Chapter 19

After Glen had handled Pancake's execution, I went into the RV and asked Evie to come talk with me. We talked for over an hour, then Della came in. She took off her clothes (Evie and I were still dressed) and sat on my lap. She didn't say a word, just put her arms around me and held me.

This little girl who had lost so much, who had been through so much, was trying to comfort me. I laid my head on her shoulder and cried my eyes out. When I had cried myself out, I said, "Thank you."

Della's smile was a mile wide when she said, "You're welcome," and then kissed me.

Day 173 - November 10

When we came home from Ironton, everything was chaotic, but not as bad as it had been when we came back from Missouri. Fred and Jim had claimed one of the new houses that had gone in as their own, so that left my family in a house by ourselves.

We were getting close to having single family housing capacity, but my wives suggested we invite Homer, Bell, and Brenda to live with us anyway. I had no problem with it, so we did. They accepted eagerly.

There were five bedrooms and two baths in the house. In addition to Homer and his wives we had Della, Kammie and Cindy. The other two kids stayed with the Canadian women.

I had Jim Smith come in and look at what it would take to make the master bedroom and the bedroom Kammie had been using into one large bedroom. He suggested we move the bathroom over to where the den had been as well.

"That way you could have even more room in the master bedroom and we could fix up a bathroom that all of you could be in at once if you wanted to," he said.

My wives all loved the idea, but Tiff suggested that we could make the old bathroom into a huge walk-in closet. Jim said he'd get a crew right on it.

Today was the day we were going to make our scouting trip to Redding. There was going to be quite a group of us going. First off, Tina and Sandy refused to let me go if they couldn't go along. Rob and Betty were going to fly the plane. I wanted Russ Shepard, Homer, Brenda, Glen, and John with us as well.

We took along some charged batteries for cars and a fuel truck and plenty of flashlights and lanterns. All of us were armed with M-16s and handguns. Since we were planning an overnight stay, we took sleeping bags and some camping equipment.

We also took along a small generator and a fairly high-speed pump for filling the Citation's tanks for our return flight just in case we couldn't get a fuel truck running.

I don't know if all Citations were fitted out as luxuriously as this one, but this one made it a pleasure to fly. The seats were wide and comfortable. The space between the rows of seats was wide enough you could really stretch out.

It is just over two thousand air miles from Lexington to Redding. The flight took four and a half hours and we arrived in Redding around 1:30 PM. Luckily the Redding airport runways were clear and we were able to land on the second pass. Rob taxied the plane over toward the terminal where we could see at least one fuel truck parked.

We had talked about things before we left and had decided the first thing we needed to do when we landed was refuel the plane. That way, if anything went badly wrong, we had a way to get away quickly.

It took us about an hour to get the plane refueled and while we were doing that, Homer and Glen found a couple of vehicles we could do some exploring in and got them started.

Rob said there were some things he wanted to check out on the plane and Betty decided she'd stay and help him. The rest of us loaded into the vehicles and took off to find a food warehouse.

Russ told us there was a Safeway distribution center in town, so we followed him. He drove straight to the warehouse. It was nice having someone that knew the area along.

The warehouse still had power! It wasn't even locked. We started looking around like a bunch of kids who found themselves in candy land. It was a treasure trove.

There were freezer suits hanging in a dressing room, so a couple of us put those on and went into the freezer area. There were probably half a dozen semi loads of chicken and chicken parts in the freezer. There was even more of beef and almost as much pork. We ignored the frozen dinners and things of that nature, but were very happy to see a large stock of frozen juices.

"It's a shame to realize that all of this is going to spoil shortly," I told Homer as we were walking around.

"Yes, it is a shame, Ed, but there's not a thing we can do about it."

"Yeah, I know. Everything's like that. Russ was telling me that big areas of the cities here in California have burned down already. They'll be earthquakes and floods that will do their damage as well. Within just a few years, the whole west coast will be beyond repair."

"I imagine the whole country is like that, Ed. It's just more apparent here because the power is still on. I have a question for you, Ed," Homer said as we walked back out of the freezer. "How do we know how much meat we're going to need?"

"Jenny has been doing some research on that. She found out that Americans eat around a hundred pounds of beef, seventy pounds of pork, and ninety pounds of chicken every year. Some of those things are going to have to change a little. We have around 250 people in the village. I figure most chickens are going to dress out around three or four pounds. Let's say three for ease of calculation. That means that each person eats around 30 chickens a year. It would take 7500 chickens to supply the village with poultry for a year. There's no way we'll be able to supply that many chickens for a few years."

"Yeah, I can see that," Homer agreed.

"Now beef, on the other hand, is a little easier. A beef cow dresses out at over 700 pounds, so one beef will supply seven people for the year. That would mean we'd need around 35 beef cattle per year for the village. Hogs dress out around 200 pounds, so we'd need around eighty of them per year."

"Well, I think we have all of the beef we need running loose. Are we going to load up on pork and poultry?"

"Pretty much. Poultry especially. John has spotted a lot of hogs running loose as well. They're harder to find than cattle, but not impossible. Ham and bacon has to be cured to be at it's best, so we're going to load up on a bunch of that. We also want to pick up a bunch of frozen juices."

"Are we still planning on using the big helicopter to transport everything?"

"I've been thinking about that. It would take quite a few trips with the chopper to get everything we want. I think I'll ask Rob to follow I-80 through the mountains to see if it's passable. If it is, we just might take three or four truckloads and drive them through. Can you drive a semi?"

"Yep. I know John and Glen can drive them too."

"We have enough people here to take back four truckloads. I think that'd pretty much hold us until we can start producing on our own."

Rob and Betty decided they didn't want to take the Citation on a trip to scout out the highway. "It just goes too fast," Rob told me. "I saw a twin engined Cessna over here that looks to be in good shape though. If Homer can help us check it out, it'd be a much better choice for a scouting mission."

Homer agreed, so the rest of us started looking for refrigerated trucks to make the trip east. We found four likely suspects and got them fueled, then ferried them over to the warehouse. I decided I didn't want to start loading the trucks until we knew what the road conditions were going to be like, so we went back over to the airport.

Homer was there, but Rob and Betty had already taken off. It was a little after 3:00 PM, and Rob wanted to be back before dark. As it happened, I was beginning to think we had delayed too long as it was. Dusk had crept in before we heard the approach of the Cessna.

Rob was beaming when he exited the plane. He told us that the roads were clear through the mountains. "In one of the highest passes, there's maybe a quarter inch of snow on the road. That's nothing to worry about," he said.

I agreed, so I told him I thought he and Betty should take off first thing in the morning and let Jim know he needed to get more freezer units installed as soon as possible. Rob and Betty decided they'd sleep in the Citation and take off at first light. The rest of us would be sleeping in the cabs of our trucks.

Tina, Sandy and I were snugly warm in our nest and we slept as well as if we'd been in our bed at home.

Day 174 - November 11

Shit! No coffee again, I thought as I pulled myself out of the sleeper. I'm sure Tina knew what I was thinking as she got out of bed too, but she didn't say anything. She said she had to go to the bathroom and then disappeared inside the warehouse.

About fifteen minutes later, she came back out carrying two travel mugs of freshly brewed coffee. I could have kissed her. Well, actually I did kiss her. "Where did you get this," I asked, amazement written all over my face.

"This place evidently sold coffee makers as well as coffee," she said. "Sandy and I found them yesterday."

"That is so neat," I said. "We should take it along with us. This truck has an inverter to give us electricity. We can take along a can of coffee, some filters and a jug of water and we'll have coffee every morning."

We had backed all four trailers up to the loading dock the night before, so we were ready to start loading as soon as everyone was up and around.

We went heavy on chicken, but included a good supply of hams, bacon, and sausage as well. We also loaded several pallets of orange and grapefruit juice. As we were nearing capacity, we added french-fries and hashbrowns and frozen vegetables.

It took us nearly all day to load the trucks, so we decided to wait until the next day to leave.

Day 178 - November 15

Well, we got in late this afternoon from our cross-country trip. It was actually a rather boring trip. There was, of course, no traffic to keep it interesting. The biggest hardship of the trip was trying to stay awake.

My four wives, who I had left at home, attacked me as soon as I was out of the truck. They also attacked Tina and Sandy. It wasn't too much of a surprise that Della threw her arms around me and kissed me as enthusiastically as my wives had.

Day 179 - November 16

Jim wanted to show me what all they'd accomplished, so he took me on a tour right after breakfast. Someone already had crews moving the frozen food from the trucks into the freezers. I started to tell someone to try to group the different types of foods into different freezers, but I saw they were already doing that.

"These people seem to be well organized." I told Jim.

"Yeah, we've got some good help. June Pacheck has worked out work assignments for everyone. Jenny tells June what has to be done for the livestock. I tell her what has to be done about construction. Fred tells her what has to be done about the mill or about electrical. Lee Henderson and Bell are kind of in charge of food, so they both tell June what is needed that way. June figures out who to assign to what and who to put in charge of the detail."

"There are some things that have to be done every day. Are people assigned to those details permanently?"

"Pretty much. If someone really wants to be on a detail permanently, they're encouraged to let June know. Likewise, if there's something they purely hate doing."

"What do you do about things that fall in different categories, like milking. That could be either livestock or food?"

"Usually, the two supervisors just get together and decide who's going to handle it. If they can't agree, they'll be coming to you," Jim said with a big smile.

Okay, I kind of expected that. We walked up through the houses so I asked Jim how we were coming on them.

"Well, there are a couple of things we wanted to talk with you about," he told me. "We're kind of at a loss as to what to do with all of the single women. If we keep up with the single family housing units like we are now, the only options we see are to give each single woman her own bedroom or to have several women in one room. If we try to give each of them their own room, it will take a hell of a lot of houses. We could easily put four bunk beds per room, and that would cut down a lot of space needed. The other option is to get some prefab barracks from one of the army bases."

"What do the women want?" I asked.

"We haven't had a formal meeting about it, but I'd say most would accept the four per room. It depends, we might even get it so they could be only two per room before it gets too cold. I don't think they'll like the barracks idea."

"Why don't you call a meeting of all of the single women and put it to a vote? I'm sure that most of them are going to be as reasonable as possible."

Jim sighed and said, "I guess it is my responsibility. Okay, I'll call a meeting for tonight."