An Unwelcome Homecoming by Darrell Maloney

Author:Darrell Maloney [Maloney, Darrell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-03-25T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 28

The snow in Blanco lasted a couple more days and then melted, but residents had little time to enjoy the respite. As it had the winter before, a major ice storm struck a week before Christmas and made just walking around treacherous.

At least there were no downed power lines this time to hinder travel even farther.

Blanco, like every other city in the land, was a place where few people had the luxury of parking themselves in their houses for days at a time.

Long gone were well stocked supermarket shelves and well-stocked kitchen cupboards.

The supermarkets were locked up, boarded up and abandoned.

Most towns had community kitchens or “soup houses” which used federal government stockpiled food, augmented by local volunteers, hunters and growers, to provide one hot meal per day for its residents.

Able-bodied residents had gotten better at growing crops and hunting, trapping and fishing to put extra food away for the winter.

Canning was the preferred method, but canning supplies were hard to come by for those who didn’t already have them on the day of the blackout.

And canning was a lost art.

Few people knew how to do it before the EMPs hit, and as hard as they were trying to teach the skills to a younger generation, there were still critical shortages in jars, lids and seals.

Still, more and more families were able to grow enough subsistence foods like corn and grains to dry them out and sock them away to get them at least partially through the winter.

Dave and Woody took great advantage of migrating geese stopping to rest on area lakes and provided some two hundred pounds of the birds to Jake’s Café. They bagged more than two dozen ducks. And they continued to bring in fish two or three times a week.

If the town was relying strictly on their efforts they wouldn’t be able to keep up with demand.

But other men, and sometimes women, also went hunting and fishing every chance they got.

And area ranchers did their part, donating a head of beef or hog when the kitchens needed them.

There was a lot of bartering going on. Mostly labor for meat.

But there was also a sense of teamwork. Of taking care of your neighbor. Of helping out however one could.

When Dave wasn’t out hunting or fishing, he was in the woods turning trees into firewood. And when he wasn’t doing that he was delivering the firewood to shut-ins and those who were elderly or disabled.

Long stretches of cold weather mean an awful lot of wood was being burned.

Luckily this was the hill country, with plenty of wood to be taken.

The ice on the ground was a constant thorn in everybody’s side. It slowed down everyone and everything and made doing even the simplest tasks ten times harder.

It didn’t take people long to start praying for snow instead of cursing it.

The snow, you see, gave walkers at least a little bit of traction.

And it made it easier for hunters to track game.

As the winter dragged on, each and every person in Blanco fell into a routine.

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