Wednesday, November 21, 2007
City or Farm
Eugene sat in the lawn chair and assessed his position. He opened another bottle of beer as he thought about his transportation situation. After raiding the neighborhood for cars and such, his end of the street was strewn with methods to travel. He had a Cooper and an ATV, along with a tow truck and a Rec vehicle. He had several bicycles and motorcycles but was still prizing a Segway. His car collection was growing, many of them he kept in the other garages near his house. He had a personal gas station about two blocks away that he had rigged up to operate on a generator, where he also had parked about five cars. He had a cache' of traveling modes.
He thought about how much things had changed in so short of time. Sipping his beer he thought how it all seemed like he had fell into an alternative universe. Or that this was a major hallucination to vanish unexpectedly. Was he crazy, he often wondered. Almost every person on Earth had perished. He knew that there were other people out there because he had listened on the CB radio in the truck. But for now he thought of this time as HIS hallucination and nobody else was involved. He thought about the future as a step-by-step effort to survive.
He clicked off the mental list of things to do, but returned to a major question. "Should I find a farm?" His eating habits were going to have to change in a few weeks. Milk and eggs would go bad all over the world and certainly where Eugene lived. He worried about his long term diet. Boxed food would last a long time, powdered milk, cereal and canned goods would get him through a long period. There was tons of bottled water sitting on shelves in empty stores. But he suspected that if he didn't get to a farm then the milk and eggs might be a thing of the past as he knew it.
Cows and chickens are human animals, that is to say that they probably can't survive in the wild without human intervention. The cows would be sitting ducks for the coyotes and wolves, the chickens would be sitting ducks for cats, and the sitting ducks would start flying to avoid what happens to the cows and chickens.
Eugene believed that if he didn't get to a farm and save the animals then he might never see chicken eggs, cows milk and beef steak again. It was now day 5 after the crash, he wondered if finding a farm tomorrow might already be too late. He thought that somewhere in America a farmer survived and kept the farm thriving, but even if true Eugene wondered whether he'd ever know.
He wanted a horse. Although Eugene never had been riding before he had always wanted to fly like the wind. In this new world horseback riding could be a reliable mode of transportation. That settled it. Tomorrow Eugene would spend the day checking out the farms that remained in the west suburbs. These places were nearly tourist outposts of working farms. They had lasted as the property values rose in the growing subdivisions around them by specializing, organic fruits for instance was one. A few were horse farms and others had the traditional corn, cows and coop that allowed tours.
Eugene wondered how they had fared after the five days. Were the animals still alive? If they did were they still penned and hadn't escaped? Would there be anyone there? Or would someone else in this city think of the same thing Eugene did? Were there others thinking about future bar burgers?
This would be a major undertaking, the biggest since the second day for Eugene. This trip would be a day long venture he figured. He listed the necessities randomly, flashlights, guns, food, bottled water, some kind of book about farms for the novice (Farming For Dummies?), several pair of jeans and shirts. He calculated that the PT Cruiser would be enough car. It would hold enough supplies yet be on the smaller side in order to be able to jockey around the occasional crash remnants on the roads. Cars and trucks were everywhere. Cars abandoned in the middle of streets, Eugene imagined some crazy leaping out of the drivers side and running away screaming most times he saw those awkwardly parked cars.
He finished off his beer and reached into the cooler for another. Twisting the cap off, sipping the rising foam, he settled the bottle on the side table and picked up his journal. He tore into his writing, scribbling as much information as he could recall from his day as fast as he could. He had several to-do lists throughout the journal and he kept writing new ones. He flipped through the old ones, checked off any completions and followed the check with the day number, today he wrote plenty of fives. He knew he was indirectly writing his history and a history of the world as he learned of it. Most of the world info he wrote in a second journal. He had a third journal for important knowledge such as conversion charts, instructions for hooking up generators, hand draw maps of places he'd been, etc.
Eugene picked up the journals on the second day almost out of chance as he had thrown twenty of them into his cart that night he looted supplies. The books of blank paper seemed a bit odd among the important looking items such as batteries, food, gas containers (he had one full cart of them alone), etc. He had looted a major market locally known in Michigan as Meijers in a late hour raid. This was his first looting and he had been plenty worried about meeting other looters, but needlessly as he looted quickly and escaped back to his base around his old house.
"And now I'm going to visit the farm!" he said out loud. He wrote up a quick to-do list for tomorrow's trip from his memory of an earlier mental list. He also wondered about his speaking aloud. Sometimes he surprised himself with his own voice and he often wondered if it was crazy speaking aloud to no one but himself. Which logically brought him around to the question of his own sanity, was he crazy or going crazy? "Or am I sane in a crazy situation?" He asked himself as he spoke to the empty yard.
He wasn't afraid of meeting other people, at least not trembling at the thought. Eugene considered creating his own survival environment his top priority. He had his base, here, basically his chair in the backyard would be the center point of his "empire" he jokingly referred to as his home. The six or seven houses and yards around his home had ceded their authority to Eugene's empire, he looted and annexed them. Now he was planning an "invasion" of an empty(?) farm area that he hoped would become his second base. Eugene exclaimed "I'm a madman general in a mad-ridden world!" to his empty yard. He laughed a small chuckle and went back to his beer for a good swallow and then back to his journal.
He thought about how much things had changed in so short of time. Sipping his beer he thought how it all seemed like he had fell into an alternative universe. Or that this was a major hallucination to vanish unexpectedly. Was he crazy, he often wondered. Almost every person on Earth had perished. He knew that there were other people out there because he had listened on the CB radio in the truck. But for now he thought of this time as HIS hallucination and nobody else was involved. He thought about the future as a step-by-step effort to survive.
He clicked off the mental list of things to do, but returned to a major question. "Should I find a farm?" His eating habits were going to have to change in a few weeks. Milk and eggs would go bad all over the world and certainly where Eugene lived. He worried about his long term diet. Boxed food would last a long time, powdered milk, cereal and canned goods would get him through a long period. There was tons of bottled water sitting on shelves in empty stores. But he suspected that if he didn't get to a farm then the milk and eggs might be a thing of the past as he knew it.
Cows and chickens are human animals, that is to say that they probably can't survive in the wild without human intervention. The cows would be sitting ducks for the coyotes and wolves, the chickens would be sitting ducks for cats, and the sitting ducks would start flying to avoid what happens to the cows and chickens.
Eugene believed that if he didn't get to a farm and save the animals then he might never see chicken eggs, cows milk and beef steak again. It was now day 5 after the crash, he wondered if finding a farm tomorrow might already be too late. He thought that somewhere in America a farmer survived and kept the farm thriving, but even if true Eugene wondered whether he'd ever know.
He wanted a horse. Although Eugene never had been riding before he had always wanted to fly like the wind. In this new world horseback riding could be a reliable mode of transportation. That settled it. Tomorrow Eugene would spend the day checking out the farms that remained in the west suburbs. These places were nearly tourist outposts of working farms. They had lasted as the property values rose in the growing subdivisions around them by specializing, organic fruits for instance was one. A few were horse farms and others had the traditional corn, cows and coop that allowed tours.
Eugene wondered how they had fared after the five days. Were the animals still alive? If they did were they still penned and hadn't escaped? Would there be anyone there? Or would someone else in this city think of the same thing Eugene did? Were there others thinking about future bar burgers?
This would be a major undertaking, the biggest since the second day for Eugene. This trip would be a day long venture he figured. He listed the necessities randomly, flashlights, guns, food, bottled water, some kind of book about farms for the novice (Farming For Dummies?), several pair of jeans and shirts. He calculated that the PT Cruiser would be enough car. It would hold enough supplies yet be on the smaller side in order to be able to jockey around the occasional crash remnants on the roads. Cars and trucks were everywhere. Cars abandoned in the middle of streets, Eugene imagined some crazy leaping out of the drivers side and running away screaming most times he saw those awkwardly parked cars.
He finished off his beer and reached into the cooler for another. Twisting the cap off, sipping the rising foam, he settled the bottle on the side table and picked up his journal. He tore into his writing, scribbling as much information as he could recall from his day as fast as he could. He had several to-do lists throughout the journal and he kept writing new ones. He flipped through the old ones, checked off any completions and followed the check with the day number, today he wrote plenty of fives. He knew he was indirectly writing his history and a history of the world as he learned of it. Most of the world info he wrote in a second journal. He had a third journal for important knowledge such as conversion charts, instructions for hooking up generators, hand draw maps of places he'd been, etc.
Eugene picked up the journals on the second day almost out of chance as he had thrown twenty of them into his cart that night he looted supplies. The books of blank paper seemed a bit odd among the important looking items such as batteries, food, gas containers (he had one full cart of them alone), etc. He had looted a major market locally known in Michigan as Meijers in a late hour raid. This was his first looting and he had been plenty worried about meeting other looters, but needlessly as he looted quickly and escaped back to his base around his old house.
"And now I'm going to visit the farm!" he said out loud. He wrote up a quick to-do list for tomorrow's trip from his memory of an earlier mental list. He also wondered about his speaking aloud. Sometimes he surprised himself with his own voice and he often wondered if it was crazy speaking aloud to no one but himself. Which logically brought him around to the question of his own sanity, was he crazy or going crazy? "Or am I sane in a crazy situation?" He asked himself as he spoke to the empty yard.
He wasn't afraid of meeting other people, at least not trembling at the thought. Eugene considered creating his own survival environment his top priority. He had his base, here, basically his chair in the backyard would be the center point of his "empire" he jokingly referred to as his home. The six or seven houses and yards around his home had ceded their authority to Eugene's empire, he looted and annexed them. Now he was planning an "invasion" of an empty(?) farm area that he hoped would become his second base. Eugene exclaimed "I'm a madman general in a mad-ridden world!" to his empty yard. He laughed a small chuckle and went back to his beer for a good swallow and then back to his journal.
