20
July 20XX
My
Dear Lucilius:
Yesterday
we say our first band of refugees.
The
first hint I had of it was a Recreational Vehicle coming through town
past my home, and then another. And another. And then a truck
pulling a trailer – until a whole parade of vehicles drove by my
house and on the park down the road, where I do my laundry. As I had
planned to do laundry that day anyway, I gathered my things and
walked the mile or so to the park.
The
park was virtually full – the first time in years I can remember it
being so since my youth of coming here. Adults and children milled
around the main area of the park, the children running around as if
trapped inside all day (which most likely they were) the adults in
small knots clustered together.
As
for me, I was there to do laundry, so I started up my loads, pulled
out my book and commenced reading. I sat quietly until about 15
minutes latter when a number of younger women came in to apparently
start doing theirs as well. We nodded pleasantly to each other, then
I returned to my book and they to their conversation – which was
loud enough to hear over the edge of my cover.
They
were, apparently, from somewhere south of where we are had been on
the road “for a few days” - not enough regional accent to detect
from where. Wherever they were coming from, it sounded as if life
had not become too awful yet but they were worried about something
that was about to come. They did not sound as if they had a clear
plan on where they were going yet - “West” is what I heard, but I
did not get a sense of how far “west” really meant.
During
the conversation, children flitted in and out of the laundry room,
laughing and crying and shouting at the top of their lungs. It has
been a rather long time since I have had that level of...”activity”
in my life. It was a source of both joy and confusion to me as my
life has become so much more quiet now. I can scarcely remember when
such loud days were the norm.
I
finished and folded my laundry, nodded to the ladies women finishing
theirs, and then packed up everything in my basket and headed out.
The park was as full and busy as the laundry room had been, with
children tearing around the spots and men and women in small
clusters, grilling over charcoal or cooking over camp stoves.
They
were gone the next morning to points “West”, as the owner told
me, almost gleeful at the amount of money he had turned in one day
and trying to figure out how to restock before the next wave came
through.
It
is a concerning thing, Lucilius, these populations on the move. In
point of fact there is probably no better thing “west” of here
than there is “east” of here, or north or south. I am coming to
fear the time of decision has already passed and one will need to
make do with where one is and what one has.
Your
Obedient Servant, Seneca
i enjoy reading these letters
ReplyDelete"I am coming to fear the time of decision has already passed and one will need to make do with where one is and what one has."
ReplyDeleteTo a large extent, I think we're already at this point. The cancer that's killing this country has metastasized to areas once thought of as "safe." You can run, but to where?...
Deborah - Thank you so much, that is really the kindest thing you can say to any writer. Creating them is certainly a good thought exercise.
ReplyDeletePete - I rather agree. At some point one has to go with what and where the are rather than what they wish they had and where they wish they could be.
ReplyDeleteFor many of us - me included at the moment - the best I can do is prepare to hunker down and let the storm wash over us. I am doing my best to be completely unremarkable, in person and online. Let others brag of their preparations and their plans. I am simply, quietly, going to survive.
Wonderful as always TB. I read your blog every day.
ReplyDeleteI've been seeing a few preppers that fascinate me. They have thought through the SHTF scenarios and I'd like your opinion. These guys are the doomsdayers - and the one fella said that if the day of the prepper arrives, and the S really hits the fan - most preppers are going to die along with everyone else. A lady I watch on YouTube is a nurse and she was equally bleak - she started talking about who was gonna die first when the lights go out: The elderly, the diabetics, the people with various conditions that require medications, etc. In Venezuela, for example - hoarders got mobbed and burned out when they tried to bake bread or make supper because the hungry neighbours could smell the food cooking and mobbed them. I don't know if even having a gun will save you. If you have food, you are going to stand out and people are going to notice you.
I don't see the lone survivor making it if things get that predatory... I am prepping too, there's not much else you can do... but I wonder if it will make a hill of beans worth of difference when the time comes.
Glen, I think in principle I agree with a great deal of what you are suggesting. Anyone who, by medicine or care or technology, will probably quickly die simply because the means of their survival - be it medication or electricity or those that care for them - will be gone (in the sense, sadly, it will very much be like the wild: animals who are anything other than able to largely survive on their own will quickly perish).
ReplyDeleteAnd unless one is off alone or in isolation, the other danger is present: in fact, people will smell your food cooking or see that you are fatter and fitter than everyone else will assume you have supplies - and - true or not - will take action. The best, perhaps most useful analogies will be individuals who survived sieges or war zones: how did they survive, living cheek by jowl with "neighbors" that would turn them in or steal it if they had half a chance?
I, too, wonder Glen. But better to have done something and be proven wrong than to have done nothing and discover later you could have.
There is available historical information about the Holodomor, Weimar Germany and some of the less sanitized Great Depression stories about how folks made out.
ReplyDeleteOur own American experience has been very sanitized. Many a home and farm were sold on the Courthouse steps to bankers guarded by Sheriffs.
This created that "Grapes of Wrath" homelessness and hungry folks on the road looking for their next meal and maybe a job. Towns posted sighs telling wanderers to move on because they couldn't feed their own.
There was a good reason that the Civilian Conservation Corps could pay next to nothing but offer a tent, cot and food to build the projects.
There were some kind souls giving a hobo a meal for some yard work, but just as much desperate folks knowingly selling bad eggs and lime water as milk back then.
Why do you think that robbers and murderers like Bonnie and Clyde were so admired by the people? Not like they were giving anything to the poor, eh? They were sticking it to THE MAN.
Smuggling in of potatoes and heating coal for trade in family silver and such really occurred when hyperinflation made a mockery of your weekly paycheck.
In the food situation more than a few German farmers returned from Church to find drunken thugs slaughtering their milk cow and chasing their chickens into the woods.
Some folks hid food and made sure that they complained as much as their neighbors about hunger and stood in lines for what little bits of sawdust bread that was available. Dirty faces, loose clothing can hide a lot.
Michael, I suspect that we will be re-acquainting ourselves with these historical narratives sooner rather than later.
DeleteCertainly a very easy way to avoid notice is simply to appear no different than your neighbors. In that sense I try to keep the outside appearance of our home on par with our neighbors, lest we stick out.