|
Post by rep1270 on Jan 12, 2022 10:13:49 GMT -6
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on Jan 26, 2022 21:56:40 GMT -6
It didn't resolve on its own. There is a thread on corkboard over at TB, topic 'prayer request'. If there's not enough TB overlap here, I'll port my updates over here.
Thumbnail is, last Friday, my wife was having trouble catching her breath. Finally got her to agree to whistling up an ambulance for her. On the road to town, she stopped breathing and was intubated and bagged and put on a vent when she got to the ER. Pleural effusion--buildup of fluid between lung itself and the rib cage, in the sac the lung rides in-- on one side and considerable congestion within the other lung.
A chest tube and several harrowing scares later and she's had a tracheostomy and almost a bronchioscopy which I think was only avoided by copious voices lifted in prayer on her behalf, and today when they did the tracheostomy it was almost-immediate improvement in her breathing. They're weaning the vent very slowly overnight and tomorrow morning, the ICU doc is pretty certain they can do a trial run without vent.
They have a new, or at least I've never heard of it, system here in the ICU. They have in week-long rotation either a cardiologist, a pulmonologist, or a general surgeon who 'camps out' in the ICU for a week straight. They've turned the conference room into what looks like an efficiency apartment for the doc, and he is on site 24/7 for a week and hands off to the next one. VERY accessible and the two Denise has been cared for by, both have been top-notch. If I ever wind up in a hospital, I hope it's this one. They're wonderful.
I'm off to the sack. I promise, I will pick back up on Bo and Sandie's adventures as soon as the air mover is backed away from the fecal matter!
|
|
|
Post by gipsy on Jan 26, 2022 22:26:08 GMT -6
Take your time we will be here waiting
|
|
|
Post by cavsgt on Jan 26, 2022 22:59:59 GMT -6
Thoughts and prayers Denise will be fine with all of the love and caring coming her way from all of us.
Phill
|
|
|
Post by 9idrr on Jan 27, 2022 19:12:25 GMT -6
We understand where your priorities lie.
|
|
|
Post by texican on Jan 27, 2022 22:32:07 GMT -6
rg,
prayers sent for your DW.
Texican....
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 11, 2022 21:23:48 GMT -6
EIGHT
J.B. looked down at his speedometer: 90 miles an hour. He hated running this fast, but he didn’t have enough knowledge to make a decision whether he was needed there RFN or ASAP. At least traffic was nonexistent on the unstriped fourteen foot wide strip of pavement that passed for a county road in this county. Oncoming traffic would require him to cut his speed by half or more. At least it’s all flat farmland and not brush, he thought, so I can see cross traffic long before the unmarked intersections.
Watching the red lights reflecting off of the back of oncoming traffic’s signs, he was running a number of scenarios through his head. The dispatcher had not only been vague but was fairly worked up, but then of course she was new and any phone call coming in that included the words ‘they’re shooting at us’ was likely to get a newbie pretty close to in orbit.
He remembered his own first ‘shots fired’ call, almost twenty years ago, when a ninety five year old geezer decided that he’d had enough of the noise from the redwing blackbirds in his trees. Now, while that’s not so bad in and of itself, what made it worse was that the old man wasn’t shooting a shotgun at the birds, he had picked up his old .30-30—and was shooting at them from his upstairs window! This did not go well with his neighbors. When J.B. got there, things were settled down. The blackbirds had been scared off, and the old goat was perched in his rocking chair, cleaning his gun. No harm no foul, as they say. J.B. gently suggested to the man that he might go outside next time and shoot UP instead of DOWN at the birds, so as to not scare his neighbors. And maybe pick up a shotgun instead of a deer rifle, too.
Man, those were a lot easier times to deal with, he thought. Today, there’d be a SWAT team there and some sort of standoff, probably getting the old man killed or seriously hurt. So unnecessary, almost every single one of those SWAT style takedowns.
Slowing, as he reached the edge of town, he hit his siren just a tap and ran through the first of three red lights on the way to the grocery store where the action was supposed to be taking place. As he sped back up a bit, the phone in his pocket chirped at him.
“Hello?..... Hey Junior, where you at?...... Okay, good. I’m in Robstown…..No, not quite there yet, another block. What’s it look like there?.... Oh? That’s good news…. Yeah, let’s hope this one turns out to be rocks instead of shots too. Listen, I’m almost there. I’ll call you when I find out what’s going on here. Just hang loose there, be visible but not too visible, know what I mean? You stay inside, but leave your car parked in front of the store with the 4 ways on…no, not the bubblegum, the 4 ways, that’ll draw attention without working people up…. Okay, call me if you need to.”
J.B. didn’t care for the semi-supervisory role that he had assumed, or rather that had assumed him, having the seniority and much more experience over the other deputies out ‘in the country’ as the chief deputy called it, but would much rather be the go-to man in the area than have some city boy from Corpus out patrolling and harassing farmers and so forth. It was unwritten policy that anything happening west of town that was unusual got directed to J.B., when he was on duty—and sometimes when he was not.
*****
Crouching behind a dumpster across the street from the store, two teenage boys discussed what was unfolding in front of them.
“Ma said she couldn’t get no food earlier and it’s all on account of they won’t take her Lone Star card. Pinche gringos, they’ll take cash but they won’t let US buy food!” complained the younger one.
“Dog, no s***, dude. Lookey, what I’m sayin’ earlier: they ain’t got nobody on the door. Le’s go get some. We can be in and outta there ‘fore they even see us. Or are you chicken?” he taunted his little brother. Seeing the younger boy hesitate, he continued, “You know what Ma's boyfrien' say, the only way to get ahead is to get lucky. We gotta go make our own luck. You don’t wanna take nothin’, fine, just go in there, and get their attention, y'know, extract 'em, like, while I do a man’s job.”
The two boys’ education had all come from the government school, and they both had been taught that anyone who had more than they did should share, after all it’s the only way that those who don’t have anything can get anywhere in life. Of course, their parents—or parent, more than likely—was as ill-equipped as were the boys in terms of morality and being able to tell right from wrong, instead relying on whether something felt good instead of whether it was the right thing to do.
Grandparents? Sure, they had them, but the boys had slid from the previous generation’s marginal humanity to utter uselessness on the back of hearing their mom mutter things like “what do those old farts know? I’ll do what I please” as soon as the grandparents were out of earshot, and sometimes even within their hearing.
The boys heard these comments, and when they asked Mom about the things she said that did not sound right, their mother would continue her rant against her own parents (because she had never had limits set on her and did not know when or even how to self-impose limits) and explain that her folks were old fashioned and just didn’t understand that things are different now. By and by, the boys learned that they had nothing to fear from their mother, and there were no consequences for any of their actions, other than a vague threat of punishment, which generally consisted of being sent to their room and ignored, which they discovered meant a beeline from the door to the window and out for a night on the town, for which they’d be sent to their room. And so on.
The mom was determined to be a good modern parent as she had seen on the primetime TV shows—not The Jeffersons or All In the Family, that was old fashioned stuff that her folks liked, more like the funny shows like Married With Children—and not impose her values on her children, not limit their freedom to do what they wanted. Besides, it was just too much work to follow the boys around and check up on them, and on top of that she was determined not to be as mean as her parents were. After all, they’re good boys. Sure, they might test her every now and then, but she would send them to their room, and besides, that gave her some peace and quiet. And no, they never did nuthin' wrong.
The grandparents did as usual, admonishing their now-grown children and now the grandsons to do the right thing all the while condoning the mistakes and poorly thought out decisions of their kids, never letting the kids who now had kids of their own learn of the consequences of poor decisions.
That would someday real soon come full circle with this generation, in this particular family, with these two boys who had gotten up from behind the dumpster and headed toward the store with no plan other than to 'get something.'
*****
As J.B. pulled up to the front door of the supermarket, he got out to a mob of people who were demanding he do something.
“They won’t let me have no food!”
“My card don’t work and they won’t give me nothing!”
From another: “You gotta make ‘em give us something—they got all that stuff in there, but I don’t have nothing on my fritcherater to feed my family!”
From yet another direction: “It’s not FAIR!”
J.B. put his hands up in the air, palms out, in a gesture for silence. When the crowd had settled down enough to hear him, he said, “Listen to me, everbody! It’s NOT the grocery store’s fault! The whole Lone Star network is down, it’s not just here in town. We’re all gonna have to just wait it out and maybe it’ll be back up tomorrow. Now, who all here has nothing, and I mean NOTHING, at home to eat?”
About a half a dozen hands went up.
“All right, the rest of you are here are okay ‘til sometime tomorrow, right?” Heads nodded here and there, a few mumbles of “I guess so…”
“Okay, then, it’s not the end of the world if you can’t get a few odds and ends.” After waiting a few minutes for those somewhat pacified people to leave, J.B. addressed the remaining few.
"Now, those of you who haven’t got anything at home, who all has a home phone?” Silence. “Cell phone?” All the hungry heads nodded vigorously, some holding up their hands, showing the latest I-phones, doubtlessly leased or on some sort of rent-to-own scheme.
J.B. turned as if to sneeze, covering his mouth with his hand, in reality stifling a grin of expectation and biting his tongue to keep from saying what was really on his mind, resisting the urge to ask next how many of them had 24 inch spinners on their cars. Shortly, he recomposed himself and turned back to the crowd as he pulled out a little spiral notebook from his pocket and flipped through the pages.
*****
Inside the store, the two boys watched from the baby and hygeine aisle through the front doors at the scene unfolding outside. Hearing through the open doors the deputy’s ongoing instructions of where to find food, the boys’ attention turned to other things in the store that were a lot more useful to them than food, their attention drawn by those who were still in the checkout lines pulling out real live cash with which they paid for their purchases. A plan began to form and the two discussed it, changing their focus from food to the stacks and stacks of twenties they imagined were crammed into each cash register.
*****
“Now, listen up, those of you who honestly do not have food for dinner tonight, take down this phone number. It’s to the Loaves and Fishes hunger line. They’ve likely got something set up somewhere in town where you can go and get the stuff to make a hot meal or three. Now, just one thing to think about: Don’t let yourself get to this point at home again. Sometimes things happen that we can’t control, so we have to be ready for them.”
Some of the crowd nodded their agreement at the words of advice, while others grumbled to nobody in particular that this whole mess had BETTER be cleared up by morning. J.B. did not like the mood of the slowly-dispersing crowd one bit.
Heading into the store to find the manager, a couple of teenage boys caught the veteran lawman’s eye, which had zoomed in on the baggy pants and sideways caps. Kids like this don’t come into a grocery store, he thought. This could be trouble. He kept watching and eventually he made eye contact with the shorter of the two, who elbowed his associate and whispered something excitedly. Sixth sense in overdrive, J.B. stopped and turned to face the boys, just watching them as they stole glances at him while trying to ‘be cool’ and examine the contents of the shelf in front of them, not even noticing that they were standing in front of the ladies’ products, while continuing to whisper nervously to each other.
“I don’t like the way that pig’s looking at us, bro,” muttered the younger one under his breath, picking up a box from the shelf in front of him with shaking hands and pretending to read it before putting it back and looking at another. “He’s just looking at us like he’s fixing to laugh, or something. Just keep acting like we’re shopping, dog. He’s creepin’ me out.”
“Dog, let’s just leave it for later. You right, we gonna be smart about this and come back later. C’mon, we’re outta here.” The boy turned toward the door, not even looking back at his little brother, his heart pounding in his ears until he was through the door and out in the parking lot, where he took off at a sprint for the railroad tracks and the safety of his side of town, hearing his little brother’s pounding feet right behind him.
“You saw ‘em too, huh?” the manager of the store asked as he came up behind J.B., chuckling. “I was in the office and happened to look up as the security camera panned ‘em. Wonder which one of ‘em was needing what they were looking at?”
“You got me, Jeff,” grinned J.B., relieved that two potential fires had been put out with good old common sense and tact. “Way that shorter one looked when he noticed me watching, he shoulda been looking at diapers, 'cause I'm not so sure he didn't have a great personal need of one right about when I walked in.”
The two men had a chuckle at the kid's expense, then got down to business. “J.B., if what corporate’s telling me is for real, we’re ALL gonna be needing a diaper before too long.” Jeff paused and took a deep breath. “We’re not supposed to say anything, but I don’t suppose it’ll hurt to tell you and besides, you probably already know it being as you’re law enforcement, but they’re saying that there is not a problem with the link cards or with Visa or anything like that. Something about the banks. Not sure but I’ll tell you what I think. I think the upshot is that there’s no money to back up these electronic transactions, and somebody let THAT cat out of the bag, and all the news networks are scrambling to confirm it. I saw it on Drudge, but no confirmation from anywhere else except NewsMax, and they’re as apt as Drudge to run something without backup.
“Now, just in case they can confirm it over the weekend they, whoever “they” is, decided to prevent hyperinflation and a general banking panic and blah blah and so on, the Fed has shut down the electronic system for the weekend. This keeps anyone from accessing their account and keeps everybody in the dark for a few days, and if this all blows over without the story breaking, they can blame a bug or Kim Jong Il or Putin or whatever they like.”
J.B. gazed at Jeff, “Hmm, that puts it all into place. I only know what I’ve seen, there’s been no official word from anywhere yet. But I will tell you that it does jive with the shift order I got to refuel at the county barn and not at Valero. Guess if the whole net is down we couldn’t very well use our county charge cards.” J.B. went on to relate Bo’s story about the bank branch in the Alice Wal-Mart closing early, which snapped Jeff’s head around to stare.
“No joke? So THAT’s why they didn’t answer when I called up to Cottonpicker State Bank about a starter check one of our old customers wanted to write!”
The insistent trilling of J.B.’s ringtone on his cell phone broke the conversation there. Recognizing the number and frowning, he looked up at Jeff. “Hey, I gotta get this—holler if you need anything, I probably have to run down to Bishop right quick. Later, Jeff.” As J.B. turned and hit send to answer, Jeff waved good bye at the departing deputy talking excitedly into his cell phone, and startled to see the man burst into a sprint and, after a Luke Duke slide over the hood of his car, burn rubber out of the parking lot with lights and siren on.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 11, 2022 21:34:07 GMT -6
NINE
“It’s flaring up in town,” Bo told Sandie as he came through the back screen door. “J.B. got a call on his cell phone while I was visiting with him down by Lenny’s corner. Seems there’s some shooting going on at grocery stores. Either it's people who can’t get their electronic money to work, or just someone taking advantage of the situation.”
Sandie shook her head and frowned. “Never ceases to amaze me how people can refuse to use their brains. What’s the point of shooting up a grocery store? For crying out loud, they shut down the store, then what’s everyone gonna do?”
“Dunno, hon. Guess they don’t think ahead that far. Of course, if they thought that far ahead they wouldn’t be in a situation where there’s nothing to eat in their house and no way to get it. Even someone who’s broke isn’t gonna go hungry, with all the charity organizations out there. It’s not shame, like it used to be. Ya know, when people are ashamed of going and asking for help. These people are the ones who are shameless when it comes to demanding that they be given Section 8 housing, be given food stamps, be given free doctor visits, be given a new street by in front of their home, be given a new park for them to take their preschoolers to for a month until their older kids trash it all and graffiti it all up and hang out smoking crack, and then they demand that somebody ‘do something’ about all these dopers who are their own worthless kids!” Bo had himself worked up into a pretty good rant by now, but realized he was preaching to the choir so to speak, and calmed down. “Sorry, babe, I just get to thinking about how these worthless wastes of oxygen can sit there and howl ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme 'cause you OWE me’ and some equally worthless politician will come along and promise them that you and I, and everyone else who is responsible with their lives and raises their kids right, are gonna pay for THEM to sit around on their butts and watch Oprah and Ellen all day. That’s not their job, and it’s damn sure not my job to support some other family or two that can’t be bothered to get off their butts and shift for themselves.
“There I go”, grinned Bo, as Sandie nodded at him. He continued, “I worked my self up yet again while I was trying to apologize for getting worked up the first time.”
Sandie looked at him pointedly. “Bo, look, I do not mind at all when you get angry about this sort of thing. It ticks me off too. Look, I’m as upset as you are about it. I get sick of people presuming I’m on that side just because they see this chair. They think I’m right smack in the middle of the Obama crowd, and some have had the nerve to tell me that if I’m not, I’m a hypocrite. Sure I have Medicare. That’s my only option with the current system. I do not need health insurance any more than you do. BUT, and it’s a big but, with them, Medicare, paying what they do pay for wheelchairs and catheters and stuff I need, and the regulations that prohibit a Medicare vendor, someone who sells things and bills Medicare, from giving a cash discount, what else can I do? They’ve priced all this stuff out of our reach!” She gestured down at her chair. “This damn chair, for instance. Well, not this one, you traded for it, but the one before it. I asked the salesman... saleslady... how much they wanted, retail, for the chair." She looked at Bo. “Eight thousand dollars! EIGHT THOUSAND! For WHAT? Price all the major parts, maybe six hundred dollars, maybe just maybe a thousand tops. Build a frame out of iron pipe, mount all the stuff on it, and shazam, you have a wheelchair. But is that frame worth seven thousand dollars? All it is, is iron pipe!
"Next, I asked how much they billed Medicare. The salesman wouldn’t tell me. Finally I told her I wasn’t buying it from them if they didn’t give me a price, and guess how much they hit Medicare up for for on that chair?”
Curious, Bo raised and eyebrow and grunted inquisitively.
"One thousand, three hundred four dollars and eighteen cents! Because that is the 'Medicare allowable' on a powered personal mobility device," Sandy fumed in a mocking voice. "And of course, we can't hand 'em thirteen pictures of Ben Franklin, because it'd drop their average sale price. See, Medicare pays only a certain percentage of the going price for a piece of equipment, and if they give me a cash discount, it lowers the average price. Not only that, but as more and more people find ways to get on the government dole for dropping a nickel on their big toe, or having 'back pain', or just plain ol' being tubs of hog lard, the more chairs are sold at Medicare's discount, and that drives the average down, so the cash price HAS to go up like crazy, just to keep the average high enough for them to make money!"
Bo nodded, "In any other field, it's against the law to charge different prices according to who is paying or how it's paid, but the medical industry has exemptions from almost all those anti-trust and price-fixing legislations that's been signed into law. It's all a racket, with the goal being to get the whole damn camel of single-payer into the tent while nobody notices. Way they're doing it, the dumb masses will welcome it, and never even understand what a loss of freedom it is, and never notice the slippery slope they've allowed themselves to get started on!" Bo chuckled, bitterly, then grinned a genuine grin at his wife. “Seems like I’m not the only one going on a rant lately. No, you’re exactly right, Sandie. They’ve priced us right out of being able to just go down and pay cash for durable medical equipment. DME suppliers are one of the biggest rackets there is. I told you about going down and trying to replace your shower bench, didn’t I?”
“No, well, yeah, you mentioned it but never got into it. Tell me. And I promise I won't go off on the 'truth in advertising' breach when the DME people call durable medical equipment 'durable'... planned obsolescence and intended short lifespan, combined with crappy workmanship on most stuff,” growled Sandie, then she looked up and grinned at her husband. "Damned if we aren't two peas in a pod, here I am going off during my promise not to go off! Anyway, go 'head. I almost got going with what I wasn't gonna get going with."
Bo chuckled and blew a kiss at his wife, then turned serious. “Went down to the DME place, and they had the exact one you need. I gave ‘em your information and they punched it all into their computer, and the twerp turned to me and said all you qualify for is a hard back shower chair. Padding is considered a luxury, you see. I told him you had had problems before with sitting on a hard plastic chair, that they were uncomfortable and after sitting there for a while your skin starts to break down from the pressure, to which the pendejo replied ‘well, she’s just gonna have to get used to it.’ Then I asked him how much they get from Medicare for that plain hard plastic bench, I forget the number but it was around one fifty. Then I asked him how much the padded one was, he said one eighty. I told him real simple, just let me upgrade and pay the cash difference. No dice. He wouldn’t do it because of the regulations. No problem then, I said, I’ll just pay for the shower bench. He said it’d be $457.14 plus tax!”
“WHAT?!” exclaimed Sandie.
“Yep. That’s when he told me that Medicare only paid at that time a certain percentage, I forget what, of retail price, so in order to keep their Medicare reimbursement up, they had no choice but to hit me up for full retail, in case a federal auditor decided to show up and look at their books.
“And that, to make a long story short, is why you now shower on a Frankenstein concoction that came out of my toolshed, with a twenty dollar Ace Hardware padded potty seat and some bedframe angle iron reinforcements under it, instead of a nice shiny new factory shower bench.”
Sandie looked into Bo’s eyes, “Darling, just one more reason to be thankful I have you in my life. What would someone else do who didn’t have access to your skills, not to mention your ‘I can do it’ attitude?”
Bo appreciated hearing words like that from his wife, but that wasn’t the endgame of why he did what he did. He did what he did because it was the right thing to do, not the ‘tasty way to do it’, to borrow from Wilford Brimley; actually, it was a little of both.
Buddy stuck his head in the front door, “Hey, you two come out here, got something for ya.”
Sandie grinned, and Bo simply looked confused. She said, “Well, come on, let’s go see what he’s got. Oh, go get a couple bowls and spoons.”
Even more puzzled, Bo did as asked, and as soon as he hit the fresh air on the porch, he understood. The draft through the house from back to front had prevented any whiff of cooking cobbler from entering the house, and since Bo had come in the back door he never knew what was in store. Speaking of in store, Bo wondered how J.B. was making out.
******************
Slowing as he neared the north end of Bishop, J.B. wondered how the dang dispatcher could have gotten it so bassackwards. He could kick himself for taking the dispatcher’s word for things as gospel. They’d been known to do really stupid things before, not out of spite but just simple ignorance and inattentiveness. Not all of them were professional slobs, he thought, but only one can ruin the reputation of the whole bunch.
Turns out that the shots were fired at the Super S in Bishop, not at the HEB in Robstown. When J.B. had arrived in Robstown and no shooting was going on, he had marked it up to a simple overactive imagination on the part of some 911 caller. However, when Junior called him so excited he could hardly control his words, J.B. knew he’d sent the kid to the wrong location.
The wet behind the ears 22 year young deputy had rolled into the grocery store’s parking lot and set his 4 ways as instructed, then gotten out to go calm down the crowd of people angry about the non-working debit card readers. It was only when he was halfway to the front door that he simultaneously noticed the star-shaped cracks in the plate glass windows, along the complete absence of visible customers. As the kid’s hair just began to start standing up, he heard a CRACK, almost at the same time as a whistle and another star appeared right in front of him on the sliding door. Too far to dive back beside his patrol car and not willing to wait for the sliding door to open for him, he dropped where he was. Slithering over to the little coin operated merry-go-round horse next to the front door, he then took the time to try to determine where the shots were coming from. Satisfied that he was concealed well enough to call for backup, he reached for his shirt pocket and patted it, frowning, until it dawned on him that the phone was sitting on the console of the Crown Vic, plugged into its charger, not ten feet away but as good as a mile away.
Looking over at the wall of the building, he saw something he’d never used in his life: A pay telephone. Ever since the proliferation of cell phones ten years or so ago, when he was a twelve year old boy who lived sixteen miles from town, he had never had a need to use a pay phone. His family used FRS radios to communicate out on their land, and when he’d come to town on the rare occasion that was not school related, he’d never had a need to use the phone since the only people who he needed to call, his folks, had no phone service out in the brush.
Hmm, he thought to himself, guess you put money in that slot up there and then dial what number you are calling. Let’s see if I can reach it without getting my hand shot off. Boy if I’d of thought tonight would turn out this way, I’d of done a lot of stuff different tonight….like stick my cell phone back in my pocket. Now, what was J.B.’s phone number? Thinking he remembered it, he crawled over to the pay phone. Slowly reaching up for the handset, he was rewarded with a crack-PINGGGG as the shooter missed him, but dented the front of the payphone just to the right of the handset. Looking up, he saw there was only one light fixture illuminating this side of the doorway, an eight foot fluorescent fixture with two tubes. Looking around, he couldn’t find anything heavy enough to heave at the bulbs that might break them. Only had to break one, but still. My gun? No, heck no, he thought. My luck, it’d land on the barrel and seriously screw me up if I had to use it. He remembered a friend who had tripped while hunting for rabbits one time years ago and had unknowingly gotten a bit of dirt in the end of the barrel of his .22 and when he went to shoot, the dirt was enough to completely destroy the action of the old rifle. If a .22 can do that, imagine what this .38 would do if I got some crud in its barrel.
Other things went through his mind as possible projectiles, including shooting the light out, but he didn’t want to do that just yet. Handcuffs! Heavy enough, won’t need ‘em for this pendejo ‘cause he’s either gonna be dead, he’s gonna run away, or someone else’s gonna take him where he is. Pulling out the handcuffs, he rolled onto his back for more accuracy and flung them at the bulbs, immediately rolling back over to protect his face from flying glass, of which there was plenty as that side of the store’s porch plunged into darkness and long shadows from the distant light of the other side of the door.
Easing onto his side to let the pieces of glass roll off his back, he looked up and with a smile realized that the phone was completely shadowed by the soda pop machine between the phone and the other lights. Reaching up again, with no immediate reaction from afar, he brought down the receiver, dropped his quarter, and caught J.B. still in the Robstown store. “Hey, unc, they shootin' at me down here! Some fool across the street, I think. I need your help. Bishop police’re here, but they inside and can’t see much since all the lights are on. Guy’s beside the white garage north of the store. There’s a white pickup truck looks like he’s hidin’ behind.”
“Be there in a sec. What phone you on anyways? Your cell phone ain’t a 584 number, that’s a Bishop landline.”
“On the payphone in front of the store. Cell’s in car charging,” Junior admitted sheepishly.
“On the way.” J.B. hung up on the pinned deputy.
************
Coasting to a stop a couple of blocks from the store, J.B. got out of his car, intending to finish the distance on foot. He knew more or less where the kid thought the shooter was, in fact because of the location, he thought he knew WHO the shooter was. The shooter had been arrested a few months ago by J.B. for threatening the clerk at the grocery store for not selling him beer without showing any identification. He didn’t dare show his license, he was only seventeen. He threatened then to get even with the store, and J.B. figured the kid was making good on his promise, or at least not letting a good crisis go to waste.
J.B. turned up the street north of the grocery store, and at the second house on the right, he quietly let himself through the side gate into the back yard of the house. Passing by the windows, he could see through the flimsy curtains at a couple in their late thirties, fixated on the television, which was turned up loud enough to drown out a pack of monkeys having wild sex in the next room, and eased himself on towards the detached garage whose doors opened onto the alley. Next to the garage, parallel parked in the alley, was a white Dodge half ton with two flat tires and grass growing up around it. Sneaking a peek around the corner of the garage, J.B. saw a figure rise up right behind the cab and lean over the front of the bed with a rifle. Looking across the vacant lot into the parking lot of the store about 75 yards away, he couldn’t see any targets, so he figured the kid was just getting ready if something should show up.
J.B. quietly made it across the twenty or so feet of yard to the gap in the back fence where the walk gate used to be, and stuck the cold aluminum barrel of his Mag-Lite against the boy’s neck. “Betcha can’t guess what this is, son,” he said quietly. As the kid stiffened up in fear, he continued, “Now, just set the rifle down in the back of the truck and gimme your right hand behind your back.” As he snapped the cuffs around that wrist, he said, “Okay, now your left.” After securing the kid, he picked up the .22 and cleared it, then, wishing he could whistle for Comet, began reciting the shooter his rights as he walked him the two blocks to the waiting patrol car.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 11, 2022 21:52:25 GMT -6
(****NOT PART OF THE STORY--UPDATE ON D'S HEALTH ISSUES****) Still not over and done with Denise. She went through hell and two hospitals, wound up coming home with the tracheostomy, ventilator, and a feeding tube. She came home March 11, only to go back to the hospital a few weeks later with a relapse-type situation going on. Finally, though, the little local hospital figured out what sent her back, and what the original problem was to begin with. She had MRSA running rampant in her lungs, all the way back to a blocked ureter and resulting raging infection in her left kidney back before last Thanksgiving. Yeah, this crap has been going on, really, for six whole months! At any rate, they *THINK* they've got the MRSA on the run now, sent her home again, this time instead of going to a acute care facility in San Antonio. That's a story in and of itself, which I will tell someday when I get this story all posted. Might even make it into a Scrachline type Bo-and-Sandie story that has no relation to this one save for the names of the participants. To make a long story short, she's home again, after being re-trached and put back on the vent and having a second round of thorocentesis done (that's pulling fluid out from around the outside of the lung, between the lung and the ribs) but without the need for a chest tube this time. Came home on 6L of oxygen 10 days ago and is already down to 2 liters during the day and three at night. They're going to start reducing the vent settings this week or first part of next week, from what the pulmonologist said when she did a televisit with him last Thursday. This time, came home cleared to actually eat instead of feeding tube feedings. THAT is another story, too. Thumbnail is, she has not had one drop of that "nutrition" glop they typically meter into a feeding tube--I cooked every meal while she was in the hospital for three weeks and pureed it in a really serious blender and took it up to her. The hospital wouldn't/couldn't do it, but thank God they had zero problems with me doing it if I 'really wanted to go to all that trouble'. (Well, DUH! This is my better half, my reason for being, my everything! What the hell do they THINK I'm gonna do??) Early on, docs said she'd maybe be strong enough to wean off the vent in a few months and by end of summer might be completely off of it. Last Thursday her own doc (who has privileges at that hospital and bucked the hospitalists and was a HUGE advocate for us) shortened that timeline to 'weeks' to be off the vent, and credited the healthy feeding. She's still taking some nutrition through the tube, but ~90% by mouth. Says she likes chewing her own food I've been scraping her plate into the blender less and less as the days pass...in fact, I haven't done that in probably 3-4 days now, come to think of it. She's down for the night and I have some time to just sit and unwind, so I'm going to try to get another chapter read through and posted. Thanks for bearing with me...and us...
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 11, 2022 22:05:12 GMT -6
TEN
“Oh, man, I’m stuffed!” moaned Bo as he leaned back in the plastic lawn chair and set his cobbler plate on the table in the front yard. “Y’all two outdid yourselves this time. Better’n I coulda done, tell the truth.” Grinning and dodging a playful swipe from Sandie he continued, “Anything else we need from anywhere? I’m trying to figure out if we need to go into town any time soon.”
Sandie thought about that a moment. “No, not really. Be nice to have a bunch of things, really a bunch more of some things, but nothing we really need at the moment.”
“Well, how long can we last with what we have here?” Bo replied.
“Depends on how burned out you get on rice and beans. You just started canning meat, and put up a bunch of the stuff we had in the freezer, then we caught that sale up in Mathis on chicken legs and refilled the freezer, so we’re good on meat for months. With the drought, we aren’t as good for veggies as I’d like to be, but with ten pints of carrots we’ve got a years supply, at least for me,” she grinned, after pantomiming a barf face. “I cannot stand cooked carrots. Raw is fine, but cooked, ughhh…”
“Yeah, darling, but beggars can’t be choosers, and we’ll be glad for those vitamins in the carrots, and the water they’re in, come middle of winter when the cactus is getting tough and stringy, ‘specially if it doesn’t set in raining pretty soon.” Bo was getting fatalistic. It had been almost two years since the last rain of any significance, and he was beginning to wonder if Elmer Kelton’s book “The Time It Never Rained” was a prophecy instead of a historically accurate novel.
Bo and Sandie turned to look as the front door smacked shut. Walking down the ramp, Buddy addressed them both. “Um, y’all know I was planning to go up and see Sissy and Renee, right?”
Cautiously, Bo replied, “Yeah, well, when we get through with a few of the projects going on around here, and we see what’s going down with the world, maybe you might just be able to take some time off and run up there for a while. When were you thinking about going?”
Buddy looked at the ground midway between his parents. “Well, I kinda have a bus ticket for day after tomorrow. Just didn’t know how to tell you with all this crap going on, and I know we have stuff to finish up, but when I bought the ticket I thought we’d be through by now, and I can’t let the ticket go by, they’re getting picky about that sort of thing. Gonna cost me to change the date on it.”
Bo looked like someone had slapped him. “You’re gonna just go off and leave the roof half off the upstairs? You do realize it’s gonna rain someday? I know it’s taken us some time to get it done, but with work and with you wanting to extend your room instead of just cover the flat roof, it’s taken more time. Are you sure you’ve thought this through all the way, son?”
Buddy looked up at his dad, “Yes, I’m going day after tomorrow, bus leaves at ten in the morning. I’ll do my best to tarp the bad spots, and I’ll be back in a couple weeks. I just have a really bad feeling about all this stuff we’ve been seeing, I think it’s just the tip of a really big bad iceberg, and I want to go at least try to get those dumb girls to see sense and let me bring ‘em home.”
Seeing that the boy had thought this through, even though not thoroughly, Bo did his best to hold his temper down. “So you’d rather put a project like our roof on hold to go a thousand miles away to try and bring the girls home? Can’t you give me a couple more days here and let us get the tin on at least the south side of the roof? I can handle the north side myself, but it’s those long pieces we’re gonna have to use on the south side that it’s gonna take two people to do.”
Buddy shifted his weight and looked off in the distance. Bo could tell his mind was made up. Ever since he’d been a little boy he had had this streak of obstinacy. While in most cases it served him well, and had made him into a dependable young man, it irritated his dad to no end, especially when his mind was made up to do something and no amount of reasoning from Bo or Sandie could sway him.
“Well, Buddy, you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do, and the heck with the burden it puts on your dad,” said Sandie, who had a habit of being very direct when she was at odds with either of her guys’ plans. “But I’ll tell you this much: I think it’s pretty hen-doo of you to have bought that ticket ever how long ago you did and not tell us. Look, if you’d have said something then, and given us a chance to weigh in on it, for one thing there wouldn’t be a thing we could say now, and for another, your dad might have planned things differently if he’d of known you were going on a certain date. But no, you had to go off and do something like this and spring it on us at the last minute. Do not expect either of us to like it, and you’re gonna have to come up with a whole lot better job of convincing us that it’s the right thing to do than you’ve done so far,” she steamed as she gathered cobbler dishes and loaded her lap. Buddy reached over to take some of the pile, and she said irritably, “I’ve got it. Might as well let me deal with it myself tonight, ‘cause you dang sure aren’t gonna be here to help me next time.” With that, she gave the uncanny impression of stomping up the ramp in her wheelchair, with an equally uncanny and unmistakable, and real, slam of the door as she went inside, leaving the men to themselves.
Bo asked his son, straight faced, “Any questions on where she stands on your little adventure?” He was trying hard not to laugh at the situation that the kid had found himself in, and that was made much easier with the knowledge that the roof over his bedroom was still in a stack on the ground. “You do realize she’s right, don’t you? Further, if you’d have let us in on your plans and done it right, I’d have helped you with the bus fare, and helped you by trying to soften up the girls. I know you want them home if the stuff starts flying --son, I want them home much more than you do-- but I can’t see where a day or two difference in a two week trip is going to be that big of a deal. You know that’s all I’ve thought about since I was in Wal-Mart was that the girls are all up there with their heads up…um, well, in the clouds as far as current events. I’d go myself if I thought I could get back in one piece, and if it’d be worth it—by which I mean if I thought they’d come home.”
Buddy looked away again. “Yeah, but I’ve gotta do this, Dad. I don’t want to put it off a day or two. What would you think, what would you say, if I was a day or two too late getting back, if I’d of put leaving off?” He turned to look at Bo.
“Yeah, you’re probably right. I’m just ticked a bit because you didn’t tell me earlier. Probably wouldn’t make any difference in the long run, since I didn’t get the tin bought for the roof until this week anyway, but at least I wouldn’t feel so left out of your plans. I guess what I’m trying to tell you is, if we’re gonna all work together, we gotta keep each other up to speed on what we’re doing. Even if you don’t think it’s a big deal, if it impacts my life or Mom’s, you gotta tell us. Fair ‘nuff?”
“Fair ‘nuff, Dad.”
******************’
“We should of sent him off with more food”, mused Sandie as they drove away from the bus station. They were both glad that Buddy had chosen Alice as his departure point instead of Corpus Christi, since the bus stop in Alice is at a truck stop out on the bypass, far removed from downtown, and the terminal in Corpus Christi is right downtown. “Hope there’s better selection of munchies at the other stops his bus is gonna make. That glorified convenience store they call a bus stop here is picked clean.”
They had both gone to take Buddy to see him off, and had gotten there thirty minutes before the bus was scheduled to leave Alice. Expecting just to drop him off, they had changed their plans when the bus wasn’t even at the station yet, and after inquiring inside learning that it hadn’t even made it to Falfurrias yet. The truck stop had obtained the bus concession by virtue of having several gas stations on this Valley Transit route, and bidding a package deal to provide bus service to four towns that otherwise wouldn’t have any more than a flag stop.
Bo and Sandie had gone in to keep Buddy company until at least the bus showed up, and hadn’t expected an hour of downtime. When the bus finally arrived, the story made it out that the bus had been unusually thoroughly checked over at the Border Patrol checkpoint south of Falfurrias. Rumors had been flying since the failure of the ATM and credit card system, and the rumor mill was in overdrive among the bus passengers after being held up for almost an hour as the agents pulled each and every passenger aside and had them prove their citizenship and identification. Two passengers, a man and a woman, not traveling together, had been detained, they called it. The man had questioned the Border Patrol’s legitimacy in their aggressive questioning, and the woman had not been able to produce any identification. Supposedly, some passengers said, she was going to be held until her husband could drive up from McAllen with her purse, which she’d left in the car. Other passengers smirked at that and wondered aloud if the agents were going to be that accommodating, being that the woman was wearing a chador and had a middle eastern accent. It was a fairly widespread conclusion that there was some foreigner behind the banking mess, and that the Homeland Security folks had taken this to mean that something else might be sifting in through the southern border. Bo made a note to himself to ask J.B. about that next time he saw him.
Turning towards the noise at the ticket counter, he watched a couple arguing heatedly with the clerk. “I’m sorry, sir, but I told you on the phone that ticket prices were not firm until paid for. After we give you your paid ticket, we will honor that ticket on that day only. After that it is subject to an adjustment, if the price of fuel fluctuates the way it has been doing lately.”
“That’s bullshit, lady! I just called this morning and you told me the tickets would be a hundred sixty five each to go to St. Louis! Now you’re telling me twenty more each! I don’t have that kind of money laying around and we’ve got to get up to get her folks! I hate to break it to you, but I work at one of the banks here, and it ain’t gonna get fixed anytime soon!”
The clerk held her ground, “Sir, the price of Diesel has gone up fifty cents since nine this morning. We get our prices daily, and if you’d have gotten here within an hour, I’d have honored the phone quote like I told you I would. But that was three hours ago. I’m sorry.”
After hushed but animated conversation, the couple turned back towards the clerk. “Sorry about my husband’s language earlier. We understand. Is there no way you can at least cut us some slack? That’s going to eat into our eating money, and we’ve got a long way to go.” The woman looked pleadingly at the clerk, who looked off to the back of the store and made a come-here motion. After whispering to the man who had answered her beckon, he turned to the couple, as the clerk returned to the register to help the next customer.
“I wish I could do something about the fares, ma’am, but we’re only a reseller, not an agent. We’ve gotta do what the computer says and cannot change fares. But, I understand. Look, we’ve got very little on our shelves out there, but I’ll tell you what do. Go gather up twenty dollars’ worth of merchandise and bring it back up here, and we’ll bag it up for y’all. That’ll cut twenty bucks off the ticket price, and we’ll just get it back when we get our commission check next month—if there is one next month, according to what you say.” The clerk returned and offered them a sack to fill, and both watched as the couple prudently picked out fruits and vegetables, as well as some jerky and for drinks, juices and V8 instead of soda pop. The manager nodded to himself, satisfied he had helped someone who was thinking instead of reacting.
Bo had gotten a nudge and nod from Sandie, and with that, he walked out to the truck and got a few things. Back inside he passed them to Sandie, who wheeled over to the couple as they sat and stowed away their food. “Couldn’t help overhearing your exchange with the guy at the counter. We carry this just in case, but figure you need it more than we do right about now, since we’re only a few miles from more stuff, and you’re a lot further away. Take it, it’ll keep your food from going bad on you before you get where you’re going.” Sandie handed them the soft-sided insulated lunch bag and cold freezies in it that had contained some bottles of water for her and Bo. They had more of the little insulated bags at home, and it wouldn’t hurt them to drink warm water, and the fruits and such that the couple had picked up would last much better with the cool.
Impulsively, the woman leaned over and gave Sandie a grateful hug, and explained that they had planned for weeks to make this trip to go pick up her mother, who was recently widowed and felt unsafe without her husband. The couple was busing to St. Louis to bring back Mama and her car and a U-haul trailer of her belongings. Sandie mentioned Buddy was attempting to do the same thing with headstrong older sisters who lived alone. She pointed out Buddy to the couple, and he came over and was introduced. The three of them agreed to ‘keep an eye’ on one another and were discussing Buddy stopping on the way back from Joliet if they were still in St. Louis when Buddy headed back. As they loaded on the bus, the husband was describing his mother-in-law’s location to Buddy and offering to put it on paper when they got settled in the bus and moving.
The day before had been a day packed with activity. Waking Buddy up a half hour before dawn and getting breakfast, Bo and Buddy had spent the day working from a list he and Sandie had made up the night before of two-man projects, prioritizing those that had to have two people first, and then those jobs that it’s nice to have two people. They had gotten through the first part of the list and were most of the way through the second part by dark. Sandie had called a friend and gotten her to come over and help inside the house to keep from pulling either of the guys off of their work, and the day had been long but they had accomplished much more than either of them really expected to.
Between the two, they had gotten the tarp on the roof securely, gotten the yard in shape, and walked the fences all the way around the property, making note of weak spots and tightening them up. After that, they did the maintenance on both tractors, both pickups, and the generator and water pump. Although these were not projects that require two people, it made the job go more than twice as fast due to not wasting the time of bouncing up and down like a jack-in-the-box to get all the steps done in order. They finished off the day by hauling the hog trap out to the run in back even though it’d be a few weeks before Bo wanted to deal with processing hogs. Summer in south Texas is decidedly not the time to be peeling and sorting a feral hog. Besides, Bo had to can all that chicken in the chest-type deep freezer to make room for the pork, especially a hot-weather kill.
“I’m just glad he gave us a day’s notice, hon,” Bo remarked to Sandie as they made their way home. “And I feel safer with that couple, what were their names? No matter, I feel safer knowing at least he’s traveling with other people part way. They seem decent enough, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, I have good feelings about those two. That was a good idea you had, giving them that little cooler. You're always thinking of stuff like that, and I think that little gesture will pay itself back in spades, some how some day. Now, that guy, I’ve seen him before, somewhere. I don’t know if it was in the Wallyworld or somewhere, but if he’d have been a jerk I’d have remembered. I think he was just worried when he blew up at that clerk. I’m worried, too. Things just ain’t right. I mean, what’s a bank employee doing heading out of town for a week or two, vacation or not? I mean, it takes money. Wonder if they know something they didn’t say. Look, I’d do the same if I worked in a bank and knew they were going to be closed for a while, and if I was the boss there, I’d sure let my help cash their checks, or heck, even close their accounts or at least get what cash they could out of what’s on hand. Bet these two know something that isn’t common knowledge. Reckon Buddy’ll get something out of them over the next 800 miles?”
“I suppose he’ll let us know if he does,” replied Sandie. “That nitwit kid that lives down the road was carping yesterday afternoon that nobody’d cash his paycheck for him, and his bank was closed for the weekend. Said he didn’t know if he’d make it til Monday without money. Speaking of…” Sandie paused and glanced over at Bo, who was watching the road.
“I’ve got something to tell you—” Sandie started to say as Bo launched into the lapse in conversation.
“I’ve got a secret I’ve been—” Bo and Sandie looked at each other and started laughing.
“You first, hon,” said Sandie, after the spontaneous laughter had died down.
“No, you first, I interrupted you,” countered Bo as he made the turn onto the road into Agua Dulce, removing his attention from his wife only long enough to negotiate the turn and see that there were no other cars to the horizon, and turning back to Sandie.
As they sped away from the intersection, neither of them had looked up to notice that the flashing warning lights over the intersection and on the stop sign were dark.
|
|
|
Post by cavsgt on May 11, 2022 22:37:13 GMT -6
Thoughts and prayers sent your way. Think of Denise and think of us free loaders if there is any time left. phill
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 12, 2022 20:07:21 GMT -6
ELEVEN
“Well, I’ll be dipped!” Bo exclaimed as he smacked the steering wheel.
“What?” Sandie looked over at him, immune to his forgetfulness when it came to mundane issues, and not really worried when Bo remembered something in this manner, because that typically meant it wasn’t important to begin with.
“Ice, dang it! We blew right past that Twice the Ice in Alice, and I didn’t even give it a thought. Man, I’m losing it,” Bo shook his head, irritated with himself for remembering to load up a couple of coolers into the truck but then forgetting to fill them at the bulk ice dispenser in town. Now, the only option besides backtracking nine miles was to pay twice the price for half the ice from a convenience store, the only convenience store (which added more to the bottom line) in Agua Dulce.
At the bulk station, if one had an ice chest or similar vessel, ice was a dollar and a half for a twenty-four pound shot of it down the stainless chute sticking out of the boxy little building full of ice-making equipment that looked remarkably like a shipping container. They were little more than huge vending machines, and becoming very popular in the hot, dry south Texas region. Convenience stores had until recently had the market cornered on ice sales, and it was not uncommon to see a ten pound bag of really cold and hard water go for over two bucks, but hey, that’s what the market was bearing, apparently. Only when a profit is made by legislating restrictions on the competition is it immoral, to Bo’s thinking. Lots of people complained, but one enterprising man did something about it and devised a way to make ice from the city tap, do it automated, and reliably. Bo had never begrudged the convenience stores their two dollars, as they were interested in making a profit same as anyone else, but by the same token, he was more than happy to see a superior product offered at a better price.
One city in the area did in fact try to muscle some legislation through the city council, at the behest of the owner of a chain of convenience stores in town. The thinly veiled attempt at keeping Twice the Ice out of town was worded such that any place that sold ready-to-consume foods had to have an attendant on premises. It almost slithered its way into law, until the word got out that it was simply a money-grabbing attempt by Hakim El-Achmed, the owner of three Happy Gas convenience stores in that town. When the city council meeting at which the final reading of the ordinance was scheduled came up, fully two thousand of the town’s thirty-eight hundred residents showed up and mobbed the city hall, filling the parking lot, front lawn of the city building, and the street for two blocks in either direction. Needless to say, the ordinance was unanimously voted down.
As Bo pulled into the one store in Agua Dulce to get his ice, Sandie commented that it looked awful dark inside. Bo replied, “Well, there’s one way to find out, and it works every time. I’ll go in and look.” He grinned at his wife as he dodged a swat. “Be right back. Ya want me to get one bag or go ahead and get the forty pounds we were gonna get if I’d have had my head screwed on straight in Alice?”
“Ya know what, hon, go ahead, and get all the ice. We haven’t bought anything here in a while and it’s close enough to the house where we need to do our part to keep them open.” Bo nodded and headed inside, leaving Sandie to her thoughts: It’s not the end of the world if we pay eight bucks instead of three for forty pounds of ice, and I’d hate to see the store close up because the other 400 people in town decided to save five bucks each. I’m not gonna be a part of that, we need the convenience of having this place nearby, especially since we lost the one right down the road because people quit paying the markup that she had to have to stay open in a rural environment. Oh, reminds me, I need to finish up with telling Bo about my little surprise for him. Boy is he gonna be in for a shock, she grinned to herself as she waited for Bo to come back out.
Meantime, Bo had walked into a shadowy cave of a store, with the only light coming from the glass entry door and the one small window in the owner’s office near the back of the building, which admitted a weak and indirect glow through the open office door and into the back aisle.
“Hey, Bo, Tio’s out back monkeyin’ around with Frankenstein, he’ll be back inside in a bit”, came a voice from the shadows in the direction of the checkout counter. As Bo’s eyes adjusted, he recognized the stock boy sitting on a stool near the end of the counter, discreetly blocking the only pathway back to the register with his body. A big kid with an easygoing personality, he had saved his uncle from several sticky situations right at closing time with his immense bulk. Ernie was only sixteen years old, but was already six foot five and close to three hundred pounds. He had played both sides of the football for the Agua Dulce Longhorns for two years already, earning an honorable mention on the All-State Class 1A team his freshman year, and a place on the All-State 1A defensive line just this past fall. All he really had to do was stand up and look at any punk who had even the notion of asking Unc Jaime for the money in the till, and the problem was solved.
“No problem, Ernie. Lights been out long?”
“No sir, about fifteen minutes is all, but both sides of town are out, and that almost never happens. AEP loses their load about once a month over south side of the highway, but the co-op only drops out if there’s a storm up near Campbellton, where their generating station is. Kinda making me wonder if it’s a coincidence. South side went down about a half an hour ago, and I walked over here ‘cause it was boring at home, and about the time I got here, the lights went out here.”
“Boring? What, no x-Box?” Bo kidded the young man.
“Aw heck no, I was out in Daddy’s shop fartin’ around. Daddy showed me on some forum where this guy in Central America was tryin’ to make a .22 pistol from scratch and by hand, no power tools, and I read that whole thread and printed it out, and I’m trying to copy what he was doing. Put me outta business when the lights shut off. Guess that’s what I get for cheating and using power tools.” Ernie chuckled at the thought.
“Well, all I came in for was some ice. Got a couple of those big forty pound bags in the walk-in?”
“Yessir, I believe we’ve got plenty. That’ll be….” Ernie looked off into space for a second or two, “seven and ninety-two cents, tax and all.” In addition to being the biggest kid, in fact probably the biggest human, in Dulce, he was arguably possessing of one of the most nimble minds as well. Ernie had not only garnered all state football honors, but had taken first place in several statewide academic competitions as well.
Bo passed over the money and thanked Ernie for his time and for the latest gossip. “You said Jaime’s out back? Think I’ll go howdy him right quick before I get the ice out of the cold room.” Ernie nodded as Bo left through the front door to tell Sandie what he was doing, and then walked around the side of the store to find the himself facing the half-moon of the second largest human in Dulce.
“Hey, guy, you a plumber or something?” Bo called at the convex shape of skin framed by a shirttail and leather belt.
“Naw, if I was, I wouldn’t be working on this ancient piece of caca Pop bought used back when I was a kid,” grumbled Jaime as he stood up, tugging on his waistband then extending a greasy hand at Bo, who gripped it firmly and looked past Jaime at the antique flathead 4 cylinder Ford engine.
“S’matter, no spark?” asked Bo, familiar with the engines, as he owned two of them, in a different function as the power plants in a pair of equally ancient Ford 9N tractors.
“Yeah, that’s what it’s doing. Kinda yellowy, weak looking spark.”
“How often you fire this baby up?”
“Usually I do it pretty regular, but with this drought, no thunderstorms, no power outages, so outta sight outta mind, if you get what I mean,” replied Jaime.
Nodding, Bo crouched down and poked at the plug wires, moving them around where they snaked through the belts and were tied off to the brackets to keep them from getting tangled in the belt when the engine was running. “Hmph, here it is, look at this,” Bo moved over a bit to let Jaime lean over his shoulder. “One of my tractors does this, and it’ll never start when the wire to the front plug is like this ‘un is. See where it got loose from its tieback and it’s wearing a groove in it from rubbing on the flywheel pulley?” Bo reached in with both hands and, with one hand holding the zip tie in place, pulled the offending wire back through until it was clear of the pulley. “Hard to tell it’s rubbing, from the only way you can get a sight line on it, but it’ll dang sure keep this fourbanger from bustin’ off, every time. Might want to dab a little pooky on that bare spot ‘fore you catch a rain, ‘cause it’ll ground it out in a heartbeat. Got any of that liquid tape stuff?”
“Liquid tape?” Jaime repeated, puzzled.
“Well, not really tape, it’s a rubber coating that insulates, comes in a yellow can, they have it at Wallyworld in the boat section. Supposed to waterproof electrical connections, and it does a fair job of it. My brother’s a jetski nut, and he gave me a can of it ten years or so ago, and the few times I've remembered and used it, I've been happy with it. Seals out moisture and does a fine job. Let me go look, I’ve probably got some in my tool box.”
Jaime followed Bo back around the side of the store and to his truck, where he watched Bo open the tool box and root around in what looked like a disaster area. Bo was, to be gentle about it, an absolute pig when it came to organization. However, it was hard to organize a single toolbox with as much stuff in it as Bo carried around. Bo tended to classify things as either nice to have and worth a dig in the gull-wing truck mounted box, or things that needed to be got at immediately and those things were very religiously kept where they could be had in no time, usually in the door pockets or homemade console in the cab.
Muttering to himself and shoving things around in the tool box, Bo finally straightened up and handed Jaime a well-traveled but nearly full can of Liquid Tape. “Here ya go. I found two of ‘em in here. Go ahead and keep this ‘un. You’re gonna need it more’n once to keep that antique running, and Wal-Mart is probably gonna be useless to go into for a while anyways.” Bo closed his tool box and, having a sudden thought, reached into his pocket for his spare key ring, and locked the box.
“That’s a fact, Bo. I bet there aren’t two people in that whole Walmart who could even begin to ring up an order without those fancy computers they have. And I know they ain’t got an Ernie!” Both laughed at that last comment. There weren’t many Ernie’s out there.
Bo walked over to the passenger side window, which Sandie had rolled down. “Hon, I’ll be a few more seconds, gonna help him get his backup power going if I can.” After getting Sandie’s blessing and assuring her he wouldn’t spend another half hour yakking, Bo headed towards the back of the building to find Jaime just finishing up painting the insulating liquid on the spark plug wire.
“All right, let’s see what happens now”, said Jaime as he screwed the lid on the can and set it on the windowsill of the building. He moved over to an electrical breaker panel which had been modified into a “dashboard” for the stationary power unit and flipped one switch, then pressed a button to engage the starter. Immediately the eighty year old engine caught and brought itself to a rough slow idle, which smoothed out as they listened. After a minute or so, Jaime flipped another switch in the modified breaker box and the engine kicked up to what sounded to the naked ear to be a fast idle speed. When it stabilized at that speed, another flip of a switch and with a squeal, the electric clutch similar to that on an automotive air conditioning compressor mated up and the lineshaft started spinning, which turned the belts for a driven generator head Bo had seen before at Harbor Freight, and three other automotive style compressors. One by one, Jaime flipped the switches that engaged their clutches, waiting between loads for the engine to re-stabilize. After all was running steadily, he closed the control box and walked over to inspect the gauges on each compressor’s subpanel. Nodding to himself, he looked at Bo and with an incline of his head in the direction of the back door, they both walked into a well-lit store. Pausing at the walk-in cooler, Jaime opened the door and reached up to feel the fan-blown air coming off the coils in the ceiling and grinned at Bo. “Back in bidness, my friend. Thanks for your help.” Jaime extended his hand one more time in appreciation for Bo’s spending a little time on his dilemma.
Taking the offered handshake, Bo replied, “Hey, man, that’s what it’s all about. Now, I need to get my ice and head on out.”
“Don’t worry about that”, called Ernie from the cash register. “I already stashed it in your coolers when you and Unc Jaime went back to start the engine.”
“Thanks, Ernie, I owe you one. I appreciate that.” Bo replied, and headed towards the front door as it opened under the push of a short, balding, amply fed man in a dress shirt and slacks. Turning to Jaime, he said, “Better start feeding this kid, ‘fore he blows away.”
“Bo Willis, you best keep that to yourself and not give that little boy any ideas,” came a female voice out the office door, followed by Ernie’s mom, who was Jaime’s sister. “Don’t you be giving that boy any reason to go fridge raidin’ when he gets home or I’ll send him to your place!”
Bo recoiled in mock horror. “No ma’am, Miss Janie, I wouldn’t dare do anything to send him foraging in my direction! Remember when you brought him out to help me to build that fence? I swear he ate a whole cow when we got finished and Sandie invited him to stay for dinner. With that, I better go, or Sandie’s gonna be wondering how come I didn’t help her out to come in and say hi to y’all.” Bo waved at the family and turned to the door, to find the other customer looking curiously at him.
“Willis? Any relation to Lee Roy?” asked the stranger.
“Depends. How do you know him?” asked Bo with a grin.
The greasy combover flashed as the man’s eyes darted around the store. “Used to work with him before they laid a bunch of us off at the car dealer. Name’s Al.” Al looked as if he was debating on whether to offer a handshake or not, furtively watching to see if Bo was going to do so, then beat him to it and have his out first, or if Bo did not, he would never indicate he was offering one.
“Ah, okay, that’s where I’ve seen you before!” replied Bo, noticing the little worm’s halfway intentions and obvious attempt at control without leading. Bo elected to go without an offer of a handshake to the little weasel who had mustered up a vast amount of unfounded righteous indignation last year when he had been informed that he, a veteran of twenty years of car selling, was to be let go while they kept the ‘new guy’ who had only been with the company for a few months: Lee Roy. The company grapevine told the story: Al was always poaching customers, not waiting his turn for the next available “mullet”, and would drop them or pass them off without even a display of loyalty to them if a better looking prospect came through the door. On top of that, Al was always dancing around the edges of legality when trying to close a deal, hinting without coming right out and making promises he had no intention of putting on paper, and in several cases outright pulling a bait-and-switch on unsuspecting customers, some of whom soundly and roundly cursed the dealership after getting home to find that their brand new pickup really had a six cylinder motor instead of the V8 they test drove and thought they had bought. Understandably, Al’s complaint ratio was very high, and this played into his being the low man when layoffs began instead of the “new guy.”
Lee Roy not only had no complaints, but had a knack for developing such a friendly rapport with his customers that he had repeat customers and referrals asking for him by name on a daily basis. His integrity and sincerity won him many repeat customers, a loyalty almost unheard of in chain-type dealers. It also won him the ill will of the less-scrupled car salesmen at the dealership.
“You must be that brother Lee Roy was always talking about that kinda marches to his own drummer,” mused Al as he looked at Bo’s daily ‘uniform’ of shorts, tennis shoes, shirt that had been modified by removal of the sleeves, and straw hat. He was too busy looking at the packaging instead of what it contained, and never noticed that his choice of words had put Bo into alert mode. Lee Roy was, by nature, a gregarious and somewhat trusting person until someone gave him reason not to be such, and likely had mentioned Bo as the brother who grew and ate his own food and lived out in the west end of the county on an almost self-sustaining ten acre mini-farm.
“Yeah, I am that one,” laughed Bo, while his mind leapt into gear, exploring several forks in future’s road and deciding on which direction to go at each in the next few moments. “And speaking of that, I’ve gotta get back out there, too many chores to do, not enough time to do ‘em all.” Looking past the greasy little worm, Bo gave Ernie a parting shot, “Any time you want to come out and zero in that thirty aught six, we’ll be there. Just let me or Sandie know you’re on the way.”
“I’ll do that. Thanks, Bo”, replied Ernie as Bo pushed the door open on the way out.
Bo scanned the parking lot out of habit, and stepped up into the pickup and cranked it up and pulled away from the front of the store. “Keep an eye out for one of these cars on the way home,” he told Sandie, who had her head on a swivel as well, looking for any possible threat Bo might have missed. He appreciated and welcomed having her along for a second set of eyes. Even though her defenses were not as formidable as other people’s, she was a keen observer with an extremely sharp memory and a good deal of situational awareness.
Sure enough, as they turned back onto the road leading to their home, Bo glanced over his shoulder and saw Al standing on the front porch looking in their direction and hurrying to his car.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 12, 2022 20:20:04 GMT -6
TWELVE
Back on the road and out of town, Bo looked at Sandie. “What was that secret you were going to let me in on before we got distracted?”
She grinned and replied, “Never mind, we’re close enough to home I’ll just show you.” She loved the cat-and-mouse game with Bo, who had a curious streak a mile wide and would usually pry a secret out immediately, but he had learned that it did not work with his wife. He resigned himself to finding out about whatever it was when she was good and ready for him to know. Fine. Two can play at this. I was gonna tell her what I’ve been stashing away but she can just wait til she tells me first, he thought to himself.
Turning off on the county road, Sandie looked back up the highway and announced to Bo, “Looks like that ugly little car with that slimy looking fat guy is about a half mile behind us. I saw you talking to him. Who is he?”
Bo explained to Sandie who the weasel was and thanked her for noticing him, explaining that in Lee Roy’s first few days, when he started working at the car dealership, he might have unintentionally and innocently hinted around at some of his older brother’s preps. Sandie frowned at that, not liking the notion of that creep following them home and letting Bo know her feelings.
“I agree. I do not want that little—” Bo used a vulgarity with laser precision. “—anywhere near knowing where we live. He’s trouble, is what he is. No, I don't think he'd ever try to come get our stuff, but he's trouble because he’s the kind of person who won’t just keep it to himself, he’ll trade his knowledge for an easier batch of stuff, and trade it far and wide. And he'll keep trading that knowledge. There'd be no tellin' how many people wantin' to relieve us of our burdens, just so that worm can get a sandwich this afternoon. Let’s see what we can do about this.”
Bo slowed gradually, flipping on his left turn signal to turn down a seldom-used county road that had all but been abandoned. The road was the back entrance to a subdivision that had never fully gotten itself off the ground, and as a result had only three houses in it out of a hundred surveyed lots. Most of the back half of the neighborhood had been left to grow back up into the native grass, huisache, and mesquite and it had all but overtaken the road as well. Rough, and with potholes in it big enough to hide a horse in, it was no match for a low-slung, mid-80's Fairmont, but so long as he took it easy, it was no problem for Bo in the high riding pickup. Creeping up the road, going half off the ditch to avoid a large crater in the road, he watched as the Fairmont gingerly turned down the all but abandoned roadway. Speeding up after the first big hole, Bo ran the road at normal speed for a quarter mile and slowed way, way down again for the next large crater, driving off in the opposite ditch to miss the majority of that one’s depth. Glancing again in his mirror, he saw Al monkeying his moves in the Fairmont, up to and including the detours into the ditches to miss the biggest holes. Grinning, he knew his setup was going to work on the little creep.
Ahead, the road curved sharply around a large mesquite, the brush under the mesquite doing a good job of blocking the view around the bend. Bo was very familiar with this road, having mowed for the developer on the cleared lots while the subdivision was being actively marketed, and recently with the pitiful real estate market, had been baling the grass on the lots into hay for his small contingent of critters and for the occasional sale to a weekend rancher. Accelerating around the curve and leaving the Fairmont just emerging from the latest obstacle in the road, Bo straightened out and aimed for a very narrow ridge of pavement that had somehow stood between a pair of enormous washes in the road, straddling a five foot wide and two foot deep pothole and passing by a slightly larger one to his left. Beyond these two was a patch of roadway where the pavement had been chipped off by traffic, and it looked like a third large rough spot that would tear up a vehicle if hit at speed. Flooring it, Bo got up to about fifty miles an hour, dodging smaller holes for the most part, wanting to put some distance between himself and his natural trap for the erstwhile salesman.
Al did exactly as Bo predicted, and as he came flying around the corner he had seen Bo come around at speed, he looked ahead for Bo. This distracting glance put him right upon the two huge craters without the time to align his car for the narrow smooth track that would have safely carried him over the obstacle. Seeing the skinned pavement past the two holes that at that point in time looked the size of swimming pools, Al slammed on his brakes and as the car started to slide, the sound became a sickening crunch as he high-centered the little mid-size Ford on the rim separating the two craters.
With his problem solved, and with Al back at the brushline and unable to see much of anything behind him except trees, Bo and Sandie turned back onto the main county road at the front of the sparsely populated housing tract and resumed their trip home, losing sight of Al to the brushline before making the turn that put them pointed at their place.
“Smooth move, my husband”, laughed Sandie as they both wound down after the adrenaline from being followed left their systems.
“Ya know, there’s gonna be more and more of that as things get worse, don’t ya?” asked Bo.
“Yeah, I know it. Let’s get home and get this ice into the deep freeze before we have a buncha cold water.”
“Might gonna have that soon enough anyways, if the electricity is out here too,” mused Bo out loud.
Sandie nodded, “Well, at least we have that brown fridge that we can plug into my chair charging setup.”
“Already plugged in there, hon. I wanted to make sure it would consistently run that fridge as well as keep enough charge stored up to recharge your chair every night.” Bo had put together a solar panel and battery bank setup to keep her chair charged. He had thought it through and decided that while electricity was convenient and handy to have, when it came right down to it, it was a luxury to have, with the definite exception of recharging the batteries in Sandie’s chair and the possible exception of having a cool place to store leftovers.
After placing a clamp-on ammeter on the power cords of the three refrigerators and the deep freeze they had in and around the house, to his surprise Bo found that the fridge with the lowest amperage draw was the seventy-some odd year old GE refrigerator in the hallway that they normally kept a few soda pops in and used for overflow when the other fridges got overcrowded. Being only a few feet from the bedroom, he ran a 12 gauge extension cord over to the old fridge and plugged it into the inverter that drew from the solar cells’ battery bank and discovered that even with the load of the refrigerator, the solar setup was able to easily charge Sandie’s chair and provide an occasional light for an overnight trip to deal with necessities. Pleased with that discovery, Bo left the arrangement as it was just to let it prove itself out. Time for the real test, he thought to himself, and time to get cracking on that little pumpjack you have designed in your head for the well, too.
So many people lament that they haven’t got the money to provide themselves with backup systems, that the system has got them trapped because to save the electric payment each month, it’d take a year’s worth of electric payments to purchase what is needed to get off the grid. That’s true, Bo would say, but you don’t have to get it all at one time. He had bought the 1500 watt inverter when Harbor Freight had them on sale a couple years ago. It sat in a box waiting for the next component of the system to go on sale or otherwise appear with an attractive price tag. This had happened about six months ago when the same Harbor Freight had received a half dozen of the solar packs in damaged boxes. Bo offered to pay full price for two of the sets, sight unseen, if he could have all six of them. The store manager replied that he needed to enter them as damaged in the computer and see what the main office’s reaction to that would be. Sometimes it was return to warehouse, sometimes it was dispose of them at the individual store. A week later, Bo returned and was rewarded with all six boxes at no charge, since he was a long-time customer who understood the nature of the cut-rate products sold and did not force them nor take advantage of the warranties. All in all, Bo had come out miles ahead with Harbor Freight products because he took care of his tools and machinery and rarely forced them to do more than they were intended. Happy with his windfall, he proceeded to spend the two hundred dollars he had budgeted for the pack of solar panels there in the store on another inverter and some tarps and a little low-amperage transfer pump. On impulse he also purchased a drill-powered transfer pump with garden hose fittings on both ends, thinking in his mind of a way to mount it to a blower motor out of an automotive air conditioning system and have a 12 volt transfer pump as well.
Yep, it takes some serious thinking and takes some serious pack-ratting to be able to do things on a shoestring, but it can be done, he thought a few minutes later as he was unloading the ice and carrying it into the house. It doesn’t take as much money as most people think to do what has to be done. Just look around here, it may not be all modern and stylish, but its dang sure secure and comfortable. Bo looked around as he walked from the truck to the front door, seeing each thing that he had done and remembering where the materials had come from and how he had put it together. This deck was all culls from Home Depot, when he caught them cutting up the squirrelly sixteen footers and convinced them to cut ‘em into a ten footer and a six footer instead of into three five footers. Made a nice deck and the short side worked wonders for the ramp. He chuckled at the green paint still slightly evident on the ends of some of the four by four posts holding the front deck up, weathered proof that they had been fifty-one cent culls in the wagon at Home Depot. Some folks would go pay hundreds of dollars for the materials to build this ten by ten deck and three by sixteen ramp! Patience got me the decking, and I snagged the four by’s and treated two by’s on a whim just because I knew I’d find a use for ‘em some day. Cost me less than forty bucks for this eight year old deck, he grinned to himself thinking of the wastefulness borne of ignorance that most sheeple display. Worse than that, though, is some folks would actually sit on their butts and pay someone to build this! He never could figure out why some people were just so terrified of learning, and couldn’t figure out the reasoning behind the fear.
Bo deposited the ice into the three-quarters full chest freezer and headed on down the hallway to the bedroom to find Sandie rooting in one of her dresser drawers. Several of her drawers had mementos and photos of sentimental value in them, since she could reach the drawers with much more ease than a filing cabinet or a box on the top shelf of the closet. She was removing and placing in her lap some old awards Lynn had gotten in kindergarten and with her pre-teen softball team, things Bo never had any interest in and only faked interest out of respect for Sandie and Lynn. Not to say he had no interest in his step-daughter, just that the awards and rewards he valued the highest were the self-confidence and poise that all the kids, step or not, displayed because they were secure in their own selves.
“C’mere, hon, got something to show ya,” Sandie beckoned.
Stifling a groan at the prospect of having to look through yellowed photos of little kids holding baseball bats, he walked over. “Whatcha got?”
“My secret. It’s not bad, I’ve just been following the Neal Boortz saving plan,” she replied. “You’ve been following it too, if you have noticed.” She gestured at the drawer, which appeared to be too shallow. He reached down to move it out and possibly shift the light on it, when he realized why it seemed a few inches too shallow. Standing on edge, the drawer was packed with currency. From her comments about Neal Boortz, Bo knew it was all one dollar bills.
The Boortz Saving plan is simple. Spend what you like, whenever you like, but do NOT ever spend a paper dollar bill. Bring those home and hoard them. You’ll be amazed at how fast and how big your stash will grow. When asked by a grinning Bo, Sandie admitted she’d been doing this since she heard Neal talk about it back before Y2K.
“Well, let’s use your surprise first,” said Bo.
“What do you mean, my surprise?”
“You’re not the only one who’s been squirreling away things.” Bo walked over to his side of the bed and opened the bottom drawer of the night stand. “You’re right, I’ve been doing it too. Every dollar bill I find in my wallet each morning goes into this drawer.” He pulled the drawer out of its slot and tilted it to show Sandie a neatly arranged stack of singles about half the size of her drawer-covering accumulation. “But, I’ve got another surprise for you too, hon.”
With that thought churning in her head, he put the drawer back in its slot and walked over to the closet and closed it. On the wall, behind where the perpetually open closet door lay against, Bo reached down and pulled on the baseboard, which came off with a Velcro sounding rip to reveal a hand hole. Reaching into that hand hole and pulling a release, the whole wall inside the closet opened up to reveal a hidey spot between the studs. If the door hadn’t been restrained by his winter jacket hanging on a coat hook in the closet, it would have opened more than the quarter inch it did. Pulling open that hidden inside door, Bo drug out a pair of coffee cans. Opening them revealed a couple of number ten cans, nearly full of pre-1964 US coins; predominantly quarters and nickels. Bo had been checking his change for coins older than himself for years, and had amassed a nice collection of them. He held up a quarter to show Sandie. “This quarter is worth about four and a half bucks right now. This dime,” he replaced the quarter and produced a dime, “is worth about two bucks. When those paper bills are worthless, these will do nothing but go up in value. We’re set for trading for what little we need that we can’t produce here, at least for a while, first with your 'secret', then with mine.”
Sandie finally managed to quit goggling at the coffee cans and thought. “Be a good idea to use up the paper money on stuff we might could use, like in the next few days, and hang onto that heavy stuff and see how long we can last before dipping into it. I would like to use these dollar bills up before they become worthless though.”
Bo agreed with that and went over to his ‘desk,’ which was a table set up against the side wall of the bedroom with his laptop on it and a few other odds and ends, and selected a stenographer’s notepad, opening it and folding it back to a particular sheet. “I’ve got a list of stuff I haven’t had the spare money to pick up just yet. Feel like a run to the city?” he asked as he handed her the list.
Looking over her reading glasses at Bo, she said, “Sure, let’s get on the road soon as I rest for a bit and let my chair charge. You’ve got a good list here, but there’s a few things I’ve had on my mind that I don’t see here.” As she ran through her mental list, Bo nodded and grabbed a pen to add them to the notepad.
“Got a question. How much you got in that drawer?” Bo asked.
“Not a clue. I’ve forced myself to not ever count it until we were ready to go spend it. Now it’s time to count it. I’ll get down for a bit, you plug in my chair and count it.”
Bo nodded, did her bidding, and slid the drawer out of the dresser, walking over to the nightstand and adding his stack of ones to the drawer and then setting the drawer on his edge of the bed to count. After letting the dogs out to roam, he had a second thought and went back to the door, opened it and pulled the key from the outside and threw the bolt after re-closing the door. He then swung by the back door and threw its bolt before going back to the bedroom to figure out what they were going to add to their supplies.
|
|
|
Post by papaof2 on May 12, 2022 22:11:18 GMT -6
Things don't have to be purchased new or installed by an "expert". My small solar backup system - that can also be a very small "long-term cabin in the woods with a small fridge" solar system, cost about $2000 over 5 years. That includes solar panels (most of the wattage is used panels from craigslist.org), charge controllers (including some spares), as well as a spare 2000 watt pure sine wave inverter, the batteries and some purpose-specific tools and test equipment (two wire test box to test a solar panel under load, inch-pound torque wrench to get the battery terminals tight enough to handle their rated discharge current, etc).
If you want to start small, HQST has had 100 watt panels for $83 delivered in the US this year and there are sellers on eBay with similar deals. Or you might luck up and find something at Harbor Freight - my first solar hardware came from there but their current charge controllers are MUCH better than the one that came with their original "45 Watt Solar System" package. However, it was a learning experience ;-)
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 13, 2022 21:56:14 GMT -6
THIRTEEN
Bo climbed into his pickup and cranked it up to jackknife it so that he could set the ramp to run Sandie’s chair up into the bed. It took several parking spaces to do this, especially with a 28 foot trailer, and this was the last stop of the morning’s run. Standing on the floor and craning his neck, he looked at the angle between the trailer and the truck and decided he was fine. Now when she gets through in the drugstore, I’m ready for loading up. Bo wasn’t usually the nervous type, but sitting there in the middle of the shopping center parking lot with the load he had, it made for some quick glances around.
Sandie and Bo had put off their trip to the city after they counted the drawer full of dollar bills, discovering that they were able to make numerous stops. In the place of an afternoon short run to the city, he decided to hitch up the trailer and load scrap for a sale trip, with the end goal of being able to effectively eat the scrap metals.
First stop had been right at dawn, at the recycler's place in the small town twenty miles north. They were waiting when it opened up, and Bo weighed in, emptied his trailer, then after weighing out, he went to prowling around the yard. He never ceased to be amazed at some of the things that people called scrap, but realistically he knew that most of the usable items in the yard were probably stolen for their value in weight. McCromick’s bought scrap at 70 percent of the going price in the city and sold it for a modest profit, to the city's bigger scrap yards, making their profit on the hauling of the iron into the city. Besides being open to the public as a recycler, the small outfit sold whatever was in the yard for double their intake price. While not fire-sale prices, it was still much better than buying new, and sometimes some really good stuff showed up there. Most places would put a premium price tag on the “good stuff” but Alton McCromick let it all go at the same per-pound rate, to regular customers. Bo sometimes brought in scrap, and when he did that and Mr. McCromick was in a good mood, Bo could unload his scrap and load up whatever looked irresistible and pay or be paid only on the difference in weights. Today was one of those days, and he had not yet returned to the pay window to collect on his 'delivery' until he scouted a few piles that had looked promising on his circuit through when unloading.
Buying any amount of ‘stuff’ presumes that one would like to keep that stuff and use it oneself. Many people will just blow off preparation, instead letting the extent of their preps be making mental notes of who has stuff, and planning to either go help those people use their stuff or, if that is not a welcome plan of action, just take that stuff and use it themselves. Bo didn’t have a whole lot of stuff, but what he had was his, and he was bound and determined to keep his stuff and have it used by those with whom he wanted to share. Keeping one’s stuff generally requires a good line of defense. Bo had a weak spot in his defenses and knew he had only a few days to get that rectified.
First thing Bo went after was any sturdy angle iron or pipe that could be made into a serious gate to replace the sheetmetal galvanized farm gate that was the weak point in the front defenses. Between the subtly shaped ditch and the really nasty blackthorn brush just inside the fence, with its needle sharp and very stiff two inch thorns, and the scattered huge chunks of concrete under the blackthorn brush clippings, the front was well defended from both ground assault and rubber-tired vehicles. The last gap was the twelve foot gate that had been a “next time I get to it” project. It’s time to get to it, Bo, he said to himself.
The south and east sides were bordered by mesquites too thick to drive anything through, and only a hog could get through the thorny brush with any speed or stealth. North side was cleared, but had Kenny’s “strip mine” to cross, where the neighbor had spent a month with a rented trackhoe doing some major drainage work in an attempt to make water drain from his property. For the most part it had done the job, but the cuts and ditches had never been smoothed out and as a result there were several impossible man-made ravines, some up to 20 feet deep, that one had to cross to traverse that lot. There was one roadway that went across it, but it was not readily apparent. All the trenches were lined up with the ‘observatory’ at the top of Ken’s house, so hiding in one of them wasn’t an option. The other security factor with the trenches was the residents: diamondback snakes. While snakes are solitary and have no further ambition than to depart a human’s vicinity, one must make human noises to induce the snakes to leave, noises such as talking, stomping around, running machinery, and so forth, any of which noises would alert the barking residents of the farm. It was the proverbial rock and hard place, use stealth and the snakes get you, warn off the snakes and the people know you’re there.
Finding some slightly squirrelly drill stem, Bo stepped it off and found that he had come across six full 24 foot joints of it, none of which was sprung enough to even notice when cut down to gate size. Five for the gate crossbars, one for the two ends and several other features he wanted to incorporate.
Looking around some more, he saw a pile of steel fence posts. Judging from the look of them, they had been in the ground recently since they still had dirt around the anchor lug at the bottom. Bo went back and got the truck and trailer, and drove up next to the fence posts. He picked up a few of them to begin loading them, deciding to put them sideways across the front end of the trailer. Finished with that, he climbed back in the truck and puttered across the yard, watching one side as Sandie watched the other for interesting or useful things.
“Stop!” cried Sandie. “Go look over there, behind that bathtub! I just saw something that might come in handy!”
Bo got back down from the truck and picked his way towards an old steel bathtub with a rusted out drain hole. Carefully, nudging it with his toe first and then picking up an old stove leg and whacking the inverted tub to send any overnight guests scurrying (or slithering) away, he reached down and rolled the tub out of the way to reveal what Sandie had seen: One end of an ancient iron treadle sewing machine! He turned to Sandie and gave her a thumbs up and a grin, which was returned.
“I know I can’t use it, but if we have it, and someone else doesn’t have one but can use it, we could barter with ‘em for the use of it,” Sandie reasoned.
“Good idea, hon,” replied Bo, marveling again at how his wife had turned into as shrewd a scavenger as he had ever known, and remembering how she had wanted to crawl under a rock when he stopped on their first date at the curb to load a gas grill he’d spied put out for the next day’s trash. And on the way to the restaurant, no less! She had been mortified at the sight of showing up at the eatery with an old, garbage-picked gas grill hanging halfway out of the trunk of the rental car Bo had for that trip to see her.
Wrestling with the sewing machine, he got it set upright and it appeared to be intact, with only a few minor bends in some bracing, nothing that couldn’t be fixed with a torch and a hammer. Moving stuff out of the way to frog-walk it out to the trailer, he kicked that stove leg he had used to clear the tub----
Stove leg? STOVE LEG? Bo started rooting around again in the waist high stacks of someone else’s scrap, looking, looking….
Bingo! A four hole wood stove, missing most of one leg! He held the rat-whacker up to the stove, and the broken leg matched exactly with the little ear of leg still bolted to the bottom of the stove itself. Apparently the leg had broken off, and someone had pitched it. Probably sat in someone’s barn for years, until the kids decided to get rid of all of Grandma’s old junk, probably bringing it in to get some money for dope, Bo cynically thought. Nothing wrong with this stove that a little grinding and one welding rod can’t fix, he thought to himself. Nothing but surface rust on this thing, a can of stove black paint and a wire brush and you can’t BUY what I just found!
Loaded with the stove, sewing machine, T posts and the six sticks of drillstem for the gate, the two pulled up to the office. Since the electricity was out in the country, and the scrapyard was just on the edge of town enough to be served by the REA instead of the public utility, Bo and Mr. McCromick eyeballed the load and agreed on a weight since the electronic scale was not working.
“Corpus still has lights, but only in a few areas, the areas that the cogeneration plants down on Refinery Row supplies,” offered the scrap man, saying that he had already been into the city that morning to run a few errands before opening the yard up.
“Well, that’s good to know. What about the area where Sam’s is?”
“I think they’ve got lights. I passed by there and the gas station in front had cars stacked up in front of the pumps, and they wouldn’t be there if the pumps weren’t working,” the old man reasoned.
Pocketing his change and pulling out of the scrap yard Bo and Sandie headed south for the thirty mile trip to the lumberyard. They would pass two yards on the way into town, but Bo was meeting his neighbor at a Mom & Pop yard in town that was very strict with their culls and reasonable with their sales of culls.
Reaching the lumberyard, Bo pulled into the back, fenced area and pulled up next to the cull pile. Looking over it, he saw that it was a nice mix of two-by’s and decent size sheets of OSB. Oriented Strand Board was of a much higher quality than even just ten years ago, when it was little more than glued together sawdust. Bo had started out using plywood sheets for the flooring on his house, and when he went back for a few more he had discovered the lumberyard to be out of plywood and, wanting to get the floor finished so he could start on the walls, he bought a half dozen sheets of the OSB tongue and groove, and had found it to be just as sturdy as plywood over time.
The OSB in the stack looked to be a whole bundle of it that had fallen off a truck, or some other calamity which caused one corner to be bungled up considerably. It was only the corner, and while it would need to be cut down, it would only shorten it by a few inches one way or the other, which when you’re not picky and you’re building yourself, it’s easy to allow for. Bo walked in to the office and made a deal with the owner of the establishment for the entire cull pile, getting it for much less than a tenth of the retail price. After settling up with the owner, Bo loaded the loose two-by lumber himself after a forklift loaded the stack of OSB onto the tail of the trailer and had shoved it in far enough to make the load steady enough to pull down the highway.
This left a nice empty spot between the wood stove and sewing machine and the stack of plywood, with the longer pipe and lumber lining the sides of the trailer. The two of them left the lumberyard and decided while in the city to go visit Sam’s Club. After jackknifing the rig to get Sandie’s chair out and helping her into it, Bo got back in the truck and straightened it out. He had had a bad experience one time with leaving it jackknifed and returning to find that people had pulled into every marked parking space around him, effectively blocking him in until the majority of them moved. Ever since that he had always taken the extra time to straighten back out when the two of them took a trailer to town.
Sandie had gone into Sam’s with Bo to help pick out and keep tabs on the total on the buggy. When they had gotten what she considered that she needed to be there for, she told Bo she was going to go over to the pharmacy area and see if she could pad their supply on over the counter medicines and possibly get three month refills on her prescriptions.
As Bo drug the four-wheel cart towards the checkout stand, he looked over and saw an interesting item in the outdoor section of the store: a Coleman camp oven. Stacking that on top of the bundles of toilet paper (the only paper product Bo and Sandie kept any large stock of, since it can be used to blow your nose, and paper towels seemed to both of them to be a waste for general cleaning when a cloth towel could be washed and reused) he hauled his load of TP, motor oil, rice and beans to the checkstand then out the door and onto the trailer.
After re-jackknifing the rig and setting up the ramp for Sandie’s chair, Bo went to rearranging the load on the trailer, moving things here and there for a more stable ride, and moving the two monster packs of TP into the back seat of the cab. Rooting around in the tool box on the truck, Bo found another two straps and used them to tie down the rest of the goodies on the trailer, remembering his dad’s line that you look awful silly picking up your load off the side of the road when there’s a bunch of extra tie downs in the bed of the truck.
“Hey good lookin’, think I can get a ride out of this ol’ town?” Sandie had quietly wheeled up behind her husband as he was cursing a rusted strap ratchet into performance.
“Yeah, I guess. Let’s hurry up and get out of here afore my wife gets out here”, Bo countered with a grin. Taking the box of aspirin, ibuprofen, and hand sanitizer off of her lap, he set it into the bed of the truck near the front where it wouldn’t slide around, and set to the task of getting Sandie into the truck and comfortable before loading her chair.
Chair loaded, Bo folded the aluminum ramp back up and closed the tailgate. Glancing up at the fuel pump area to judge the line and crowd, he saw movement out of the corner of his eye. All of a sudden, he sneezed loudly and slapped the truck, reassured when he heard the door locks snap shut when Sandie recognized his warning signal. Two punks, who Bo presumed were from the neighborhood behind the Sam’s store, were on the trailer poking through the boxes he had just loaded. It was obvious they were new to this and were simply looking for something to sell to make a quick buck, because both had their attention focused completely on pawing through things instead of their environment. They hadn’t even noticed him handling Sandie’s chair up into the truck or the slamming of the tailgate or the sneeze, or if they did, they figured it was someone who couldn’t see them through the stove and sewing machine.
Bo reached quietly into his right front pocket, feeling for and grabbing his .38 and slowly working it out into a more ready position as he soundlessly walked up behind the two boys. He left the revolver mostly in his pocket but far enough out where the hammer wouldn’t get hung up in pocket cloth should he need to show the kids his little toy. As he neared the two, he heard them under their breath talking to each other about how most gringos come out of Sam’s with at least something good. “Pero, this pinche bolillo, man, he come out with nothin’ but butt wipe and DOG food, bato!”
Bo finally spoke. “Y’all drop somethin’ on my trailer, boys?”
Both jumped like they’d been hit with a hot poker. Recovering quickly with the false bravado of a young kid who hadn’t ever been told no, the slightly older one looked at Bo and sneered, “What you gonna do about it if I did, old man?”
Bo looked at the boy. “Well, if you did, you’re welcome to get it and get back down off my trailer. But, I really don’t think you did.” Bo grinned coldly. “You two was fixing to take off with some of my stuff, weren’t you?”
The younger one swallowed hard, while trying mightily to not show fear in front of the bigger boy, who continued taunting Bo. “So what if we was, honky? You ain’t got nothin’ on here I want anyway, or I would,” he said with a pathetic attempt at sounding disdainful.
“Bet you wouldn’t”, countered Bo, who was less and less of a mood to be lenient on these two kids who probably had no concept of ownership of property.
“I got me something that says I would, old man,” retorted the boy as a fairly large knife appeared in his hand.
Bo looked at the knife and the way the boy was holding it, and made a decision not to escalate things. Leaning on the trailer rail with his left hand and looking the boy in the eye, he said, “You are a dummy, aren’t you? First you try and take stuff off my trailer, then you pull out a knife you haven’t got a clue of how to use.” With that, Bo reached out and slapped the boy’s forearm, sending the knife skittering across the parking lot.
It didn’t work. The boy looked towards his knife twenty feet away then back at Bo with an expression of rage and resentment on his face. He glanced at the other boy and out of the side of his mouth he told the other boy, “Voy a tumbarlo, cuando corres al cuchillo y matalo.” (I’m gonna knock him down, you head for the knife and kill him.)
So much for talking with these kids, Bo thought to himself when he heard the plan. As the older one’s gaze returned to Bo, he found himself staring down the barrel of the revolver that had materialized in an instant in Bo’s right hand. “Cayete! Chico, pare ahora!” Bo barked. (Shut up! Young ‘un, stop now!) “Kid, you’re doing this for fun. I’m doing this to live. That’s why you’re gonna walk away empty handed with a new lesson to learn: Don’t screw with someone who earns his stuff. Now y’all GIT!”
Like a pair of spooked rabbits they got. As Bo dropped his weapon back into his shorts pocket, he noticed the unmistakable aroma in the air: One of the two had unloaded in his britches. Maybe that’ll stop ‘em, he thought, if one of ‘em got that scared. Bo turned to walk towards the pickup and saw the Sam’s security Gator coming up the aisle as he opened the driver’s door. The Gator stopped and the security guard got out and waddled over.
“Any problems over here? I noticed a couple boys running from your rig. They weren’t threatening you or anything were they?”
“No,” replied Bo. “They were looking at my stuff a little too close and I had to yell at ‘em, probably why they ran.” He decided that it would probably be best to not describe every bit of detail surrounding the ‘visit’ he had had to have with the boys.
“Oh, okay. You’re sure everything’s okay? Is there anything more to it you want to tell me?” The rent-a-cop squinted in his best tough-guy expression, which was kind of humorous when coupled with the crumbs of taquito on the front of his shirt.
“Nope, not a thing, but I appreciate your being here in case I needed protectin’,” Bo smiled.
The security guard puffed out his chest, obviously pleased with not only himself but with this lowly civilian’s recognition of his authori-tah. “Well, that’s what we’re here for. There’s two more just like me that would be here as fast as they could run,” he said as he patted the only thing hanging from his belt, a radio.
“I cannot tell you how comforting that is to know, sir,” said Bo with as much sincerity as he could muster, while behind his back he bent his finger forcefully the wrong way with his other hand in a mostly successful effort to keep from laughing out loud, though a snicker did escape and had to be covered by a ‘coughing’ fit. When he recovered from that, Bo told the guy, “Thanks again for your quick response and sharp eye.” With that, Bo climbed in and cranked up the Diesel to prevent any further conversation, waving as he pulled away from the now-completely self important rent-a-cop.
At 50 miles an hour, driving down the freeway a few minutes later, Sandie reached over and took Bo’s hand. “Thanks, darling. I sure am glad you came out to the truck before I did.”
Bo glanced at her as he checked the right side mirror. “Yeah, from now on, hon, you stay inside the store if we split up. Hang loose by the exit but inside far enough to be in with people, and I’ll look for you on the way out. I’ll do the same, because you coming out with all that stuff from the pharmacy on your lap, they coulda ripped you off as you came from the door all the way out here. And I kinda doubt those two would’ve cared if they knocked you out of your chair or not, and might of come back to take it out on you when they realized all they’d got from you is aspirin. By the way, you didn’t get your prescriptions refilled? I didn’t see a bag.”
“Yep, sure did. Didn’t want it obvious though, had the clerk stuff the bag down into the pouch on the back of my chair seat. Don’t worry, they won’t blow out”, grinned Sandie as Bo jumped to peer through the mirror and started to slow down. “They’re under a two pack of Nutella I saw on an endcap and picked up on the way to the pharmacy counter.”
Bo looked at her and replied, “That’s all the more reason to stop and secure stuff. Heck with the meds, what if the Nutella flies out?” He looked at his wife in mock horror.
********************
Finally feeling safe to slow down to a walk, the two boys took stock of where they were in the neighborhood and oriented themselves towards their grandma’s house, which was right on the bus line to Robstown, a large part of the reason their mom let them go visit Grandma without supervision after the strange story about last night and the HEB and the complete lack of food arriving home from the grocery store with them last night.
Felipe looked at his little brother. “Jesse, you realize we can’t let that honky get away with pointing his gun at us. That kind of disrespect gets you dead in our hood.”
“Well, bro, we could just not say nothing. That sounded like one bad dude, maybe we better just shut up, and maybe nobody’ll know.”
Felipe looked at his fourteen year old brother. “Kid, I know, and that’s too much. Some day…. Just some day….”
Jesse looked over, “Yeah, I know, you’re just hopin’ your little novia don’t hear about it!” He grinned at his seventeen year old, puppy love-sick brother who was constantly strutting around every time the pretty little sixteen year old came around.
“Jesse, you leave Nita out of this. I swear, if she finds out some old man did that and walked away alive, I’ll kill you.” The look in Felipe’s eyes brought fear to the younger boy. As they turned the corner and Felipe got downwind of little brother, he sniffed experimentally and made an awful face. “Aw, man! What died? Oh, that’s nasty. Where’s it coming from?” He sniffed again as red crept into Jesse’s face as he shrunk from embarrassment on top of the lingering fear at his brother’s earlier warning. “It’s YOU! No, man, that ain’t cool. No way! I’m gonna get sick! Aw, no, that’s friggin’ gross! Oh, why did you go and do THAT?!” Shaking his head and holding his stomach, Felipe managed to mutter, “Maybe we shoulda stole that gringo's toilet paper!”
********************
Trailer unloaded and Sandie resting while her chair drew some charge off of the solar charger, Bo looked through the cash register tickets from their stops that day. “Not bad, hon. Only spent a little over three hundred, and that’s including the stuff from the lumberyard.”
“Great, what does that leave us with? Close to eleven hundred left? What do you want to do, hang on to it or go get more stuff?”
“Well, with the Chinese cuttin’ up like they are and telling us to stuff it, and with the dang mideast and that Achmanutjob and his possible nukes, it appears to me that those dollars are gonna be worth less the longer we hang onto them. Might as well buy stuff we know we’re gonna use. If it turns out I’m wrong, why then while we’re using up the stuff we bought, we can save back up on more of ‘em then.”
Sandie nodded at that. “Okay, what would you like to have? I know I saw a chair in the ad paper for a couple hundred. I’d really like to have a second good one. I think the ad said it’s the same model as this one, and if it is, I could alternate days in them and see if the solar charger alone will reload the batteries, instead of wasting all the power using the inverter to power a battery charger. We’re still not for sure what I’d have to do with a week straight of overcast during the wintertime, right?” Getting a nod from Bo, she continued, “I’d like to put on the list that chair, if it’s still there.”
“Absolutely, hon.” Bo agreed, nodding some more. “Let’s see. We’ve got all our gas bottles filled, thanks to you and Buddy. I didn’t top off the truck on the way in today, but that was mainly because of the lines at Sam’s, plus I was just wanting to get out of there before those punks brought back some help. After that, there wasn’t a pump I could get to with that long trailer. I’ll have to go out tomorrow and see if I can find some Diesel. We haven’t run the blue truck since you two filled it up, have we?”
Sandie shook her head. “No, haven’t had a need to, not with Buddy gone. I just go with you. Speaking of that, Annie is coming tomorrow, she asked if she could come put in a day or two this week, since her ‘real job’ laid her off.”
Annie was the young lady who came in as needed to help Sandie with things around the house when Bo was overloaded with work. A single mom with three boys, ages six and twins just shy of two, she had made some poor choices involving males in her life but did have the good sense to show the deadbeats the road instead of keeping them around and being miserable. Besides, the boys had a good rapport with their dads, and Annie told Sandie she had vowed to herself to never run the boys’ dads down in the kids’ hearing, instead showing a united front, and only disagreeing in private, resolving any difficulties out of sight and hearing of the boys. Bo and Sandie both liked Annie immensely, since she had apparently matured a lot in the last few years. While she was young enough to be their daughter, they both thought of her more as a friend, and Annie seemed to show that same sentiment.
Bo thought that was a good idea, and said so. He continued, “What do you think about including her in the figuring when we’re planning our food on hand and such? I know the kids drive you up the wall, but would you rather have Annie here than have to go deal with stuff like today at Sam’s? I mean, it’s probably gonna get to where that sort of thing is more normal than not, if you know what I mean.”
Sandie had been thinking about that, especially in light of the last few days of riding shotgun with Bo and even more so since the ‘repel boarders’ exercise a few hours ago. “You know, we could probably do that. Buddy’s gone for who knows how long, so his room’s just sitting there. If he comes back alone, he can stay in the camper. If he brings sisters, we’ve got a space problem whether Annie’s here or not. That older boy of hers-- what’s his name? Shane! – can probably make up a room out on the back porch where the stairs come down from Buddy’s room, and Fred and Ferd can bunk with Annie. I think they do anyways. I do know she’s been wanting out of that apartment she’s got, and she’s gotta be really sweating it if things are as strange in that town as they have been in Robstown and Bishop.”
“Why don’t you ask her tomorrow? I can build a good solid door for where the storm door is on the porch, which’ll give that room a little more security, and maybe mount a cattle panel over the screened area. I don’t think there’s gonna be that kind of problem but it’d help Annie feel better about Shane being downstairs in a separate room. You could offer her room and board for being available to help you when needed. It’d be a load off my mind knowing you didn’t have to be exposed to crap like today any more than necessary.” Bo had been thinking about that ever since the parking lot, and Sandie’s idea about Annie was the answer. Now, the trick would be getting the young mother to agree with moving her three boys out into the sticks.
“I’ll bring it up when she’s here tomorrow, and if she likes the idea, we’ll re-inventory what we have on hand and do what we have to do. Look, unless you have a better idea, Bo, why don’t you light out soon as she gets here and go grab as much more beans, cornmeal, rice, and sugar, you know, the staples that won’t go bad, and I’ll call you with her reaction. If you’ve already bought the stuff, good, bring it home. Then I’ll send you back out with our list right away. I don’t think stores are gonna stay stocked very much longer, because once these punks get bold enough, suppliers are gonna quit sending trucks into most places. What little gets in is gonna be priced out of sight anyways. So get out of here early and go do what you gotta do.”
“I’ll clean out Wally world and HEB in Alice of beans, rice, and sugar. I think I’ll hold off on flour, maybe a dozen big bags. You know how fast flour grows critters down here.”
“True, Bo, so just get enough to make it for a while. You know, I’ve wondered, why can’t you somehow turn that grinder you have out in the shop into a flour mill? Then all you need to do is grind some hegari or even milo. Anything with enough gluten in it to rise, and if it doesn’t lighten up, we’ll just eat a lot of tortillas.” Sandie grinned. “Go by the co-op and see if they still have hegari. You told me it used to be planted as a winter grazing crop down here, so there should be some in stock in October, don’t’cha think?”
“Excellent ideas. All of ‘em.” Bo thought about the grinder and winced. Now why didn’t I think of that? A couple of roughened wheels just touching, some sort of adjusting setup, a hopper, and a chute. Dang, that woman is worth her weight in gold! Our own flour, without a four hundred dollar mill from someplace up north! Bo grinned a goofy grin and told Sandie, “Have I ever told you how lucky I am to have you around?” Leaning over to plant a kiss on her lips, he continued, “I can’t imagine life without you, darling. Maybe you can’t go and do physically, but your mind just makes up for any lack you have in muscle.” Planting a second kiss, he got up to go put away the groceries from Sam’s that he and Sandie had stacked near their assigned spots.
|
|
|
Post by bluefox2 on May 14, 2022 7:40:34 GMT -6
As much as I like to read all of the other stories here where folks get lucky with money and/or land and such, this story is much closer (to me at least) to the real life most of us live.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 14, 2022 21:51:31 GMT -6
FOURTEEN
Bo walked out of the co-op office in Mathis, puzzled at the response he’d gotten when he asked about hegari seed. Generally planted as a fall or winter crop with a 65 day span to get a seedhead, and with the first frost realistically around Christmas in south Texas, Bo was certain they’d have at least some in stock a month before planting should begin in the middle of October. The co-op doubted they’d get any in, and the only hegari in the facility was that which farmers had brought in for storage, but didn't want to sell, and had asked the elevator operator to catch and hold a certain portion of their delivery. Generally, this seed was used for feed in a crop/animal farm, but in non-hybrid varieties the caught seed could also be used for planting.
When Bo asked about buying some caught seed, the cryptic response was that every farmer that caught his seed to store was hanging onto every pound. Didn’t make sense, with prices so high, unless these same farmers were expecting to have to plant it as a main spring crop next year, which now that he thought more about it, it was not a bad hedge to have a backup seed to plant if things didn’t shape up by February. Besides, he thought to himself, what good’s the money really gonna do? Not like its worth much more than the paper it’s printed on and there’s bound to be other folks who realize that.
Sure, money is worth whatever it can bring you, and is basically worth what a buyer and seller agree its worth, but when the seller turns around a week later or a month later, whenever he decides to spend his money, and gets raped when he tries to buy with it, it puts a bad taste in everyone’s mouth. Bo had absolutely no use for paper money. To him, it was a hoop to jump through for certain transactions, such as paying his electric bill…used to be, he thought, and will be if the lights ever come back on…. and mortgage payments, gasoline, car insurance, and so forth. Bo took money for his work, enough to spend on what he had to use Federal Reserve Notes for like the payments above, but had no real interest in accumulating them, as they depreciated faster year by year. Ten years ago, a two by four was seventy-nine cents at the lumberyard. Now it’s over two dollars. If one had foreseen a need for, say, a hundred two by fours, back then and bought them only to put in the shed for later, one would have a hundred two by fours now. If, on the other hand, one had taken that seventy nine dollars and tucked it into an envelope and saved it in case he needed it later (to buy 2x4’s, perhaps?) and then now needed lumber, he would only have 45 two by fours instead of a hundred.
Now, carry that on out further. Suppose he needed plywood instead of 2x4’s. One could then go trade three two by fours for a sheet of six dollar OSB. There was enough 2x4 stacked from earlier, remember, to get 33 sheets of OSB. However, had he gone and gotten that envelope out of the dresser and used that seventy nine dollars, he’d have thirteen sheets of OSB instead of thirty three. The only catch was to find a willing taker for his 2x4’s who also had some surplus sheet stuff.
Bo had tried for years to convince Sandie of the lunacy of hoarding FRN’s, and finally got through to her when food started going through the roof a couple years back. When she noticed that the food she was serving today was bought at six months ago’s prices, effectively cutting their food bill in half, she was on board. Even the replacement food bought at today’s prices will be considered a bargain in another year, by most expectations, so it continues to pay dividends regardless.
Anyway, that trip to the co-op shot, Bo realized he’d probably have to barter something he’d found or held onto for some seed from another farmer nearer to his own place. Maybe even something like trading someone some tractor work for the seed. He’d done this often enough with some of the neighbors who needed things Bo had, and Bo had needed the use of a particular piece of equipment he hadn’t managed to stumble across for next to nothing.
As he drove south down the highway back towards home, he looked out his side window at the sky over the Gulf of Mexico. Slowing to keep the truck on the road while he studied the high clouds, he could tell something was brewing. The sky just looked funny. Bo used to snicker when his dad would look off into space and call for rain in two days, or three, or maybe even just ‘within the week,’ all on the basis that the sky looked funny. After years of his dad proving right more often than not, and when his dad was wrong he was only wrong on the timing and not the event, Bo started to study the sky more closely. He still couldn’t put a finger on exactly what it was that looked different, but had developed his dad’s knack for calling a turn in the weather. His vague but fairly accurate hunches had even in the past few years began to earn his dad’s respect.
September is not out of the question for tropical events in the central Gulf, and while he’d not heard anything from anywhere official, Bo expected to be hearing something shortly. With that, he turned his attention back towards the surface, and scanning at each hilltop and intersection for interesting things, he continued towards home.
Pulling in the driveway next to Sandie’s truck, he remembered he needed to start it, as it had been several days since Buddy had left so abruptly. Looking past the house, he saw Booger, the big mixed breed mutt that had been born Christmas Day 2007, right in between Bo and Sandie! Booger’s mom had apparently decided that was the softest, most secure place to domino, and the friendly beagle mix had hopped up on the bed and proceeded to deliver three healthy pups. The sheet and mattress pad were a total loss, but thanks to the shower curtain Sandie had insisted be laid under the mattress pad in case her paralysis led to an ‘accident’ of some sort, the mattress was saved. The two females were cute as bugs, and Sandie found homes for them about two months later.
The male, on the other hand, was one of those dogs that there’s just something about. He was huge, for one thing, with paws as big as his mom’s by the time his sisters were adopted out. Bo knew he was going to be a bruiser when he reached his prime, and Sandie had become attached to his goofy, ungainly antics. Booger was a keeper. Sure enough, he grew to a bit over a hundred pounds and outgrew his goofiness to become a beautiful dog, with a very protective tendency towards his people-momma. Sandie had a protector who would probably give his life for her.
Bo could always tell where Sandie was when she was outside in the yard by finding the dog. Booger was always ‘on guard’ watching the front gate, and all one had to do to find Sandie was look behind the huge dog within twenty feet. Sure enough, sighting down the dog’s spine and off his six, Bo found Sandie sliding chicken scratch into the coop. He had, at Sandie’s request, developed a way for her to tend the chickens without scattering their scratch feed. They had a pan in the coop, and Bo had taken the pan and drilled two holes in the lip of the pan. Through one hole he ran a piece of ornamental chain to the top wire of the enclosure, not taut but within an inch of being taut. On the opposite hole he ran another piece of the same ornamental chain but instead of tying that off to the roof, he tied it to a piece of twine which he ran through the wire coop ceiling and over and down to the side of the coop, where he tied a loop in it and then tied the tag end of the twine to the side of the coop. With this, Sandie could loop the twine around her wrist and pick up the feed pan to dump it out, scattering any grain that might be left in it for the chickens to scratch out, along with dumping the chicken doo out of the pan as well. The second chain served to hold the pan in roughly the same location as well as make it easier to have the pan come back down right side up. By picking up the pan a couple times an inch or so, scooting it back over to where gravity from the two chains positioned it, the pan wound up under the discharge end of a piece of 3 inch PVC pipe that ran at an incline over to the wall of the coop near where the cans of feed sat. With an old measuring cup, Sandie could scoop out feed and pour it into the end of the PVC outside the coop, and it would run down the inclined plastic pipe and into the feed pan. Another scoop was scattered into the milling area of the coop for the chickens to paw and scratch at for exercise, and beside, that was part of the job description of a chicken, was it not?
Feeding completed, Sandie turned to the back wall of the north end of the coop, where the house was. At a suitable height for her were six cabinet doors about a foot square. Each little door opened into one of the six nesting boxes in the henhouse. Rolling up to them, she opened the first one which revealed the tail end of a setting chicken. Reaching up under the hen’s rear, she felt around and nodded. Bo walked over and put his hand on her backrest, and she turned to him and said quietly “Eight, I think.”
Bo nodded. “Decent size brood for that hen.” Going to the other end, he opened a cabinet door to an empty nesting box with four eggs in it. “Breakfast”, he grinned as he carefully pulled out the three white and one brown egg. “You gonna let a couple of these set or you want to clean them all out ‘cept that ol’ biddy who’s already settin’?”
“Well, let’s get a few days behind us and see if that last one will keep giving us four eggs a day. So far it’s been averaging that, and these other boxes have a couple each in ‘em. I’d like to see a couple dozen chickens hatch out now, they’ll be old enough come winter to survive. Next week or two, on out though, let’s figure on eating whatever eggs we get. I’ll check twice a day, and so long as we have fridge space, I should be able to keep enough of ‘em saved up for Thanksgiving. I can do some stuff early with some of ‘em, too, and freeze it or boil ‘em and pickle ‘em. They’re still pretty good as deviled eggs after being pickled.”
“It’s still chihuasco season, and the sky looks funny, and here you are talking about Thanksgiving! Darling, haven’t I told you already that every day I wake up and you’re there, is thanksgiving enough for me?” Bo couldn’t help but get mushy on Sandie ever so often, he liked seeing her go red in the cheeks a bit. Just a bit.
“Whoa, hold on a minute there, Bo—what do you mean the sky looks funny?” Sandie swiveled around to look up and east. “I don’t see anything strange.”
“Just that, hon. You remember how you could look at the sky up in Joliet and tell me that it was gonna snow and when and how much? But you couldn’t describe what it was you could see that made you say that, and what’s more you turned out right more often than not? Well, I grew up down here on the coast, and the sky looks funny. I s’pose we’d of gotten a weather report if we’d of had the radio on. I never have trusted the TV weathermen, they always either hype it up like Chicken Little or bury it if there might be tourists to scare off.” Bo headed for the house, and veered towards his pickup, figuring the radio in it would work just as well and they wouldn’t have to go inside just yet. Besides, he could listen while checking over the pepper bushes.
*******************
“Well, isn’t that strange, Bo. First time I’ve ever heard of all three stations having equipment failures on the same night,” Sandie commented as Bo walked into the bedroom where Sandie was resting her ‘sittin’ muscle’, as she called it. (“Well, muscles DO get bigger with use, and this thing has gotten a lot bigger in the last ten years or so, so that makes it a muscle, doesn’t it?”)
“Mmmph,” grunted Bo as he swatted a cat off the bookshelf to peer in at the desktop weather instruments. Temperature 88 degrees, about normal for ten at night. Humidity normal, about 90%. Taking a notepad and pencil from beside the bed, he wrote down the time and barometric pressure, since it is not a barometer reading that tells you what is happening but a change in readings. If the barometer is falling, chances are that there’s inclement weather on the way. If it’s rising, on the other hand, then either your crummy weather is ending or your good weather is going to continue. By writing down the time and indicated pressure, Bo could check it again in a few hours and see what might be in store.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to grunt at you, hon. Are you thinking something’s fishy too?”
“Well, duh, darling! You had the radio on each of the talk stations for an hour and all they had on was infomercials and not a single newscast or weather bulletin. Not even the current conditions and you know how they love to fill gaps with those. Why do you suppose? What went wrong?” Sandie looked at Bo.
“Yeah”, he chuckled humorlessly, “I guess that was a stupid question. I’m just not used to you being as concerned with it as I am. I always figured one of us being paranoid is enough.”
“Bo, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean you’re wrong. I just don’t obsess over stuff the way you seem to, I guess I just file away the information and get on with my life instead of having to get to the bottom of every little news blurb. Really, though, you think that thing with the weathermen all having ‘technical difficulties’ is believable?”
“Not only no but hell no, Sandie. Look, if the radar had been down, they’d say that and do without. Somebody asked them—or worse yet told them—to shut up tonight. I would bet it’s because there’s a pretty good size blow coming and with nobody having much money it’d be a good recipe for a panic.” Bo considered that, and continued: “While it makes some sense, I really have a problem with someone ordering the media to hush. That is what gets me. Those of us who have had the foresight to be ready for a blow need to know its coming. People gotta have time to board up and secure stuff. Lots of people will go buy a dozen sheets of plywood and declare themselves set. Others wait until the last minute, wait until a watch is issued, then go stampede the stores. Either way, that plywood ain’t on the windows until there’s a reason for it to go on. They apparently don’t want to give us a reason, and that bothers me.
“It’s one thing to try to maintain calm, but a whole ‘nuther thing to keep people in the dark about something that could be dangerous. Sure, it’ll make the law’s job easier if the sheeple are clueless, but...” Bo trailed off in frustration.
Sandie voiced an ominous thought. “Could that be what they want?”
Bo froze. Finally, he was able to identify that funny feeling he had had at the Walmart checkout only four short days (“only FOUR days?!” he thought) ago, and then again that evening as he shut the front gate. Information. The key. Shut down information, and we’re not much better off than the sheeple. With a shudder as if a chill breeze had just blown up the back of his shirt, he started to turn to Sandie but was distracted by the old tomcat hopping up on the front windowsill and arching his back and growling. Following the old tom’s gaze, he saw headlights slowing down and turning into his drive, stopping at the gate and dying, leaving faint orange running lights. Glancing down at the sleeping dogs and shaking his head, he repeated his thanks for being blessed with a watchcat.
Bo reached over to his dresser and picked up a set of binoculars and focused them on the set of running lights a hundred fifty yards away. “Company. At the gate, no headlights.”
“Any idea who?” Sandie asked.
“Hard to say in this dark, hon, but it looks like a newer Ford.” Bo looked away for a few seconds and then reacquired the view in the ‘nockers’ as his kids used to call them. One day when his oldest was about three, Bo was watching a javelina wandering across a field one January day when the phone rang. Little Renee answered the phone and told her maternal grandma that daddy was looking at knockers and mommy wasn’t around. It took some explaining but now the whole family had a new name for binoculars.
“I’d best get back up,” Sandie suggested.
“Yep, let’s do it.” In two steps, Bo was to her side of the bed. As he slid his arm under her knees, she grabbed him around the neck and he straightened up and carried her to her chair. As he helped Sandie get situated and adjusted, Bo continued, “Have you even tried your phone today?”
“No, you’ve been here, or we’ve been out together. Haven’t had a need to use it. Come to think of it, nobody’s called either.” Reaching into the side pocket of her chair, she pulled out her phone and hit send twice, which would call the last dialed number, and was rewarded with the fast busy that indicated the system was down or overloaded. “Not working. Could that be your family? You usually talk to them daily, and your dad might have gotten worried if he couldn’t get through on the phone.”
“It could be Lee Roy or Polly, or even Dad. No…. not Dad, he’s got an ’04 Heritage, not the new style front end. Anybody else, they ain’t welcome that I can think of.” Bo stepped across the room and took from the homemade pine gun cabinet a 20 gauge model 1100 and stuck his finger into the magazine. When it stopped a half inch in, he was satisfied it was loaded as it gets, and handed the shotgun to Sandie.
She could handle the self-loader respectably well, well enough that she wasn’t going to remove any of her own body parts, and while she couldn’t aim it and pull the trigger, she could rest the butt on the edge of her backrest and ‘shoot from the hip’ well enough that someone in front of her didn’t have very good odds. It was a chore for her to reload it, with her limited dexterity and strength in her hands, but with five in the magazine she could rack the bolt and load the chamber, and for at least five bangs, be a respectable obstacle.
Bo returned to the cabinet and checked the magazine of his .30-30 and set it back inside, then pulled out the Mossberg 500 12 gauge which had 000 buck in the magazine. Dropping another box of five 000 shells in his pocket, he returned to the window, wishing he hadn’t taken that minute or so away, finding that the guests had already gotten the gate open and were halfway up the driveway with headlights back on. While most would presume that the driver had a key to the gate, Bo did not rule out the possibility of someone having made use of that universal key (otherwise known as bolt cutters) and cut the lock.
As the guests, now considered intruders, pulled into the clearing in front of the house, Bo reached over and flipped a switch that turned on four quartz 300 watt spotlights, the kind sold at Walmart for about seven bucks each and designed for construction work, all four of which were aimed at the entrance to the clearing and positioned widely apart, giving very little shadow and lighting up anything in the drive as good as daylight. Any real length of time and they'd suck the batteries dry, but being left on for a few minutes didn't drain the batteries too much. At the same time as he hit the switch, he pressed the panic button on the key ring of Sandie’s truck, which was backed in beside the house, aimed straight down the driveway at the gate. The panic button caused the horn to honk and the headlights to flash on the truck, offering Bo a distraction should he need to repel boarders.
The lights revealed Bo’s sister Polly, sitting there blinking in the sudden burst of light. Recognizing her, Bo shut off the lights and the truck alarm, and said to Sandie, “Polly.” Sandie nodded and went to the front door and flipped on the front porch light. Polly stepped down from her truck and shut the door, alerting the sleeping dogs who flew into alert mode and after frantically looking this way and that, began barking in earnest at the sudden (to them) appearance of another pink-hairless critter.
Inside, and the howdying done, Polly got right down to business. “Tried calling you but my phone wouldn’t dial out. Got news, it’s important enough to drive all over to let y’all know. Remember a few years ago I was working for that company that was contracted to the Navy?” Getting nods from both, Polly went on, “Well, a couple of the Navy contact points and I have kept in touch since I went to work for the oil company, and one of them dropped by my house a couple hours ago.”
Polly paused for a breath before plunging into her news. “There’s a cat 4 storm in the middle of the Gulf, east-southeast of us, headed west. Landfall is expected near Rivera about this time tomorrow; the outer bands should be rolling in by noon. Homeland Security—boy what a joke!—put a gag order on the media since the news of a storm and the need to board up or leave would cause panic with people who can’t get at their money because of the banks' closing. Navy knows about it, so does the Coast Guard. Brad could get in a bunch of trouble for telling a ‘mere civilian’ about it, but he owes me several times over for pulling his nads out of a fire more than once at work. Already drove over to Lee Roy’s, he is going to Mom and Dad’s and help them close their shutters and do what he and Missy can to help them burrow down there. They took their dogs and plan to stay over there until the storm makes landfall.”
As Polly paused for air, Sandie spoke up. “First, Polly, thanks for coming. I sure appreciate your taking the time and effort to come all the way out here. What are you going to do, stay home or leave, or what?”
“Woody and Brutus are in the truck, sacked out in the back seat. I shut all my shutters and put stuff on top shelves, and loaded up what I could in the back of the truck. I can’t ride it out at home, I’m only fourteen feet above mean tide at home. Even if this weakens to a cat three before landfall, we’re on the bad side of it for one, and for another a cat three can have up to a sixteen foot storm surge. I don’t feel like treading water,” she replied with a weak grin. “I just hope the house stands through this. I have all the insurance, goodness knows my checkbook can tell you by how light it is every January, but with the banking and financial stuff so screwed, it’s anybody’s guess if they’ll even pay a claim. They’re getting away with so much fraud now, what’s a hurricane?” Polly was gifted with a dry, sarcastic wit, which she used to take the edge of gloom off of situations without making light of them.
“So, you still haven’t answered. Whatcha gonna do?” Bo repeated Sandie’s question.
“Bo, you can be such a pain in the rear at times”, interjected Sandie. “Now’s not the time to put her on the spot. It’s clear she came here not only to warn us but possibly to ride it out with us, right Polly? If that’s it, you ought to know you’re welcome here any time. Any of your family, Bo.”
“Well, yeah, only if I won’t be in the way.” Polly looked gratefully at Sandie for saying what she had wanted to say but couldn’t swallow her pride to say it. Polly was a very independent and self-sufficient woman, and sometimes that ‘me-do-it’ attitude got in the way of seeing an extended hand of help. She knew that she could have counted on her older brother, but tended to ask for help only as a last resort.
“Heck, sis, you’re never in the way. I’m glad you’re here. After this thing blows over I may need some help if it takes some of these trees down before we can get out, and Sandie just isn’t gonna be much help physically, so if you and the boys want, let’s get you unloaded and situated. We’ve only got Buddy’s bed as an extra, but he’s gone off to drag his sisters’ home, so his room is available. It’s got an outside door, so Woody and Brutus can come and go without having to tromp through the whole house. Speaking of that, why don’t you get them out so they can sniff and sprinkle and get reacquainted with their ‘cousins’?”
While Sandie grabbed a dishtowel and hit the flat surfaces in Buddy’s room to knock the dust off, Bo and Polly went to let the boys out and unload her truck. Several of the plastic tubs she had loaded her truck with were fairly heavy, and while Bo was curious as to what his sister might deem important enough to load in the face of a hurricane, he expected he’d find out in due time.
Unloading done, and all tires marked and tails sniffed, the doggie cousins all decided to engage in a game of run-around-the-house and bark like the morons they were. While Sandie helped Polly get situated in the extra bedroom, Bo headed for the kitchen. Dumping out the dregs of the morning’s coffee, he looked in and, satisfied he’d gotten the proper amount of grounds out of the pot, added another couple of scoops of fresh coffee grounds and filled the pot with water. Striking a match and holding it to the burner, he started a pot of coffee for the discussion he knew was fixing to take place, and providing for himself the fuel he knew he was going to need, since sleep was out of the question with only about eighteen hours of warning for a category four hurricane.
|
|
|
Post by imahic on May 17, 2022 20:37:06 GMT -6
This is a great story. Thanks for the update.
|
|
|
Post by texican on May 20, 2022 0:09:42 GMT -6
rg,
Cat 4 hurricane coming and you end it there. That is just being mean.
Like the tale.
Thanks,
Texican....
|
|
griz
New Member
Posts: 15
|
Post by griz on May 22, 2022 13:38:01 GMT -6
Found this 1st at the tree farm; no idea how long ago and, when the plug was pulled, thought it was lost. I joined TB a long time ago but wasn't really active until maybe 5-6 years ago. Once I figured out how the place worked - pretty well thought out, BTW – I started searching and found this in the completed format. Still waiting hopefully for a continuation but, if the muse took a LTLoA, there’s not much to be done. I know of no injection to fire up the creativity bug so……. Just have to enjoy what we have I guess. Just had a thought: have you changed your fav type/brand of coffee or adult beverages/pipe tobacco since you ended the 1st part? Yeah: just grasping at straws now……
|
|
|
Post by texican on May 22, 2022 18:25:00 GMT -6
Yeah: just grasping at straws now……
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 22, 2022 19:42:37 GMT -6
Well, I have started re-posting this story with the intent of carefully proofreading it, cleaning up a few loose ends, with the aim of getting back into the swing of it and starting on the trip out of Stockdale to points west and northwest. Keep in mind that this story was written 11 years ago, and some of the stuff is kinda....dated. But I'm going to leave it that way as best I can (pay phones, etc.) and IDK how to do it without a major rewrite, getting Bo out of a '88 F250 and into a '76 F150 Maybe I could just have him have both, or have one was sitting at his folks', or something. That's what's taking so long with the posting, is reading it like it's a new story to me. And in some ways it is. Been a while since I read it cover to cover. R/L Sandie is having a long hard battle with pulmonary issues, and that's been taking a lot of time. It's getting to where it's just necessary to be close by for a few minutes of intense help, then back to boredom for anywhere from 30 seconds to four hours. It's because of this that I'm going to try to jump in and start writing again. If I can't go out and make money, at least I can have some fun! I'll get a couple more installments proofed and posted this evening. Time to go cage up the dinosaurs.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 22, 2022 22:36:49 GMT -6
FIFTEEN
Where to start, was Bo’s first reaction to Polly’s news of the advancing weather system. Probably with some nicely salted words directed at Buddy’s abrupt departure, but those wouldn’t make the situation any better, so Bo didn’t waste thought on that beyond dismissing the idea.
Standing on the roof of the living room with a flashlight, Bo took a quick inventory of what was on hand, remembering that he had not brought the sixteen foot sheets of corrugated iron from the Home Depot yet, since they wouldn’t fit on the trailer with all the other things he and Sandie had on it. Bought and paid for some weeks ago, they languished at the lumberyard for want of space on a trailer.
Tomorrow’s no good to go get ‘em, Bo thought, as every Tom, Dick, and Harry is gonna be up there buying plywood. Plywood! He remembered Ken had a stack of it in his back yard he’d brought home from a jobsite because it had been rained on and rendered unfit by the inspector. He had been using one by four purlins under the tin on the north side, which when spaced out with sixteen inch gaps was just as sturdy as a sheathed deck and about a third less in cost. Let’s see, he thought, fourteen foot rafters, twenty feet—no, twenty two counting the overhangs—rounds to sixteen feet by twenty four feet, or four sheets wide by three sheets long. That’s twelve sheets.
After climbing down, Bo poked his head into the living room and told Sandie he was going over to Ken’s for a minute, and he’d be back shortly.
“Don’t spend all night yakking with him, Bo! I know how you two are when you get together.” Sandie was always poking fun at Bo for his ‘just a minute’ visits with the neighbor which tended to turn into hours-long sessions. Not this time, though.
“Not enough time to shoot the bull, hon. Gonna see if he’s still got some of that plywood he brought home. Back in a few.” Bo replied, heading back out the door towards his truck, swinging by the tool shed to fire up the generator and flip the switch that started the compressor. He drove out the back path past the house and into the back pasture, curving around following the edge of the brush until he came across another dirt path headed back into the brush.
Long ago, Bo and his neighbor had agreed to save a bit of money by not fencing the property line dividing them, instead spending the money on better fencing on the perimeter of their two blocks. This resulted in unrestricted access from one back yard to the other, which was handy at times. It was even handier when haying or disking the combined twelve acres behind their houses without having to contend with a fence running up the middle of it. Dividing the acreage into grazing plots was accomplished with a single strand of electric fence and a solar powered charger, which kept the critters, when there were some, contained nicely.
Pulling up into Ken’s back yard, Bo saw two figures in the dark, sitting on a bench near the chicken house. Cutting his headlights, Bo coasted by moonlight to a stop near the stack of plywood and got out.
“Hey neighbor”, came the deep, accented voice of Ken. He was a naturalized citizen, a native of Belize, and retained the accent of his youth spent in the then-British protectorate. “Got visitors this late at night, then you come wanderin’ over here. What’s up?”
“Yeah, that was my sis. She brought some news. S’posed to be a storm in the Gulf, gonna be in tomorrow late.” Bo answered. “A friend of hers from when she worked on the navy base told her about it.”
“Big ‘un coming. Been watchin’ skies all day now”, remarked Ken. “Wind’s already wrong by just a bit. ‘Stead of blowin’ straight in the back door it’s comin’ in the side window just a bit too.”
Bo turned to watch the trees and the wind for a moment, and nodded. It was shifted just a few points to the east already. “Not only that but it does seem a little lighter than normal for this time of night.”
Ken nodded. “How you come to know about weather like this? Most of you ‘Mericans just know what the news man say. We didn’t have a news man in Belize, we had to watch it for ourselves.”
“Same here, buddy. The news tells us only what they think the tourists want to hear, not what’s really gonna happen. Besides, who is gonna get mad at a weatherman for being wrong? It’s not like they’re doing anything but guessing anyways. Educated guess, but still a guess.”
Small talk overwith, Ken got straight to the point. “Your boy left you hangin’, didn’t he? You got what you need to fix dat roof?”
Grinning, Bo answered, “Yeah, enough for the north side. South side stuff’s still sitting in town at the lumberyard. That’s what I came over for. Reckon I could use a dozen of those sheets of plywood over there?” He nodded at the stack by his truck.
“Of course, yeah, no problem. How you gonna get it up there?”
“I guess just back up to the north side of the house and shove it up there onto the living room, and hope it stays til I get up there and walk it over to the south side of the new room and shove it on up to the second story. I’ll nail down a couple, then come repeat with the next ones.”
Ken looked over at his nephew. “Mickey, we got anything goin’ on now?”
“Yep. Look like we gonna go he’p de nebber,” came the response from the young man. He was as Belizian as his uncle and as generous and honorable as well. He stood up and turned toward his house, which sat next to his uncle’s. “Gonna go tell the ol’ lady where I’ll be at.”
Ken and Bo rose and headed towards the stack of sheathing, one going to each end of the pile and as they picked up the first two sheets to transfer into the old Ford, Ken asked how many.
“Dozen will do it. Have two foot extra on the eave and two foot on one end of the gable.”
As they transferred lumber, Mickey walked back up with his hammer and bag in one hand and a skilsaw in the other. Plywood loaded, Bo climbed in behind the wheel, as Ken climbed in the passenger’s seat and Mickey hopped up on the tailgate.
Things went smoothly and quickly, once Bo explained to Ken that his plan was to finish up with the tin on the north side and then deck the south side with plywood, either covering the bare wood with the tarp he and Buddy had spread a few days ago, or in worst case, simply tarring the cracks with roof pookie so as to keep the rain out of the house. Ken suggested doing both, as that would provide a secondary layer of protection, with the tarp possibly keeping the water off the OSB for a while, and if it should blow off or become ripped, the pookie in the cracks would be a second line of defense. Both men agreed that any sort of shingling job or roll roofing would be a waste of time, as either of those products needs some time under a hot sun to “settle in” and provide any sort of protection. With the plan laid out, Mickey stayed on the back of the truck to shove the sheets up to Bo, who carried them over and pushed them up to Ken who, after getting Bo’s assistance with the first row along the eave of the house, carried the sheets up, positioned them, and nailed them in place with the pneumatic nail gun. Within an hour the roof was sheathed and an extension cord was run and a chalk line located for the purpose of cutting the overhangs to size. Another hour found the gaps all filled with black roofing tar and the tarps stretched across and nailed down through 1x2 lath. The drip, or downhill, edge of the tarp was wrapped down and under the rafter tails and secured to the underside of the tails between a pair of 1x4’s, so as to not impede the runoff.
The walls were already up and sheathed, with gaping holes where the windows were to go. Windows were in a stack on the ground, next to the back porch. After finishing the roof, Ken suggested putting the windows in the holes as that would keep any horizontal rain from blowing into the room upstairs and also protect the windows from getting blown around or away. Any holes they didn’t get to or have windows for could simply get a sheet of plywood screwed over them for the time being.
“Ken, Mickey, I sure do appreciate y’all’s coming over here at midnight and help me with this,” said Bo, sincerely.
“Aw, Bo, you’d of done same for us. You have done as much, I know you got up out of bed at three one morning when I called from down the road, stuck, and spent the rest of the night pulling me home through mud I had no business being in, in a station wagon!”
Laughing, Bo replied, “Hey, that’s what neighbors are for, Ken. Besides, you’d been out of town. How was you to know it’d rained an inch that afternoon?” What a mess that had been. Ken had gotten just over halfway down a dirt county road when he realized that a torrential downpour had covered one end of the road but hadn’t touched the other. Instead of stopping and backing up, which was too late by then anyways and would have only guaranteed his getting stuck, Ken floored it and in a “Damn the torpedoes full speed ahead” moment made a valiant effort to reach the hard road two hundred yards away. It wasn’t for lack of trying, but Bo wound up bringing his little tractor out there and pulling Ken’s Caprice Classic station wagon the final ninety yards to the pavement. Ever since then, the intersection at the northeast corner of their block of property, where the dirt turn road heads from the winding county road to the highway a mile north, the two neighbors had referred to that as “Ken’s corner.”
Windows all in or covered, Ken and Mickey joined Bo on the ground as he killed the generator and gestured towards the outside sink and accompanying bar of Lava soap, and got to work removing the black roof mastic. All three men turned as a voice came from inside the kitchen. “You guys come in and get a cup of coffee if you like!” Sandie had made another fresh pot after she and Polly had pretty much demolished the one Bo had set on to boil earlier.
Sitting around the kitchen table, Bo asked Ken what he needed to do to batten down for the storm. Ken replied that about all he had to do was secure the stacks of sheathing and sheetrock he had in his yard, and board up a couple of north-facing windows, and he was set. Mickey had even less that needed to be done, except for picking up the odds and ends in his yard and getting them stowed.
“Well, then, it looks like we’re pretty much set on the uh-oh type stuff,” observed Bo, to nods from the two other men. “Well, then, what are we doing sitting here drinking coffee that’ll keep us up all night? We might as well get some sleep and I’ll be over in the daylight to help with whatever you might need, guys. All my stuff is stored as good as it can get, and it won’t take me a couple hours to secure what’s left out.”
“No need to come help, Bo,” replied Ken. “It’s only two windows, I’ll probably do them when I get home, get it out of the way.”
“I’ll give you a ride home and cut and toss or grab and nail, whatever you want me to do. Then I’m getting up first light to do a walk around and see if there’s anything I need to attend to before the rain bands start sliding in.” As with Bo earlier, Ken was pleasantly surprised by the offer of help and didn’t hesitate in accepting it, and all three climbed in and on the truck for the ride back over to Ken's house.
Another hour and that little job of boarding up Ken’s two windows was accomplished. Bo asked about his ‘observatory’, nearly thirty feet in the air, and to his respectful amazement discovered that those windows were quarter inch Lexan, and would blow out intact before breaking. Bo had presumed they were standard picture windows; he knew there were sliding ports underneath each one for a deer rifle, but had figured they were simply rejected windows from jobs. “No, Bo, the frames were, but I had a job replacing the protective Lexan over the stain glass windows at a church downtown, and brought all the old Lexan home. Took the broken glass out of the frames and put the Lexan in. They wanted it replaced because one of the board of Deacons had read somewhere that it was only good for five years against breakage.
"Turns out the man was reading the warranty and not the test results on it. Tests show that this stuff will be breakproof for ten years, and break resistant for another five after that. Result is, I don’t have to board those. Even made the slider ports out of smaller pieces of the same material. So all I had to board was the windows in my daughter’s room.”
Bo nodded his appreciation at the value of the reclaimed plastic product, and turned to face the wind. “Smells like the beach already. It’s starting to really swing around to the northeast now. If it goes on around to due north, we’re in trouble.”
“Yep. And if dat ting pick up speed it could be here long before they say. Good ting your sister warned you, because I don’t tink your house could’ve stood getting dat much water in it.” Mickey shook his head at the thought of an open roof and a tropical system.
“No, it couldn’t have. I want to thank you two again for your help. I owe y’all a big one. Any time.” Bo stuck out his hand. “Thank you both. I know Sandie will be much more at ease knowing the house is buttoned back up.” Ken, then Mickey, grasped Bo’s hand warmly and repeated their earlier statement that that’s just what neighbors do for each other. The three men were all of like mind, that they were very lucky to have the others as neighbors.
With that, the men bade each other good night, and at 4:15 a.m. each went to their respective beds for a few hours of welcome and, in Bo’s case, unexpected sleep.
|
|
remembergoliad
Member
if you send friend req on FB, message me too. I won't accept if I don't recognize you.
Posts: 158
|
Post by remembergoliad on May 22, 2022 22:45:03 GMT -6
SIXTEEN
“Scgrawkkk!!!! Sca-grawkkk!!!”
“Dang chicken!” Bo muttered as he looked out the east window to a completely dark and undefined horizon. It was still eerie to him to not see a faint glow, especially on a somewhat humid night, from pole lights here and there between him and the horizon. Looking just south of east he could still see the glow from Corpus Christi, but that required getting up out of bed and looking from the foot of the bed.
“Come back to bed, hon. It’s only been an hour since you came to bed.” Sandie yawned in the dark.
“Naw, I’m up, and if that goofy chicken hasn’t lost time, it’s about thirty minutes before light. I’m gonna go start the coffee.” With that, Bo found his loafers and slipped them on, feeling his way in the dark to the kitchen, pleased that he only stepped on one dog on the way.
There is a big difference in night without electric service and light with it. Bo could usually find the way to the kitchen from the glow of the various clocks and displays on the microwave and so forth, but without electricity, it is truly dark after moonset. Reaching the kitchen, he walked across the room feeling for the countertop that ran the length of the opposite wall. Reaching it, he stopped and felt above for the knob to the spice cabinet door, where the kitchen matches were stored. Striking one, he found the candle in the wall holder and lit it, then shook the match out and laid it on the stovetop. Grabbing the coffeepot, he dumped the grounds and dregs of last night’s pot into the five gallon bucket headed for the compost pile and added three scoops of fresh grounds to the pot and stepped over to the gorilla shelf unit by the table, where the five gallon water cooler was. He filled the coffee pot, set it on the stovetop, took the match and re-lit it from the candle and held it to the burner as he turned on the gas.
At loose ends for a few minutes until the coffee had boiled itself into readiness, he walked out onto the back porch and grabbed the flashlight hanging from a nail by the porch door and walked over to the chicken coop.
“Mornin’ you old bat”, he greeted the blustery old bird who had woken him up.
“Grawk? Gra-graaawwwk guk guk ga-KUK bluk bluk,” she responded, as if to say, “Who, me? Your snoring’s what woke ME up!”
Bo grunted, which was about all he was capable of that early in the morning, especially before coffee, and opened the door and stepped into the coop. He tried to make this a morning habit, but because since Sandie could feed and collect the eggs the hens laid where they were supposed to, he didn’t make it out there every morning, even though he really should. Poking around with the flashlight and peering under and behind the hens, he discovered a couple of eggs in the one box that had been emptied last night, and since the chickens would probably get a bit flustered later that day, and setting eggs would be secondary to survival to them, he took the eggs and carried them into the house, which by then was starting to smell like coffee. Glancing back out the door at the eastern sky, he was just able to make out the horizon. It’d take about twenty more minutes to be able to see stuff, he thought. Might as well enjoy this down time, no point in firing up the generator for half an hour’s run.
Bo got his coffee cup and Sandie’s mug out of the dish rack. Sandie didn’t care for morning coffee, preferring her morning jumpstart from a cold Coke of some sort. Adding some ice cubes to her mug, he reached into the bottom of the fridge and got a store-brand can of “cola” out and while in the icebox he added the morning’s eggs to the stack already in the tray on the door.
Coffee in cup and coke in mug, Bo headed back to the bedroom carefully feeling with his feet for the black dog that would still be invisible in the early pre-dawn glow. As Bo walked by the door to the bathroom, he flipped on the switch to the light with his elbow, which would give a bit of indirect light into both the hall and bedroom without blinding Sandie. They still had lights they used in the bathroom and bedroom, but tried to make do with candles and oil lamps in the main room of the house, getting all the chores requiring precise vision done by dark.
Continuing to use the lights in the back of the house was a tradeoff for safety’s sake, in that it was much safer to flip a switch on a compact fluorescent lightbulb (CFL) than to light a lamp or candle to answer a call of nature in the middle of the night. It also allowed Sandie a bit of control over the lighting as well, as her bedside lamp was rigged with a pull chain switch that she could operate by feel from the bed. Sure, she could turn on the ceiling light as well, as when Bo had built the house he had installed a 3-way switch setup with one switch at the door and another on the wall right next to the bedpost on her side of the headboard.
There were two switches there: One for the ceiling light in their room, and the other that turned on the CFL floodlights at the corners of the house. Those were used both for security and also as a call lamp for Bo if he wound up outside while Sandie was down resting her rear during the afternoon.
These two lights, the one in the bathroom, and another single light in the ceiling of the great room were on one circuit, making use of Bo’s 400 watt inverter he had bought years ago to power his laptop computer when he was on the road. Two additional 1500 watt inverters were also connected to the battery bank that was housed in a shed just behind the house. Each of the larger inverters powered one refrigerator and a few selected outlets scattered throughout the house, located to power things like a reading lamp in the living room, the television in there, and the desktop computer.
The house had been set up like this from the first day of its existence, simply because when Bo had built the house, the power company had only offered to run the power in two hundred feet from the road without charging him five dollars a linear foot construction costs to come the rest of the way, so Bo decided to spend that two thousand dollars that having the meter on the side of the house would’ve run, to purchase several solar panels and a bank of deep cycle batteries. Originally they had run a single ten-gauge underground cable from the meter to the house, to power the refrigerators and a battery charger for the bank of batteries, and as Bo upgraded the electrical service, he just left well enough alone, for the computer and the few lights on the first 1500 watt inverter were doing just fine, and besides, he liked having a few things that wouldn’t go dark every time lightning struck anywhere within 50 miles. The past few days, his planning was making him look plenty smart.
Setting Sandie’s mug down on her night stand, he reached over and gave her shoulder a squeeze and whispered “I love you” to which he was rewarded with a contented grunt and a sleepy smile. “Gonna go walk around outside, see what needs doing today and make some priority lists. Coke’s on the nightstand when you feel like it”, he smiled back at his wife and quietly left the room.
Stopping at the desk in the front room to grab a pencil and pad of paper, he headed out the front door this time, and started looking for things that could blow away or that needed extra protection from a lot of rain. First thing he thought of was that he really did need to make something to go in the frame of that vent window on the red truck. A garbage bag would blow right off in high winds, and with the unpredictable directions there was a good chance that it’d blow rain in on the dashboard no matter how he parked the truck.
Walking on around the house, he stopped to look at his tool shed that he had built several years ago. While it was built sturdily, with 4x6 corner posts and a concrete slab poured a year or two later when he could afford it, the awning over the front was held up by two 4x4 posts, and the rafters were laid on top of the plate of the shed’s front wall and nailed to the shed roof’s rafters, basically just making a really long overhang that angled up to a height of eleven feet at the furthest from the shed. That’ll blow right off, Bo thought, because those 4x4’s are holding it UP, not DOWN. They’re only buried eighteen inches, and it’ll pull up in a good stiff wind.
Looking around for a solution, he thought of strapping it down to the tire changer that sat on a small concrete slab under the tallest end of it, but wasn’t sure if that would be enough. Too bad I don’t have any of those screw in anchors—no, wait, I have one BIG one, he thought with a grin. Going over to the big tractor, he opened the vapor valve on the propane tank, purged the converter and, after slapping the gearshift out of habit to ensure it was firmly in “Park”, he reached up and turned the key to start. On the second revolution the forty six year old, four cylinder Deere engine started. Then he walked up to the front and reached under and closed the bypass on the hydraulic pump, hearing the whine as the system primed up, then he climbed up on the seat and drove over to the line of equipment along the back yard fence.
Backing up to the PTO driven post hole digger and shutting the tractor back off, he climbed back down and attached it to the tractor and slipped the driveshaft on the splined stub on back of the tractor. Bo was a bit paranoid about monkeying with a PTO driveshaft on a running tractor, as he’d seen a man get rolled around one and lose a leg when the shaft made ONE single revolution after a piece of grit got caught in the wet clutch inside the tractor’s transmission. Just that one complete rotation and that was all it took to give the man the new nickname of Woody. Ever since then, Bo would shut a tractor off completely before doing anything involving an implement’s driveshaft.
Hooked up, he restarted the tractor and drove over to the shed and backed under the overhang until he was about centered. He was about to do something that he swore up and down he’d NEVER do again in his life the last time it had happened: he was going to screw the auger into the ground. A post hold digger works by being held up with the hydraulics of the tractor, loosening dirt and then conveying that loose stuff to the surface on the flights of the auger. It was not intended to dig in and pick up compacted dirt, although it would certainly do that.
In the heavy buckshot clay under Bo’s place, screwing in an auger meant it was there until someone with a huge pipe wrench and several hours of time came along and “un”screwed it by hand after disconnecting it from the tractor. Bo figured to screw the three foot auger into the ground up to the hilt and then run a couple of chains or straps from the 2x6 rafters of the overhang down to the auger that was now acting as a really large anchor.
The 55 horsepower John Deere 3010 did as Bo asked of it, and screwed that auger all the way in, leaving only the last six inches of the top of it above ground. After Bo got the auger unpinned from the powerhead of the digger, he moved the tractor away from the shed and looped a ratcheting tiedown strap through the outside two rafters on each side, and around a piece of cold-rolled steel he had slipped through the attaching hole at the top of the auger. Tightening down on the ratchet, he looked up and judged that the roof was as held down as it was going to get.
Pausing to take a look at things in the fresh new daylight that had arrived, he noticed the wind had shifted a few more points to the north, bringing it just north of northeast. Shaking his head, he headed back to the house to blow out the candle and shut off the light in the bathroom, as well as avail himself of another cup of coffee.
|
|
|
Post by texican on May 23, 2022 22:58:48 GMT -6
R/L Sandie is having a long hard battle with pulmonary issues, and that's been taking a lot of time.
rg,
Sent prayers again for Sandie and you. Your are doing a great job for her. Keep it up and remember we are out here praying for y'all.
Texican....
|
|