Lord. I am grateful to be where I am.
Out here in God’s country. With a house, a barn, a few dozen acres, and a generator. And a well. And an (expensive but extraordinarily useful) hand pump that will let me raise sweet water from 100 feet below ground level, should propane, or oil, or gasoline, whatever it is that charges my generator (and–as with electric cars–that’s the problem with them, you nitwits!) fail or become so expensive that I can no longer afford to buy it.
So, I’ll have water. No matter what.
What else will I have? Well, eggs. Because, chickens.
And, lamb and mutton on the hoof, in my fields. As distasteful as I find the prospect of eating what I regard as my “pets,” needs must, as they say.
And, what else?
Well, friends. Friends with pigs (read–bacon and pork roasts). WIth cows (read–milk and beef). With so many country resources that those others of my buddies in the city and elsewhere are–I think–bereft and have forgotten. Poor them.
And with guns, and archery. So: venison, turkey, and whatever else presents itself in the fields. Not bunnies. Lord, I hope I’m not reduced to eating bunnies.
And seeds and grain, saved through the years for planting well into the future, and into years of want.
And–here we are. Years of want, entirely self-imposed, and entirely our fault and the result of too many years of prosperity, idiocy, selfishness, and the determined refusal to learn from history.
You think I’m worried about how much toilet paper I have? You think I’m besieging Sam’s Club for crates of it? Umm. No,. There are, after all, always dried leaves. And one can always shake.
If it comes right down to it, and although I may not have enough money to fill my tank with gas, I’m betting that I–and my neighbors–will make it. Right here. Right now. In these United States.
And we’ll make it not because we’re perfect, or because we’re better than our neighbors, or because we’ve abandoned our culture, our values or our families to chase after our own Church of Individual Narcissism and Perpetual Persecution Complex.
We’ll make it–men and women working together–because we can. And because we always have..
I hope the same is true for all of you. Bless.
