The Slow Road

by Jerry D. Young

  The two had long talks about the situation and finally came up with a plan. Again, it certainly wasn’t their dream house, but it would be much better than what they had. Never one to laze around, except on Sundays, after the animals were taken care of, Jasper started two new major projects.

  Millie had been after him for a long time to find a day job, since the graveyard shift was so hard on him. He was putting in the same number of hours, with the projects going, but he began to look a bit better and wasn’t as tired all the time the way he had been before, despite the equal hours of work.

  The first project Jasper hoped to finish before the birth of the babies and it got both financial and time priority. They were going to need a vehicle with a rear seat once the babies came and Jasper and Millie knew exactly what they wanted. And Jasper knew how to get it. The same garage where he had built the pickup was more than willing to get his part time help for the use of the garage for him to build a new vehicle.

  It went well, and quickly, as Jasper was basically building a rig identical to the pickup, except it would have the body of a Suburban when he was finished. Another reinforced and gusseted frame from a wrecked pickup. Another Pontiac Super Duty 455 engine. Another five fuel tanks. The Suburban body was a year younger than the pickup, but the design had not changed cosmetically in the two years

  When he was done two weeks before Millie’s due date a person looking at the vehicles from the front wouldn’t be able to tell which was which. Since the raw material was available in the form of another wrecked one ton pickup, Jasper went ahead and made a second trailer, also nearly identical to the first one he’d made for the pickup, including built in fuel tanks to extend the range of the towing vehicle.

  When he wasn’t working for the county, getting all the overtime he could get, or working on the Suburban, Jasper was preparing the property around the park model trailer for additions to be added to the trailer.

  The work would be done in several stages, as money and time permitted. Jasper and Millie’s goal was to have the first half of the construction done before the babies turned two and the second half done before they were three.

  They managed the feat, even on the accelerated schedule they adopted when Millie got pregnant with their third child a year after the twins were born. Jasper was able to apply all his spare time to the house project after the Suburban was done. Always the horse trader, Jasper acquired most of the materials he needed for the construction by trading labor for them, though the garden, orchard, and animals were making enough to help defray some of the cash costs.

  Jasper got the footings poured and the piers and foundation built for the expansion on all four sides of the existing park model trailer. The ends were only being extended slightly. No living space, just the same exterior treatment the entire structure got as it was completed.

  The space enclosures were basic good house building with twelve inch insulated walls and a hipped roof that covered the entire three sections of the house, with a generous overhang all around.

  But the additions for better security were the main components of extra expense. Using techniques that Joel Skousen had developed that Jasper read about on the internet, Jasper added a bullet resistant half height wall from the ground to the level of the bottoms of the windows. The addition tapered from twelve inches thick at the bottom to eighteen inches at the top. It was made of steel studs and steel horizontal structural elements and went around the entire structure. The cavity made by the sloped structure faced with steel siding was filled with three-quarter inch minus washed gravel.

  The conventional windows were covered with Lexan sheets, that while not bullet proof, would maintain their integrity if holed by a bullet. The bullet might break the glass behind the Lexan, but there would still be a window. For additional protection Jasper made working shutters for the windows that could be closed from the inside. They were made of three one-quarter-inch panels of tempered steel sandwiched with two layers of five-eighths marine plywood.

  Again, not bullet proof against heavy rounds, they would stop smaller rounds and shotgun blasts. Jasper wasn’t worried about bullet holes in the area above the gravel wall. They could be easily patched. Glass windows couldn’t, thus the Lexan, which could. The doors were built in the same manner as the shutters, with additional shutters that could be closed over the doors.

  The slight reverse taper of the projectile resistant wall coupled with the wide overhang of the steep pitch metal roof resulted in a striking looking dwelling that still met all building codes.

  Besides being protected fairly well from projectiles all around Jasper plumbed in some used pipe and sprinkler heads on the roof and under eaves. The roof and walls could be washed down with water in the event of a natural fire, or an attack with Molotov cocktails.

  The innocuous looking vents in the top layer of the three full block plus cap block foundation wall and gravel wall were built by Jasper to swing open easily from under the house so they could be used as gun ports. There was the normal steel access door in the foundation in the back wall for under-house access, but there were also two trapdoors in each of the new front and back sections of the structure to access the area, just as there were two places to gain access to the attic for minor, lightweight storage.

  Though they kept the propane furnace that was in the park model trailer, Jasper installed an outdoor wood burning furnace to provide heat for the completed house. Even the homebuilt redwood hot tub on the new covered rear wooden deck didn’t use propane. It was wood fired.

  CHAPTER THREE

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  The construction, when completed, gave Jasper, Millie, and their children five nice bedrooms, two full baths plus the original small bath of the park model trailer, as well as two storage rooms, a real laundry room, and a large living room. All at a tenth of the cost of having a much smaller and less protective home built, even a manufactured home.

  Jasper and Millie had an open house for their few friends after the final touches had been added to the house. Though simple and plain by almost all standards, the house impressed their friends for the fact that they had done it themselves, for a ridiculously low cash outlay, though they didn’t know exactly how much. They just all knew what Jasper did for a living and he couldn’t have had much to work with, especially after the babies were born and Millie gave up her jobs to stay home with them.

  The only comment approaching negativity was one about how small the back yard was now with all the garden and yard buildings. Jasper smiled an inward smile. Alvin’s wife didn’t have a clue. It was more than worth it for Jasper, Millie, and the children.

  Alvin took Jasper aside and asked for a tour of the rest of the place, without his wife along. Jasper had a quick word with Millie and slipped out the back door with Alvin. In the years that they had been working together gathering firewood, hunting, and the occasional helping hand at Alvin’s, Alvin had never really looked over the property.

  Jasper looked at Alvin about halfway through the quick tour. Alvin’s mouth was open and he was looking around in awe. And that was before Jasper took him into the “storage shed” shelter.

  Alvin was acute enough to recognize the thick walls and right angle turn into the space for what they were. Elements of a fallout shelter. Just before they went back inside the house, Alvin stopped Jasper and said, “I don’t want to sound superior or something, but how did you do all this? I make ten times what you do and I don’t have a fraction of what you have, in terms of taking care of me and my family. You have a full fledged fallout shelter, for heaven’s sake!”

  “You know me, Alvin,” Jasper said softly. “I just take things as they come and do what I can, one project at a time.”

  “And work hard all the time. I don’t think I could do it. But I’m worried about the future. The world situation. Global warming. All that. I can’t get Alice interested. All Lance cares about is his motorcycle and iPod. The girls love the horses and take good care of them, but what will I do if things
go bad? Look at what happened when the subprime lending market collapsed. I lost almost a million dollars I had invested. It cut my net worth in half.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Alvin. I’d certainly be glad to help in any way I can, but I sure don’t know what to tell you about getting your family on board. It’s never been a problem with me. Millie has been right there, pitching in right from the start.”

  “Yeah. You’re lucky there. She’s a trooper.”

  Jasper was 31, Millie 30, and the youngest child was two at the time of the open house. Much to Millie’s relief, primarily fear of Jasper having a heart attack, Jasper slowed down some, to spend more time with the children. They would start home schooling the twins in another year.

  But Jasper was Jasper and he needed a project to work on. They’d never found a suitable generator and Jasper wanted reliable, constant power for a few things. What Jasper did was begin to accumulate cheap LED lights and used deep cycle batteries whenever he could get his hands on either. Then, as finances permitted he bought solar battery trickle chargers for the batteries. He set up a battery with solar trickle charger in each of the buildings, to provide light when needed.

  He also wanted power for the computer so he set up another system in the house to use with the 12 volt power cord that came with the computer. He added several of the LED light fixtures in the house and shelter, with their own batteries and solar trickle chargers.

  Though they only used a little propane in the house kitchen range and hot water heater, when Jasper found a used thousand gallon aboveground propane tank he traded for it and made arrangements to have it moved to the property. He set it directly over the buried tank and slowly began to fill both, buying a hundred gallons of propane a month, year round, until both tanks were full.

  The tank had come from a farm and had a wet leg so Jasper could fill propane tanks from the new tank. He began to scrounge some up, cleaning and painting them, getting those that needed it recertified and modern valves installed until he had almost another five hundred gallons of propane in portable tanks ranging in size from twenty pounders to one-hundred pounders. He didn’t really have a use for them, but the opportunity had presented itself, so he took advantage of it.

  He did find a use for some of them, losing several in the process. The blizzard and ice storm of several years previously had been called a once in a thousand years storm. The one the area got the winter of 2011/2012 put it to shame.

  With Millie and the children safe and sound at home, Jasper, in his position with the county, again helped out getting supplies to people and people to shelter using one of the county trucks until it ran dry. Alvin was in the process of getting a new truck and had sold the Dodge one-ton with dump bed, so didn’t have anything that would move during the bad weather. Jasper picked Alvin and his family up and took them into town to the shelter.

  Jasper trusted Alvin to drive Jasper’s pickup, so took him home to pick up it and the trailer so he could help with the rescue efforts. When they were taking a break at one of the shelters Alvin told Jasper, “I always kind of felt sorry for you having such old vehicles. I had no idea what you had were in such good shape and so capable.”

  Jasper smiled. “They do okay.”

  They dropped the conversation when a very tired looking deputy came over and asked them to deliver some hay to one of the local farmers, and pick up a family that got stranded on the highway trying to make it in to the shelter. “We just don’t have anything left suitable for the jobs.”

  Jasper and Alvin split up and carried out the tasks they’d been asked to do. They kept it up for five full days, with the sad task of picking up some bodies of people that had died because of the severe weather.

  Alvin was a bit green around the gills when they dropped the bodies off at the county morgue, each one having brought in three bodies in the trailers.

  Millie was glad to see Jasper get home, but they’d been snug and secure. Millie still worried about Jasper’s heart due to his father’s chronic heart problems, and Jasper’s several years of hard drinking.

  Fuel had jumped to over five dollars a gallon since Jasper had helped during the last blizzard. He submitted a request to have the fuel he’d used in his two vehicles replaced. The county, thankful for the help, agreed. It was two months before Jasper got the fuel, but he did get it. The same couldn’t be said for a few of the small propane tanks he’d handed out to people that had run out of propane because of running their furnaces at full blast for such a long time.

  But both vehicles were full when the gasoline became available. Jasper kept them that way most of the time. So with the thought of future supplies of fuel in mind, Jasper went shopping for an inexpensive gasoline tank and stand. He couldn’t find one so went to TSC again. They had one. The manager of the store was one of the people that Jasper had helped and cut him a good deal on the tank, stand, and dispenser.

  With the tank set up near the propane tank, Jasper had the truck delivering fuel to the county put his two hundred gallons in the new tank, plus three hundred more that Jasper paid for out of the money he knew he would be making during the clean up.

  He misjudged the situation slightly and he and Millie ran tight on cash when Jasper couldn’t do as much of the cleanup for individuals, which paid better than the county overtime, which Jasper was putting in doing cleanup on behalf of the county.

  But he had it and kept the tank topped off religiously the same way he’d always kept the vehicles topped off. It was easier now, since he could refuel at home every day and get a gasoline delivery every month to keep the tank between half full and full.

  As bad as that winter was, the summer turned out to be much worse. Jasper had never really believed much in global warming, especially with the recent severe winter weather, but he was starting to change his mind after the temperatures began hitting the one-hundred’s in late June and didn’t drop significantly until late September of that year.

  He spent quite a bit of overtime for the county delivering water and ice to many of the same people that he’d delivered food and water to during the blizzards. He also brought many of them in to cooling shelters if they had no air conditioning or couldn’t run it when the power was out. Which it was often, again.

  Then that fall he did much the same thing due to heavy rains that began to cause flooding in the area, including his residential neighborhood. The property was on a gentle upslope from the street. At its worst, the water came to within two inches of getting into the house and over the deck, and just covered the garden with an inch or so. The alley was right at the upper level of the flood water. At least it wasn’t a raging flood. The water was moving, but slowly, as it rose.

  Millie sweated the rising water out. Even if the water did get into the house, she could still take the children across the deck, onto the outdoor kitchen mound which was an extension of the shelter mound. There was still more than a foot of freeboard for the outdoor kitchen and the shelter.

  Jasper honored his duty for the county and worked, taking only enough time to raise a sand bag revetment in front of the entrance of the shelter, giving another two feet of protection to the shelter itself, above the mound.

  He didn’t think that would happen, for before it reached the floor level of the shelter the water should be running over the alley and down that side of the slope. There just wasn’t much way for the water to rise more than a couple of inches higher than the alley. He also moved the chicken tractor and henhouse up on the small open area of the shelter mound to keep them out of the water.

  The rains continued for a week, with the flooding lasting for several days after the rain stopped. Jasper was only getting home for a meal and few hours of sleep before he went back on duty. The flooding had played havoc with the county roads and all the county crews were putting in overtime to try to get them repaired as the flood water slowly went down.

  Millie killed over a dozen snakes that found refuge on the family islands. She didn’t even try
to differentiate between helpful snakes and the dangerous cottonmouths that were common in the area. She also drove off several larger, less dangerous animals, though she did kill a couple of possums and raccoons that became aggressive when she tried to herd them back into the water.

  They lost much of the garden, as the flood came during the height of the harvest, but with their stored reserves they didn’t want for food. They chose to eat on the stored foods and sell or give away the small amount of produce they got after the water went down and Jasper was able to mud his way through the garden in tall rubber boots to recover everything he could when he finally got a few daytime hours off.

  With all the overtime Jasper was making, Millie was able to make two more double mortgage payments and still have money left to have a nice Holiday season that fall. They talked it over and decided to build up some cash reserves again, putting the increased salary from Jasper’s promotion to crew chief of one of the maintenance crews.

  Millie was still able to pick up a Super Pail or two every month of long term storage staples. And though they’d always kept plenty of toilet paper in the house, Millie began to double buy it at the buyer’s club they were now members of, and stacked it in the attic of the house. There was plenty in the shelter and Millie and Jasper both thought with the rodent proofing Jasper had done when he built onto the park model trailer, plus poison out in the attic, the paper products would be safe from rodent and bug infestations.

  Jason had two more projects he wanted to do, while there was still space in the back yard. He’d guttered the roof of the house, piping the run off toward the street, since the rear of the property was higher. He hated loosing that much water, so rented a tiny excavator and dug a hole to put in a seven-hundred-fifty gallon stock water tank for a cistern to catch the roof runoff.