2nd Earth 2: Emplacement (22 page)

When we get to town, Teddy and Nickie know exactly where the miniature golf course is. They explain that they saw it when they were cleaning out houses, and although they had no idea how to play it, they thought it would be a great place to go for a date, under other circumstances. The course is in pretty good shape, considering how long it has gone without maintenance. All the supplies you need to play are right here, so we pass out putters and balls to everyone, and show them how the game is played. The boards where the ball rolls are raised up in places, so the ball doesn’t roll like it would if it was smooth, but everyone thinks it’s great anyway. We men let the wives and children continue playing, while we discuss the best way to go about this. We all agree that this would definitely give the young people, and those of us who are not so young, a way to relax and enjoy ourselves.

Since the course is not in bad shape, we decide that we will try to move the entire course to the farm and set it up there. We are discussing where we can put it, when Dayna and Charity come over and tell us they think it will go perfectly between two of our barns, in an area that is only used for walking anyway. Plus those barns are only used for equipment and not for animals. We know exactly where they are talking about, and agree that this should fit into that spot nicely. It is difficult to pull the young people away before they finish their game, but we really have to get back and outline this project to the committee, then get started moving everything. The young people and the wives say that we can start right now by taking all the balls and putters, along with the boxes of scorecards home with us.

The children can’t wait until we can get the course set up. Some of the adults feel the same way about the full size course as well. When we present the idea to the committee, the vote is unanimous to proceed. There was one suggestion that we put the course more centrally located for all the groups, but we all agreed that it should be in a group since the children will be playing. We don’t want them wandering perhaps into the woods, or trying to find other groups. We will probably wind up with more than one course eventually so that each group can perhaps share with one or two others. The transfer of the course from its current location to the farm goes much smoother, and with a lot less problems than I would have guessed.

Each hole is put together in sections, so all we have to do is separate the sections and load them on the flatbed. Some of the wood frames crack, and a few even break, while loading or unloading, but we have plenty of good lumber to repair anything that needs it, and all the help we could want. We even find some carpet or floor covering that matches the covering that is supposed to be grass. We bring several rolls of that back with us on one of the trips as well. It takes us two weeks to get the entire course moved and set up ready to use. Of course we have had a group repairing and making each hole usable, as we bring them over, so every day the young people get to play the holes that are ready. This has been one of the most popular projects that we have ever done.

We have had help from the other groups, who also enjoy coming over and playing on the course as well. Even though there is almost always a line waiting to play, there have been no arguments so far. Now that this course is complete, except for some minor things, we want to change; the other groups are looking for courses that can be set up in their areas. We will be happy to help them, some of us men and women have expressed an interest to design and build some holes that are more challenging than the course we have. We feel that it can only help the children if they have to figure multiple angles, to get the ball close to the hole while playing. Most of the current holes require one or possibly two bank shots to get the ball into the hole.

When we mentioned making bank shots it reminded some of us that we used to enjoy playing pool. I know it appears that we are only thinking about entertainment, instead of our safety and our survival. Actually, that’s all we have thought about for the past couple of years, and now that the threat of invasion is at least much lower than it used to be, and our crops are growing, we feel that some entertainment is not a bad thing. Plus the miniature golf and other things we are thinking about doing, gives us something to do as families, and keeps the young people occupied in a good way. Our young people do have bicycles, and the younger ones have all kinds of toys, but the miniature golf is something we can do as a family.

When Bob, Trevor, and Blake return with their wives from searching for other people to join our community, they have ten new people, who are more than happy to be out of the cities. When they see the miniature golf course they just laugh, and say that they enjoy going away and coming back, because they are never quite sure what they will find when they return. They, along with the new people, get to try their hand at the game. I have to warn them not to bet against any of our young people, male or female, because they will more than likely lose. Many of us parents have already learned the hard way.

4

The summer is slipping past and we are still as busy as ever, but we always find time to rest on the Sabbath, and to spend time with our families. Bob and his team are out looking for others again. They always manage to find at least a couple of people that are more than willing to join our family. They have been gone as long as a month, at least once this year, although the average time they are away is about two weeks. We did find some pool tables in town as well as in the city that is in the opposite direction. Since we use the church for meeting in when we have a large group, we put three pool tables in our meeting house, and we still have room for our entire group to fit in comfortably. There are also several homes in all the groups that have pool tables in them. I enjoy playing once in a while, but not as much as some of our younger and older people do. Frank and dad love to play pool, as much as they do playing checkers and cards. We found a small table in one of the stores we were in, and they love playing on that.

Our peanut crop is getting close to harvesting. According to the books we have read on the subject, there is a short window that the ripe peanuts must be picked. If you wait too long, they will break off the plant and stay in the ground, and if you pick them too early, they will not be ripe. We have been marking the days on the calendar to make sure we don’t forget. When the time comes that they are finally ready we will make sure we have plenty of help, because the plants have to be picked by hand since we don’t have a peanut harvester. The plants have to be pulled out of the ground, with the peanuts holding on to the roots. The plant is turned upside down to let the peanuts dry for a few days in the air. This last trip Bob mentions seeing a couple of things that catch our attention.

One of those is that they went past a large farm that was marked as a peanut farm. They took the time to check it out quickly, and they found several barns full of equipment that was probably used to harvest peanuts. We waste no time getting a group ready to check that out. As it turns out they do have three harvesters on this farm which looks huge. We also find very large ovens that were used to dry the peanuts after they are picked. They must have made their own peanut butter as well, because we find at least two presses in boxes that show that’s what they are for, and two others that look almost just like them. We also find dozens of bags of seeds in the barns that they were probably going to plant the year the war ended almost everything. It takes a couple of trips to get everything we can use, but it is definitely worth it. We also find hundreds of cases of jars and lids that are just the right size for peanut butter, along with many more books with information in them.

Our peanut crop turns out to be a huge success, but then we have been praying that we have a good crop more than planning how to use it. Our expectations are high in how the peanut butter will taste, but we are fully aware that our soil may not be as good as it should be for this crop. Our pinto beans did much better than we thought they would. They are pretty easy to store as well. We simply put then in five gallon plastic pails with lids that we found in town, after seeing them in the basements of most of the homes here. Naturally the beans have to dry first, but after that they will last quite a while. That is if we can keep from eating them all. When they ripened we cooked a large batch, and mashed them with some cheddar cheese that we make. Everyone in all the groups loves them, so next year we are going to double the area that we plant.

Our other crops are doing quite well also. We have more tomatoes this year than we did last year, and our sweet corn is doing great. I remember when I was young, helping Ma Horton cut the corn off the cobs, and get it ready to either be frozen or canned in jars. When the corn is ripe we have large groups of people in the meeting house sitting and cutting the corn off the cobs. We have some tools that help the process, but we wind up cutting at least some off with a knife. This is the third crop that we have had, and we can all honestly say we have not heard one word of complaint from any of our family. We are still concerned about being able to replace the lids that we use for canning. The rings and jars can be used over and over again, but the lids only work once. We tried using some twice and it didn’t work very well at all.

That’s the other surprise Bob had for us when he came back last time. We got so busy harvesting and canning that we haven’t been able to do anything about it. He told us that in their travels, they saw a factory that has the same name as the lids and jars that we use for canning. They did not go inside, but they say it is a pretty good sized factory. Mike is excited about it, he says that he may be able to bring some of the machinery back here, and we might even be able to make our own lids. That would be great, but even I know that it will take many processes to make the lids, but maybe they have a good supply of them in the factory. Bob says the factory is just about a day’s drive away, so in between harvests, we plan a trip over to see what we can find. At this time of year we are busy harvesting, and preparing foods for storage, but we feel this is important enough for a few of us to check out.

The trip over is uneventful, which is what we always hope for. The factory is larger than I thought it would be, and we are definitely not disappointed. We enter the factory from the front, and go into what appears to be the offices of the people that ran the company. Sara, Morgan, and Jenna are with us as well as James, Mike, and Gary. The women all say they would love to have some of the office equipment, even if it is pretty much all antiques compared to what they are accustomed to. Mike heads into an area of the offices that is marked engineering, the rest of us head out to the production area. There are machines and equipment all over the place. We can see the lids and rings that we use for canning on punch presses where they were being punched out. They are connected to conveyors that carry them to hoppers, that I’m sure got taken away to the next step in the process when they were full.

I would have loved to see this factory when it was running. There are other machines that appear to be where the completed lids were fed into, to get the coating of rubber that seals the jars shut. Mike joins us when we are at these machines, trying to figure out how they work. Mike has some notebooks that he says are the process instructions for operating this equipment. He is excited and confident that if he had a couple of days, he could actually get this equipment running again. Around the machines we are looking at, there must be fifty or sixty thousand lids, waiting to have the rubber put on them. At the end of the process there are thousands more that have gone through the process, and are being put into the little boxes automatically. At least they were when the factory was working. There is another line where rings are coming off being boxed as well.

Looking at the number of rings and lids right here, we will have more than enough for a couple of generations. It would be great to get the machinery running again, but just seeing what we are is a huge relief. What we find when we go to the shipping area is almost mind boggling, because here we find pallet loads of boxes of the finished product. The pallets are marked with who they were going to, and how many are on that particular pallet. Just adding the quantities quickly in my head, I can see that there are over a million lids sitting here on the dock. They must be affiliated with the jar company of the same name, because there are thousands of jars in the stock room and on the shipping dock. We find that we can back our truck right up to the dock, and load the pallets onto it using one of the fork trucks sitting here.

They are electric, so we will have to recharge the batteries, and hope it holds long enough to load the truck. Gary and Sara are looking around and find a propane fork truck that we are sure we can get running. We spotted a store on the way here, so while Gary, Sara, and Ken get the fork truck running, some of us head to the store to see what we can find there. The store shows signs that people have been visiting here recently. The stock room is still full of canned goods, and there are a lot of canning supplies here as well. We decide to see what we can get on the truck from the factory, and then see if we have any room. We only take enough food for our trip then head out to see if there is anyone around.

We see a sign that says Sporting Goods, so we head that way to see what we may be able to use. They have just about everything you could want in the line of sporting goods. There is a barrel full of different putters, as well as a whole wall covered with golf clubs, balls, and clothing. We also find a very nice almost new, thirty years ago, truck with about a fifteen foot box on the back. Naturally we have to see how much work it will be to get it running. Since we are going to spend the night anyway, we figure why not and get to work on the truck. James and Jenna head back to the factory to tell the others what we are doing. They come back with the pickup with the compressor and generator on it, and we have the truck running in no time. Gary and I take it for a drive to make sure it is going to stay running.

We turn down a street a couple blocks from the store, and we see a woman and two small children running for cover in a building, a few doors down from where we are. Naturally we stop and call to the young woman, telling her that we mean them no harm. They have disappeared by the time we get to the building, so we continue on, hoping that maybe we can find them before we leave. We mention what we saw to Sara, Jenna, and Morgan when we get back and they want us to take them to where we saw them. We are on the block before where we saw them, when Sara tells me wait here for a moment. We are walking, so I just stop where I am and watch them go into the next building. They are in the building probably five minutes, when they come out with four women and seven children. We recognize the ones we saw earlier, so that is a relief. The woman says she heard us call, but she was too frightened to stop.

With the new truck, we have just about room enough for everyone to ride back to the farm. The women we found tell us that as far as they know, they are the only ones living here. In the morning while the truck is being loaded, some of our group decides to take a ride around town just to make sure we don’t leave anyone behind. On the far side of town they find a family of four that are walking into town from the north. They are more than happy to join our group, and the father in the family even helps us load the truck. We are able to fill all of our vehicles at the factory, which had its own gasoline pumps right there. The weather is not bad, so rather than spend another half day getting a vehicle running, some of us volunteer to sit in the back of the pickup on the way home. When we get there everyone is excited about the quantity of lids, rings, and jars we found and they are just as excited about the golf clubs, and balls we brought back, as well as the other balls and games we found there.

As usual the new people are excited to join our community. There is plenty to do and since they are all more than willing to help, we know they will be good additions to our family. We are continuing to harvest our crops that include the fruit trees we have. At first the new people were afraid that they would get into trouble if they eat some of the fruit while it is being picked. But then the children told them that they do it all the time, especially when they are picking apricots and cherries. They all seem to like the peaches, apples, and pears just as much. The orchards seem to be doing better every year. Frank says that’s because we are pruning the trees properly each fall, so that they don’t have a lot of wasted branches that prevent fruit from growing. We have plenty of each crop to can some, dry some, and eat just about as much as we want fresh.

The faces on the new people make going after them all worth it, especially the children. They have never known a time when they can have a full belly on good nutritious food, and sleep in a warm comfortable bed. We have a large number of children under ten living in all the groups. We always have to be careful in the farm yards, because there are always children riding bikes and other riding things, and just playing around the yards with the other children. The dogs and puppies keep them from wandering off, besides the moms and the teens take turns watching the little ones. If there is mischief brewing you can bet that Tammy and Tina are right in the middle of it. Fencing in the playgrounds has helped keep the little ones where they are supposed to be, plus we try to keep adding to what they have to play with to keep their interest.

One of the things we have been doing at least this summer and fall so far, is taking bike rides as a family. We found some little stroller like carts that can be fastened on behind a bike for the younger children. Some of them even have plastic covers, to keep dust off the little ones, and to protect them better. It is not uncommon to see thirty or forty people, and bikes riding from group to group on an evening. We love to go bike riding to visit our friends in the other groups. We get to visit with our friends and get some great exercise doing it. Our hunters have started taking their bikes to ride farther from home to shoot game, to keep what we have local just in case. They always take a radio with them and call when they are ready to have whatever meat they have killed, picked up.

We have been talking about raising our beef in the pastures, instead of letting it run wild. Personally I have been studying the animals in the woods since we came here and they seem to be breeding and multiplying fine on their own. Most of the cattle we see in the woods are not even afraid of us, and on most days you can sit on the porch and see several large groups of them, along with deer grazing on the deep grass on the other side of the road. That is not counting our cows that we keep for milk and other dairy products. We usually just let them graze behind the two barns that we bring them in to milk. When we first came here, and we started having cows come into the barnyard, there were several calves along with the adult cows. We now have ninety-seven head at last count that we milk every day.