Shaky Business

by Foster, Ron

  To Johnny it seemed to him that they were a bunch of backwoods ruffians and unfair traders but his complaints feel on deaf ears, they would just smile and say value is value until he could see for himself a little better way to get around to their way of thinking. It didn’t matter how much he admonished them or threatened them that the Central Trade Bank would get them by revoking their metals trade license or something when he got home. But on the other hand, he was stuck here with no place to go until they turned him loose and as far as he knew his old regular bosses might be in jail and all the Central Bank’s gold confiscated so it was go along and get along with most of their demands.

  At first, Johnny was welcomed addition into the community and regarded highly because he was so willing to trade metal for what everyone called worthless paper regarding the trade script they often used for trading until redeeming it at a later date for precious metal. However his youth and arrogance allegedly gleaned from his position as a depositor of bullion in Weatherman’s bank and his status as a Central Banker soon overrode his discussions in what the community thought was necessary to resolve the matter of the value of what might could still well be worthless paper they possessed and held him accountable..

  Time and considered judgments or just messing with the poor boy brought on a understanding that the Central bank was pledging $50,000 for the expedition and David’s end of the lake clan owed half from their own coffers for the adventure however they could put up the required hard assets which was done.

  The new company was called The Grand King Oyster Company in deference to an old scoundrel David had once read about and appeared to want to emulate called “The Oyster King” who was a former notorious resident of Saint George Island in the 1900’s down in the area Hobe and crew were traveling to. David had read about and became familiar with the talents and motivation that led a poet and evangelist to purchase the island in 1916.

  The charismatic William Lee Popham was a gifted speaker and enthusiastic writer who used his romance novels as equity to purchase the island. Sales of lots were slow until he hit upon a way to provide income from oystering. William Lee began to acquire land and leases to oyster bottoms but suffered ups and downs due to rivalries and accusations of fraud. David had himself an ace up his sleeve in the form of a book most didn’t know he possessed and read about a man who was the dominant force in developing Apalachicola and Saint George Island from 1916 to 1936 to maybe emulate later! History does repeat itself and if you’re the only one with a play book that worked then the odds are in your favor.

  Hobe reminded everybody that on boats, salination plants to produce fresh water as well as various fishing yacht ice makers existed in Florida where those big engine boats could no longer could go out without fuel and were most likely abandoned. Rigging such contraptions to whatever working boats or barges they could find put them in a serious new position for commerce and trade. The idea like the Birdseye Produce Packing Plant coming into being by having the ways and means of collecting produce before spoiling and putting it out for trade if we just locked down the means for keeping it fresh was Hobe’s first thought.

  Crick amended the statement by advising Hobe that there were many marina mechanics and backyard electricians that were fully capable of arranging such niceties as refrigeration and were already probably doing so somewhere on the gulf already. If The Oyster King company offered to do the same as they were already doing he idea would probably fall on deaf ears and nothing come out of it unless a larger supply chain of produce and end point distribution and sales could be obtained . But Hobe said he had the angle from hell on both ends of that conundrum.

  “OK, Hobe, I’m game. Just how is it that you are going to interfere in somebody’s business already freezing seafood from the ocean and then allow you to be the main one to be carrying it back here?” David asked snidely.

  “Well, I’m goanna take a page out of your own book David! You always say its identifying supply and demand and that’s all what’s needed for you to attach yourself to make a nickel even if you were broke on a street corner. I got to thinking one day about when you said that to me the first time and it was always the extra luxuries that go along with things that are in demand, kinda like steak sauce for the steak and you said it didn’t matter, that you would try to sell them the “sizzle” before you sold them the steak. I got to thinking about that one and you kind of caught me off guard by your take on advertising of that old steak house and selling how good the sizzle of their steak was over someone else’s and me being a country boy had a light come on. How the hell do you sell the sizzle to someone who hasn’t even heard it in many years or ever for that matter? That’s kind of how I came up with the idea for my tortillas. You know how hard it is to come up with a sandwich if you haven’t got bread or any way to keep it fresh and you come up with the way to keep ‘em fresh nobody’s selling? Now I got to thinking we only have baked fish, pan seared fish to eat and grilling fish is a hassle because it often sticks to the grill or falls in the coals so the missing element was oil. Now used to be a long time ago folks from Florida were called “Crackers”. That was the sound them old farmers made with their whips cracking them in the air to drive hogs to market in Florida. They didn’t have cattle drives back then in the South, they had hog drives coming up from Florida. They herded them hogs like this because they were smart enough to get a move on because only the sound of it was necessary. Now it’s kind of reversed. You got all these fish and oysters and shrimp and such down there in the Gulf and I bet everybody’s Jonesin’ for some hog lard which at certain times of the year we get buckets of every once in a while. Now you think about it Davey boy, how much would an oysterman trade me for some oil or lard to fry his fish or his oysters with? They’re Southerners like us and that shit would be gold in comparison to most things. Can you imagine living life with no more fried chicken, fried oysters, fried shrimp, fried anything including damn fried pickles? Well, I’m about tired of the lack of fried food myself and unless they have already got a steady supply of lard down there, I think that’s my in and you know David those things you call daisies you been berating and kidding me about? You know those big pretty flowers that I grow out in front of my house?” Hobe said referring to the always five or ten big sunflowers Hobe said decorated his house that produced so little seed you couldn’t even hardly get a snack off of.

  “Well those are black oil seed sunflowers! Now I haven’t figured out the end to this by any means, but while you been laughing at me for not eating them or doing something with them, I been saving those seeds. David, what does Florida have all over the place that will probably be shut down that we ought to be investigating?” Hobe asked letting the notion of oil seeds and oysters congeal in his trader’s mind.

  “I don’t know, you got me on the sunflower seeds, they just don’t grow too well around here. They take a lot of maintenance and water you know, that’s why I asked you where your flowered overall shorts were last time I saw you out watering them looking like Miss Daisy to which Crick looked like he was going to hiccup a swig of the drink he just took

  “Come on, David. Put your brain to it, I asked you the one question everyone but you would normally miss!” Hobe said delighted he had David puzzled.

  David hemmed and hawed and scratched his head a bit then and asked for more clues before he finally said” Florida has some kind of big or little plant nurseries on every corner?”

  “Your own the right track!” Hobe said grinning at his game of wits.

  “Are you may be thinking about getting your fertilizer down there or growing some Sunflowers in some old tomato beds or something?” He asked contemplating what kind of angle the man might have.

  “Well you’re partially right: usually they got a shitload of plastic pots filled up with potting soil sitting on weed cloth between the rows in them places. Now I don’t know what’s still growing in those darn things if it’s not inedible geraniums or something but when you think about it, you got kind
of like a premade garden waiting on you. What would happen if I showed up down there with fifteen pounds of black oil sunflower seeds and commenced to growing in those pots already nicely prearranged and filled with dirt for me? Could be I could figure out how to put a solar water pump on that already designed irrigation system them places got if I could figure out a rain water collector” Hobe said with a sly smile.

  “Aw hell! If you could come up with a homemade oil press of sorts we’d have the equivalent of store bought cooking oil wouldn’t we?” David said with a hell yea hurray and giving him a big high five for the brilliance to his scheme.

  “You got it!” Hobe began before Crick chimed in “Why can’t you do it around here and grow them the same way? Why Clem and Bertha down at the plantation would bust their britches to think of growing flowers and making money off of them! We got us a huge dang plantation down there with lots of workers and that old bastard Clem claims he can sprout the busted end of a hoe handle if need be and make it grow! Why don’t you let us give them Sunflower seeds you got a try?” Crick said thinking he was going to be an overnight millionaire.

  “You ever see any fields full of sunflowers in the South? Hell no! Kind of like they grow Idaho potatoes and Maine potatoes but they just don’t work here for some reason and we grow sweet potatoes. Now I am not much of a commercial agricultural gardener and I can’t tell you why some things work in a Southern climate and some don’t but I can tell you things grow in a pot if you put enough fertilizer in it. Well, down there if I got pots full of soil which may or may not have any fertilizer in it already I got a good start. So what if they are probably full of weeds that you can pull and shake the dirt off of the roots and use the dirt afterwards. I plan on planting black oil sunflower seeds in al them damn things and see what I can come up with. Then we press the oil and trade it to both the people that produce the oysters and the people that eat the oysters. And oh, did I tell you that you can make hot pepper sauce to go with them oysters and those will grow in Florida real easily? I don’t quite have the knack of it yet but I bet if I can fry a tortilla so I can make some kind of a cracker out of it for that oyster to sit on too! And could be if I need to you add ocean salt to it and call it a saltine! I tell you what boys, I got this mission covered in more ways than you can even in envision! Think about it, hot sauce, oil, saltines, convertible pork chops for lard to make poor boy sandwich bread, there’s lemon trees grow there in folk’s backyards, now all we got to have us is a cooking oil refinery! I sort of have a place in mind that might have something I can convert” Hobe said taking the approach he was the Einstein of this new apocalyptic world and it was his sailboat that would soon be bringing home miraculous rare delicacies and trade.

  “Now that’s slicker than owl shit Hobe! Sounds like you got this thing pretty well thought out! But I got a question for you: if Crick can’t raise sunflowers over on the plantation for lack of fertilizer or water etc, what are you planning on using? It’s been years since all those pots you been talking about were tended too and I’ve seen a few of those places, those weeds have already sucked up any fertilizer that was in them already years ago. Are you asking me to somehow transport or supply you with fertilizer down that way? If so, that won’t work, it’s too far of a distance.” David said trying to wrap his head around this intriguing notion.

  “Hey now, ya’ll are speculating way too damn much on that fifty thousand loan you been talking about. It don’t take that much money just to raise some sunflowers” Johnny began before everyone told him to hush because they wanted to listen to this phenomenon of commerce Hobe said he could create.

  “Now give me all of your handshakes and promises all around that if I will tell you most of the rest of my plan you all won’t try to, what did you call it, David, “circumvent me”? Hobe said letting the cat out of the bag that David and he had had a prior discussion on the matter and that he held some kind of ace up his sleeve nobody else was aware of.

  David uncomfortably squirmed in his chair and regarded the “what are you up to now” looks from his detractors as he tried to distract everybody with another round of moonshine they knew to avoid if they wanted to not get influenced unduly by the wile old character.

  “Cough it up, David, spit! You been finagling in the background and trying to influence something to benefit you again! You got some kind of trade deal on fertilizer you can’t get transported?” Dixon asked.

  “Nothing of the kind, you big ol’ money counting furry friend! Hobe’s got that answer for you and the rest of your questions. He just came to me asking my advisement on it if he had to put all his cards on the table like you’re asking him to do now and trust you.” David declared attempting to put the others back in their places and out of his own personal business.

  Hobe looked to his left then slowly looked to his right like he was seeing if someone could overhear him and then looked straight at the men’s faces as they were studying him and got around to advising them that David had told him that the fertilizer and seed business stemming off the venture was a whole separate franchise business that he wanted a part of and that he himself had agreed it was not up for discussion unless David wanted to elaborate.

  David eyed everyone the same way they were starting holes through him and then quietly said “A Fifty thousand dollar investment was offered to be assisted with which as they knew had already been agreed upon and he guessed everything was on the table now about why he had tried to influenced it so much. You see Hobe has benefitted in wisdom from receiving many a shitty job around here until he managed to save enough for his own boat and be his own captain. Well he was once was hanging around one of my all night drinking and plotting and scheming bouts when a story came up about how when I was a first responder in the National Guard the powers that be were deciding on what to do with a meat warehouse that some siding had blew off during Hurricane Frederick in Mobile, Alabama on the Gulf Coast.” David said.

  “I remember that story!’ Crick said getting interested in what that might have to do with David’s sometimes murky ways of identifying where a dollar might come from next.

  David had regaled his audience that evening around the campfire about how the whole Alabama National Guard threatened to quit if they were forced to remove that rotting meat that the owners had let spoil instead of distributing to the needy when it started unfreezing and Hobe came to a very brilliant contemplation.

  Hobe had wondered what happened to all the seafood warehouses down there experiencing the same thing without electricity to run the freezer units. It sat and rotted of course. It was still sitting and rotting and everybody within a mile or two had probably found themselves a better place to live pretty quickly if they were able around the fish processing plants.

  Fishmeal, Hobe said, was basically the same thing: rotted fish dried out for agricultural use. Whatever mummified or sloppy remains still existed in these places was the perfect fertilizer for anything vegetable or oil seed plant in this world. Why you should be able to get it out by the shovelful these days he had declared to David.

  That’s the way Hobe planned on growing the sunflowers: free fertilizer, free dirt! A genius notion of sorts just there for the taking! What happens when you are the sole possessor of oil to fry with and a steady supply of fresh seafood? It might take some finagling, it might take some deceptiveness, it might take some creativity but anything was possible!

  “Holy Shit! Why we could ship on a small boat ten to fifteen bushels of raw oysters, a few hundred pounds of assorted seafood like crabs and scallops, I ain’t studying fish at the moment...” Crick began before Morgan asked “How hard is it to catch a lobster?” To which Randal said he didn’t care as long as there was a possibility of getting one regularly on occasion and that if he could find some butter somewhere down there he might not ever come back!

  “Imagine, I can have all this shellfish that I want and like and not even have to eat another dang fish again I ain’t too keen on, not that they are too bad bu
t it’s not my favorite meal by a long shot or even close to what I actually eat other than just for survival. As a bonus I won’t be beholden to Roland and his money lending unless he wants to exchange some better terms at my prices.” Randal said volunteering himself as a partner to this deal nobody had yet considered including.

  “The key to ‘really’ preparing for a long term collapse is successful adaptability to changing circumstances. Resourcefulness. “To make everything out of anything”.

  7

  Grand Lagoon

  Hobe manned the ships wheel in a tight white knuckle grip as he slowly tacked the sailboat around the peninsula of the State Park looking for signs of life and carefully trying to follow the missing buoy now apparently unmarked channel. There were hazards aplenty for the unwary sailor and storms and lack of dredging had made a mishmash out of the sandbars and underwater rocks that filled his windy and choppy water passage.

  They hadn’t seen anyone yet but they had not really expected to because the stained and torn park brochure map they had reviewed indicated that the campgrounds were on the far lagoon side and the majority of the acreage on the bayside was left wild. The park had over one and a half miles of beaches on the Gulf and Grand Lagoon and they had just had begun to approach the somewhat cleared pass between the two that changed with the whims of nature often.