I left the city earlier this year, and have settled in on property that my grandmother bought 70 years ago. I work from home, in the arts, doing publicity, proofreading, and copy-editing. I have a very quiet life, very private, a few good friends, a deep knowledge of the region. I rarely go more than five miles from home.
The world frightens me much more than it did when I was younger and stronger and living in the big scary city. Havoc, it seems, has already been cried, and it’s not out of the question that the dogs of war will be let slip in Times Square. About six months ago, I began stockpiling. It’s been quite a journey. My emphasis has been on canned goods, dehydrated and freeze-dried food, and first-aid supplies.
And I haven’t told anyone about this except my son.
So, here I am, lady of a certain age, on my own, my only family 100 miles away, my closest neighbor is a man I don’t actually like very much (although he has, if you hold his feet to the fire, a certain grudging and oddly unpleasant generosity of spirit). I never expected I’d spend my golden years alone, but it’s not so bad, come to find out. There’s a lot worse things can happen to a girl than not having a husband. I’d prefer they didn’t happen to me, which brings me to the subject at hand.
Content as I am, I find I want to live a good while longer. I didn’t need a lot of convincing, but there are some good, scary scenarios depicting what it’ll like for those who don’t make any preparations. The movie “Testament [1]
My little home has always been a weekend retreat—I own about an acre on a quaternary road. The house is on a wooded hill overlooking a 50+ acre lake on which there are only a half-dozen other houses, and it can’t be seen from the road when the trees are in leaf; it’s not terribly conspicuous even in the winter. It very unlikely it will get flooded. Occasionally in the springtime, at very high water, the little access lane—is there such a thing as a quinternary road?—will be covered with up to three feet of water. I found out a few years back that I was the only person who knew how to get into and out of our little enclave when the lane is under water.
The far shore of the lake is part of a conservation easement on which can be found the remains of the local limestone mining industry, which went belly-up before the Civil War. There’s another lake about a mile back in the woods, and several mines.
My brother and I explored those mines, or caves, as we called them, and, when I was a youngling, I entertained TEOTWAWKI [5] fantasies of hiding out there, finding true love while keeping civilization alive. The caves are unsuitable as retreat locations, for a number of reasons, but my little house is not. It’s my redoubt, where I plan to live out my days and where I will hunker down if the worse—or even something only moderately bad—comes to the worst.
One of the most annoying phrases to come out of the New Age, that lavish font of faux philosophy, mock wisdom, and do-it-yourself religion, is that “God doesn’t give you anything that you can’t handle.” I can handle a lot, but my feeling is that, whether God gives it to me or not, there are plenty of things I couldn’t handle. [JWR Adds: That phrase is a derivation, and a corruption of 1 Corinthians 10:13: “No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it.” That verse is about temptation, not physical trials,] Nuclear war, for instance. Nor am I arrogant enough to think I could handle the death of a child. The problem is with the verb: “handle” is trivial, the kind of action taken in ad copy, which is, come to think of it, what a lot of that jejune new-age nonsense actually is. I’ll stick with King David and St. Paul, thanks. And I’ll allow as how “handling” is not the action you’ll want to take when faced with catastrophe of the apocalyptic sort.
My focus recently has been water. I always thought I could count on the lake as a sure supply of water, albeit water that would have to be filtered and purified six ways from Sunday. After reading Paul Erlich’s book The Cold and the Dark: The World After Nuclear War [6]
There are two wells on the property. The original well is about 70 feet deep, and when I was a child there was a hand pump (and an outhouse). My father modernized the house in the 60s, getting rid of the outhouse, installing electric baseboard heaters and running water, and putting an electric pump on the well. That well went dry in the parched summer of 2002, and I had a new, 400-foot well put in. I’m in the midst of arranging for a hand pump for the old well. (It has filled up again and is perfectly functional. It’ll only cost a couple-three hundred dollars, as the water is quite close to the surface.)
There’s also a pretty constant supply of water in the basement of the house. This has always been a nuisance that called for a sump pump, but now I’m beginning to think I need to collect it in a cistern.
I’ve begun to think about security, too. As I said, I’ve told no one about my preparations, other than my son. I’m on good terms with my immediate neighbors, known all of them for many years. But this is private, and I have told no one.
The woods across the lake are somewhat accessible, although the resort that has title to the land installed, a few years back, some substantial fences (think, Arbeit Macht Frei) at key access points. The lake itself has a public landing where fisherman occasionally put in. I’m not too worried about hordes of refugees from the city, I’m far enough off the beaten path, but local people who haven’t fished that lake for years are likely to remember it and show up for water and dinner and laundry and who-knows-what else. Up until five or six years ago I always had a Doberman or two. Now I’m thinking I should dog up again, but I’m thinking Rottweiler. More intimidating but actually gentler, their less exigent exercise demands more suited to a woman of my years.
Here are the other preparations I’ve made so far:
- Many, many kerosene/oil lamps, both the table variety and the “railroad” kind that swing from a handle; lots of spare wicks, many gallons of oil. I got these lamps years ago, when my life was very different, when I used to entertain rather a lot. I hung them from hooks in the trees, and they lit up the paths and woods around my house, quite a magical effect. I use them instead of a flashlight when I need to go out at night.
- Books, for reference and to replace what I’m used to finding on the Web. Joy of Cooking [7]
is simply indispensable. I don’t know a lot about Irma Rombauer and Marion Becker, but their magnum opus evokes a solid, Midwestern, roll-up-your-sleeves-ladies pioneering spirit. I’ve had a copy since 1976, and have gone through several editions. The recipes themselves range from down-home to haute—Christmas cookies, pâté de foie gras, chicken and dumplings, apricot soufflée, anything you need, it’s here. There are instructions for the field dressing of game (“Find and take hold of the large intestine as near as possible to the already loosened anus…”), stuffing a boar’s head (…a gloriously glazed and garnished presentation, so gird up your loins and prepare to receive a hero’s reward…”), tapping a maple (“Hammer the spout in gently but firmly so as not to split the bark, which will cause a leaky tap hole.”), and beating eggs (“The French dote on copper.”). A more recent acquisition has been a volume published by The Success Companies in 1908 called Household Discoveries & Mrs. Curtis’s Cook Book. If you anticipate living a lifestyle that doesn’t depend on the internal combustion engine, you’ll want this book. It’s long out of print, of course, but you can find it on the Web. My copy is in excellent shape. It’s full of hints and procedures, recipes and advice. The recipes should be taken with a grain of salt, as it were, but I’ve always been fairly liberal in the interpretation of quantities and oven temperatures, myself. There are substantial disquisitions on laundry, care of the teeth, nursing the sick, household hygiene (“Never throw dishwater from the kitchen door.”), childcare, household and garden pests, preserving and canning, and much more. Things like using slippery elm bark to preserve animal fat and oil; fireproofing and waterproofing; preserving fresh meat for several days with sour milk, vinegar, charcoal, or borax; the fireless cooker; Favorite Meals In Famous Houses; etc. Household Discoveries & Mrs. Curtis’s Cook Book is chock-full of vital information and vastly entertaining with it.
- Speaking of entertainment, I have many books, as well as board games, decks of cards, and vocal music. I don’t know how many people can actually read music anymore, but I have hymnals and books of vocal arrangements of pop songs, folk songs, and madrigals. Find your own favorites at Singers.com [8].
- Blackout curtains from Wal-Mart ($11.99 per panel). These will serve as insulation and as security, keeping light indoors and the house invisible at night. I’ve put self-adhesive Velcro along the window frames and sewn it up the sides of the curtains.
- My 12-gauge pump-action Mossberg. A five-shooter. I have 10 boxes of shells and pick up a couple or three more every time I go to Wal-Mart.
- Peppermint oil to keep the mice away, and steel wool to plug up holes where they can get in. Mousetraps for the stubborn ones. Fly-bait powder and flypaper. Flea bombs. Insect repellent (at a deep discount this time of year). I also have hornet bombs that shoot a powerful spray 25 feet.
- I expect one or another of my gentleman callers will be coming by. Helpless as they seem to be, one of them can dig the sanitary pit and another the cistern in the basement. And of course my son, who’s not at all helpless but who’s not made any preparations and who will, he’s told me, hop on his bike and cycle up here from the city. He can do it, too. He bicycled across the country, solo, in 2001. All the way from here to there and back again. Granted, he’s nine years older, now. But he’s quite fit and just as stubborn as I am. In any case, there’s an advantage to preserving any niceties we can, so I’ve laid in a supply of disposable razors and a shaving kit by Burma-Shave with mug, soap, and brush.
- For currency, I’m putting aside cash, $10 a week or so. I don’t make a lot of money, so it’s slow going, but I have a substantial collection of sterling silver, from the days when the family was flush. It’s quite valuable, but I need to find how barterable these knives, spoons, pickle forks, and gravy ladles really would be after TEOTWAWKI [5].
Now, as to what I plan to do in the coming months: goats. I’m made arrangements to get two Nigerian dwarfs in the spring. I can milk ‘em, I can ‘eat em, although someone else might have to slaughter them for me. They’ll nibble on my fingers and keep the lawn mowed. I’ll have to fence in my tiny acre before they arrive, but that’s fine, a little electric barrier (with a solar charger) between me and the rest of the world. It won’t keep the rest of the world out, but it will make them stop and hello-the-house or at least get my attention with their cursing and give me time to grab the twelve-gauge before they’re across the yard and into my stuff.
And ducks. They’ll like the lake.
Over the winter I’m planning how to sequester my supplies. There’s a good-sized dead space where the kitchen backs up to the stairs. It has shelves, and could be easily masked with a false wall of sheet rock and molding, all of which can be held in place with Velcro. (I’m a great believer in Velcro.)
Music is important to me. What I need is a solar charger for the iPod, which is loaded at all times with the Desert Island play list, not as important as keeping gas in the car, but up there. It would be nice to have a working computer, including my music library, whether or not the Internet survives the apocalypse. I have the solar charger from the VW Jetta (turbo-diesel, thanks for asking) with a cigarette lighter male half. GoalÆ has an Anderson-to-female cigarette lighter adaptor that’ll power the amplifier for $6.99 plus shipping. I think. Internet and blogosphere talk of such items gets, usually by the second paragraph, into geek talk that goes straight over my head like a 787. There’s a bit of head-scratching involved in studying up on these power sources and applications. For instance, when I do web search on “female cigarette lighter” I tend to get web sites of Chinese manufacturers of elegant combustion devices designed to be held by dainty hands. Obviously these are of no use to me as I stopped smoking some twelve years back and left daintiness behind sometime later.
Grates from the oven and the Weber grill will do for cooking on the fire pit I have out back, but I’ll be wanting a wood-burning camp or military stove, preferably one that will heat the house, as well. There are such available, and I expect I’ll get one in the spring. I have a good selection of cast-iron cookware, heavy for a lady to lift but useful for pre-industrial cooking situations. I’d like to put in a fireplace insert to heat the house.
What have I learned, making these preparations? I’ve learned that stubbornness and leverage are as important as brute strength. And that it’s not at all painful to buy a little at a time; whenever I shop for groceries I pick up a few more cans of fruit or vegetables, a few more rolled bandages. And I’ve learned that it’s important while making all these preparations to maintain at least the semblance of a normal life. Normal now is not what it was.
I look at what I’ve done, all by myself, and I’m kind of amazed. I’m not finished with my preparations, not by a long shot. But if the hammer fell tomorrow I would feel, if not safe, at least not destitute by the altered standards of destitution that would obtain in such a development. I’ll have told no one, but I’ll have enough to share if Polite Society comes calling.