Dear Diary: It’s Me, Jessica: Chapter 7 (Book 3)

By the author of Dear Diary: It’s Me, Jessica; The Second Year

In case you missed the last chapter, you can find it here.

Dear Diary,

It’s me, Jessica.

The sun had set, so we decided it would be best to spend the night at Four Corners. We traded for dinner, my usual seasoned chicken and rabbit skewers, and a skewer of roasted vegetables. Rae opted for stew and a small boule of bread. We sat on camp chairs near the cooking fires across from Carlos. It was cool enough for light jackets but not cold. From Jack’s militia training, we have gotten into the habit of taking cold and wet weather gear and sleeping gear in our saddle bags or backpacks.

“What is your dog’s name?” I asked Carlos.

“Her name is Kyrie,” he answered as he fed her rabbit from a skewer. The big dog gently took each bit from his hand.

“What kind of dog is she?”

“Oh, she is a mutt. Adopted her from an animal shelter when she was just six months old. The people at the shelter said they thought she was a mix of German Shepard and Rottweiler, but a few thought she had some Pit Bull in there too,” he said as he gave her another bite.

“She is very gentle. Most dogs just wolf down food,” Rae said as she dunked the bread into her stew and took a bite.

“With me she is. She is my princess. But she can be vicious when she needs to be. We got into a situation awhile ago on the road with some guys. She mauled one of them. Nearly took off his leg. She is smart too.”

I glanced over to Rae and said, “Sounds like Samson.”

“Samson?” Carlos asked, looking puzzled.

“Good friend of ours’ dog. Big German Shepard. Samson once took out a guy who was on top of Rae, trying to strangle her. Crushed his neck with one bite and then thrashed him about half a dozen times, not that it was needed.”

Carlos smiled, “Yeah, dogs tend to do that. Don’t you?” he said to Kyrie and scratched her ears.

“How long have you and Kyrie been on the road?” Rae asked.

“Oh, I honestly don’t know. Probably three or four weeks.”

“It is May eighth. HAM Guy keeps track of the date,” I answered, between chewing my skewer.

“HAM Guy?”

“Another friend of ours. Has a HAM radio set up, solar array, batteries, computers. He trades charging people’s portable devices for food and things,” Rae responded.

“Never thought of that.”

“Where are you from?” Rae asked as she dunked her bread again.

“Oh, I am from Goose Creek, South Carolina, but was up North helping out a friend opening his restaurant.”

“What kind of restaurant?” I asked before starting on the vegetable skewer.

“Get this, he is half Polish and half Mexican. And he was opening a carry-out or delivery-only Dim Sum restaurant.”

Rae and I both looked puzzled.

“Dim Sum is like Asian dumplings, egg rolls, spring rolls, scallion and shrimp pancakes, that kind of thing,” Carlos explained.

“A Polish Mexican opening an Asian restaurant? That is different,” Rae noted with a tilt of her head.

“That is what I said. But it was working. Business was a little slow at first, but picked up once word got out. He did not even have to advertise. There would be half a dozen Grub Hub cars in the parking lot, almost from open to close, coming and going. By the third week, he was seriously thinking about hiring another cook. And then the grid went down.”

“Did it get bad?” I asked.

“Not at first. The only place he could afford to lease was on the edge of town. Little hole in the wall kind of place. Been at least a dozen different restaurants over the years. To get a lower insurance premium rate, he had a backup generator big enough to keep the walk-in cooler, the walk-in freezer, and the lights on in a prolonged power outage. Ran off a big propane tank that also ran the cooking range and fryers. After the second day with no power at Shane’s apartment, we packed up all the food in the apartment, some clothing, air mattresses, and moved into the restaurant. Had to keep Kyrie out of sight.

“For the first few days, business really took off as we were one of the few restaurants still open. We had to make a few changes with no phone service. People just drove up, ordered on the spot, and paid in cash. Then things went sideways. With ATMs down, no credit card service, people began to demand we feed them. But the food delivery truck did not come. What food we had on hand was getting short, and we were not going to give them our own food, which we brought from the apartment.

“So, Shane, Cathy, and I decided to make one last run to the apartment in the trucks and get whatever else we could of value, close the restaurant, and stay there. Being out on the edge of town helped. Some people would come by. Shane and I went out with rifles to change their mind about doing something stupid.

“Then, one guy with his family claimed he was a town police officer and demanded we take them in. Shane politely but firmly pointed out the town did not even have a police department, just the county sheriff department that was a good twenty miles away. The guy then began blubbering something about charity and religion. When that did not appear to work, he went back to demanding. When we told him to get lost, he called us every name in the book as he got back in his car and drove away.

“After that, it was pretty quiet. Cathy did something called ‘wild gardening,’ using the seeds from the vegetables we still had on hand. With the restaurant closed, we were only using the cooking range for ourselves. Shane decided it would be best if he shut the generator down and only used it to keep things in the walk-in cooler and freezer from going bad. By rationing the propane, he figured we could have a year’s worth, give or take. Not feeding the general public, and with the food from the apartment, we made things last for about two months. Then Shane and I would hunt. Shane was an avid hunter since he was a kid. He made sure we used every part. I was never a big fan of liver, but he would grind it in with the meat and make something like a meatloaf. The bones were used to make bone stock. The walk-in cooler and walk-in freezer really helped. We could make one deer last three or four weeks. There were other things like groundhogs, turkeys, and geese that changed things up.”

“What about fruit?” I asked. “Some people have had problems with scurvy.”

“In the woods, we found wild apple trees. They were not ripe yet, sour, but we would mix them in with a meal. Was not too bad.”

“Salt?” Rae asked.

“Restaurants buy in bulk. Had a dozen five-gallon buckets full of salt. Commercial-grade containers of all the herbs and spices we needed to run the restaurant. Then fall came, and Cathy’s wild garden was ready to harvest. So were the apple trees. She saved the seeds from the best vegetables. What we were not going to eat that week, Shane vacuum sealed them in a commercial-grade sealer and froze them. We made apple cider, and tossed the cores out behind the restaurant. In a few years they would grown big enough to start producing. Sealed and froze the apples too.”

“Sounds like you made out pretty good,” I said.

“We had one problem, water. About a week after the grid went down, the water quit. We guessed the town’s reserve water supply, up on a hill, gravity-fed, got used up by the residents. Restaurants tend to have stacks of food-grade five-gallon buckets around. We put as many of them as we could fit on the roof and behind the restaurant. After it rained, we would consolidate the water into buckets and put a lid on them, leave the others out to collect rain. July and August got dicey. Two weeks, no rain, things began to get grim. Twenty five-gallon buckets of water sound like a lot, but it is not.”

“Twenty five-gallon buckets of water was not enough for the three of you and the dog?” Rae asked, looking perplexed.

“The gardens. We still had to water them.”

“Oh! Right.”

“Winter was not fun. It was cold. We tried to use the propane as little as possible, using the cooking range to provide some heat. But basically, we just bundled up as much as we could. The upside we did not have to run the generator as much to keep the cooler and freeze cold. It might have been forty degrees in the restaurant.”

“Must have been boring.”

“Yeah, it was. We did have tablets and laptops. Shane had an external hard drive of TV shows and movies, but that even got boring. We would listen to music, talk, wonder what had happened to the grid, and if it would ever come back on. Theorize about what was going on in the rest of the state or nation. Where was the government in all this? The one good thing was when it snowed, we did not have to worry about water as much.”

The father of the family who runs the kebab place came out to let us know they were turning in, but if we wanted to keep one of the cooking fires going for heat, we were welcome to. We thanked him.

“That sounds like a good idea.” Carlos stood up, opened his pack, and in about two minutes, had a small two-person tent set up. “Kyrie and I had a long day on the road. We are going to turn in too. See you in the morning.”

I did not realize how late it was while listening to Carlos talk.

Rae and I wished him good night.

Rae looked up at the sky.

“No clouds. Maybe no rain. But if it stays clear, it will be a cold morning. Best we get the tent and our sleeping bags,” Rae said, looking at the stars.

Entry two

As usual, I woke up at pre-dawn twilight. Rae was still fast asleep next to me. I gave it some more time, then quietly exited the tent.

The Eastern sky was bright, but the sun was still behind the hills. People were starting cooking fires, getting water from the river to the South, or just mulling about. I helped the family get their cooking fires going, some warm coals still to work with for both cooking and to ward off the fading nights’ chill. After a while, I had one of the fires going well when Carlos and Kyrie crawled out of their tent. Both of them stretched.

Seeing me, Carlos asked how I slept.

“Very well. You?”

“Great. The hot dinner helped. Have not had a meal like that in weeks. Just whatever I could hunt or find. I think I lost a few pounds.”

“We all have. Rae once said, ‘When all other diets fail, the post-power world diet will succeed.’”

“Yeah,” Carlos smiled. “She got that right.”

“Speaking of the devil, the devil is awake. Good morning, Rae,” I greeted her as she got out of the tent and stretched.

She then looked at Carlos and said, “I had some weird dream about eating egg rolls. I’m blaming you.”

“You’re welcome!”

Suddenly there was a odd sound. Like buzzing. I looked around but could not find the source. It was not just me either. Others were looking around. Then someone shouted, “Look! In the sky!”

We all looked up.

“What is it?” I ask no one in particular.

“It’s a drone,” Carlos answered.

About 1stMarineJarHead

1^stMarineJarHead is not only a former Marine, but also a former EMT-B, Wilderness EMT (courtesy of NOLS), and volunteer firefighter.

He currently resides in the great white (i.e. snowy) Northeast with his wife and dogs. He raises chickens, rabbits, goats, occasionally hogs, cows and sometimes ducks. He grows various veggies and has a weird fondness for rutabagas. He enjoys reading, writing, cooking from scratch, making charcuterie, target shooting, and is currently expanding his woodworking skills.