Survivors: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

27. Hunkered Down

The economy of the Four Corners was in shambles. With the power miraculously still on but the value of the dollar destroyed, the few merchants left in business soon reverted to simple barter or taking pre-1965-mint-date silver coinage for payment. The most commonly accepted currencies were silver dimes, silver quarters, .22 long rifle rimfire cartridges, cigarettes, and boxes of new mason jar lids.

All of the local banks and credit unions soon closed, but one community bank eventually reopened as a warehouse bank, primarily for the use of its vault space, by local merchants who needed a safe place to store their silver coinage. Eventually they bought another disused bank building as a second branch, just for the use of their vault space.

Word quickly spread that there was still gasoline available for sale and the power was still on in Bloomfield and Farmington. Customers drove from as far away as Moab, Utah; Durango, Colorado; Tuba City, Arizona; and Window Rock, New Mexico. Many of them drove “pea cups” that were crammed full with enough gas cans to give a fire marshal a heart attack. The byword was: “Come with silver coin, or don’t come at all.”

The Bloomfield refinery started to do a land office retail business, but L. Roy wanted to work out wholesale deals with gas stations as soon as possible. The steady flow of retail customers coming through the gate represented a security risk. Soon after working the deal with Alan Archer, Martin set up a similar gas-on-credit arrangement with Antonio Jacquez, the owner of a gas station in Bloomfield. Jacquez, who came from one of the early pioneer families in the region, reopened his gas station. He did a brisk business and gradually built quite a pile of silver coins.

It was a great place to ride out the Crunch. Ben Fielding believed that he had landed in Muddy Pond, Tennessee, providentially.

Ten years before the economy fell apart, Ben was an associate attorney in a Nashville law firm. He had been hired to defend a Mennonite man who had been charged in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by the family of a tourist killed in a fall from a hay wagon. When he traveled to Overton County to see the scene of the accident and interview the defendant, Ben fell in love with the area. There he met two other Messianic Jewish families like his own, and he developed an affinity for the dozens of Mennonites who would become his neighbors. Although he had differences with them on some points of Christian doctrine and their hyperpacifism, he admired their hard work and clean living.

When he returned home, he described the village to his wife, Rebecca, and they committed the issue to prayer. As Jewish believers in Jesus, they had an active prayer life and believed in heeding God’s guidance in how, when, and where they should live.

Shortly after first seeing Overton County, and after much prayer, Ben felt led to shift to a body of law that would enable him to work from home. He transitioned to wills, trusts, and estates law. A year later he was able to quit the firm and go into practice for himself, working from home. His law practice was ideal for this. His clientele grew by word of mouth, and eventually he had clients from all over the nation. Eight years before the Crunch, he bought a forty-acre farm near Muddy Pond and soon moved Rebecca and their five children there.

Muddy Pond was a ninety-mile drive east of Nashville and an eighty-mile drive west of Knoxville. The town, located on the Upper Cumberland Plateau, was several turns off of any major road, so only local traffic passed through. Aside from a few bed-and-breakfast yuppie tourists who sought out “plain people” quaintness, few Tennesseans had ever heard of Muddy Pond. The village had a general store and just one summer tourist attraction: a horse-powered sorghum press.

Without planning it or, as Ben said, “By Ha-shem’s providence,” the Fieldings were in the right place at the right time when the Crunch occurred. His 1960s Mennonite-built farmhouse had a good well that produced twenty-two gallons per minute. A water tower above it was kept filled by a very reliable Dempster windmill. The house lights were propane, and he heated the house with wood and coal. Their only modern conveniences, necessitated by Ben’s law practice, were two phone lines and a wind-powered alternative energy system, with a 2.4-kilowatt Skystream windmill and six Sharp Solar photovoltaic panels.

The Fielding family did most of their cooking with a propane range. There was also a propane engine backup generator for the battery bank, but they only rarely had to run it. Right after they’d purchased the farm, Ben was shocked with an estimate of $18,500 to have the Cookeville Electric Department extend the power lines to his farm. After doing some pricing, he concluded that it would be less expensive to simply make his own power. He hired Lightwave Solar Electric in Nashville to install the PV panels, and Ready Made Resources in Tellico Plains, Tennessee, to install the Skystream wind generator.

As the Crunch set in, Ben assessed his situation. He concluded that his family’s greatest need would be more propane storage, so he replaced their existing 250-gallon leased tank with an 1,800-gallon tank that he purchased. He also ordered an extra two tons of coal. This exceeded the capacity of their basement coal bin, so they stored the rest in the pallet boxes in the barn. There was still a bit of gasoline available (for $18.99 per gallon) but no cans for sale. Ben filled the tanks on all of his vehicles, including his ATV, and his four five-gallon gas cans, but that still left him feeling woefully short of gasoline for an extended emergency. By the time that Rebecca suggested filling some steel milk cans with gasoline, all of the gas stations had closed.

Ben did his best to stock up on ammunition for his rifle and pistol, but he found very little available. Altogether, he had less than seven hundred rounds. But by scouring the Internet, he did manage to find some exorbitantly priced spare magazines for his pistol, an HK USP Compact .45, and his rifle, a Galil ARM .308.

After hearing the news about the riots spreading all over America’s cities, Ben gathered his family for an evening of devotional study. His wife and children gathered on the two living room couches. That night he had selected Proverbs 1:24-33 for their reading. He thought it was particularly fitting, given the news headlines.

He read aloud, “Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; But ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would none of my reproof: I also will laugh at your calamity; I will mock when your fear cometh; When your fear cometh as desolation, and your destruction cometh as a whirlwind; when distress and anguish cometh upon you. Then shall they call upon me, but I will not answer; they shall seek me early, but they shall not find me: For that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the LORD: They would none of my counsel: they despised all my reproof. Therefore shall they eat of the fruit of their own way, and be filled with their own devices. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them, and the prosperity of fools shall destroy them. But whoso hearkeneth unto me shall dwell safely, and shall be quiet from fear of evil.”