Sharecropping The Apocalypse

1 | NOW IMAGINE IT!-2-3

“Humm, how about that brace of OSS Phillips head looking knives he had pit back from his crazier times thinking about this day? No that was frivolous and unnecessary. He had what he needed weapon wise and if it wasn’t sufficient he would be dead anyway.” David thought why was it that no one was considering that just plain dying of old age was no longer an option and that helping each other in mutual kindness to hopefully not meet too much of a untimely or very painful death was much more important than dreaming up things to die over? Of course if a lot of people just remembered the fact that survival skills are not just for war, they’re needed in our daily lives as well, then we might all get through this.

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That it was a well known fact by some that David had military grade weapons around and readily available to him was a pretty much known or a guessed fact by most folks in his small rural community.

The residents of this backwater were also precariously somewhat aware or had been forewarned about his alleged prowess and marksmanship in using said firearms tactically and effectively. For him to have pondered on his small arsenal of guns and having chosen as his daily carry for today an old western style six shooter and a 12 gauge pump shotgun also spoke volumes about his shoot them if I need to mindset.

Nothing like having a shotgun in close quarters battle. David also stood a pretty good chance at shooting a deer at 50 yards or so with the flat trajectory of his potent .357 magnum pistol. He could at one time back in the day, he thought whimsically also place an accurate lightening quick follow-up shot with the single action pistol if needed. He wasn’t really to sure how much of his previous prowess and accuracy he retained with it though, because he hadn’t fired that particular weapon in years. However he was comfortable with it and hoped his muscle memory and brain sighting of it remained.

David loved the old simple six shooter pistol and had learned and practiced several western trick marksman shots with it over time, but that had been with a younger mans eyes and a much longer time ago than he cared to think about. A lot of water had passed under his bridge and time and age had sneakily caught up with him as the years faded and he mellowed.

David had been prickly as hell though lately, hinting about or directly telling the few folks he had seen around that his “well was running dry” regarding any food supplies and that his “well bucket” had had itself a big hole in it for weeks in regards to leaking out any more morsels of food to the needy non preppers looking to him for a hand out.

Oh, give him a little credit now. He had given away some basic foodstuffs away like a few pounds of rice and beans to assuage his conscience and other folks hunger and he use some goods to try to gain some time and allegiance with one set of not so savory neighbors, but he had judged this little bit of foodstuff loss as a necessary evil and not a total loss entirely.

The old late seventies in age couple across from his property had taken in the grandkid and his girlfriend a year ago and the boy had walked over about a week and half ago to ask David would he mind helping dig a grave for his grandmother that had just passed. She had been on a cord plug in oxygen generator and had bless her old heart, expired within a day of switching to bottled emergency oxygen. This tragic event had happened not to long after the grid was shut down and was a surprise to David just because he had not considered her fate or plight until then. Too many things affecting his own life and others made him remiss in his considerations of some neighbors he rarely saw.

David didn’t really have to ask the surviving relatives exactly why they wanted to bury her on their homestead, but like an old goombah he was he asked them anyway. Sometimes you just don’t think things out. The boy said him and his grandpa had decided it was neither fitting nor proper to bury the old woman in the city mass graves that were filling up if they had their own land to pick a peaceful plot on. Said the old women would be happier that way in only the way the living can relate to last wishes.

The radio had advised in no uncertain terms awhile back that the closest town’s community mortuaries were full up and that the morgues were way over capacity in the hospitals and with no fuel to run emergency generators for refrigeration that mass graves were a necessary sanitization issue and services were being held to bring out your dead for civil affairs disposal. The National Guard was setting up numerous grave registration rosters to try to keep up with the deceased so a record could be kept of those who had expired and gone to the great beyond, but the boy and his grandpa like many others of like minds or hearts chose not to waste the gas or energy notifying anyone of the women’s passing. They were just going to handle the laying of the woman to rest matter quietly themselves in a more meaningful manner.

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David thought of the boy begrudgingly as an arrogant nare do well occasional hardcore druggie that under normal conditions he needed to avoid and not associate with. However, under these conditions he would not refuse anyone in there time of need and one thing lead to another and soon they were both digging the hole with a self serving passion while sweating profusely preparing to give the old woman’s bones back to the earth in a solitary respectable grave in a backyard clearing.

David had allowed himself to cough up and donate to the surviving relatives a bit of food. He made the gesture stating it was to help stabilize the boy’s sick grandfather who was grieving for his wife. David by this act of generosity actually quietly hoped it would buy him some small space of time before he had to do the same kind of funerary duties again for the old gentleman. Old couples have been known to die a week or so from each other.

The boy and his girlfriend acted grateful and friendly enough for David’s kind acts but he had rebuffed any of their efforts to befriend him any further or answer many questions about how he was getting by. He knew all too well that now was not the time for him to be evaluating or accumulating new friends and took on a persona of aloofness and icy suspicion in their regard.

The boy’s (should say mans) name was Will for Willard and the girls or woman’s name was Sally and both had the tattoo freak thing going on that David despised somewhat. His generation considered tattoos as something for the lower class criminals to advertise prison sentences or for the more hardcore type fringe folks to evidence their toughness or something.

David had ever so slowly become much more accepting to the inking your skin fad overtime but generally speaking his first instincts had been proven to right all too often regarding folks he knew wearing piercing and ink to be pretty much disreputable types. Particularly if they were into extremes of this funky trend which in his opinion was nothing more than a distasteful fetish. David particularly didn’t like to see them on women at all. This was because he considered the female form to be the most beautiful creation on earth and it was almost sacrileges to him to watch pretty young women deface themselves and their loveliness in what they considered his uncool geriatric old mans view on how their tattoos looked

His personal opinions aside of the couples constitutional rights to do freely with their own personal appearance as they wished notwithstanding, he could not overlook the feeling all those dreadful tattoos and piercing they sported gave him of the couples chances of being industrious and employable in this world or any other.

That wasn’t the worst feeling he ever had about them though. The feelings he got about them when just barely a week had gone by after they buried grandma and they had stopped for a visit were far worse. The couple had come over to ask of him once more to dig deep and provide for them some rations in a way that felt like, well to him anyway, that they thought they were somehow entitled to it offering nothing in return.

At the funeral he had given to them in his opinion, graciously and without reservations 5lbs each dry weight of parboiled rice and beans, a few cans of corn and 2 cans of spam. That was before they had come to his front door knocking loudly and announcing themselves the following Monday morning wondering if he had anything different to donate to them. Apparently a diet of beans and rice sucked and was not good on their or the old man’s digestive systems and they were wondering if he couldn’t diversify the contents of his next donation to them.

David had not even tried to explain the benefits of Parboiled rice to them. How it actually was better on the old mans stomach etc. Parboiled rice might sound like it's precooked, but it's not. Instead, it's processed quite differently from other types of rice. The resulting grain is cooked and served just as you would white or brown rice. However, because of the special processing, parboiled rice is a better source of fiber, calcium, potassium and vitamin B-6 than regular white rice.

Parboiled rice is especially rich in niacin, providing 4 milligrams, or 23 percent of the recommended daily intake in 1 cup of cooked rice. You’ll also get 19 percent of the daily intake of vitamin B-6. These values are about double the amount you would get from non-enriched white rice. Your body needs B vitamins to metabolize food into energy, but they also fill other roles, such as helping make hormones and neurotransmitters.

Vitamin B-6 removes the amino acid homocysteine from your bloodstream by turning it into other substances. This might help keep your heart healthy; high levels of homocysteine are associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular disease.

These reasons alone were all well and good with David but his thought on the matter were parboiled rice stores on the shelf longer and is more nutritious. That’s a no brainier for a prepper like him. Hell you can even get it in white and brown.

“White rice has a shelf life of up to 30 years if it is stored in a cool dry place sealed in a container with oxygen absorbers. If stored at higher temperatures it will still last for about ten years. Any added nutrients and flavors will be retained.

Brown rice from the store typically only lasts about 6-8 months due to the oil content in it. If you choose to include this in your food storage make sure you rotate it very aggressively. Commercial packaged instant brown rice designed for longer term storage can have a longer shelf life. Thrive Life has Instant Brown Rice with a 7 year shelf life. That is the longest we’ve ever seen for brown rice according to Food Storage made easy by Jodi and Julie at h***:://foodstoragemadeeasy.net”.

“My NEXT donation?” David drawled out and asked while raising one eyebrow askance at the pair but otherwise looking quite deadpan.

“Well yea, I mean, well uh... David don’t get me wrong now. We are really grateful man for the rice and beans you gave us and appreciate the kindness. But you know how it is; we were just hoping that you might maybe throw a few cans of something different in this time to break the monotony” Will sort of whined as he looked like a weasel to David.