The Solitary Man’s Refuge Read online

  The Solitary Man’s Refuge

  Ron Foster

  Alabama, USA

  © 2014 by Ron Foster All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13:

  978-1496102034

  ISBN-10:

  1496102037 Printed in the United States of America

  Acknowledgements

  LowBuckPrepper & Cat Realdaypreppers.com Lowbuckprepper.com

  My Dear Friends Cheryl Chamlies Pat Lambert

  SUNRNR (Sun Runner) www.sunrnr.com/ SUNRNR provides portable solar generators that produce clean energy for power outages, backup power or off the grid electricity or microgrid.

  Taylor Brand Knives

  1

  Countdown To Prepperdom

  Donald turned his truck out onto the highway and began his short 40-mile trip to his new house and a new beginning. Because of his elevated mood and excitement on this fine day, it seemed to him just somehow a bit brighter and warmer than a normal sunny day in south Alabama during January. This was it, the big day he had been anticipating and yearning for, ever since he finally signed all the papers at the lawyer’s office for his new bug out location on Dec 28, 2011 and started his mental countdown to Dec. 21, 2012. The end of the Mayan calendar was not far off and he didn’t know quite what for but he was getting prepped for better or worse. He didn’t really hold with any of the prophecies or theories that were making the rounds on the internet and in the media, but he sensed something was going to happen this year, so better safe than sorry.

  He had been calling his new place everything under the sun in front of family or friends. To some, he referred to it as his prepper shack, to others it was his farmstead, farm or just his little new house in the country. Whatever he called it, he knew it for what it was to him, his very own bug out location! And he had the keys!

  This was to be his last big roll of the dice to get out of the city and to get the house and himself ready for the solar storms that he felt reasonably sure were going to take out the electrical grid sometime this year. Troubling times lay ahead and he was bound and determined not to be caught short when the black swan flew and the circuit breakers shutdown.

  At age 53, he had been through a lot of life’s and the economy’s ups and downs and so he had been encouraged somehow or forced to move back in with his elderly mother for a while as an interim check gap, while he added to his education and simultaneously built up his preps and got back on his feet again. He scrimped and saved from his school loans, and with a few odd jobs had finally managed to painstakingly scrape up $5,000 as a down payment on a bug out location. A bit of luck was on his side and with this weird going to school money saving strategy, he was able to put a down payment on an owner financed tiny two bedroom home. The house sat on approximately 3 mostly wooded acres and he had jumped at the prospect of buying it, even if it was a wee bit overpriced for what it was.

  The real estate ad for it had read that the owner wanted $8,000 down and $500 a month for 12 yrs to equal out to the price of $52,000. He offered the owner 42 grand for it after looking it over and noticed it was a small trailer someone had added to and basically turned it into more of a house. He bought it and the land for $380 a month owner finance and he was very happy with his new purchase.

  The payment was very affordable, he hoped, and pretty easily doable on his small royalty incomes as a science fiction writer. He had decided that even if the shit didn’t hit the fan anytime soon, it was high time he had his own place in the country again.

  The college degrees he got had not done him any good what so ever in finding a job in this rotten economy. He had been lucky enough to reinvent himself once again and apply his intellect to something more productive and fulfilling by working for himself as a post-apocalyptic writer.

  He had already made several trips to his place while moving his preps out of a mini warehouse he had leased along with his small stockpiles of prepper stuff he had stored at friends’ houses and was really elated to get it all together in one place now.

  He was sure glad that he had the use and possession of the two 24 x 12 portable metal buildings that had come with the property. One of them was filled full of boxes from the very first day from his U- Haul truckload of preps he had brought up from the city.

  Organizing it and putting together shelves, etc., had taken him three more days, but you could now easily walk around inside the shed. He still had lots to do in there, but things were coming together nicely in what he called his prep shed.

  He moved all his garden tools and regular tools into the other building he called the garage and was still dragging things in, or acquiring them and the place was pretty much in managed disarray. When he got his next royalty check, a Troy Built tiller was at the top of his list of “to buy”, got to have it things.

  This place is sucking the life out of my finances. Don mused, not entirely put off at the notion of how many unexpected or more expensive than he had thought improvements and preps were needed to get his place in proper prepper working order.

  Don had defiantly hit the ground running in Jan 2012 working on his place in a whiz-bang flurry of activities that helped to assuage his mind somewhat of the nagging notion he had less than a year to get ready for some type of calamity? He wasn’t exactly sure what, but something foreboding seemed to have taken over his psyche as well as many other “Preppers” worldwide. It was like a mass awaking of the populace to prepare for some known or unknown disaster these days, as more and more people joined the ranks of the prepper community and shared knowledge.

  Preparing for what disaster and when you think it might happen, is a different notion or worry amongst all preppers. But prep they all did and usually in the extreme. Don’s disaster he was prepping for was the mega solar storm NASA had predicted for 2012-2013, but that was far from the only thing he had worries about. Economic collapse, terrorism, natural disasters, you name it; they were all subjects he studied and reviewed and prepped for daily.

  Donald Dupree was a bit of an enigma. He had been everything from a construction worker, soldier, fine jewelry manager, and an entrepreneur in more things than he dared to relate on a resume.

  He had always been a prepper though, in some form or another, and when he came up with a plan to go back to school at 47 he had two goals in mind. Get his degree so that maybe he could get a decent job in a new profession and build up his preps in the meantime for the day he got out of school or 2012 hit, which ever came first. He was becoming pretty adept at doing the professional student thing for a while.

  Moving back home allowed him to save on his expenses immensely and he had been able to fill up a 10 x 8 ft. mini warehouse unit to capacity unbeknownst to his non- prepper Mom. He had managed to buy quite a bit of preps every semester from his financial aid refund check and some money he earned off odd jobs.

  He had studied emergency management while in college in hopes of increasing his prepper knowledge and thought that this new career path would have been an ideal job to apply his talents to. However, he soon realized that without work-related experience or being a younger man that qualified for some intern program, he couldn’t find a government or state job in that field and had applied his knowledge of disasters to helping non-profits do business continuity plans until they themselves soon buckled under the financial pressure and closed their doors due to a failing economy and lack of charitable contributions.

  His preps had been accumulated after years of study and contemplation. When he had first started down the road of prepperdom he made the usual newbie costly mistakes he had learned from. His final preparations had been now refined carefully and were the best quality available he could afford.

  He had his own way of doing things when it came to food
storage, that might not make sense to those that think the pundits and gurus in the survival blogs can’t be wrong. For example, that only store what you eat crap they advise, went out the window with him a long time ago.

  He had been investing in Mountain House and other brands of freeze dried food for the last 5 years pretty much exclusively.

  This type of food storage lasts 30 years he had figured and if the crap hasn’t hit the fan by the time I am 80, that is if I make it that far, well I probably will have already got in it to supplement my non-existent retirement or something so I can feed myself.

  It was his meager retirement and insurance plan and totally self-directed. He had seen his food preps go up in price around 40% since he had started socking away this expensive type prep a few cans or a case here and there. But he didn’t start on it until after he had already got his ready-to-eat normal kitchen type preps in order.

  Hell, he had three cases of MH chicken that used to be $25.00 a can that was now $46 to replace it. While others lost their 401k investments, he was doing ok in his own meager way and had also started to amass a small stash of silver that he had bought over a period of time.

  Don was quite pleased he had stored over a years’ worth of food for one person as well as plenty of guns, ammunition and other prepper paraphernalia, so as soon as he moved in to his new home he was basically ready for what ever may come down the pike.

  Today his thoughts were more about long-term sustainability, though. He had to get his land ready to help him be self-sufficient for the coming hard times. Stored food preps run out eventually, game gets scarce and besides, this place was also where he was going to retire at. He didn’t want to lose one summer of a tree growing or planting long term crops like asparagus etc. for a lifetime of enjoyment and food.

  He had gotten an estimate to clear the trees off a couple places on his property so he could put in a raised bed garden and have a small orchard. A trip to Lowe’s to have a look at current lumber prices had surprised him when he saw that they were already selling fruit trees to go in before spring.

  He had resisted the temptation to buy some trees and blueberry bushes and instead had gone home and spent countless hours on the internet weighing the pros and cons of different varieties, as well as buying the plants local. Those seed catalogs are awful tempting but good sense had prevailed based on his past bad experiences with mail-order plants and he had decided on mostly buying what he could inspect locally and just pay a bit more for plants in his own community.

  Today he was going to the small town about 12 miles from his house and then going to Wally world and Lowe’s to purchase trees and berry bushes before they got picked over. He had looked at nature’s signs for planting and checked the farmer’s almanac and all the indications said early spring and no late frost, so he committed himself to taking the next big plunge.

  At $15- $25 a pop for fruit trees this was no easy choice. He had contracted for the timber crew to do his land clearing in a week for $1800 dollars which was $600 more than he had estimated. He could have cut a lot of those trees himself, but after reflecting on it, he was not going to save that much by doing it, because a lot of the expense was bringing in the big machinery to haul it off and he wasn’t no spring chicken anymore to wield a chainsaw all day, he had opted to get the professionals on the job for speed and safety.

  He was still grumbling about the landscapers’ price however, because that high price was with leaving the stumps in the ground and the fool of a woodcutter was telling him that although it was good timber he couldn’t sell it because the local mill was shut down. Oh, well time was not on Don’s side so “get her done” had become his new expensive mantra when a quick decision had to be made and the money was available. He just jumped in and did it by throwing money at a problem.

  He had this odd premonition, like some preppers did, that there was a big hourglass of preps somewhere and that he was in a race with it before the some weird “disastrous event” happened.

  People from all over the world had joined the prepper movement over the years for as if some sort of “social awakening” had strangely occurred amongst this group. Don didn’t know why, but he had an odd nagging sense of urgency to get things done and that something was somehow just not quite right and eerily foreboding beyond the daily doom and gloom news headlines. Something seemed to be bigger and scarier on the horizon that he could not quite put his finger on.

  It was as if to him, that by not ordering something by mail today, not going down the rabbit hole to get the true facts of a situation or reviewing his prep gap lists daily, he would somehow hasten a disaster by his inactions and be left wishing he had prepared better. Doing the best at this moment, puts you in the best place for the next moment, he figured, and he kept adding to his stash.

  He knew this was some pretty crazy thinking on his part. Just like the sports fanatics have their weird ways of thinking something they wear or do affects the outcome of a ball game, but he just couldn’t shake it, nor did he really want to. He liked being a prepper; it was his lifestyle and hobby. It gave him pleasure and a sense of security to make all these plans.

  Don was normally a pretty intellectual, steadfast guy and was good at analyzing different behavioral motivations. He once helped get a Native American tribe to prepare for disasters in one of the most flood prone areas in the Midwest by doing a rethink of the tribes religious belief’s and giving them a different way to think about the usual dire warnings the government had been telling them for years to try to get them ready for floods.

  You see this tribe had a belief that if you planned for something bad to happen, it would. They said it was like sending out an invitation, so they refused to plan for or mitigate the effects of the inevitable annual floods they seemed cursed with in the Midwest.

  Talking to a village elder, Don had asked a question, regarding if they planned on next years harvests and time to plant things. The elder said that, indeed yes, they did. So Don told him that if they planned for something positive to happen by considering the dangers or lessons from the past of not planting early, having enough fertilizer, etc., then the crops were usually good, but they would be doomed if these things were not considered and that it made sense to plan for what the old floods taught and nothing bad would happen. This made sense to the tribal elders and they cooperated with FEMA to help mitigate flood damage and disaster proof the community.

  Don had questioned his own motives about just how far he was willing to go with his own personal preps many times and he also looked at his penchant for looking at worse case scenarios and trying to not over spend money to prep for them. Regular life had its own needs and expenses, for example getting a better vehicle made a lot good sense.

  He drove an old 1985 GMC 4x4 that was showing its age, however, unless he had to meet someone for the first time driving it, he never thought about its appearance, just its durability. It was completely paid for, and even if he eventually got something else, he wanted to keep it around because it was borderline EMP proof. He had considered converting it to a wood burner or alcohol fueled someday as a project. Well, there were just too many other expenses to consider now and replacing was just not going to happen anytime soon it looked like.

  “Lets see here, get back on track of purchase planning before you get to Lowe’s” Don reminded himself. “ I need to contemplate a few things here instead of just winging it or overspending, if I can help it. Now, I can’t really wait to get these fruit trees. But I can maybe finagle how I get them to the house. That deer rack I got on the back of my truck can handle 6, maybe 8, of them big gallon plus pots. Thing is a lot of those tress and bushes I seen are already getting leaves. Twelve plus miles traveling on the interstate out in the wind and I bet I stress them out pretty good and lose a lot of leaves anyway. I need a bunch of 2 x 6 boards for my raised beds and I was going to get all my lumber delivered for a $50 extra charge. Damn! I was going to get a gun safe delivered with them but can’t afford that purcha
se this month, or can I? Maybe the store will up my credit card limit if this is a big purchase for home improvement? They are always pushing and advertising that special purchase program, but I don’t know if that’s just certain things. I got ONLY about $279 on that store credit card, humm, possibility. Ok, do some math for a sec, ten raised beds to start with. That’s 20 twelve foot treated 2 x 6’s for the sides about $7.00 each=$140 I need 20- 8 ft. cut in half by them (one cut free per at store) for 4 ft. ends at about $4 per so $80 plus the $140=$220 that ain’t bad. I know I need other boxes but until I see the lay of the land, not sure about sizes. Hell, 10 boxes more than two people can eat, maybe, if I have a good veggie crop. Still haven’t found me a place to haul me in a truckload of manure and I ain`t paying 5 bucks a bag though. Ten trees max is $250, 10 blueberries $70, I need a tiller $700 and a gun safe $400. How much does all that crap cost? Don mused as he traveled the two-lane highway.

  He eventually came up with $1570, which sort of freaked him out, but wasn’t insurmountable if he spread out or properly planned for the expense. He decided he just might have to avail himself of one of those special rate big purchase deals if they let him up his card because he couldn’t justify even in his rush to get things done the 25% annual interest them shysters wanted.

  “Why is it that they have usury laws which say that outrageous loan interest rates are illegal for the loan sharks, etc., but not the credit card bankster companies in this state?” Don thought but already knew the answer too. It’s because they got rid of the Glass-Seagal act and allowed banks to trade securities and form derivatives out of notes and insurance he fumed.

  Don got over in the turn lane and waited on the light to head on into the Lowe’s parking lot. He had chosen this little town as his proximity for a bug out location as well as retirement area mainly because the people were just so darn nice here. He had always stopped at a BBQ joint/bar around the area coming and going to Florida for years and was always impressed with the hospitability he had received when visiting.