Chapter 19

Well, it turned out that separate housing was closer than I had thought. Virtually everybody was in favor of separate houses, and they wanted construction to start as soon as the monsoon season was over. I couldn't argue with the overwhelming support the idea had, besides, I really didn't want to argue. Every free moment, and there were plenty, of the rest of the monsoon season was spent in getting ready to start construction. Plans were made, and tools were sharpened—we were ready to act as soon as our farm was planted; fortunately, nobody was stupid enough to neglect that!

Getting the farm started took less than two weeks; the horses made the job a hell of a lot easier. Plowing was still done with the diesel powered "tractor," but the horses provided the remaining motive power whenever appropriate. The horses seemed to be glad the monsoon was over, too.

At this point, there were only eight families, so we needed only one street with four houses on each side. Lots were staked out, and a lottery was used to assign the lots. Hopefully, that way, nobody would feel cheated. To be on the safe side, it was decided to put a stockade wall around the little town and mount a scorpion (a smaller sized ballista) on each corner of the wall. Two gates were planned, one at each end of the street, and a simple entrance of the type we had originally set up at the stockade on Landing Site #1 was planned for the other two walls. The gates would be wide enough for one wagon at a time to pass through, but the side entrances would be barely wide enough for an adult human to squeeze through. It was hoped that this would be narrow enough to discourage even the smallest carnivores.

Ezra and John were detailed to lay out the walls, since Ezra had some experience as a navigator, and John seemed to know how to do almost everything. They finished the layout of the walls and the building lots in four days, so we were ready to start construction.

Another lottery was held to determine the order of construction of the houses, and my family won the honor of being first. We had selected a two-storey, eight-room house with an attached kitchen and separate privy. One day, we hoped to have flush toilets, but that wouldn't be anytime soon.

There was no problem about having enough lumber. The trees were often 50 feet tall and about 18 inches in diameter. It was easier to use a whole tree trunk for constructing the outside walls of the house than it was to try to thin them down, besides, we thought to gain some extra protection from the very thick walls.

We had four diesel powered chain saws and some extra cutting chains, so that was not a problem. We used rendered dinosaur fat for the fuel, and it worked fine once we got the engines started by using a tiny amount of "up time" diesel fuel. That was a minor pain, since the engines would even start with the rendered fat once they had been run for a while and were well warmed up.

Construction went very fast, considering that we had to divide our time to take care of other projects, including keeping an eye on the two landing sites in case anyone else showed up. A number of mistakes were made and corrected on our house, so it took longer to construct than the later ones, but every family had its own house before the next monsoon season.

Furniture was a problem, but we were able to build what we absolutely needed. This was mostly done by following guidelines we picked up from pioneer furniture we found described on the DVDs. For example, beds were made from a wooden frame of salvaged lumber, and salvaged rope was strung in a grid pattern to support the mattress. This had the advantage of allowing for custom bed design, and my family had a single bed for the adults wide enough to accommodate four people. Smaller beds were made to hold the children individually.

The kitchen used a wood burning stove made of concrete. That made a wonderful oven for baking, and Angie was really pushing her experiments to make a usable flour. We didn't have running water, yet, but John and Wilbur were hard at work on solving that problem; it turned out that Wilbur was a plumber who just ran his charter boat business on weekends and holidays. We expected great things from him.

Bill had us milking the mares as soon as they were ready to get raw material for casein plastic. He had a lot of ideas of what we could do with the plastic, including the possibility of making pipe for conveying water. As soon as we got enough milk, we would be on our way to running water and, eventually, flush toilets.

One of the children made a momentous discovery, though he didn't know it at the time. He found a reedy plant stalk that could be treated to yield fibers that were much like cotton in texture and appearance. As soon as Adel saw the fibers, she said, "TAMPONS!" The other women who were old enough were also excited over the prospect, but the men who did not have such a biased attitude were able to see things of cultural value like toilet paper.

Bill immediately set out to work out techniques for making paper, string, and, yes, tampons (he knew what was good for him). Before the end of the next monsoon season, Bill had pilot production of tampons in the works, and expected to have them in full production within another month. He was definitely going to be the hero of the year as far as the women were concerned.

Meanwhile, Amos and Swift Rat had been working on the toilet paper problem. They had made some quite acceptable toilet paper, but they did not have anything close to a production prototype. About half of the female population was working with the crude system they had, making toilet paper one sheet at a time by hand. They were barely able to keep up with the demand, but their hard work was appreciated by all, both male and female. Angie had a mechanical talent, so she threw her mind into the problem and came up with a workable process, though it did still require a lot of hands-on attention. Amos thought that they could fix that, given enough time to work on it, now that Angie had taken the pressure off.

Meanwhile, the three older women were teaching school, though I was keeping a close eye on just what they had to say. I was afraid that they would try to inject religion into the classroom, but they were playing it straight, so far. Janet had been a school teacher in elementary school back in the 21^st century, so she didn't have much trouble adjusting. Mable and Hazel had not been professional teachers, but were able to assist Janet when it came time to give individual instruction in math and English.

Maybe things were going to work out all right with Wilbur's family. All four of them had given into a kind of silent peer pressure and had started going around nude. Wilbur had treated it as something of a joke, but his three wives were not amused. However, they finally gave up on being the only ones to wear clothes within the colony, especially when their clothes began to wear out, and they had no replacements. On top of all that, it looked like Janet might be pregnant! She had been the loudest about us all living in sin because we were having sex without being married. I guess that means that the most hard headed person can eventually bow to inevitable necessity.

Another boat showed up at Landing Site #2. However, the only one aboard was a pregnant dog! She appeared to be mostly, if not all, German Shepherd. We were ecstatic to see her. The boat she was on appeared to date from around the 1900s, based on the few records that we could find. It looked like the crew had abandoned ship at the sight of the waterspouts and had run for their lives, leaving the dog behind, probably for lack of room on the escape boat. We didn't care about the reason, we were just glad to get the dog. The older boys were especially happy with this addition to our colony.

She was in pretty bad shape when we found her. She had been chained on a relatively short leash, and her water and food bowls were empty. We gave her water and some jerky that we had with us, and we had to restrain her from eating and drinking too much. We were afraid that her puppies might have been injured by her deprivation, but there was no way we could tell before they were born. We named the dog "Happy," both from the way she acted and our feelings on finding her.