to sell those coins, because I need a car of some kind. I'm hoping you can help me find something I can afford."

I nodded while I chewed bacon and eggs, then said, "Yep. I can do that. Here."

I handed her the keys to my Malibu. "You can have the Malibu. I don't drive it now. I'm here all day and if I need to go somewhere, I drive the truck because I'm always hauling something."

Gloria started to protest and I cut her off. "You've been taking care of me all my life. My turn now, so just keep quiet and deal with it."

"I never expected that Wes. I'm not asking for you to..."

"I know, but I'm doing it, so that'll be that. What else do you need to do today?"

Gloria had to think about it for a minute. She said, "I need a job. I haven't worked since right after Bob and I got married. He thought if I worked, it made him look bad. But I am still an LPN, and there are jobs around for nurses. If I have a car to drive, I'll be going to look for a job as soon as I get back from Louisville. I can rent an apartment in a day or two and not have to impose on you kind people."

Kate said, "It's not imposing. You're family, just like Wes. We're glad to help."

"I appreciate it a lot, but I'll get on my own as fast as I can. If I get a job here in town, I should live close to it, and there are places I'll be able to afford."

Joe told her, "I can see you think like Wes, but you are welcome here as long as you want to stay. Okay?"

Gloria gave him that gorgeous smile of hers and said, "Okay."
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CHAPTER 10


Shortly after Thanksgiving, we had butchering to do. I had never butchered anything bigger than a rabbit when Dad took me hunting as a kid, so I was some concerned about doing this. I shouldn't have wasted any worry over it, because with Joe guiding things, it went smooth as could be. Gloria even turned out to help cut up and package meat. She was just trying to pay back their favors to her, but they insisted that she take home some beef tenderloin and a couple huge round steaks for her help. No more than she ate, she made a dozen freezer packages out of it.

I had scrounged an I-beam with help from Billy James, who had found some work for a big construction company in the city. I cut a couple small trees and made support posts out of them, spiked to the bottom of trusses in the machinery shed. The I -beam went on top of the posts in the machinery shed where we had the shop. I hung my trolley and chain hoist on it and used it working on farm equipment.

I should say that the machinery shed was big. It was called a shed only because of the shed-type roof that sloped mostly one way, but it was big enough to house the tractor, combine, baler, Joe and Kate's pickup, and still have room for a double bay for me to work on things. I think Joe said it is 32 feet by 120 feet long. That much space was impossible to heat with a stove, and only 4 of the bays had doors and a concrete floor anyway. That section with doors was walled off from the rest of it that was open on one side. The open part had a gravel floor. It was a big metal building. Most farms didn't have enough shed room for their equipment, but Joe did. There were a couple older wood sheds that housed the smaller equipment.

For butchering, it made a fine place to hang a beef. Joe's tractor had a front loader on it, so that made it easy to dispose of the waste products. That means the guts, for those who haven't done this. They got buried on the back of the farm in a washout where it was easy to cave some dirt over it. We didn't want to attract any coyotes or stray dogs. The back of the farm was 3/4 of a mile away, and sloped downhill that direction. It got steeper as you went toward the back, ending in the woods where it was too steep to clear off and farm. Somewhere down in that valley below was a year-around creek where a lot of deer and other wildlife got water.

As fast as we got the beef in the freezer, Joe and Kate wanted to kill a couple hogs. They would go mostly in the smoke house, so freezer room wasn't an issue. After a dry salt and sugar cure packed in wood boxes, the hams, shoulders, bacon, and jowls all got hung up and smoked over a red oak fire for 2 weeks. They would all keep until hot weather, I was assured. By then, we would have some room in the freezers so what pork was left could be frozen.

Joe said that his grandparents had no electricity until the 1950's, so they used the pork up before it spoiled and ate mostly fresh chicken or canned beef in the summer. He said there was the remains of their old springhouse down over the hill to the west. It was a hike from the house, but not all that far, so they had kept milk and butter and such there before refrigeration. That man never opened his mouth without teaching me something.

Sis had helped again, learning to cut meat now. She had a nice apartment in the residential area of town that was close enough to her job in a nursing home that she could walk the 6 blocks if she wanted to. When the streets were slick in winter, she was walking to work. She had always been sensible with money. Her only extravagance now was a paying a little more for the apartment because they allowed her to keep her dog, where cheaper places would not. Gloria seemed to be happier now than when she was married, although I could tell she was lonely and came out to the farm fairly regularly to visit.

The old farmhouse had a good sized cellar under it that we had filled with canned goods on shelves and potatoes in wood boxes. The shelves were pretty full. Joe and Kate had never gone in for the convenience food thing. They both were farm raised and still did most things like their grandparents had taught them. They hadn't had a milk cow for many years, but when Ashley and I moved in, Joe suggested that we teach one of his Angus to be milked when her calf came. We only milked her in the morning, after penning her calf away overnight in the stall next to her. She wasn't a dairy cow, and didn't give all that much milk, but it was more than we needed. Kate made some cottage cheese, and showed us how to skim off cream and how to make butter with her old cranked churn. The grocery bill for the 4 of us didn't amount to much.

The farm had once had dairy cows and the stalls were still in the barn, used for storage now. That part had a concrete floor with a manure trench behind where the cows had stood to be milked. That barn is huge. It had been built with enough loft space for storing loose hay, back before balers were invented. There were actually 3 stories to the barn, the loft, the main floor where feed and equipment was kept, and the basement for livestock. The basement was open on the back side, since it was built on a hillside. On the front side, the main floor was level with the ground on the uphill side, so you could drive a wagon load of hay in there to unload in the hayloft above it. The old hook affair for unloading loose hay off a wagon was still hanging way up it the top on it's roller track.

They had a well up by the house, and a septic system, so there were no water or sewage bills. The well was one of those old hand dug jobs with limestone blocks laid to line it. It was big enough inside to let a bucket down on a rope and get water. They had the top covered with a metal plate where a hand pump sat. Kate had me pull that pump out one day when she couldn't get water out fast enough to suit her. She said the cylinder needed new "leathers", whatever that was. I found out when I got the pump cylinder out of the well. It was a leather cup that worked as a piston inside a cast iron cylinder to do the pumping. I was amazed that the hardware store in town still had new leather parts for the pump. While we had it out, Joe had me get some new pipe and hone the inside of the brass-lined iron cylinder. I gave the pump a fresh coat of John Deere green paint, and Kate was delighted.

When it went back together, the water came out with no difficulty, and surprisingly fast. About two dozen strokes on the handle filled the 3 gallon bucket they kept there. There was even one of those speckled enamelware tin cups for getting a drink. Had its' own hook right on the pump. There was an electric pump, too, down inthe cellar, but the hand pump was great when you were thirsty from hoeing in the garden, or all sweaty and itchy from haymaking.

Kate dried clothes on the line outside even when it was cold out. If it got really cold, she put up lines in the kitchen and dining room area. Those rooms had been joined long ago by removing a wall. We hung our clothes upstairs in a spare bedroom. It didn't seem like any real trouble, and there was no need for a clothes dryer. Those things run up an electric bill fast.

There was no heat bill, either. I cut a lot of firewood, but not an unreasonable amount for such a big house. It had good storm windows and doors, and they had insulation blown in the walls and attic years ago. All I had to do was keep the chainsaws running and make some firewood. We might spend $50 to $100 a year to maintain the woodcutting operation, but that was cheap for heat.

Electricity was the biggest monthly bill, except for insurance. Joe had applied for Social Security Disability, but it was still in process, with a lawyer getting paid to make that happen. When it did, he would be elegible for Medicaid, but for now they had to pay their own health insurance and it was expensive. There were deductibles and Joe had to see his heart doctor regularly, and also pay a fair amount for medications. Kate was healthy as a horse, but they had her covered, too. They were both 59 years old, so it would be another 3 years before she could start Social Security and Medicare.

Those expenses made a big dent in their income, but we had done well on the farm this year because Joe had contracted most of his corn at $4.08 a bushel. The price of corn always fell a dollar or more at harvest time, so he hedged that with futures contracts like most farmers. His 60 acres of corn had done pretty well this year, and yielded about 160 bushels per acre, which was very good for this end of the state. The corn made a gross income of $39,000 this year, but he had a lot of expenses to come out of that for seed, fertilizer, chemicals, diesel fuel, and equipment maintenance. That ate up half of his gross income, and he did better than most keeping the costs down. I was learning more about the business side of farming. There was a lot more to it than just throwing out some seed and watching it turn into money.

Joe had also sold some feeder calves back in the summer when prices were high, so all we had to feed through the winter was his bull and 22 brood cows. It meant handling a lot of hay. He still used the small square baler so that meant a lot of handling. We had talked about getting a round baler to save labor, and since his heart attack, it was almost a necessity. He could drive the tractor just fine, but not for long hot days making hay. We had to do something about the hay situation before next season.
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Nobody had heard a word about Bob Stowe since he and Gloria's divorce was final. He didn't seem to be around town any more, but nobody missed him. Gloria joined us for Christmas and brought her dog. Sandy was such a polite creature that we all fell in love with her. I hadn't had a dog since we were kids, and it made me want to get another. Joe and Kate had a great stock dog that had died of old age a few years ago, but they hadn't got another one. Joe began to get interested, though, after spending the day around Sandy. We had all become a pretty close family now, and Bob wasn't even mentioned. We got together for New Year's Eve, too. Kate always grew some popcorn in the garden, and they had a nice orchard, so the women made candy apples and popcorn balls, while Joe and I got into a little of Kate's dandelion wine. The doctor wouldn't let him drink much, but said that a little in the evening was probably a good thing.

January of 2010 was cold, as usual. I spent more time in the shop with the barrel stove going where Joe and I figured out what needed worked on and what was on its' last legs. We needed a grain truck and we needed a round baler. I had no idea where to find a grain truck, but the consignment auction was the place to start looking for a baler. We planned to go look at the next auction near the end of the month.

When the free newspaper came one day, Kate saw a dog she liked, advertised for adoption from the Animal Shelter. It was a Collie/Shepherd mix that lived up to her picture. Kate did all the paperwork, took her to the vet for neutering and shots, then picked her up the next day. The old lady turned out to be at least as good as Joe for training a dog. Kate wanted a dog that could stay in the house if she felt it was needed. She had heard too much lately on the TV news about home invasions and robberies. Kate was familiar with the pump shotgun that sat beside the kitchen door, but she wanted "something with better eyes and ears than I have". Joe agreed with her.

The new dog was fairly young, and very smart, but she had a lot to learn about the farm. She set to work doing that, and followed us outside everywhere we went. Joe began to teach her voice commands, using simple words. She caught on pretty fast. Kate was schooling her, too, about house manners and what a dog had better leave alone in there. Kate named her Pat, a nice short name that was easy for the dog to understand. Pat had been given a blanket to lay on in a corner between the kitchen and the old dining room, where part of the old dividing wall remained.

We all talked to the dog, and it wasn't long before she knew us all by name and knew where we were, if Kate told her find us. Her coat was pretty heavy, showing the Collie in her, so she preferred to lay on the side porch by the kitchen door unless it got really cold out. She figured out how the door worked, too, and if it wasn't latched solidly, she could get it open and nose the storm door latch in a heartbeat. Pat would obey any of us, but she made it plain that she was Kate's dog.
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Auction day was cold and had a steady wind blowing from the North that chilled everybody to the bone. The coffee and food stand did a good business, but bidding was not as well attended as usual. The junk stuff sold cheap and the farm equipment prices were mixed. Used equipment had been selliing high, Joe said, because nobody could afford new stuff. He paid a good price, $7,650 for a New Holland 664 round baler, but it wasn't worn out yet by a long ways. It had a hydraulic leak on one of the long hoses that went to the rear bale door, but hoses didn't cost all that much. The tires were good, and the belts looked like they would run for quite a while yet. It looked like it had been kept inside and well maintained. I felt the slack in the drive gear box, but it wasn't excessive. I didn't see anything that showed damage or really bad wear. I dragged it home the next day behind my pickup, taking it slow on the county roads. It took a big part of the day to get there.

Joe didn't want to part with his old square baler yet. It made more sense to use it for baling straw, and that was a necessary part of a cattle operation. I spent some time in February going over both balers to assure they were ready to go when spring came. We ordered some minor parts and several new bearings for the old baler then I put them on whenever UPS delivered them. In between working on the farm machinery, I did enough for several neighbors that I had some pocket money. When Spring came, we were ready for it, but a lot of farmers were not, so I worked long days and a lot of nights doing both our tillage and planting, and fixing machinery for other people. I was learning a lot more about farming than I had ever expected to know.

I picked up some junk farm machinery at the junkyards for patch materials, and had a useful junk pile behind the machinery shed. There had been enough shop business last year that I had bought an acetylene torch setup. This year I bought some extra tanks so I didn't get caught running out of gas in the middle of a job and have to go to town. The shop was getting to look like a professional operation now. There were a lot of things I would have liked to buy, but it had to pay its' own way.

I had learned the hard way that farm equipment work deserves to have a hydraulic press around. I had paid for having bearings and other things pressed in and out too many times downtown, so I looked over what they had real well. I had used jack presses a lot, and they weren't that complicated. During a lull after planting time, I bought some scrap metal and went to work building me a press. The State Highway Department had junked some guardrail posts that looked about right. They were 6" H-beams, 6 feet long. I bought them and some wide, rusty steel channel pieces for the frame and bed, and went to work. Northern Hydraulics sold a 50 ton hydraulic jack, and I salvaged some hood springs off an old Ford Galaxie to pull that big stiff jack back up after you pressed something down with it. I slapped a coat of paint on it and it looked almost like a real one. It worked really well, too.

Joe already had an ancient drill press that worked very well, and would drill a big hole in steel, and he had a good sized old grinder that worked fine. I did happen onto a junk power hacksaw that got thrown out by the local factory. It took some TLC to get it going again, but not much money. I wanted a metal lathe in the worst way, but I couldn't justify it, or I didn't think so. I had only used one briefly in prison and had a lot to learn about them. That would have to wait.
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[patience]

CHAPTER 11

According to what i read on the internet, unemployment was a lot higher than what the TV news said. The private data websites said the government had changed how they figured it, and when done the right way, it had gone from about 12% in 2009 to 22% a year later. Everybody I talked to was crying about it. If there was any kind of a decent paying job around, it was already filled. I stayed busier than ever fixing farm equipment, and had kept track of it for tax purposes. I averaged making over $15 an hour, and by mid-summer, I'd already made over $10,000, and that was farming pretty well full time along with it. Ashley made more than enough for our expenses, so what I made was what we used to pay the insurance, and get whatever bigger items we wanted. I didn't really have what most people call a job, but we were making it, and living pretty well. I had even begun to save a little money again.

Saving money bothered me, because while I felt like we had to have some laid back, the longer I kept it, the more prices went up and the less the money would buy. The price of silver showed this, too. It had been staying around $18 an ounce for several months, with a dip now and then. But in July it started up and kept going. By early October it was above $23 an ounce and still going. I felt like it was a little late to buy more silver then, but I didn't know what else to do with our nest egg, and the longer I waited, the less it would be worth. I needed to put that money to work, but the banks weren't paying squat for interest.

I did some more reading on the internet. I watched some videos that told how the big banks were doing their best to steal all the money in the country by causing inflation. I had some ideas that I needed to ask Joe about, but I didn't have a lot of hope in it.
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Gloria looked at the prices of onions and potatoes and decided against buying any. She would wait until she went out to visit Wes and Ashley tomorrow. They kept offering her things, but she felt like she hadn't helped that much with the garden and had been refusing. The prices were beginning to bite into her budget, though, so it had begun to look a lot more appealing to take what they offered. She took the few items in her cart to the checkout and noticed that other carts in line weren't very full, either.

Her next stop was at the all-things-a-dollar store, a local independent retailer who carried some cosmetics and hygiene items she liked. After that, she stopped at the newspaper office and gave a dollar for a big stack of notepads they made from their printing leftovers. Then it was off to Goodwill to look for clothing. It was Sunday, when Goodwill did the weekly start of their 'color of the week' tag sale at half off. You had to get there early, because there were a lot of people that pounced on the sale.

The parking lot was crowded, but she found a spot some distance from the door. Walking across the lot, she noticed quite a few expensive cars and SUV's, and a nearly new pickup. Many of the shoppers inside were better dressed than what she had seen there before, and had nice hairdo's and makeup. It occurred to her that a lot more people were feeling the pinch of higher prices now.

Sunday was also the sale day on used books, 3 paperbacks for 99 cents, or 3 hardbacks for $1.49. Gloria did her clothes shopping first, and found a couple good blouses and one nice dress she had spotted on Friday. When she was sure she had all the clothing she wanted that was marked down, she went to the other end of the store and browsed the housewares and books. She chose 3 paperbacks by an author she liked, then found some decorative pillar candles for 50 cents each and bought several. The power had already gone off a few times during winter storms and she wanted some emergency lighting. They picked up a couple packages from a display of cheap batteries, too, and a China-made flashlight.

In her haste to leave the night of the fight with her husband, she had cleaned out the kitchen and bathroom, but had forgotten to get anything from the garage, or workshop building. Gloria was frustrated by having far more pots and pans than she would ever use living alone, but lacking a number of other things. She had not spent much on herself for months before her life came apart, trying to help stay afloat financially. Now, she needed some new underwear and a heavy winter coat. Goodwill had came through on the coat, and it was even pretty nice. She attributed that to her petite figure, because there were a lot of overweight women digging through the coats, but saw only a few her size in the store.

Shoes had been another problem. She couldn't afford to have problems with her feet. Goodwill didn't have anything suitable for a nurse to walk in 8 to 10 hours a day. Good shoes were expensive, and after she put aside her savings amount, her check didn't go very far. She had solved that the best she could, ordering from an online shoe store and got some professional white nurses' shoes at a $30 savings over retail price.

Dollar General Store was busy when she got there, too. She found 3 bras on the rack that she thought were pretty good and the price was better than Wal Mart's. The clerk assured her she could return them if they didn't fit. They had a sale on Tracphones, so she bought one with camera capability for $20, and it came with some minutes. She'd let her old phone contract lapse a month before she left Bob, and had used a landline phone in the apartment until now, but this was cheaper. There were coupon deals online to get minutes really cheap.

Gloria needed to change oil in her car. She had asked Wes about it, and he said he'd do it, but she was determined to learn how to do that herself. Even the cheap place in town wanted $15.99 for an oil change, and she was sure she could do it cheaper. Wes said Wal Mart had the best deal on oil, in the 5 quart plastic jugs, unless somebody ran a big sale, and he said that Auto Zone was the place to buy oil filters. Since she was close, she bought a filter there, and headed home to her apartment.
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Joe was busy on his computer when I found him in his den. I sat down next to him in a big upholstered chair and asked, "Have you got time to help me with a money problem?"

"Sure. I'm pretty tired of working on farm books. The farm did pretty well last year, but it is going to be harder to do that this year with me being out of the game."

"You're not out of the game, Joe. All you have to do is point me in the right direction and I"ll take over the work. I just need you to keep me doing the right things at the right time."

"I wanted to talk to you about that. I need you and Ashley to make this place work, or we'd have to sell it, and this is the worst possible time to sell. Kate and I have talked about this. We are changing our retirement plans."

"How's that?"

"We had planned to work the farm until we were full retirement age before starting Social Security. Then, we planned to sell the farm, move to town, put the money in some safe investments, and live off the interest. No way is that going to work now. There's no such thing as a safe investment now; not the paper kind anyway. The price of land is way down, Kate's not old enough for SS, and it's going to take a while to get my disability going. Worse than all that, I could drop dead anytime."

"But I thought the doctor said you were good to go for a long time now!"

"Yeah, maybe. What he said was maybe, if all goes well and I take real good care of myself. Or, it might not last. Kate knows this. We just take it one day at a time."

"I had a real different take on this. I was planning on you being around a long time, and learning how to farm from you. Mechanics aren't in high demand these days. I wanted to ask you about what to do with the money I have in the bank from selling my folks' house. It isn't making me any money in the bank, and I don't know of a good thing to do with it. We wanted to buy a place of our own, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen now, as bad as things are."

"Listen to what I've got to say, and then we'll talk about that. Like I said, Kate and I have talked this over, and here's what we've done. We put the farm in a "Living Trust". It's a simple legal paper we filed at the courthouse. It says that the farm is owned by the trust, with Kate and I as Joint First Trustees, and you and Ashley as Joint Second Trustees."

"I'm not sure what that means."

"It's better than just a Will, it means that there is no need for the farm to go through Probate Court when we die. It will already belong to you and Ashley as Second Trustees. This is just a way of making it smoother for you two, and it should assure you that you will for certain, inherit the farm."

"Uh, I don't know what to say. I never thought about that."

"Ashley is an only child, and we always told her she gets the place when we die. Now that she's married, this is the way to do it."

"It sounds to me like you just gave me half of her farm. You sure you want to do that? What if Ashley and I had problems... I don't want to think about that. But you..."

" We're not giving you the farm, we're telling you that you will inherit it. It was a judgement call, yes. But the benefits outweigh the risks for us, and for Ashley. It's not a great risk for her, even if you got divorced, because she would probably get awarded the farm in that case anyway. I talked to Ashley about this a little while ago, and she understands. She wanted me to bring you up to speed on it, so I could explain what we have in mind."

"Okay..." It started to sink in finally, but I needed to know more.

Joe went on. "We could have made you a partner, but that wouldn't be nearly as good from a tax standpoint. It will work out better for all parties if you are both employees now, and paid from the farm income. It helps keep the tax man out of our pockets. We need to talk about your pay, and how we do that."

"I don't need any pay. You're letting us LIVE here, for cripes sake! You're mostly feeding us, too!"

"Here's how we saw this working. If you and Ashley know for certain that you are inheriting the farm, then you have a vested interest to do what is right for the long term. And that is the only way that farming can really work. You have to be committed to it, or you make short-term decisions that are bad in the long term."

"I can see that. Yeah, makes sense to me."

"Now, about your money. If you have a vested interest in the farm, you might want to put some of that money to work here. You get the proceeds from that, of course. Say if you bought a piece of equipment, you would own it, and we would lease it from you. That has a lot of tax advantages, too. I'm not asking you to do anything right now, just giving you food for thought. Let this lay for a while. You and Ashley talk about it. You don't have to put any money into the farm unless you want to, but the opportunity is there."

"I don't get what's in this for you, Joe?"

"Kate's almost surely going to outlive me. I need to do the best I can to see that she's provided for, and this is the best way I could come up with to do that."

"We planned on taking care of both of you, as best we can. We don't have much, but we could help out. I thought you'd know that?"

"Ashley said the same thing. This is a way to make it work out, we think. Let it sit in your head for a few days and we'll talk again, when you've had time to get used to the idea."
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CHAPTER 12


"Ashley, It makes me look like I married you for the farm! That's not true, but that's what everyone is going to think!"

"Calm down. No, it isn't what most people will think, at least not the farm folks. They all do something like this. Didn't you know that?"

"No, I'm not sure that's right."

"Quit being so prideful! Nobody's going to think less of you! The farm families around here already assumed this. That's just how it is. Oh, there's several ways they do things, but it all amounts to the same thing--the kids get the farm, period. At least, they do if they want it and they aren't total screw-ups."

I let it sink in for a minute. Then it occurred to me that she knew this before we got married. I said as much, to hear what she had to say about it.

"Sure I knew it. That's what Mom and Dad and me have talked about since I was little kid. It's one of the ways that you get taught about life, and looking ahead, when you grow up farming."

"I gotta think about this."

Ashley smiled a little and said, "You really didn't know about this, did you? I mean, maybe you did, a little bit, but you hadn't really THOUGHT about it, right?"

"NO! Of course I hadn't thought about it! That would be rotten, to think about marrying a girl because she's going to inherit a farm! Anyway, I expected your parents to live for ages."

"Mom might live for a long time, but Dad, well, I don't want to think about that. I love him so much, and..."

She teared up and I tried to comfort her. She pulled away after a minute, and said, "But I have to think about it. It means he could go any time, and I don't know enough to run the place."

That scared me. "You grew up here! I don't know much of anything about it, and I'm supposed to be the one who knows!"

Ashley smiled a little and said, "Oh, get off that male-role thing, would you? Farms don't work like that. It takes the whole family to make it work. You've heard Mom say her piece when Dad talks about his plans, and he listens, too. That's how it goes. They talk things over, and do the best they can come up with. It's a partnership. WE can do it together."

I looked at her with a whole new idea of how great this could be. I had gotten really lucky to find this young woman. I told her so.

She laughed and said, "No you didn't. I found YOU!"
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Creekview Care Facility was small by big city standards, which was why Gloria liked working there. She could have made a lot more money if she was willing to drive 40+ miles to Louisville to work, but most of that would have been offset by the cost of driving. Living in Louisville would cost a lot more than here, so it came out about even to live and work in her hometown. Gloria's salary was $29,500 a year, well above average income for a woman in a backwater Indiana town. Her take home pay was a lot less, after all the deductions, from $400 to $480 a week, depending on whether she worked a little overtime, or not, but overtime was rare.

She kept her living costs as low as possible, and was saving money as fast as she could. Her job did provide some insurance, a Major Medical insurance policy, but the coverage wasn't very good, basically an 80/20 plan for hospitalization. There was also a term life insurance available cheap, but she only bought enough to pay for her burial, because she didn't want to be a burden on Wes if something happened to her.

The job wasn't the best she could have found, but she liked the slower pace of it, compared to a big hospital. She had worked in one when she got out of nurses training, and she didn't want to go back to the chronic understaffing, and high pressure pace of the trauma center. The residents in the nursing home were mostly pretty nice, too. There were a few stinkers, but the good ones made up for it. She particularly liked a couple of the old men who were always cheerful and had old stories to tell while she worked.

Her time with each patient was limited, but as the weeks went by she learned a lot of their backgrounds. She knew some of their relatives because small towns are like that. Robert Little was her favorite, a history buff. He was 93 years old and could remember things from when they happened back 80+ years ago. He told of living through the Great Depression of the 1930's, often funny stories, but with a hard edge of realism about the life he'd lived. Gloria spent more than a few of her breaks listening to his tales. He was a tough old survivor whose body was giving out on him, but his mind was sharp as could be.

One day he asked, "Girly, do you keep yer money in the bank?"

"Yes, I have a checking account, and I'm trying to save some money."

"Well, you better git it outa there, I'm tellin' ya. I watch the news, and there is crooked stuff goin' on in them banks now. Ya can't trust a banker. None of 'em! They're no good. They'll steal yer money in a heartbeat, they will, an' run off with it. Happened to a lot of folks I knew."

"Where could I keep money if I didn't have it in the bank? I worry about getting robbed, you know, with crime going up now."

"Bury it somewhere's, er put it in the bottom of the flour sack, er stuff it in the mattress, but don't leave it in the bank, cuz the first time the bank gits hard up, they'll steal it an' you'll never see it again."

"They don't pay hardly any interest on savings now, so it wouldn't be much loss that way."

"I do hope you'll pay attention to me. Most folks think us old people don't know nothin', but we've done a sight more livin' and seen a lotta things. You're really good to me an' I really like you, an' I don't want to see anythin' bad happen to ya. Promise me now, that you'll at least think about that."

"Yes, I will. I've already had some bad things happen to me. Yes, I'll sure think about it. You get some rest now. It's time for me to get back to work."

Gloria left Robert's room and went back out to the nurses' station where she found the meal cart coming in from the kitchen. It was almost time for supper, and feeding time was hectic. There were some patients who had relatives that showed up to feed them, or just to make sure they ate like they should.

One man was reliable as a clock about that, Mrs. Barnes son Larry. He drove a concrete truck for the Ready-Mix plant in town, and always stopped to feed his mother before going home each night. Mrs. Barnes had been partially paralyzed by a stroke, and had early onset Alzheimers'. She could barely manage to drink when someone held a cup for her, but she was grateful for the help. It was heartbreaking to see him when she didn't recognize him some days. He seemed to take it pretty well , but Gloria could see that he felt the loss of his mother as a person.

She knew that his father had been killed in a logging accident some years ago. She didn't know if he had any brothers or sisters, but he was the only one who ever came to see the old lady. Gloria felt somewhat attracted to him, although he was not a handsome man, by any means. On this evening, her shift ended after the evening meal, and she found herself walking out with Gary Barnes.

"We all appreciate you coming every day to help with your mother. She needs more time to eat than what we can give her sometimes. I hate to say that , but there just isn't enough help here to do it all the time, if anything else is going on."

Larry nodded, "I know that. The big city places are worse. You women do all you can. I got no complaints. Mom is always clean and doesn't have any bedsores, and somebody takes the time to brush her hair, and all. I'm just paying her back, for all she's done for me, and it gets lonesome at home, so I like to stop and see her."

He said goodbye and got in his pickup. Gloria decided she'd like to learn some more about him. Her apartment was lonely too, even with Sandy there. His work uniform proved he was back to work, with warmer early Spring weather and construction was starting up again. Why hadn't she picked somebody like that, instead of Bob's nice face and snappy clothes? She mentally kicked herself and resolved it wouldn't happen again like that.

Larry drove out of town and turned on the county road, taking it slow. He was still thinking about that pretty nurse. He was amazed that she spoke to him. Pretty women didn't usually talk to him, and she was a real looker. Light brown hair and green eyes that sparkled. Larry tried hard to get her off his mind, but it wasn't easy.
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[patience]

CHAPTER 13

Bob Stowe had finally landed a job, when his brother was ready to kick him out. He was a clerk at the Kocolene gas station in Seymour. At least nobody knew him here. He just couldn't face people back in Salem, since he'd lost everything. He couldn't admit to himself that he'd been pretty arrogant back before his divorce. He didn't even try to think about investments now. It made his head hurt. He still had the Jetta, still titled in his brother's name to keep it out of the bankruptcy. Then he'd lived at the YMCA for a couple months until he could find a room to rent with kitchen privileges. He didn't make much, but he had a lead on a job at the new bank branch opening in town, and he'd kept his good clothes, so with some luck, he'd get some of his own back before long. He had lived well before, and he knew he deserved to live well.
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Donny Whitson waved the driver back to the rolloff container and signalled when he got close enough. This would be the last load until more scrap came in. He had worked his 2 men hard to get the yard cleaned out, and get it all crushed and sold. Now he had a little financial cushion for the first time since '08 when everything went sky high. He'd gotten a piece of that action, and cleaned the yard out then before it fell like a rock over the next two months. Now, it was headed up again and should go higher he thought, but he needed the money. He had that wrecker loan to pay off, and scrap wasn't coming in like it had been. There didn't seem to be much out there now.

He had found ways to make more money off what he got, though. That one fellow that was always buying steel fence posts and used metal roofing had given him the idea. Donny used to stick things in the crusher as fast as it came in, then hold the compacted cubes for sale, waiting for the best price. But he found he could get 2 or 3 times the money by reselling some things just as they came in, and not only car parts. Besides the posts and roofing, now he had stacks of angle iron, pipe, lawn and garden tractors, bicycles, and a big area of salvageable things like pots and pans, kitchen sinks, and some antique items. It was making him money, so he got the real junk crushed as fast as he could to keep some room for his new "retail line". It was getting to be more popular than car parts, and all he had to do was have his men sort it out. He made more money on a pallet of boxed rusty nails than he could have imagined. They had been in a flood and were a mess, but people bought them at $20 for a 50 pound box.
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In April, 2011, the world was greening up and looked more cheerful, but on the way into Clarksville, Ashley and I noticed a depressing number of empty houses along the highway. We only came to the city for a big shopping trip about once a season, so we noticed some changes. The yards had tall weeds and grass already, and there was the white paper stuck to a bare window, a foreclosure notice. Clarksville showed the signs of hard times worse than I'd ever seen. There were a lot of empty stores now. I paid attention to what kind of stores had closed. The sporting goods places were empty, lots of hair and nail salons had closed, a few restaurants, a big appliance store, and one car dealership were gone.

The Dollar General Stores were booming, and had even built two new stores in nearby small towns. There was a new second hand clothing shop on the main drag in Clarksville, and the Goodwill and Salvation Army stores had lots of cars in their lots. They didn't appear to be getting as many donations now, because they had a lot of new Chinese junk, the wicker baskets, coffee mugs, and cheap batteries.

"OOF! That was quite a pothole, for being in a parking lot!"

Ashley said, "There's grass growing in the lot back there at that big Mall that was supposed to be so great. Not many stores left there now."

"Makes me think, I'd like to stop at Bass Pro and look about some traps, and maybe some fishing stuff." I turned into their huge parking lot.

"You might want to buy a good rifle, too. There's too many stray dogs running around home."

"I'm not allowed to own a gun because of that dope charge. Ex-felons can't own a gun."

"Well, I can, and what other people don't know won't hurt them. Maybe I'll buy one. Let's go look."

I expected the prices to be high in the monster sporting goods store, but they were very competitive with what I'd seen elsewhere. We bought a load of stuff. Ashley wanted a vacuum sealing thing to keep dry beans in canning jars, and one of the heat sealing vacuum things that used plastic bags on a roll. I found a really nice sausage grinder with a stuffer spout, too.

We wandered around the store, looking at the displays of stuffed animals, and live fish in the almost real looking pools. I passed on buying steel traps there, since I had seen them cheaper at Rural King, but the fishing gear was priced better than Wal Mart, and the variety was endless. I bought some hooks, a few of the styrofoam bobbers, and a spool of the new Spiderwire brand line that wasn't supposed to take a "set" on a reel. I had found a handful of cheap fishing rods with Zebco 202 reels on them at the flea market back in the winter and bought the lot of them for 10 bucks. They came with a dirty old plastic tackle box that I cleaned up. Out of 11 rigs, there were now 4 that seemed to work pretty well after some tinkering. We were in the fishing business pretty cheap, and there were a lot of flood control lakes around that were full of panfish. I splurged and bought a fishing license, too.

Ashley asked what kind of rifle she should buy to kill coyotes, and I told her to look for a Remington bolt action in .223 caliber, preferrably with a 4X scope on it. Any more magnification was a waste around home where there was so much cover that you would almost never see anything over a 150 yard shot. There were a lot of suitable calibers, but .223 would shoot flat for that range and was the cheapest to shoot, since the military used it and there were gazillions of them made every year.

I didn't say much while she talked to the sales guy. He was very helpful, answered her questions, showed her a couple, but in the end she said she would wait on it. We paid for our load of stuff and when we got outside, I asked why she hadn't bought one?

"I remembered the gun store that man has by the lake. He has a lot of used stuff in there that should be cheaper, so I want to look there."

That's part of why I married this girl. She'll find the best deal around.

We drove over to Rural King, and I was surprised to find a good stock of sporting goods even though it was located in the city. I bought steel traps, and Ashley bought ingredients for homemade laundry soap, borax, washing soda, and several bars of Fels Naptha soap. There wasn't much else they had that we needed, so we took off for Sam's Club. Last winter, I'd found a deal on a camper top for my truck and put a padlock hasp and a good lock on the door. It was dandy for these shopping trips, so we could stash whatever in the truck and lock it up while we shopped at other stores.

Sam's Club had a few things that made it worth the membership cost. We got peanut butter in some quantity, some pecans, a couple bags of rice, canned olives, and big boxes of teabags. They had a good deal on flashlight batteries, so I stocked up, and we looked at the electronics, but thought we should look at Wal Mart next door before we bought that sort of thing. It was good we did. Wal Mart was a little cheaper on "thumb drives" as Ashley called them, and she wanted to download a bunch of books. She got the ones with the most capacity that were cheaper per Gigabyte of memory.
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CHAPTER 14

It felt great to get dressed in a suit to go to work, Bob thought, even if he did have to shave with a cheap razor and nicked himself doing it. He had started his career working in a bank, and it was good that he had all that on his resume'. It wasn't the kind of money he had been accustomed to making, but it wasn't an entry level job, either, so he could afford to upgrade his life soon. Bob would be starting as a teller, but he would have a small office, too, and set up accounts for new customers. He was confident that he would soon progress to bigger and better things. He had a spring in his step on the way into the bank, for the first time in a long while. He knew that Robert L. Stowe deserved a better place in society.
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When Gloria returned to her apartment, she heard Sandy scratch at the door and whine, so she let her out for a walk. Sandy negoiated the long stairs easily, and barely made it into the yard before she squatted. Gloria felt a little bad about having her inside so much, but she didn't want the dog to wear out the grass in her landlord's back yard. She always followed the dog around and cleaned up her messes, and the old couple thanked her for that. They liked Sandy a lot. She was a lovable sort, and made friends wherever she went.

Sandy rode along on most shopping trips, unless the stops were going to be too long. Gloria hated to see pets cooped up in cars for long periods. When the weather was hot, it was cruel to overheat an animal in a hot car. But Sandy loved to go with her to the bank to cash her paycheck. The drive-thru teller always had a doggy treat for her and got a big grin from Sandy. On longer trips, Sandy got put in the back seat where she could bed down and relax.

After getting her groceries put away, Gloria let Sandy back in. The dog did her greeting thing and settled down beside Gloria at her desk while she read the news on her computer. There was another story about a home invasion in Louisville that made her cringe. The world was not a nice place anymore. Gloria wondered if Sandy was worth anything as a guard dog. She was a very good watchdog and let Gloria know if anyone was near, usually by whining and looking toward what she heard and was willing to go investigate. Whether she would actually protect her master or not, Gloria doubted because of her gentle nature.

Gloria decided she wanted a gun. She had left her Dad's old shotgun at the farm over Wes' protests. He said it would get him in trouble if anyone knew about it, because he was an ex-felon now, but Ashley had put it away in a closet and ended the discussion. She decided to ask for it when she went out there this weekend. The apartment door with its' old fashioned lock bothered her, too. It was time to get a good deadbolt lock. The next day she bought one, and installed it with her landlord's help. He was old and slow, but he was good at that sort of thing. He liked the idea and later got the same locks for his own doors downstairs.
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The corn was planted and the first cutting of hay wasn't ready yet, so we turned our attention to the garden. I had added a lot of cow manure to a bigger garden plot for this year. I had plowed and disked it along with the other field work, so the weeds and grass was starting to come up again. I made several rounds over it with the disc, and that took care of the problem. The soil moisture was just right, so it crumbled up into a good seed bed. I was getting the hang of some things like that about farming.

At breakfast I said something about going to town for garden seeds, prompting Kate to ask what I needed? I said, "Oh, just the usual stuff, sweet corn, green beans, cabbage plants, lettuce, tomato plants, and some seed potatoes."

"Let's look at what I have saved before you go to town," Kate said. "They want a small fortune for seeds and plants. There's some sprouty potatoes left in the cellar, too. You go get them and us girls will sit on the porch and cut them up for seed."

I didn't have to go to town after all. She had everything we wanted, carefully saved from last year. She even had big flats full of cabbage, pepper, cantaloupe, watermelon, sweet potato, broccoli, and tomato plants growing on the south porch that I hadn't noticed. I always went out the side kitchen door, so I never saw them. I vaguely remembered her puttering around out there.

Joe and I walked out to the garden plot. I used the old push plow to lay off rows and Joe dropped seeds. He had a piece of 1" aluminum conduit about a yard long with a big tin can duct taped to the side of it to hold his seeds. That allowed him to stand up pretty straight while he dropped beans or whatever in the row, and the pipe put them exactly where he wanted them.

"Joe, how come you wanted a bigger garden this year? We still have a lot of canned goods left over from last year."

"That's how it is supposed to work. Sometimes you get a bad season, or the bugs lay waste to something, so if you don't get much of a crop, you still have enough from last year. Older canned food isnt as tasty, but it beats eating snowballs in January. We got two more people here to feed, so the garden gets bigger to make sure we have enough incase of a crop failure."

"You always think ahead, don't you?"

"Grampaw told me that if I want to make sure I keep my pants up, I better wear a belt AND suspenders. I don't, but HE did. He did everything that way. That idea rubbed off on me, I suppose, so I try hard to keep my behind covered."

I went on laying off rows and thought about that. We had agreed that we'd take care of Joe and Kate, and arranged things like he had suggested. I had already put some money in the farm, buying wire for new fencing for the back half of the 120 acres next to the woods, a new roof and metal siding on the barn, and fresh gravel on the driveway and farm lane. We had talked about trading in the tractor, too. That made me ask him, "What do we need to buy to have some backups for other things around here?"

Joe frowned and said, "That pond on the east side needs cleaned out. We don't have to pasture that field this summer, so it would be a good time to do that. The west pond is okay. We could sure use a grain truck, but only if it's a real cheap deal. Let me think on it."

"I'll keep looking for a deal on a truck. I hate to have to pay somebody to haul it to the elevator when we sell corn, and we could haul our own fertilizer with it, too."

Joe nodded. "Yep. And I've been thinking about cutting some trees for logs. That corner 'way in the back has a lot of good red and white oak in it, and it's ready to cut. I think there's some sawmills that would cut it up for us now that the price of timber is so low."

"You're not going to sell the logs?"

He shook his head. "We're way ahead to have 'em sawed and use the lumber. It cuts out the lumber yard as the middleman. We'll need some lumber to fix up some of the old buildings. I should talk to that guy down in the valley that has a portable sawmill. It's one of those bandsaw rigs on a trailer. He comes out to the farm and saws it up for you, so you don't have to haul the logs to the mill."

"I've heard of bandsaw mills, but I didn't know they were portable."

"Yeah, they come with trailer wheels now, if you want 'em. Grampaw said they used to move sawmills all the time, back when they used a steam engine. It was easier to move the mill to the next woods than to haul the logs to it. It was a lot bigger job to move one then. Now, this guy pulls it with a truck and has it set up in less than half a day."

"I know the hoghouse needs some work. What else you got in mind for the lumber?"

"If you are willing to work hard on the place, there's a lot we could do. Build a pole barn to store those round bales, maybe expand the hog operation. What do you think, Wes?"

"I'm game for it. You show me what to do, and I'll make it happen. I'll need some help on buildings. I don't know much about that."

"Just go look at the one on Les Baker's place up the road. That's what I had in mind. Take some pictures, and I'll tell you how it's done. I think there's enough big cedars to cut the poles for it, and the band mill can square 'em up and get the white wood off that rots easy. Don't need to be too tall, because we can't stack those round bales more than 2 high anyway. Lots of work cuttin' all them trees, though."

We finished planting all the seeds, then Kate and Ashley brought out the potatoes. I fetched the tractor with Joe's homemade shovel plow on the 3-point hitch. Kate had me plow four long, deep rows across the garden, and we began to drop potato sets. It was a slow job, and it was getting hot, so Joe went to the porch and sat in the shade to watch. I should have known that his mind was still working just fine, and he was busy using it.
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[patience]

CHAPTER 15

I got tired of cutting trees and trimming off limbs long before I got finished. The bandsaw mill was set up and running before I got enough cedars cut and dragged to the patch where he set up. He was busy working on sawing red and white oak for framing and poplar for roof stringers. Joe had him cut a whole mess of sticks for spacers between boards while they air-dried. He was picky about the size of them, which I thought was odd until he told me he planned to sell them for tomato stakes after we got the lumber dried.

Joe had made a list of what he wanted for the hay barn. There would also be a lot of 2 x 4's, 2 x8's and 1" thick planks we would store in the barn loft for future use. He had me cut a bunch of spare cedars, too, for making more shed posts than we needed. I figured right that he had more plans in mind.

The sawmill ran constantly for several days, and the stacks of lumber grew. The cedar was drying fast in the hot sun. Joe said that when the posts got dry in a couple weeks, he wanted me to paint the bottom 4 feet of them with used motor oil we had in a barrel. It should make them last longer.

When the sawmill man was paid and had left, we had a monster pile of sawdust and another pile of wood slabs from trimming the logs square. The slabs would become firewood, and the sawdust would be litter in the barn and henhouse, but they could stay where they were for now. I had a lot of hay to cut and bale.
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After the hay was all rolled up into big round bales, I left it in the field for now. I didn't want to move it but one time and that would be into the new barn when it was finished. I bought a power post hole auger for the tractor, for 2 reasons. One, I had no yearning to dig 4 dozen big postholes 4 feet deep for the hay barn, and two, because there was a lot of old fence that needed rebuilt, with hundreds more postholes to dig. With just me working on it, I would need all the help I could get from the tractor.

Fumbling through getting the first 12 foot tall post set for the building convinced me I needed to hire some help. With Joe's help, I got the locations marked for the other 43 posts, and the holes dug with the post hole auger. But manhandling all those posts was more than I wanted to do, so I took Joe's advice and made a trip out to the Amish community. I finally found the man who ran a conctruction crew there, a young fellow who had built a lot of pole buildings. I told him what we had, and asked him to come look it over and give me a price for finishing the building. He brought one of his men along and they concluded that the fairest way to do this was to pay them by the hour. They were short of work and could start the next day, so we shook hands on it.

A neighbor of the Amish man drove them to their jobs in his van and picked them up after work. The crew of 5 men were there at 7:00 AM the next morning, and had the posts all set and braced in 2 days. I had to hustle to get the metal siding and roofing delivered by the time they were ready for it. It took them 11 days to get the building framed and the metal put on. I was paying the men $100 each for a 9 hour day, or $500 a day for the crew. I was glad to give them the $5,500 at the end of it. They really did a job of it, and they were fast.

The sawmill man had cost us $250 a day for 6 days, and he paid his helper out of that. I thought it was cheap for the amount of lumber he made. He told me he had cut his price trying to get work, but there wasn't much to be had. So, we'd gotten a bargain. The stacks of lumber in front of the old barn were impressive for the $1,500 price. It was going to be a job to get it put away before the fall rains began, but a lot of it got used for the hay barn.

The metal roofing and siding material was running about $80 a 'square', or 100 square feet, but we had found a deal on that at a place that handled over runs and mismatched colors for half price, and they had a man who delivered for them. I bought 6200 square feet of metal, and had very little left over. The Amish guy had figured pretty close. The bill was just under $6,200 delivered, so I'd spent $13,200 on the barn and the big stack of lumber we had left. The lumber alone would have cost more than that retail.

The new hay barn was 24 feet wide, with 4 posts spaced 8 feet apart that direction. There were 11 rows of them, making 10 spaces 12 feet wide between rows. That made the hay barn 120 feet long. That is about the size of 2 average houses. It took some care, but I could get round bales stacked 2 wide, 2 bales high, and 4 rows like that, or 16 bales in each bay. If it was full it would hold 160 round bales at about 1,200 pounds each. That's a lot of hay.

We would never have enough cattle to eat that much, but we would have more next year, and part of the barn would be used for equipment. Joe's plans were flexible. If we decided to expand the cattle operation, we could max that out by buying some hay when it was cheapest, right out of the fields, and use our farm mostly for pasture. Or, we could even get into dairying again, if that looked good at some point. Presently, it did not, having too much government interference and foreign competition for the cheese market. Joe even mentioned the possibility of a big vegetable operation. That would require some big tube style greenhouses, and then the new hay building could be used for sorting, packing, and storage.
It all depended on the markets, so the key to making it in a farm operation was being ready to take advantage of the changes as they came along.

I had put $18,000 of my money in the farm so far, but we had a lot to show for it. New fences, when I got around to building them, the new hay barn, and enough lumber to fix all the other buildings on the place. There was enough slabwood for at least one winter's heating, and if we could sell the drying spacers for tomato stakes, that was gravy. I liked the way Joe thought about business, and I was learning fast.
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Things had progressed between my sister Gloria and Larry Barnes. I had seen him around town, but didn't know him until she brought him out to the farm one Sunday afternoon to pickup Dad's old shotgun. He had bought some hunting loads for it on sale at Wal Mart so she could do some practicing and learn more about how it worked. She had shot it a few times as a teenager, but didn't have much interest then. She still wasn't much interested in hunting, but wanted it for security at home. They spent the afternoon and Gloria was handling the gun safely and effectively by the time they left.

Dad had been choosy about what he bought, and got the best he could afford. The shotgun was a 12 gauge Winchester Model 12 with a full choke barrel, one of the best pump guns ever made. It showed a little wear on the bluing, but nowhere else. It had been oiled and put away in the closet after each use and was in like new condition. He never hunted that much, so I doubt if he had shot more than a couple hundred rounds in it's 60 year life. It was a little long for home defense use, but having the dog to warn her of any intruders would help.

Ashley had gone to the local gun shop and came home with the one I'd reccomended. She came home with a good used Ruger 10/22, an old Ruger .22 pistol with the heavy barrel, 6 bricks of .22 ammo, and an old Remington 870 12 gauge shotgun with the slug barrel and a big box of slugs, buckshot, and #6 shot.

For her personal rifle, she bought a Remington 700 BDL, chambered for .223 Remington, which is the same as the NATO 5.56. It was used and had a couple scratches here and there, but it was in good shape and came with a Redfield 6X scope mounted on it. She'd bought a 1,000 round case of import ammo in the deal, so we went to the back pasture and tried it out. Laying it on the hood of the truck with an old jacket for padding, I could put 5 rounds in a spot the size of a quarter at 100 paces, and the scope was pretty well dead on. Ashley did better. Her 5 shot groups were about the size of a nickel. With the wooded land in our neighborhood making for limited ranges, that meant that if she could see it, she could hit it.

That proved to be right when she saw some coyotes at the edge of our woods about dusk one evening. Two of them didn't get to the trees in time. I counted steps and got the distance at about 260 yards. The bad part was, she'd seen a bunch of dogs running with the bunch. That meant they were breeding with stray dogs, and the offspring were not afraid of people. We could have a problem if they were not controlled somehow. Coy-dogs were known to take down calves in the Spring. I decided to do some trapping next winter when they got hungry, and before our cattle started dropping calves in the Spring.

The next week she picked up a used Ruger Security Six in .357 Magnum and an old Smith and Wesson, also in .357. The gun shop had some white box .38 Special target loads pretty cheap so she bought ten boxes of those and another ten boxes of handloaded .357 ammo for about half what new stuff cost. It had 150 grain Speer hollow point bullets and was supposed to be loaded a little on the hot side. I asked if she was going to apply for a concealed carry permit and she said, "No. I bought all the guns from private owners, so none of them are papered, and I see any reason to create records of any kind. Not a good idea with your background, right?"

I thought about it and decided she was right. As usual, she had been thinking about this. She had a cardboard box full of cleaning supplies, too. I kept thinking about how lucky I was to have a wife who used her head.
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CHAPTER 16

Several loggers around the county had given up and quit because the market for hardwood was so bad. I ran into Jack Duggins in the grocery one day who said he was retiring from logging. Had all his stuff up for sale, and was going to start taking Social Security, because he'd had a downed tree roll over on him and his leg hadn't been the same since. I asked about his log trucks, and he said the one with the hydraulic loader thing on it was sold, but he had the other one still. The cab was rough, but he said the drive train was sound. It was a tandem axle 1984 GMC General with a Detroit Diesel in it, 13 speed box, 18,000 lb. front axle and 38,000 lb. rear axles.

I told him I wanted a grain hauler for the farm and would have to buy or build a box bed for it. Jack said he'd bought the truck with a box bed, and taken it off. It had been sitting for years, and was rusty, but he could put it back on for me.

I asked him, "How much money are we talking about here?"

"I'd like to get $8,000 out of it. That's a little under the market with that bed on it, but I want to get it sold. The rubber ain't too bad on it. It'd run you for a while. As far as I know the old truck is in pretty good shape. You come take a look at it and see what you think. I already sold the log bed frame, so it's a bare chassis right now. Wouldn't be that hard to set that box back on it."

I got his phone number and directions, and told him I'd be out that evening to look.

When I got there, I found he was right about the old box bed being rusty. I looked it over good and decided it would have to get cleaned up and painted, or it wouldn't last many years. That became a bargaining point, along with the less than wonderful cab. It started and ran really well, though, and idled nicely when it warmed up. He had come down to $7,500 pretty quick, so I looked it all over and drove it down the road a short ways to feel the gears, the steering and the brakes. It seemed all right, so I asked him if he could do a little better if I paid him in money?

"$7,000, and I put the box back on it. That's as far as I can go."

"You got a deal. I'll be by tomorrow night with the money."
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Back in late April or early May, the price of silver had gone up around $45 an ounce, but I had held onto mine, hoping for more. It dropped to about $40 and had stayed there all summer. I decided to sell it in case it went lower. At least I would be putting it into something to make a buck. I sold the four $250 bags I had for $26,000 back to the same coin shop where I bought it. Joe's tax accountant said I had to pay 28% tax on that for some reason, and it would add to my income tax for the year.

Anyway, I had about $18,000 left, and figured I should put a lot of it in that old truck. The front tires were nearly new, but the back ones were worn down. I took the truck to the sandblaster guy and had him take the box off to do separately. He cleaned the frame and rear axles first and shot primer on that. I took it home and painted all that with black paint and a brush. I had it up on blocks, so I took off the rear brake drums and cleaned all that out and lubed it all. I hauled the rear tires in my pickup, 4 at a time, to the tire shop for a set of recaps.

I had the sandblast man spray the box bed with primer, then 2 coats of red tractor enamel, because there was no way I could handle that bed at the farm. While he was doing that, I sanded down the cab and bought a big air compressor a spray gun we had been needing. For being my first time, it came out pretty decent, I thought.

When it all got back together, the old truck looked pretty good with a white cab, red box and black undercarriage and wheels. The recapped tires looked like new. The inside of the cab was still trashed, though, so I spent some time on that. New floor mats helped a lot, and I got by with a seat cover job done by an uphostery shop. The rest I just scrubbed until it was clean.

The retread tires cost me $1,100, the sandblast and paint work was $1,400, and I spent $800 on a compressor and painting stuff. I spent $780 on new U-joints and some exhaust repairs. Oil and filter changes ate another $90. The truck had saddle tanks on it that held over 100 gallons, so a fillup cost me $310. I hadn't bought farm tags and insurance on the truck, but I had only spent $11,500 and I had a farm truck that would haul 600 bushels of grain. A lot of people spend twice that for a car that has trouble hauling a week's groceries. I knew it would eat money, for a new batteries, coolant, air filters, and other maintenance. Trucks are expensive to own and operate. But trucks can make you money, too, and cars generally don't.

The first job for the truck would likely be hauling home some farm equipment, though. I planned to go to some auctions soon.
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We had just walked out of the new hay barn when Joe told me, "You did pretty well getting this built. The Amish crew was a good idea, and you kept the cost down. You've been through a planting and a harvest season now, and you know how the farm accounts work. You're coming right along, for a city boy!"

He had grinned when he said that, so I did too when I answered.

"Some of us city kids ain't so dumb after all, huh?"

"If I thought you were dumb, I wouldn't have let you marry that stubborn daughter of mine."

"She might have had something to say about that."

"Yeah, she's got an opinion on everything. Say, if you're going to town anytime soon, we need some...."

He stumbled and fell slowly to the ground without saying any more. His eyes were open, but he wasn't breathing that I could tell. We were just a few steps from the kitchen door, so I ran inside and yelled for Ashley to call 911. Kate heard me first and was doing it when she looked at me and said, "JOE! What happened??!!!"

"He just passed out and fell down! I don't know!"

Kate told the dispatcher her husband had a heart attack or a stroke, and to get there fast.

They did, but it wasn't any use. They told us Joe was probably dead when he hit the ground. They did all they could, but he was already gone. He was listed as DOA at the hospital, of a massive stroke.
__________________

Kate was pretty calm, I thought. Ashley cried a river, but her Mom told her softly they were lucky to have him for that long, and try to be at peace about it. I kept expecting the old lady to break down about it, but if she did, it was when she was alone. She looked as sad as anyone I had ever seen, though. She and Ashley made the arrangements at a local funeral home and we all went through the next 3 days like it was unreal. I took care of things at the farm, like I had when Joe was in the hospital.

I did my share of crying while I fed livestock, and tried to comfort the dog. She was looking for Joe to come home, staring out the driveway. When Ashley and Kate came home at night, the dog kept looking and sniffing around the car for Joe. Me and Pat did some of our grieving together. I think that helped me and the dog get a lot closer, although she would always see Kate as her master.

I tried to comfort Ashley as best I could, but I had learned that people have to do their grieving, and you best let them do it their own way. She did spend some time crying on my shoulder, and it seemed like that was the best I could do for her.

Both women had a pretty stiff upper lip for the next month, but their grief began to get sidetracked by the garden harvest. Close on the heels of that was corn harvest coming soon with cooler weather. I spent some time chainsawing the slabwood into firewood lengths and stacking it in the woodshed. "Chop wood and carry water", was the advice of some old people for when you're really out of sorts for any reason. It works. Simple jobs give you time to work through things in your mind, and it keeps you from doing something silly, like drinking or eating too much. The exercise calmed me down, and gave me time to let it soak in that I had responsibility for the farm now, and didn't have Joe to show me the way. Inside, I was still a mess. I had no clue how to manage a farm, as in when to expand the cattle her or not, how to know when and what price to "hedge" our corn crop by selling a commodity contract, or whether we should get into raising broiler chickens, or a dairy operation. I had seen Joe make such decisions, but I had no confidence in having to make them myself. I was scared spitless about all that, and I had just lost a really good friend.

Kate and Ashley changed my thinking about that real fast. They had ideas about what to do, and even though I felt like they were bossing me around some, it helped me sort things out, so I didn't fuss about it. I wanted all the help I could get.
___________________

[patience]

CHAPTER 17

I would have depended on Joe as long as he would have let me, I suppose. As it was, I felt like I'd been dropped in cold water about running the farm, and into the deep end, too. Kate was supportive of me, and let me pretty much do what I thought was right. I said something about that to her, and she told me that Joe had pretty much been letting me run the place anyway, so not to worry so much. I worried anyway, but it was nice of her to say that.

It seemed like Ashley wanted a bigger say in how things were done now, and I was really glad of it. She knew the place like her own skin, and noticed things I overlooked, like the gates that wanted attention, and a cow that didn't look just right and might need a vet to look at her. We began to spend more time together on the place because her hours had been cut back at the grocery. It cut our income a little, but I needed her at home. The corn was getting dry early this year, so in a couple weeks it would be time to get the combine out there and turn some of that standing corn into money.

Ashley said she'd rather learn to run the combine than try to drive that big truck, so I started getting her acquainted with it. She was thin enough to get in some places to grease things that were hard for me, so that was a good place to start her education. That's how Joe had taught me about the machine, describing the function of each part everytime we greased it. Then I got to climb all over the thing and replace bearings and other parts. Ashley didn't mind the maintenance, so we went over the machine in detail, and what could go wrong in operation.

"We shouldn't have much trouble this year, because it is so dry. That will keep the fodder flowing through the head and the ear will shell easier. With any luck, you shouldn't get it stopped up like we did last year."

She asked me, "What do you mean by stopped up?"

"The threshing cylinder can get packed up with green fodder and cobs and corn shucks, then it stalls the machine. You have to kick it out of gear, or risk burning up a belt or breaking something. I'll ride with you a while to show you what that sounds like when it is getting overloaded, then you back off the ground speed a little to give it time to digest what's in it."

"Okay, I've heard it do that, I think. If it got clogged up, Dad got mad because he'd have to dig stuff out of it. Is that what you mean?"

"Yep, that's it. If there's a lot of green weeds in the field, that can clog it up, too, but the corn is pretty clean this year, and that will help. It should run good."

"I never wanted to drive this thing because it is so HUGE! I was afraid I would run into something and wreck it."

"It's pretty controllable, and you don't go any faster than a fast walk, anyway, so you have time to watch where you're going. You can drive it around the yard here where there's lots of room, and get the feel of it. Then, I'll run the outer rows and get some room opened up for you. I figured we would load the truck first, so I can have the fields opened up good for you and have some room to maneuver out there."

"Yeah, I saw Dad doing that. Once some of the corn is picked, you have a lot of room to drive around."

"I'll get it out of the building and you can get acquainted with the gears out where there is lots of room, and the internal stuff won't be running, so the noise won't be driving you nuts while you learn. The cab is up high, so you can see around it really well, except in the back. You just gotta learn to estimate how big the butt end of this thing is. I'll start you in low gear, so it will go really slow while you get used to it. It's different about steering, because it steers in the BACK end!"

"I can back up a wagon, so I'm not scared of that. I can do this."

The combine was an old 4 row Allis Chalmers Gleaner and only held about 80 bushels in the bin, so Ashley would have to dump her bin often. Kate was going to drive the tractor like she had for years, hauling gravity wagons of grain to the grain bins by the barn. If we all worked at it, we could probably move the grain fast enough to keep Ashley going in the combine. We had 3 gravity wagons to rotate from the field to the grain bins, and each wagon held about 200 bushels. It was a full time job getting the shelled corn from the field to the bins, then dumping them in the elevator to the bins, then back to the field before the other wagons were full again.

Joe had contracted 5,000 bushels of corn to the local farm Co-op, so we had that contract to fill first. I kept the truck on the road for a few days, until I'd gotten 10 loads of 600 bushels each delivered as Ashley got it harvested with the combine. Most days, she had plenty of time to grease the combine in the middle of the day, take a long lunch, and still keep her Mom busy loading the gravity wagons while I made a run to the elevator. I'd get back in time to get another load on the truck before the evening humidity made the stalks too tough to run good. That way, I could leave early in the morning for town and get the trip done. Otherwise, I was helping here and there unloading wagons into the farm grain bins, checking over equipment everywhere, and keeping fuel hauled to Ashley in the field.

We stayed busy for a couple weeks, but at the end of it, we had sold 5,000 bushels of corn for the contract price of $4.06 a bushel, and another 1,000 bushels for $5.85. I was told this had almost never happened, to have the harvest time price so much higher than what futures prices had been the past Spring. I talked to a few people and they said it was a good thing, because everything else was going up, too.

This put $29,000 in the farm account, so we had a good start on income this year. The cattle that Joe had sold earlier, 22 head of feeder calves, amounted to $13,400, so the farm did okay for the year. $42,400 may sound like a lot of money, but the farm expenses came out of that. That had to support all 3 of us, plus pay upkeep on a tractor, a combine, a big truck, and a lot of implements and buildings. Yes, Ashley's job provided our spending money, and I made some on the side doing some welding and wrench work, but it wasn't all that much, and prices were getting higher on everything.

Farming does have some fringe benefits, but it isn't free insurance or retirement money. You get to work like a dog for the "benefits", such as a garden, raising livestock and hunting wildlife for meat, and cutting firewood for heat. Mostly, what those things do is cut expenses. When your income is limited, you need to work pretty hard at cutting expenses. It's no wonder that most farmers are a tight as a wart on a pickle. I did have some money in savings from the sale of Mom and Dad's house, so I needed to invest that as smart as I could to produce an income later on. I was still thinking about that, and it had my brain in a knot.


____________________

Things were busy at the nursing home for different reasons. Gloria learned that the owners had given the staff a directive to cut their expenses by 15%, across the board. It meant lesser quality food, less heat this winter, less frequent laundry of bed linens to save on utilities, no outside cleaning crew, and one of their 6 employees was laid off. The rest had to take up the slack, so care suffered while the remaining staff was overworked. The couple that owned the place were doing all they could personally to make it happen. They were there in the morning when the day shift came in, and they were there at night well into the second shift.

Gloria was really glad to see Larry Barnes when he was free to come by and feed his mother, for more than one reason. They spent some time together away from the nursing home, but it was limited by their jobs. The ready-mix plant was still somewhat busy, but like the nursing home, they had laid off 2 drivers to cut expenses. So, Larry and the other 3 remaining drivers were running 10 to 12 hours a day to keep up. It was cheaper for the company to pay them some overtime than to pay an extra man with his benefits cost.

When he had to work late, he still stopped at the nursing home to see his mother, but mostly to see Gloria. Mrs. Barnes' Alzheimer's had progressed enough that she seldom knew Larry now. He had done his grieving for this as it happened, and was resigned to her really not being there anymore. He helped give her meds, and turn her in the bed, and helped her to the bathroom before he left for the night, since her stroke had left her partially paralyzed.

The days when Larry got off work in time to be there early made up for it, because he could leave with Gloria at the end of her shift. They often went to her apartment for the evening meal, and sometimes talked into the evening. Gloria had been to Larry's place out north of town about 5 miles and she liked it. He lived at his parents' place, 40 acres of wooded hillsides and bottom land that allowed him to keep a few beef calves on pasture in the summer. His day job kept him from doing any more than that, and there wasn't enough tillable land to do much farming.

Larry's home was old and small, a 1930's era bungalow with one bedroom downstairs and a couple small ones upstairs. He kept the place neat and clean, but it looked old fashioned so he had been reluctant to take Gloria to see it. Larry was well aware of how Gloria had lived before her divorce. It was a small town, and word got around.

She surprised him when he finally took her out to see the place that October. The leaves were just beginning to turn their bright Fall colors, the pasture was still green with 5 fat beef calves in it, and the weather was a perfect Indian Summer day.

"I love it! It's so pretty out here!"

Larry said, "It's not so pretty in winter, when the leaves are gone and the roads get bad with snow and ice."

"It's like that everywhere in winter. And it's quiet. No traffic noise, no smelly trucks. OH! I want to look at that garden. "

She walked off behind the house to inspect it with him following.

"It's got some weeds now, but I'll clean it up after I get the last of the cabbage out to make sauerkraut and pick those dry beans. It's time to do that, but I've been busy. Now that work has slowed down some I'll get the tractor and disc in there and clean it up. I want to sow it in wheat next week for a cover crop this winter."

"Let's do it now! I know how to make kraut, and we can just pull the bean vines up and pick all of them. You have a bucket or a basket to put them in?"

They spent the morning in the garden and had a simple lunch of sandwiches and fresh coleslaw she made. They shredded cabbage into crocks after lunch, adding salt to each layer, then covering the filled crock with wilted cabbage leaves and a towel. It would take a few days to ferment.

"I'll come back and help you can the kraut when it's ready. I always enjoyed canning. Do you have a pressure canner?"

"Yeah, Mom had one. I've used it a lot and it's fine, but I need to get a new gasket for it. It leaked some when I did the sweet corn. I'll pick up one next week."

They sat in the yard relaxing when the work was finished, enjoying the sunset.

"I would have never thought you'd take to country life," Larry told her, as he began to have a glimmer of hope.

"We grew up at the edge of town and we always had a garden. I liked animals, but all we ever had was cats and a dog and a few chickens when I was little. I thought it would be nice to have a big farm with room for a pony and some cows. I liked to watch the farmer behind our lot when he plowed and planted, and later when harvest time came. That was all a man's world, but I thought I could do those things, too."

Gloria sat with a yellow farm cat near her chair, getting its' ears scratched. Larry's bird dog got jealous and came by for his share of attention. Larry thought it might be more than she wanted, so he called the dog away from her.

"Oh he's all right. I like dogs, and hunting dogs are really sweet," she told him. "Sandy is a retriever, you know. She doesn't know anything about hunting, though. Do you think you could teach her? She's only a little past 2 years old."

"Hmm, it's late to start, but she listens to you really well. You could try with Butch around and we'll see how it goes. You want to try for ducks this year? We have some wood ducks that land on our pond every year."

"Yeah! That would be great! We might even get Sandy to go fetch them out of the pond!"

Larry took her home later that evening and drove back with a smile on his face.
__________________



CHAPTER 18

Inflation sneaks up on you. There are lots of prices that go up when you aren't looking. You don't buy some things very often, like tires, a refrigerator, or new underwear. Then when you go to get something of that kind, the price about knocks you over.

Ashley's car needed the alternator replaced, so I took the old one off and took it in to exchange for a rebuilt one. The last one I had bought for my previous truck cost me less than 30 bucks, so I had that in mind. This one was almost $100! I didn't have that much money on me so I wrote them a check and hustled on back home to get it installed.


I kept thinking about how much it cost the rest of the day, wondering what else had gone up in price lately. Farming had been keeping me busy all summer, so I hadn't spent much time on the internet. I logged on to my favorite homesteading forum that night and found everybody complaining about the high cost of everything, especially food. I never paid any attention to food prices because we raised almost everything. Ashley got a small discount at the grocery where she worked and she bought most of what we needed there, so I never did much grocery shopping.

I logged off and asked her, "Have you noticed grocery proces going up lately?"

She gave me a look like I was an alien life form and said, "Oh yeah! Pretty steadily for the past year, in fact. I guess you haven't been paying attention."

"Well, no, I haven't, but that alternator cost me over $96 today, and the last one was a third that much, just over a year ago. That got my attention. I was just reading on a forum and everybody is griping about food prices. I wonder what else has gone up when I wasn't looking."

"Pretty much everything I've seen is going up. Not 3 times the price, but a lot of stuff is near double what it was a not that long ago. Have you talked to the fertilizer guy lately? I bet we are in for a shock there."

"No, and I need to see what is going on now. I better check on some other things, too, like contracting diesel fuel for next year and filling our LP tanks for cooking."

We left it at that, and I got to thinking about what it would cost to put out next year's crops. Then there were the maintenance things. Motor oil was bound to have gone up even with the hefty quantity discount I normally got buying it by the 55 gallon barrel. We used a lot of oil, with a big tractor, the combine, my pickup, the grain truck, and Ashley's and Kate's cars. A couple of the grain wagons had some bad tires on them and the combine was due for major servicing now that the corn was in. This was going to add up. After thinking it over the next morning, I mentioned my concerns at lunch.

Kate said, "I've been thinking about this, too. At the rate things are going up, we need to work on our farm expenses, and everything we spend, I guess. I don't want to spend too much now and have to borrow money to put crops in next Spring. Me and Joe scrimped for years to get to where we had the money saved ahead for planting, and I don't want to have to do that ever again. The interest eats you up"

I put my oar in the water then. "I have some money left from the sale of my parents' house and I've been wondering how I should best invest it. It looks to me like I should buy some stuff ahead of time, so if prices are going to keep going up. The longer it stays in the banks, the less buy. And what I read on the forum last night said that the Federal Reserve has been creating money out of thin air and giving it to banks, and they speculate on commodities with it and make prices go up. So this might go on for a while. I'll look around the farm and start making a list."

Ashley said, "I'll make a list of things I buy regularly and we can stock up on those things, too. Like some things I buy at the store and what we normally buy at Wal Mart and the pharmacy. Things like those mega vitamins Mom takes have gone way the heck up. Household supplies, and whatever."

Kate said, "We won't ever need any dishes or kitchen things. I inherited my Mother's things and they are still all packed away in the attic. There is a lot of stuff up there, so better let me see your lists before you go spending money on anything."

We both agreed to that. I finished eating and headed back out to work as the women cleaned up the table.


After going through the numbers, we decided to try open pollinated seed corn next year, because we could save the seed from year to year, and not have to pay outrageous amounts for hybrid seed. It took a while to find it, but I got 500 pounds of seed ordered. The small fields of wheat and oats we grew were already standard open pollinated varieties so saving the seed from them was standard procedure for us. The smaller grain bins already were filled with this year's crops of those. It was fertilizer that worried me, because it doesn't store very well, is corrosive as the very devil, and the nitrogen component tends to degrade pretty fast if not stored in very good conditions. I decided that the best way to store fertilizer was to put it on the ground NOW and plant a cover crop to hold onto it. The bulk dealers were all out of stock, but I found several tons of bagged fertilizer available about 50 miles from us and planned the trip to pick it up. It cost more per ton, but not nearly what I had heard the price was estimated to be next Spring.
_______________

Gloria came out one day to help can the last of our garden. There's a lot of time to talk when you are snapping breen beans. She told about the old man at the nursing home who convinced her to take her money out the bank. I asked what she planned to do with it?
"Larry Barnes and I are getting married, and we are buying some livestock for the place, and then...."
Kate interrupted, saying, "You ARE? Well, you'd have to look hard to find a better fellow. I like him a lot. Now you have to tell us how we can help with the wedding!"

Ashley had seen this coming for a long time, buut she enthused with her Mom about the prospect of a wedding. That kept the women busy talking all afternoon. I sat there snapping beans and thinking I heeded to know more about what was happening to banks. I read on the internet late that night and went to bed thinking that I had better do something with our remaining $25,000 or so that we had spread around 4 different banks.

The next day Ashley and I talked about this and got Kate involved, too. I said I wanted to use the money to make the farm as financially sound as we could. Kate said, "We could pay the taxes for next year. They will take payment ahead of time. We've done that before when our crop money came in."

Ashley said, "I like Gloria's idea of livestock. We have a lot of feed on hand, and that would pay off."

I agreed. The farm could produce more than what we had been doing, but it would be more work for all of us.

Kate said she would like to have a real dairy cow, and make cheese. We made a list and got busy on it that day. Things happened pretty fast, and we had to work out a new chore routine because within a month we had chickens in one corner of the barn, a beautiful Jersey cow that needed milked, a dozen brood sows and a boar hog to house and feed. It took some hurried work on pens and stalls, but we got them all housed. I bought a really good hammermill at the consignment auction, a couple tons of feed supplements, salt and minerals. I traded off the tractor for a younger one with low hours on it. It was the same model as the old John Deere, so all the equipment and maintenance supplies worked for it.

It was just after Thanksgiving Day before we filled Ashley's and her Mom's lists and I got the farm supplies in place. Fuel tanks were topped off, I had fertilizer spread on all the cropland and what pasture and hay ground needed it, and the pantry was full. The shop still had stacks of boxes that wanted new shelves for them, but at least it was bought and paid for, and on hand for use. We had almost $4,000 left that I took out in cash, leaving only a nominal amount in one bank and the other accounts closed out. It wasn't much money to have on hand for a working farm, but we had enough on hand now to run the farm for at least 2 years, maybe more if we stretched things, and we could always sell grain or livestock if we needed ready money.

All that made us feel a lot better, but every time we read the news online we all wondered how long things would stay together.

_______________

[patience]

CHAPTER 19


We didn't have long to wait to find out. Kate answered the phone one cold day as I came in for lunch. She said, "What? No, I don't know of anything we need from town. Why is the store closing early?"
Pause.
"Won't they get the computer fixed pretty soon?"
Pause.
"Why are the banks closed?"

My ears perked up and I was full of questions by the time Kate handed me the phone, saying, "It's Ashley, and she says all the banks are shut down!"

I picked up the phone and asked, "What's this all about?"
She said, "All I got was a news report on the radio at the store that was talking about China dumping US Treasury bonds, and that caused a panic in the banks. The President shut all the banks down to stop a panic. Credit cards don't work so most businesses are closing for the day, or just taking cash. A customer said the ATM at our bank doesn't work, either. I needed some gas, but the only station that is open is Cowboy's and they have jacked up the price to $10 a gallon and cash only!"

"You'd better come straight on home. This sounds bad. Where are you?"

"I'm at Cowboy's station on Highway 60. There are some people getting pretty mad inside, it sounds like, so I'm outa here."

"Stay on the phone until you are out of town at least, okay?"

"Yeah. I'm on my way home now. Lots of traffic headed for town it looks like."

I stayed on the phone with her until she was close to home. In a few minutes I saw her turn into the farm lane and breathed a sigh of relief. I told Kate she was home and we both went outside to meet her.

Kate got on the computer and pulled up the Zerohedge website. Just the headlines told enough of the story to get the idea.
"CHINA DUMPS US TREASURIES--DOLLAR PLUMETTING"
"GOLD, SILVER AT ALL TIME HIGHS"
"US MARKETS CLOSED, BANK HOLIDAY DECLARED UNTIL PANIC SUBSIDES"
"COMEX CLOSED"
"LONDON MARKETS CLOSED AMID PANIC IN EUROPE"
"BERNANKE CALLS EMERGENCY MEETING OF THE G20"
"US CURRENCY SWAP LINES ABORTED BY ECB"
"BERNANKE VOWS TO SUPPORT US BANKS"

We all read this news without comment, then sat down to think. Kate was the first to speak.
"I think we had all better stay home until we know what is going on out there. From what Ashley said, people are pretty upset by all this, and I don't want to be any part of that."

Ashley said, "I've never seen people behave like that! I'm not going anywhere until I know things have calmed down."

I nodded and said, "That's what I think, too. I need to call Gloria and make sure she is okay, though."

Gloria answered her cell phone, but the connection wasn't the best.
"This is Wes. Are you okay?"

"Yes, I'm fine. I moved in with Larry and gave up the apartment. He came home from work and said things are crazy in town, so I called into work and they said they need me. Larry said he would go with me to make sure I'm okay. He's going to try the grocery while I'm at work and will pick me up later."

"Okay. If you need anything, let me know, all right? This could last a while."

"Yes, but we 're fine."

"Okay. See ya Sis. Love ya."

"Love you too. Bye."

Then the lights went out in the house and Wes said, "I wonder what caused that?"

It was Monday, December 5th, 2011.

_________________________

End of Part One

[Lake Lili]

Looking forward to more!

[Dosadi]

Nice, I have read all of your stories, and find them interesting. Esp. if one is thinking of farming as a option during SHTF.

Lots of the money management for farms even applies in this slow slide into tyranny we are experiencing.

Thank you

D.

[Mr Bill]

Well done again. Thanks

[223shootersc]

thanks, need moar