Chapter 46

When I arrived home, I picked up as much of the groceries as I could carry and walked up the steps. I’d set one handful of bags down to get out my door key, when Sherry opened the door for me.

“I heard you come up on the porch, John. Can I help carry all that?”

“No, Sweetie, I have it. You don’t need to be lifting stuff just now.”

Sherry grimaced. “John Darkscar! I’m not an invalid, and I’m perfectly capable of carrying some groceries into the kitchen!”

I grinned sheepishly. “OK, OK! I guess I was being a bit overprotective. Anyhow I’m used to doing all this by myself.”

Sherry laughed. “MY Mother Hen! John, I didn’t mean to snap at you, but I’m not made of spun sugar.”

“I know you’re not. It’s a reflex. What can I say?”

Sherry laughed again. “Say nothing, hand me some of those bags and lets get the door shut!”

I laughed back and handed her half of the bags. We carried them into the kitchen where I set mine on the floor. “Just set them on the floor, Sherry”, I said “I have another load or so to bring in, then you can help me put stuff away.”

“Another load? John, you have enough stuff here to feed the D-Day invasion force...”

I grinned at her. “It’s not that bad, and I didn’t want to have to go shopping for a few days.”

“A few days? Well, if you say so ... I guess for a sufficiently large value of “few”...”.

I had to stifle a guffaw. “OK- I’ll be right back...”

I managed to get all the remaining groceries in one trip (even though it was a strain).

It took Sherry and I about 15 minutes to put everything up, as I had to make a couple of trips to the pantry shelves and deep freeze in the basement.

Sherry followed me downstairs on the last trip. She was a bit amazed at the amount of canned staples and other preserved food I had stocked.

“You’re not one of those survivalists are you John?”

“Nope, but I’m realistic enough to know that things don’t always go the way you expect, Sherry. Having a few months worth of food on hand is cheap insurance.”

“But doesn’t this stuff go bad?”

“Nah! As you probably know, canned goods are good for a long long time past their expiration dates. Anyhow I shelve this stuff by date and every few months I take the oldest stuff to the food bank where people will use it pretty quickly. I also have a pretty good stash of freeze-dried food over there sealed up in those 5-gallon buckets. When those get to be a year old, I give them to the Boy scouts for camping and get new.”

“Do you really expect things to go that far wrong?”

“Well Hon, I was without water or power for a week or more twice due to storms when I lived out in the Saint Louis area. One time was for thirteen days. I had my camping gear, and ate out of the fridge and deep freeze as much as I could before the heat made that food go bad.”

“Luckily I had some canned goods and freeze-dried backpacking food that got me through. The grocery stores got emptied pretty quickly. The government bought in relief supplies, but I was glad I had stuff of my own.”

I put my arm around her shoulders as we walked back upstairs “Anyhow, once I came into money I decided to be better prepared. This house has a backup generator that will run for two weeks on LP gas, and indefinitely on natural gas, if that stays on”.