Our End Of The Lake: Surviving After The 2012 Solar Storm (Prepper Trilogy) (41 page)

“Jack get her a sandwich and we will go talk at my place” I said rescuing her from the ladies before her outbursts got out of hand and aggravated the girls’ worse.

“Tell her about that beef before she out does the sound of fingernails on a chalk board Donnie, and come on down to the house for another parlay” I said making some distance away from the debutante who was still trying to look the gift horse in the mouth that was presented to her by all our well meaning friendship.

“I got one extra bedroom for quite quests if you and your missus care to stay, or you and Jack can be figuring something out to get you back if that’s your mind,. I am trying to stay in happy mode and my bar is for happy people so go to bed, go to hell, or go get me a cold one Lisa” I said to Donnie and letting it be known I was tired of her tirade.

“Me in and Donnie have been trying to figure out how to count all the money in the bank and cut a deal.” I said to the scowling Lisa who was ruining my good day.

“He has ICE Lisa” Donnie said showing her my simple but meaningful treasure.

“Ah that is so wonderful” Lisa said and changed her mood almost immediately to being pleasant.

“Jack and I are going to see if we can figure out how to take an ice machine off a refrigerator and try to make up some small units like this one. I don’t know what the wattage of those things is, so it might not work with the small amount of power I am producing at the moment. Once I get my windmill up though, watch out, I should be able to run most anything that was not damaged by the EMP. I am betting I can find a generator on one of these houses that either wasn’t affected because it had a metal cover and a proper ground or I might be able to fix it. Its kind of hit or miss it seems to me what works and what doesn’t depending on many things.” I explained to my guests.

“I need to talk things over with Roland and Bernie on the beef end of our new banking business, but pretty much everything else is fair game to transact at whatever exchange rate we agree on Donnie” I told him

“We going to go Turkey trapping tomorrow David?” Donnie asked me and told his wife our plan.

“Yea lets do it early morning before it gets too hot, it will take us awhile to build what I want but day after tomorrow when we check it about noon, I imagine we should have several birds and we can decide if we can do our party or not. We might have to build another one somewhere else too. I haven’t been in the woods enough around here yet to get a good feel for how big the game population is.

Lisa told us she was going back out with the girls and tell them she was sorry for making such a scene and would be back later. Jack went with her and Donnie and I figured out some more of our bank strategy and he let on he had over $25,000 of old melt value in silver at his house.

I wonder if Roland would consider letting us get into the cattle business with him I mused
.

“I only have a couple thousand in silver Donnie, but I have lots of resources and ideas to make a go of our trading ideas. By the way, you find me any come alongs or block and tackle yet?” I asked him.

“I got one come along for you, and if you and Jack can figure it out how to get it down from some rafters, I know where an old chain style engine host is. What do you need those items for anyway David?” Donnie asked while looking out towards Lisa and the girls chatting and seeming to be getting along fine now.

“I got a boat I am going after that I am pretty sure the engine will work on. I am going to make it my Barter Boat and try my hand at a bit of lake trading for as long as the gas holds out. That is the thing about EMP, even if your car or boat works etc. if the grid is down the pumps don’t work, the refinery quits producing etc. so eventually nothing moves anyway. I figure I got at least a year or so before gas starts getting too stale to use, so I am going to make the best of it before I got to deal with a world without oil.” I told Donnie so he could start planning for the same prospect.

“That thought is grim indeed David, how long do you figure it will take them to get the grid back up or fuel flowing again?” He asked looking very worried.

“That’s the thing; nobody really knows its all speculation. I would say certain parts of the grid might work in a year, but to get the whole thing back up and running… Lord knows. Then you got the transportation problems etc. to contend with. I see a bleak outlook for several years and that’s why I bugged out rather than trying to ride it out. So far the little bit of news I hear on the radio confirms I made the best choice.” I responded with a guesstimate.

“I heard on the radio Los Angeles has so many fires going it is basically burning out of control” Donnie advised me.

“I wouldn’t doubt it, I can’t even imagine being in that city the day the lights went out.” I replied and we sat in silence for awhile.

“Let me take Lisa back on your lawn mower and I will bring it back over first thing in the morning and we can go turkey hunting.” to which I said he could do that and told him he should drive slow this time and he agreed.

BARTER BOAT

We set out about 7 am and pretty much had our turkey cabin built and baited by noon and went after the engine hoist Donnie had located in someone’s garage.

After a few mishaps and close shaves with accidents we finally got it down and hauled it over to what I hoped was my new boat. Putting that hoist up was easier than taking it down and we finally got it rigged to try and hoist the boat up off the canvas straps that were hooked to the electric winch. It worked! We cut the old sling off and lowered the boat into the water.

“Now to see if it worked. Nice of the guy to leave the key in the ignition for me. Turned the switch and nothing. Damn! Ok let’s look to see if anything obvious is happening here. Ah, batteries disconnected, well that’s a plus in my favor, although there are a lot of scientists who say those lead acid type batteries have plates in them big enough to resist a pulse. So far my luck with vehicle batteries had been hit or miss, but I really had not paid a lot of attention to what kind of cells were in them. I better look into that more. Ok, batteries hooked up, I got gauges yes! Ah hell, no gas; they must have winterized this thing. Off with Jack back to our camp and get some fuel and we tried it again. A several coughs and sputters the engine fired and I had me a Chris Craft. I was always impressed by the mahogany decks on these things and the attention to detail all over.

“You ready Jack, Donnie?” I called to my crew and then eased the throttle forward and headed out unto the lake. This thing is sweet! I ran it by Frank’s house and waved to him and his wife and then cruised the boat back to my dock to show the new ride off to the girls.

Sherry was the first one down to the dock and scrambled in before we even got it tied up good. She climbed in the captain’s chair and was already inspecting the controls and playing with the steering wheel, before the rest of everyone made it down there to look it over.

“This boat is beautiful! Are you going to take us out for a spin?” Sherry asked me, before the inevitable question of if I was going to let her drive it.

“I told everyone that I had to take Jack back to get the lawnmower and drop Donnie off across the slough, but I would be back and give them all a short ride in a few minutes.

“Can I go with you?” Sherry pleaded and jumped out of my seat into the other front seat quick as a flash.

“Sure, you can.” I said and we went and dropped Donnie and Jack off and swung back over to pick everyone up who was waiting on my pier. I drove a big circle around the inlet and went to about center of the lake and started back.

“Can I try it?” Sherry said giving me her puppy dog look.

“Ok, but DO NOT go past half throttle.” I warned her and let her give it a whirl. We got back to our Dock without mishaps and our little speed demon girl behaved herself and didn’t over throttle by much.

When we got back, I was nosing around in the anchor locker and found the American flag that went on the little mast at the rear of the boat and went and attached it.

“Let’s go see Frank and Nancy.” Sherry said to me looking hopeful to play with the boat some more.

“Maybe tomorrow we can go after I check our turkey trap and see if we have something to talk about.” I told her to her visible disappointment.

“If you want to go on another short ride, I am going to put it in Bernie’s boat house before dark.” I offered and she said that would be nice and could we do it around sunset and I agreed.

Jack had arrived back and I waved him over and walked down to Bernie’s boathouse, so I could get his opinion on something.

“Bernie told me he used to have a green underwater light in front of this dock to attract fish at night. I have no idea how many watts it is or exactly where it is. But here is the switch for it. Can you rig us a plug for that light, so we can see if we can turn it on or not using that inverter in the Xantrex unit?” I asked him as he studied the wiring and then began tracing it back to the edge of the dock.

“Look here David you’re in luck; looks like it plugs into this outlet right here and works off a photovoltaic cell to turn on and off at dusk. The cell looks fried. Humm… no it switched off the surge protectors, so maybe it still works and is just dirty as hell. You can try just plugging in direct to that portable battery pack to see if it works, but being around water I would like to count on more than that Xantrec’s fuses. Plus you’re going to have to pull that generator in every night, in case it rains or the morning dew gets all over it. It’s really made just for indoors.” he said, “Although it does have a place to attach solar panels to recharge it.” Jack advised me and we went to roll the Xantrec unit down lakeside to test out his theory.

“I imagine he has a spotlight or some kind of pool light down there. I ain’t diving in to try to see what it is, but we need to know the wattage which I guess could be anywhere from 75W to 175 Watts depending on what the hell he has down there. How would you change a light bulb on that thing if it’s underwater? I guess we worry about that some other day, got to be a way to just haul it up to the surface I guess.” I said while following Jack pulling our little unit down to the dock on its two wheels.

We plugged it in and walked down to the end of the dock and peered in the water,

“Oh hang on I forgot to hit the switch.” Jack said and walked part way back down the dock and flicked the switch.

“Cool! Jack, check this out.” I said and pointed to a weird unearthly greenish glow in the water looking like something from a sci-fi movie was about to rise from the deep.

“Now that’s neat ,if we can see it that good now, just imagine what its going to look like tonight.” Jack said peering at the glowing orb of light.

“Let’s shut it off for now and surprise everyone with it tonight” I said walking back towards the switch.

“Want to start telling Lake Monster or alien stories before then?” Jack said grinning.

“We better not, folks ain’t to happy with our practical jokes these days and that Saran Wrap up under the toilet seat one backfired on me when my Mom went to use the bathroom instead of one the girls.” I said remembering getting my butt chewed for that little trick I played out of boredom and for a bit of entertainment.

“I would attempt something on Lois, but she is actually scared of those kinds of things like imaginary lake creatures and it wouldn’t be too cool to get her nervous about the lake now that she has just started getting used to it.” Jack said as we entertained ourselves by contemplating ways we could use our new find to get up to some mischief.

“Can you tell if that Photovoltaic cell works or not?” I asked him.

“It should be pretty easy to check out. Hey this Xantrec unit also will tell you how much load you are pulling, so we don’t have to guess when it’s going to drain the battery. Also, tell the girls’ that if it starts beeping to shut it off, that’s the low voltage warning.” Jack said before we plugged the light direct into the cell and he did a easy bit of checking by putting has hand over the little window and causing it to go light dark, turning the light in the lake on and off.

“Well, we will just let it come on and give everyone a nice surprise. We certainly need it to improve our night fishing catches.” I told him grumbling about all this water and lack of fish in it.

This lake is a is a mostly infertile, clear water reservoir with a limited abundance of sport fish and baitfish, when compared to more fertile impoundments like those on the Coosa River where we first thought about trying to go. Deep, clear water and very skittish bass in shallow water, all go together, and often calls for applying deep water tactics we just can’t do when fishing from our docks, because we can’t cast out far enough to get our bait or lures into the main channel. So we been resorting to night fishing mostly and that type of fishing can show some of those bigger bass species foraging in the shallows.

“Jack we need to find someone like Bernie who has lived on this Lake for many years to help us out a bit and point out some good fishing holes and how to navigate to them. We are not far from the mid lake region where more people get lost around there, in the mid-lake, than anywhere else on the lake. Small islands, narrow, main lake openings and many, small to large islands, adorn the mid-lake section. If you are not careful to be looking back off and on, you may not even remember which direction you came from, because it all looks the same. There are also some big feeder creeks to get lost in as well. Some creeks are so big; you will think you are still on the main lake, when navigating blindly without a compass and a good map.” I explained to him about one of our borders of the Lake that I had only been out on once during a guided fishing trip.