A Peek Into The Future

 

Mining Houses 

Our target was the old Miller place about a mile straight north of home. It didn’t look like it had been opened, which was unusual. Mostly you could tell if they had been mined by someone else.

Elvin, Roger and I prepared to leave by getting into our backpacks, throwing some extra bags on the bike’s handlebars and strapping boxes onto the rear bumpers. It wasn’t a very nice job of work, but it only had to work for a couple of miles.

Jen had made us some of her egg salad sandwiches to take along. Just so we didn’t die before we got home! We always carried bottles of water.

We met Roger one day a while back trying to open the P-Sec grocery store doors and finding them locked. Yeah, they finally sold everything thing they had in there and closed the darn place.

Roger was a kid who grew up in the south end of Milltown, where the newer malls and stuff had been, when open. He was like us, just trying to live in the new world. He didn’t have any family left, so we spent some time together working on things. It was nice to have a guy to help, and we helped him too. What can I say? He looked like a guy. Blond.

Honestly, he and Elvin were the buddies, not me so much. Same ages.

About the bikes. It is strange that it took so long for us to decide to travel that way. Probably because we were small kids when everything went crash and we weren’t thinking about transportation. But there are bikes all over and we finally found them and started using them. Maintenance required, as always.

It was the first summer after Jen and I got married. So, it was a warm day in early July. We were riding in t-shirts and cutoff jeans.

We pulled up on the Miller place like a gang of ten-year-olds on our bikes, and came to a stop in the overgrown driveway. It was gravel, not paved. Lilac bushes and Scotch Broom shoved their way into the driveway, nearly meeting in the middle. It was drowsy and full of working bees in that enclosed space with sound quality muffled by the bushes. We parked the bikes near where the front door had to be.

It was truly hard to tell. Ivy had grown all over the front of the house and covered the door itself. I was reminded of some old stories. Enchanted castles or cottages, and like princes doing rescues.

I had a pretty good knife I always carried, so I cut the vines binding the front door. Still, it was locked, so I had to jimmy the lock with the big, bladed screwdriver I also had in my pack. Finally, it broke. I was able to open the door, which had been closed since the Miller’s deaths.

Hot dead air greeted us as we stepped in. The floor seemed solid enough. It hadn’t been long enough to rot the floor out. I flipped a switch. Nope. It still felt paused or enchanted here. Time seemed irrelevant.

Elvin and Roger went back to the bikes and got the bags and brought them inside with us.

On the wall facing the door was a framed cross-stitched motto. It proclaimed that Today Is The Day Of Salvation. I took that as a good sign. Low puns are my jam!

There was a list of the kinds of stuff we hunted for on these mining expeditions. No. 1, still useful food. No. 2, stuff like soap. No.3, any tools or supplies that we needed. We still had to produce or locate anything we needed. It would take a while for commerce to catch on. There was some barter in foodstuffs. Some women were starting to sell clothing that they made at home. In eleven years, a lot of stuff wears out.

We stepped into the Miller’s kitchen to look around. It was a sad sight. It always was. Two cups still sat on the small table with a dried brown circle in the bottom of each one. A wizened slice of ancient bread lay quietly on a saucer. A single fly zoomed across the room like this was his place now.

Sugar and salt will keep forever. Flour will not. Spices dry out but are still useful. White rice picks up smells in time, brown rice not so much. Whole wheat berries keep forever if they are dry. Noodles don’t keep this long. They look ok but taste bad. Beans are fine but you have to soak them with soda in the water.

We never opened fridges. We made that mistake once.

There was an almost new bottle of dish detergent by the sink. Into the bag.

Elvin went through the cupboards. There was a box of kosher salt and a five lb. unopened bag of white sugar. Also, a quart of dried out honey. But that is still useful.

We studied a stack of cans of tuna. They were not bulgy or rusty. I decided to take them home. If Jen didn’t like them, I would throw them out. At home we had begun burying garbage that could not be burnt, fed to chickens, or made into compost. Just like the old days.

Dry dog food was not good this long. Sorry Bubby.

Roger went into the bathroom. He gathered up a few wrapped bars of soap. There was a nice stack of new looking towels, so he put those in his sack also. Roger didn’t live with us, but he spent a lot of days with us. So, he knew, of course, what sorts of stuff Jen said to get if we could.

Did I mention that this was July? It was July 4th in fact. Independence Day, as was. Hey, I thought, we are so there. We can hardly get more independent.

In a little old-fashioned cupboard with a mirror on it, in the sun porch at the back of the house I made an interesting find. I had no idea if they were safe, extra volatile, or if they would work at all. It was Jim Miller’s July 4th stash from years ago of firecrackers, sparklers, and a few bigger things too. Score.

I closed the front door and put a paving stone leaning against it to keep it shut, and I wished the Millers well.

We sat out on the front porch in the shade of all those bushes and dutifully ate our sandwiches and drank some water. The bees buzzed and the shadows moved across the bushes and the driveway. It was getting later. Time to load up and head home. We rode home heavy laden like those bees. All kinds of stuff hanging off the bikes.

Jen still blushed a little and looked away if I winked at her and made little kissy motions. So of course, I did. Nearly a mom, and she still blushed!

All business, she, and Lou, put away the things we brought home. She put the towels in with the rest of the laundry. Remember Lou? She was still with us, queen of the hen house and busy little gardener. She wasn’t such a crybaby anymore. The work was good for her. She liked spading up a new square of soil once in a while.

We still had water and power to the house. I guessed the workers really did own the means of production! Somebody knew what they were doing. I decided to make the trek up to the dam at Diablo and see who it was some day in the near future.

I announced to the whole crew together at the table during dinner that tonight we would celebrate the old holiday in style, as we should. We all knew about it of course. Fireworks and picnics with families gathering together. Well, we were the only family we had, except for Roops and his mom who were in Milltown at the radio station tonight.

We were on our own.

We made a big fire of bush trimmings and some bigger wood, to keep the bugs down and because gathering at a fire is a human trait. The girls sat on kitchen chairs, and we guys roamed around talking plans for the future. We didn’t have beer in those days. We didn’t have anything of the sort. Just ourselves and what we could make at home. If we had thought it necessary, we could have managed wine, but we were still too busy surviving.

As the summer night rolled on, we learned that the firecrackers still had some pop in them and that the sparklers still sparkled when a girl made figures in the air with them. The boomers still went boom. Miracle of miracles we saw a couple of full-sized boomers go off over Milltown. I had to wonder if Mr. Jones had anything to do with that! But who else, really?

I had to laugh a little to myself that night. I was observing that both Elvin and Roger seemed to be quite aware of Lou and keeping an eye on her. There was a bit of jockeying for position going on! But I happened to know very well which one she preferred. Ah the future in a nutshell.

I looked at the faces of my little tribe lit up by the dying fire, and thought, this is ok God, I’ll take it! I loved every one of them.

This should link to the whole deal; In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx