MEMORIES AND GOOD TIMES

I am sitting in our technicolor kitchen. We are starting to accumulate ristras of Cayenne Peppers in our window. A beautiful bright red. Tomorrow I have to get down to the garden and check for more of the little darlings. The ones I have up so far are healthy nourishing food. Loaded with Vitamin C. And they make other foods taste well also. Cut off a little piece and chew it with your fresh beans, Delicious! It is such a rewarding thing to have your own food, grown on your own land, prepared by your own wife. Sorta like the ways things ought to be. To hell with restaurant food and take out food and all that other malarkey. When you get out of the hustle and bustle of business and eating lunch at greasy spoons and that type of life, you really come to enjoy proper cooking again. You can take your time and savor it a bit. You can taste something and it will bring back memories of pleasant times. I think that is missed these days. The family used to live on a farm and eat together and work together and play together. And I am sure there were some assholes around who made life uncomfortable for their families. But they must have been in the minority cause most tales are happy tales. And the joy of looking around your home and seeing ristras of peppers hanging in front of the window and going to the food storage and seeing your stored food and opening the 3-gallon cans that hold all of your dehydrated goodies is a great memory. It is good to know that my friends are going to be taken care of with this food. It is good to know that they have a chance to stay healthy and up to snuff because their diet is adequate. Good times! Good memories and pleasant dreams.

A lot of my childhood was a disaster. But there were things that really made me happy even in those times. And so it is today. Life in America is turning into a disaster but we find happiness amidst the calamity. Funny how that works. Even my wife is happy seeing her ristras hanging in the sunlight. We face a disaster here on our native soil but we can make it and we can find some happiness. We have a family and we belong to a clan and we will get stronger as the days go by. I hope to God you have the same set-up going for you. The family and the clan are the big motivators in our ancestral history. You went with those folks through the mud and the blood and the beer. Your ancestors knew who was smart and who was stupid. They knew who they could trust and who they couldn't. And life was just that way. Living with someone is a great eye opener. You know them. You watch them. You listen to them. And after a while you begin to understand them. It's not rocket science, it is experience. Stay close to the wise and the smart. Those folks can save you a lot of wasted motion. There are a lot of people I think the world of, running around this country, but I have to go with those who God brings to me to go with. You don't want to leave any of them behind but you don't have the power to bring them in so you go on. You maybe say a little prayer for them and ask God to watch over them but you cannot change life. You cannot change what is going on. And you have to look out for those the good God has given you. My kitchen smells so very good right now. Not only do I have the peppers hanging down but the wife has country ribs in the oven. And I would like to share this coming meal with lots of folks, but I can't. So I go on doing the best I can and hoping for the best. That is sort of the way preppers are. We did not make this mess and we don't want the mess, but it is going to come about and we want to make it through. And we would like to take as many decent people with us as can go.

Life is not a schmaltzy melodrama of canned laughs and commercial breaks. It is the daily grind we all participate in to earn our daily bread. And to eat a decent meal and to hold our loved ones to our bosom with love and affection. This is what it is all about. The living of life to a degree that you are happy as reasonable. It ain't gonna be all skipping down the road of life throwing flowers in our path and moving gaily as we go along. There will be hard times and there will be good times. Get used to both. I am a prepper and some folks look upon me as a strange mutant human. And I don't think I am very strange at all. I just think I am more focused on reality than the average American. And this is a point of discussion. You know, there are some guys who always say the same thing or close to it, especially when they talk about things like politics and economics. The simple reason for this repetitious line of talk is that they have not seen anything that has changed their minds about the current situation. They have an analysis and they will stick with it until the equation changes. That is why some men do not write daily about survivalism. They deliver their thinking in about a week and cannot bear to repeat themselves. So they stop writing. I used to get frustrated by this type of behavior, but not any more. I take what I can get and I give what pops up on my personal monitor everyday. Some things get repeated and some things are new. And it is all there to help people. Stay alive.

Michael

mboone@rtccom.net