This is the third tale I wrote, trying to improve my character development. Those who prepare for the future will at some point have to figure out how to deal with those who do not prepare, especially family.
TOLD YA SO
Chapter 1
Traffic on the interstate was about normal for a Sunday, not quite like rush hour but bad enough with shoppers buzzing frantically in and out of the shopping district. I exitted, found the turnoff, and drove carefully into the parking lot and spotted a place near the entrance to the Western Roadhouse.
My wife Brenda said, "Jack, you always find a spot close to the door. How do you do that?"
"Hey, I'm psychic."
"More like you're lucky."
"More like I'm farsighted and can see a spot quite a ways off. Come to think of it, I need to get new glasses. Either that, or my arms are getting too short to read a book," I told her.
"Sam's Club is open late enough to do that today. We should be out of here in a couple hours."
"It takes an hour to get the food in here. No. I takes 40 minutes for all your clan to get here and finish chattering, and another 20 minutes to get the food. Good thing I ate before we left home."
"You're like a baby. Have to feed you every 4 hours, around the clock."
"You should be used to it after 40 odd years."
Inside, our group was lining up. A waitress conducted us all to the side room we had reserved for the birthday dinner. I had no idea whose birthday it was, but there were enough of Brenda's siblings to do this every month of the year. I didn't care much for the gatherings, or crowds of any kind for that matter, but my wife didn't ask for much and she is the best friend I'd ever have, so she got whatever she wanted.
I landed a seat next to Brenda's brother in law, Howard. He was retired, too, but in a very different style. Howard had a successful furniture store that he had turned over to his son to operate so he and his wife could do the travelling she loved. I learned that they had just returned from Greece and asked him if they had seen any riots like I saw on the news?
"Oh no. That's just in Athens in the poor section of the city. It's a beautiful country out in the smaller villages and there's no trouble at all. We enjoyed it. The food is marvelous and the people are very friendly. We stayed at a villa in a rural area and rented a car to see the sights. The little cafes have wonderful food and the people will help you find anything. Charlene loved it."
The waitress finally arrived and began taking orders at the third table from us. Brenda's family usually has 3 or 4 generations at these gatherings, so there were a couple babies making noise and a din of conversation among the 30 or so people. I turned to Kenny, my wife's nephew across the table and asked how he liked his new job at the insurance company.
"Pretty good. Everyone is working on how to deal with Obamacare when it goes into effect, so it's busy."
"That sounds like job security to me."
Kenny grinned and agreed.
I did my best to keep up with the chatter at the table, but I was relieved when the food came so I could eat. It was hard to find topics to bridge the gap between the interests of these people and how we did things. I should say that we live conservatively, not hard up, but limited by social Security income and what little more we have. We weren't poor by any means because we had no debts at all. And we did a lot of things for ourselves, everything from home cooked garden produce to haircuts and rolling my own smokes, things this crowd would never do. I didn't say much about that. They knew how I thought and we stayed away from those topics.
When we had finished eating and the visiting was over, Brenda and I shared what family news we had picked up. Two of the young women, girls really, at 18 and 20 years old were pregnant and celebrating it despite not having husbands yet. One did have a live-in boyfriend. The other had a boyfriend who had encouraged her to have an abortion, but she declined. Brenda's nephew Josh and his girlfriend had carried in the baby she had recently. We learned they were living with his mother Carmen and working a couple part time jobs each, so scheduling their child care was a nightmare. They had managed somehow to buy a 4 year old SUV with a rear window defogger and power everything. Carmen looked a bit frazzled, but her new hairdo and the makeup helped some. I thought maybe she had some concerns about her sales job, too, with business very slow.
Howard Robinson and his wife had bought a huge new house last summer before they sold the old one. Nothing was said about how that deal went, but he looked less strained than the last time I saw him. I attributed that to having finally sold the old place. Brenda heard her sister say that their furniture store sales were less than fantastic, but she was sure that their son had it under control.
My lobster was good, and Brenda said the ribs were too. I hope so. The tab was as much as we spent on groceries for a week.
I pulled out of the lot and headed for Sam's Club a few blocks away, each of us keeping our own counsel about how the family was doing. Brenda and I had always seen things very much alike. We didn't always communicate real well, but we had always made our life work together.
I told her as we parked at Sam's, "I got the pick of the litter when I married you."
"I did too," she said with a grin.
I only had one sister much older than I, so I was effectively an only child. It was an old joke with us.
Sam's Club was pretty busy, and it wasn't Black Friday yet. Most of the crowd was circulating in electronics and other imported junk, so we got served quickly at the small eye clinic. I got an eye exam and paid for the twofer deal on glasses, then we made our way out of the city, breathing sighs of relief when we got to the lesser travelled state highway.
"Let's stop at the Dollar Store up ahead," Brenda said. "I want to look at their sale stuff."
"Okay. I want a couple things there." They had a decent rolling pin and a plastic pastry sheet for $2 each. I knew Brenda needed those and might not buy them herself. Brenda picked up some extra meds in the pharmacy section and a sweatsuit on sale for $4. We were on our way in a few minutes.
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Our house didn't look like anything special and I liked it that way. It was just one more 40 year old ranch style along the highway. There were things out of the ordinary but they didn't draw much attention. Gardens and clotheslines are normal in our rural community, as are wood piles in the yard. Our gardens were bigger than most, and there were more small outbuildings, but it didn't really look unusual.
You couldn't see the cistern under the back porch, or the shelves of canned goods in the basement. The work shop looked like an ordinary detached garage, except for the chain hoist on a pivoting I-beam I used for an overhead crane. I had done welding and machine work for folks from all over the county until I retired. The shop business was closed, but I did favors for a few farmer friends and neighbors once in a while when they were in a bind. At this point the shop let me make many things for our use and was an ace in the hole if we needed more income.
I thought that having a backup source of income was prudent, with the economy swirling in the toilet and about ready for that gurgle of no return. At least it looked that way to me, and I had found several notable people on the internet that also held that opinion. My in-laws did not share my ideas, obviously, but the good part was that my wife thought a lot like I did. She paid close attention to different things, so that helped. Nobody can cover it all by themselves. I was glad for her perspective, especially on the medical and food issues that were becoming a problem.
My wife understands business and clearly saw how the medical profession had gone from being patient oriented 50 years ago, to profit oriented now. In our experience, that meant it was a good idea for us to deal with all of our own medical needs that we possibly could.
For instance, she had an asthma attack one evening, followed by an outbreak of hives that got pretty bad. She has allergy problems and experience dealing with them, so she took a Benadryl pill and laid down to relax as best she could. Before long, she was doing much better. She was up pretty late that night, but by morning she was fine. If I had talked her into going to the emergency room, they would have shot her full of Prednisone and she does NOT tolerate that well at all. She would have had a month of lingering side effects. Due to her having Multiple Sclerosis, and the general ignorance of doctors on that subject, she has to be very careful what she allows them to do to her. They are generally unaware of how their normal treatments would affect her.
I don't have any real health problems, other than getting old. I keep pretty active, have good immunity, and a low body mass index. That means I'm sort of skinny, at 6" 1" tall and 158 pounds. I'm 68 years old now. I weighed 148 pounds in high school, so I guess gaining 10 pounds in 50 years isn't too bad, but it means I get cold easy in winter, not having much body fat. My joints complain some when the weather changes, and my blood pressure is a bit low, but I seem to get along pretty well. Being on Medicare now with an affordable insurance supplement means we don't have to go through the misery of dealing with the new GovernmentCare law.
Social Security easily supports our frugal lifestyle, but I figured it could go away in an instant if the .gov got in big financial hurt and it looked very much like we are headed for that. Our finances were just not very good. Like a lot of other folks and some relatives, we lost our butts in the 2008 financial crash, including one pension fund that never recovered. We did have the good sense to not have everything in one basket, so we still had a little junk silver and some cash in the bank from one pension fund that paid out in a lump sum. Our problem was, there was no way we could see to make any earnings on that money. It was less than the price of a new car, so it wasn't enough to buy a rental house or anything like that.
So my old work shop looked like a critical part of our financial position. It would be fine as long as I was able to do the work. The market was there, so I didn't worry much about it. Repairmen are nearly an extinct species, so competition was not a factor.
_________________
I had been watching the financial markets for some years before we both retired. I didn't know much about how it all worked, but I had learned from an old friend who long ago had been a commodity trader, and another guy who had retired from selling investments. Both were what was known as "contrarians", meaning they typically bet against whatever trend was popular. They both made a lot of money, so they must have known something.
Both of those guys had said to watch what economic policies were trying to motivate you to do--then do the opposite. If interest rates are high, most people would be saving money, but they said that was the time to spend money in order to hedge against the inevitable inflation that always accompanied high interest rates, or soon would. And conversely, if interest rates were low, it was time to save money, because it meant we were having hard times, or they were right around the corner.
Another old auctioneer friend had said that the way to make a buck was to buy stuff where there was a lot of it, and take it where they didn't have any to sell it. Made sense to me, so when I saw machine shops selling out in the Midwest, I hit a bunch of industrial auctions and bought the cheapest stuff they had. At the time, the auto industry was on the rocks and sinking, so there was a lot available from supplier shops that had gone under.
Some famous old investor said, "Don't buy until there is blood in the streets", meaning that the price would be the lowest when things were chaotic. I did that and bought enough to equip a pretty good machine shop for the price of a decked out pickup truck. I wasn't planning to sell this machinery, I was planning to USE it, so falling market prices were a good thing for me, unlike buying a stock when the price is falling, known as "catching a falling knife".
When you get a business license it is a matter of public record and people watch that for potential new customers. Soon your mailbox will overflow with junk mail trying to sell you anything remotely related to your business name. We got so many ads that I could burn them in the wood stove and heat the shop from Fall until about Christmas. I didn't pay much attention to the ads for a few years, but by 2005, we got flyers showing a lot more machine shops going broke and it wasn't long until entire factories were being auctioned off. That meant those jobs were not coming back, so it was time to tighten our belts.
We did okay because when times are tough, people are afraid to borrow money and buy new stuff. They would rather fix what they had and make it last longer, so they came to me. That worked until about 2008 when the credit panic hit and money got really tight. My wife and I said to heck with it, and retired. We didn't sell any machinery, there being no market for it.
________________
We never borrowed any money in the business and our home was already paid off, so we had few bills. I began to work on how to get rid of more bills. Once the business was closed, the related expenses for power, insurance, and supplies went away. We had a couple old vehicles and looked at buying something newer for retirement, but the prices were pretty high and we couldn't find just simple, basic transportation. They all came with electronic everything, go-faster hub caps, and hot-and-cold-running-handmaidens to boot, adding up to twice what we paid for our first nice home. Not for us.
We fixed up the 2 old small pickups we had, putting a couple thousand dollars worth of parts in each of them. At about 130,000 miles each, I thought they would both last us a long time, since we only drove about 5,000 miles a year now. They both got good gas mileage and were reliable now. License and insurance was cheap for them, too.
Our house needed some work, so we had a new metal roof put on it. I was tired of shingles blowing off every time we had a high wind. There was an old tree in the front yard that had to go. It was beginning to die and it was too close to the house. I got a logger friend to cut it down and we made a lot of firewood out of it. Then I built a wood stove and added an all masonry room on the end of the house for the stove. That got rid of the heat bill. It also provided a sort of sun room where we could start garden plants. I put in a gas stove to do our canning and keep the heat out of the house like a summer kitchen.
We had new gutters put on the house while me and a friend were overhauling the old cistern that came with the place when we bought it. The new roof meant the water would be clean and new gutters plumbed into the cistern ended the water and sewage bill. Funny how they could charge me for sewage when we had a septic tank. Oh well, that went away with the water bill.
I expanded our gardens and rebuilt an old garden tractor, then got serious about raising food. We already had an orchard, some berries, and an herb patch growing. I went to work in the shop and made a pair of really strong clothesline posts and also made provisions for clotheslines in the room with the wood stove for winter time use. That was the end of the electric clothes dryer and its' big electric bill. More insulation in the attic and some new storm doors reduced the amount of firewood we needed. I built a 2 wheel trailer out of shop leftovers and bought a new small chain saw. Our kids had property with 30 acres of woods not too far away, so that took care of the firewood problem.
Not many more projects were possible on our place, but I thought I could squeeze in some chickens. I added on to the little storage barn out back. I built their feeder out of old galvanized round furnace pipe and an oil changing pan that had seen better days. A neighbor gave me his old windows when he bought new ones for his place and I found a door at the county landfill. The metal roofing came from the junkyard so all I paid for was the framing lumber and the concrete floor.
I bought shelled corn and wheat from neighboring farmers and stored it in barrels we got at the junkyard for a couple bucks each. I used the inert gas from my MIG welder to gas the grain in the barrels so bugs couldn't invade it. A heavy duty electric burr mill made grinding feed easy. We installed 6 Golden Comet hens and had all the eggs that we and our married kids could use for about 1/3 of store price. The chickens didn't get any of the noxious hormones and chemicals common to the industry, either. They got to pasture in the gardens after harvest and thrived.
By that time, our grocery bill didn't amount to much. The only bills we had were license and insurance on the trucks, Medicare and supplement insurance, homeowners insurance, and the electric bill. I had bought some solar panels and gadgets to go with them, planning to put those up the next summer. We were feeling pretty snug with our one acre "homestead". That had all worked nice for a couple years.
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Chapter 2
"Did you see this Jack?" Brenda was on the computer while she finished her morning coffee.
"What is it?"
"There is some bank stuff in the news. I know you watch this sort of thing."
I thought I had probably seen the latest on Zerohedge, a website I hit every morning with my first cup of coffee. They seemed to be ahead of everybody reporting financial news. But I went to look anyway. Sometimes she found some neat stuff.
"Oh, crap," I said.
"What's that mean," she asked.
"Uh, it's complicated. This is bad news. We've got a big problem."
"What is bad news?"
I was reading the details on the crash of the 10 year T-bond, and trying to digest it.
"Uh, we better do something pretty quick. I wish I knew better WHAT to do!"
"What are you talking about?"
"The ten year bond just went to 4% and is climbing. Let me see what Bloomberg says about it," I said and took her place at the computer.
I pulled up the site and saw it was quoted at 4. 76% now. The graph looked like a hockey stick, headed straight up from yesterday. My face must have looked pretty bad, because it scared my wife pretty badly.
"Jack Hesston, you explain to me what's going on!"
"Okay! Okay! Give me a second, all right?"
I tried to collect my thoughts at the same time I was trying to both understand what might happen next, and also figure out what we needed to do before it was too late. When I looked up from the screen, my wife was pretty upset.
"It's what I've been worrying about for the past several years. Unless they can pull another rabbit out of their hat, or someplace, the dollar is going to crash. I can't be absolutely sure yet, but we'd better go to the bank and get our money out quick. If this goes really sour from here, the bank won't be open tomorrow. Hell, it might close today. Get your coat if you're going along. I'll explain on the way. Make sure you've got your phone with you."
I grabbed the checkbook and my work coat and was out the door.
_________________
I talked as I drove.
"Remember the deal when the banks in Cyprus crashed a while back? They took money from depositors to keep the bank afloat. They called it a "bail-IN". They simply stole depositors' money and gave them worthless stock in the bank that was bankrupt. That little country is in a shambles now. People lost their retirement savings overnight."
"You said something about it, I think."
"Well, several countries passed laws to allow that since then. We're headed for big trouble in this country with Bond yields going nuts. There are huge bets made on interest rates, called derivatives, and they are all going to pop if this gets much worse. The banks can't make good on their bets, so they'll be broke in a matter of hours. Maybe less."
"So, you're going to get our money out, right?"
"If I can. That could be a big IF. What have we got in checking?"
"I'll look. Uh, a little over $9,700. That's too much to lose."
"I know. That's why I'm not wasting any time."
_____________
I left $50 in the account and walked out with $9,714. The head cashier lady didn't like it at all, but she did give me the money. She asked me to come to her office to talk about it.
"You know I have to file a Federal form when you take out an unusual amount of money, don't you? Especially this large an amount."
"Yes, I know. Doesn't matter to me. "
"What are you going to do with the money?"
"If you must know, I'm going to spend it before the value of it falls too far. Not that it's anyone's business, it being our money."
I was not happy about this and I cared little who knew it. This lady was all right though, and was looking out for me. I knew her slightly and understood that. So, more politely I said, "You should give some thought to doing that yourself."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because the 10 year T Bond yield blew out close to 5% the last I saw and is going out of sight. That means somebody doesn't like US Bonds and that is about the same as Dollars. Before long the prices of everything you can think of will go crazy. I could be wrong, but I doubt it."
"I hadn't seen that."
"That's what we saw on Bloomberg News a few minutes ago. Check it out. If this bank has any interest rate bets, you'd better get out while the getting is good."
The interview got cut short because her boss came out of his office and beckoned to her. I thanked her and left, with the envelope full of cash in my inside coat pocket. My wife had been silent through all this. After we were inside the truck she asked, "What do you have in mind now?"
"We need to spend some money fast, but I'm not sure what all we should buy. Food is first, and while you are doing that, I'll be thinking. First, you should call any of your folks that you think will listen and tell them to go get their money. Actually, that may be illegal, because it could be called inciting a bank run. Better be careful how you say it. And don't say anything in public about it. People are going to figure this out soon and when they do all hell will break loose."
_________________
We decided to go to the Wal Mart in the next town 25 miles away. I turned on the radio and before we got out of town the Public Radio staiton was talking about this, saying it would all be okay and the newly appointed Chairperson of the Federal Reserve had noted that they would buy whatever it took to get Treasury Bonds stabilized.
I told my wife, "Yeah, they'll do that all right, with money created by a computer keystroke. The dollar index will be off a cliff before they get done talking about it. We better buy another freezer, a cheap one, and fill it with meat. I need to stop at home and pick up a phone book. On the way to Wal Mart, you can call the LP gas guy and have them top off our tank. You got a piece of paper to make a list?"
"Yes, in my purse somewhere."
I chuckled at that. "Maybe I should find a pad at home and get it faster."
She ignored the gibe about her huge purse and dug in it. Amazingly, she pulled out a small pad and began to write, then said, "I'm calling the kids."
"Good idea."
We made a fast stop at home where I got a phone book and a fast cup of instant coffee courtesy of the microwave. I made sure the dog was in the house while she picked up a bundle of bills and a calculator off the desk. We both made a stop at the bathroom and hustled out to the truck. She called our son and explained what we were doing and why. He snapped to it right away and said he'd call his wife and have her make a bank run, and he would call his sister. Brad said he would stay at work the rest of the day, it being a Thursday and he would get paid today. Then he'd cash his check and do some shopping on the way home before he and his wife went out to get serious about it. Brad and I had covered this ground a few times, and he was maybe more paranoid about banks than I was. I doubted if they kept much in their bank, which turned out to be true. Brad was partial to cash.
Brenda was on the phone for the next 30 minutes while I drove. She talked to her younger brother and one sister and said they would pass the word along through the family. I had only a couple older cousins still living, so she looked them up and gave them a call. Carl was receptive because he had been burned in the 2008 crash, and Eugene had never trusted banks anyway, having been told by his Dad who lost his farm during the 1930's to a bank in a shady deal. Having known that uncle of mine, it's a wonder he didn't wring somebody's neck over that.
Brenda smiled and said Eugene thanked her repeatedly for calling him. "I always liked him."
"It's not because of his looks, that's for sure. He was homely as a mud fence when he was young, and he didn't get any better looking with age."
"Yes, but he's a really kind person. And he's a marvelous dancer!"
I suppose I'll never understand what attracts a woman.
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TOLD YA SO
Chapter 1
Traffic on the interstate was about normal for a Sunday, not quite like rush hour but bad enough with shoppers buzzing frantically in and out of the shopping district. I exitted, found the turnoff, and drove carefully into the parking lot and spotted a place near the entrance to the Western Roadhouse.
My wife Brenda said, "Jack, you always find a spot close to the door. How do you do that?"
"Hey, I'm psychic."
"More like you're lucky."
"More like I'm farsighted and can see a spot quite a ways off. Come to think of it, I need to get new glasses. Either that, or my arms are getting too short to read a book," I told her.
"Sam's Club is open late enough to do that today. We should be out of here in a couple hours."
"It takes an hour to get the food in here. No. I takes 40 minutes for all your clan to get here and finish chattering, and another 20 minutes to get the food. Good thing I ate before we left home."
"You're like a baby. Have to feed you every 4 hours, around the clock."
"You should be used to it after 40 odd years."
Inside, our group was lining up. A waitress conducted us all to the side room we had reserved for the birthday dinner. I had no idea whose birthday it was, but there were enough of Brenda's siblings to do this every month of the year. I didn't care much for the gatherings, or crowds of any kind for that matter, but my wife didn't ask for much and she is the best friend I'd ever have, so she got whatever she wanted.
I landed a seat next to Brenda's brother in law, Howard. He was retired, too, but in a very different style. Howard had a successful furniture store that he had turned over to his son to operate so he and his wife could do the travelling she loved. I learned that they had just returned from Greece and asked him if they had seen any riots like I saw on the news?
"Oh no. That's just in Athens in the poor section of the city. It's a beautiful country out in the smaller villages and there's no trouble at all. We enjoyed it. The food is marvelous and the people are very friendly. We stayed at a villa in a rural area and rented a car to see the sights. The little cafes have wonderful food and the people will help you find anything. Charlene loved it."
The waitress finally arrived and began taking orders at the third table from us. Brenda's family usually has 3 or 4 generations at these gatherings, so there were a couple babies making noise and a din of conversation among the 30 or so people. I turned to Kenny, my wife's nephew across the table and asked how he liked his new job at the insurance company.
"Pretty good. Everyone is working on how to deal with Obamacare when it goes into effect, so it's busy."
"That sounds like job security to me."
Kenny grinned and agreed.
I did my best to keep up with the chatter at the table, but I was relieved when the food came so I could eat. It was hard to find topics to bridge the gap between the interests of these people and how we did things. I should say that we live conservatively, not hard up, but limited by social Security income and what little more we have. We weren't poor by any means because we had no debts at all. And we did a lot of things for ourselves, everything from home cooked garden produce to haircuts and rolling my own smokes, things this crowd would never do. I didn't say much about that. They knew how I thought and we stayed away from those topics.
When we had finished eating and the visiting was over, Brenda and I shared what family news we had picked up. Two of the young women, girls really, at 18 and 20 years old were pregnant and celebrating it despite not having husbands yet. One did have a live-in boyfriend. The other had a boyfriend who had encouraged her to have an abortion, but she declined. Brenda's nephew Josh and his girlfriend had carried in the baby she had recently. We learned they were living with his mother Carmen and working a couple part time jobs each, so scheduling their child care was a nightmare. They had managed somehow to buy a 4 year old SUV with a rear window defogger and power everything. Carmen looked a bit frazzled, but her new hairdo and the makeup helped some. I thought maybe she had some concerns about her sales job, too, with business very slow.
Howard Robinson and his wife had bought a huge new house last summer before they sold the old one. Nothing was said about how that deal went, but he looked less strained than the last time I saw him. I attributed that to having finally sold the old place. Brenda heard her sister say that their furniture store sales were less than fantastic, but she was sure that their son had it under control.
My lobster was good, and Brenda said the ribs were too. I hope so. The tab was as much as we spent on groceries for a week.
I pulled out of the lot and headed for Sam's Club a few blocks away, each of us keeping our own counsel about how the family was doing. Brenda and I had always seen things very much alike. We didn't always communicate real well, but we had always made our life work together.
I told her as we parked at Sam's, "I got the pick of the litter when I married you."
"I did too," she said with a grin.
I only had one sister much older than I, so I was effectively an only child. It was an old joke with us.
Sam's Club was pretty busy, and it wasn't Black Friday yet. Most of the crowd was circulating in electronics and other imported junk, so we got served quickly at the small eye clinic. I got an eye exam and paid for the twofer deal on glasses, then we made our way out of the city, breathing sighs of relief when we got to the lesser travelled state highway.
"Let's stop at the Dollar Store up ahead," Brenda said. "I want to look at their sale stuff."
"Okay. I want a couple things there." They had a decent rolling pin and a plastic pastry sheet for $2 each. I knew Brenda needed those and might not buy them herself. Brenda picked up some extra meds in the pharmacy section and a sweatsuit on sale for $4. We were on our way in a few minutes.
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Our house didn't look like anything special and I liked it that way. It was just one more 40 year old ranch style along the highway. There were things out of the ordinary but they didn't draw much attention. Gardens and clotheslines are normal in our rural community, as are wood piles in the yard. Our gardens were bigger than most, and there were more small outbuildings, but it didn't really look unusual.
You couldn't see the cistern under the back porch, or the shelves of canned goods in the basement. The work shop looked like an ordinary detached garage, except for the chain hoist on a pivoting I-beam I used for an overhead crane. I had done welding and machine work for folks from all over the county until I retired. The shop business was closed, but I did favors for a few farmer friends and neighbors once in a while when they were in a bind. At this point the shop let me make many things for our use and was an ace in the hole if we needed more income.
I thought that having a backup source of income was prudent, with the economy swirling in the toilet and about ready for that gurgle of no return. At least it looked that way to me, and I had found several notable people on the internet that also held that opinion. My in-laws did not share my ideas, obviously, but the good part was that my wife thought a lot like I did. She paid close attention to different things, so that helped. Nobody can cover it all by themselves. I was glad for her perspective, especially on the medical and food issues that were becoming a problem.
My wife understands business and clearly saw how the medical profession had gone from being patient oriented 50 years ago, to profit oriented now. In our experience, that meant it was a good idea for us to deal with all of our own medical needs that we possibly could.
For instance, she had an asthma attack one evening, followed by an outbreak of hives that got pretty bad. She has allergy problems and experience dealing with them, so she took a Benadryl pill and laid down to relax as best she could. Before long, she was doing much better. She was up pretty late that night, but by morning she was fine. If I had talked her into going to the emergency room, they would have shot her full of Prednisone and she does NOT tolerate that well at all. She would have had a month of lingering side effects. Due to her having Multiple Sclerosis, and the general ignorance of doctors on that subject, she has to be very careful what she allows them to do to her. They are generally unaware of how their normal treatments would affect her.
I don't have any real health problems, other than getting old. I keep pretty active, have good immunity, and a low body mass index. That means I'm sort of skinny, at 6" 1" tall and 158 pounds. I'm 68 years old now. I weighed 148 pounds in high school, so I guess gaining 10 pounds in 50 years isn't too bad, but it means I get cold easy in winter, not having much body fat. My joints complain some when the weather changes, and my blood pressure is a bit low, but I seem to get along pretty well. Being on Medicare now with an affordable insurance supplement means we don't have to go through the misery of dealing with the new GovernmentCare law.
Social Security easily supports our frugal lifestyle, but I figured it could go away in an instant if the .gov got in big financial hurt and it looked very much like we are headed for that. Our finances were just not very good. Like a lot of other folks and some relatives, we lost our butts in the 2008 financial crash, including one pension fund that never recovered. We did have the good sense to not have everything in one basket, so we still had a little junk silver and some cash in the bank from one pension fund that paid out in a lump sum. Our problem was, there was no way we could see to make any earnings on that money. It was less than the price of a new car, so it wasn't enough to buy a rental house or anything like that.
So my old work shop looked like a critical part of our financial position. It would be fine as long as I was able to do the work. The market was there, so I didn't worry much about it. Repairmen are nearly an extinct species, so competition was not a factor.
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I had been watching the financial markets for some years before we both retired. I didn't know much about how it all worked, but I had learned from an old friend who long ago had been a commodity trader, and another guy who had retired from selling investments. Both were what was known as "contrarians", meaning they typically bet against whatever trend was popular. They both made a lot of money, so they must have known something.
Both of those guys had said to watch what economic policies were trying to motivate you to do--then do the opposite. If interest rates are high, most people would be saving money, but they said that was the time to spend money in order to hedge against the inevitable inflation that always accompanied high interest rates, or soon would. And conversely, if interest rates were low, it was time to save money, because it meant we were having hard times, or they were right around the corner.
Another old auctioneer friend had said that the way to make a buck was to buy stuff where there was a lot of it, and take it where they didn't have any to sell it. Made sense to me, so when I saw machine shops selling out in the Midwest, I hit a bunch of industrial auctions and bought the cheapest stuff they had. At the time, the auto industry was on the rocks and sinking, so there was a lot available from supplier shops that had gone under.
Some famous old investor said, "Don't buy until there is blood in the streets", meaning that the price would be the lowest when things were chaotic. I did that and bought enough to equip a pretty good machine shop for the price of a decked out pickup truck. I wasn't planning to sell this machinery, I was planning to USE it, so falling market prices were a good thing for me, unlike buying a stock when the price is falling, known as "catching a falling knife".
When you get a business license it is a matter of public record and people watch that for potential new customers. Soon your mailbox will overflow with junk mail trying to sell you anything remotely related to your business name. We got so many ads that I could burn them in the wood stove and heat the shop from Fall until about Christmas. I didn't pay much attention to the ads for a few years, but by 2005, we got flyers showing a lot more machine shops going broke and it wasn't long until entire factories were being auctioned off. That meant those jobs were not coming back, so it was time to tighten our belts.
We did okay because when times are tough, people are afraid to borrow money and buy new stuff. They would rather fix what they had and make it last longer, so they came to me. That worked until about 2008 when the credit panic hit and money got really tight. My wife and I said to heck with it, and retired. We didn't sell any machinery, there being no market for it.
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We never borrowed any money in the business and our home was already paid off, so we had few bills. I began to work on how to get rid of more bills. Once the business was closed, the related expenses for power, insurance, and supplies went away. We had a couple old vehicles and looked at buying something newer for retirement, but the prices were pretty high and we couldn't find just simple, basic transportation. They all came with electronic everything, go-faster hub caps, and hot-and-cold-running-handmaidens to boot, adding up to twice what we paid for our first nice home. Not for us.
We fixed up the 2 old small pickups we had, putting a couple thousand dollars worth of parts in each of them. At about 130,000 miles each, I thought they would both last us a long time, since we only drove about 5,000 miles a year now. They both got good gas mileage and were reliable now. License and insurance was cheap for them, too.
Our house needed some work, so we had a new metal roof put on it. I was tired of shingles blowing off every time we had a high wind. There was an old tree in the front yard that had to go. It was beginning to die and it was too close to the house. I got a logger friend to cut it down and we made a lot of firewood out of it. Then I built a wood stove and added an all masonry room on the end of the house for the stove. That got rid of the heat bill. It also provided a sort of sun room where we could start garden plants. I put in a gas stove to do our canning and keep the heat out of the house like a summer kitchen.
We had new gutters put on the house while me and a friend were overhauling the old cistern that came with the place when we bought it. The new roof meant the water would be clean and new gutters plumbed into the cistern ended the water and sewage bill. Funny how they could charge me for sewage when we had a septic tank. Oh well, that went away with the water bill.
I expanded our gardens and rebuilt an old garden tractor, then got serious about raising food. We already had an orchard, some berries, and an herb patch growing. I went to work in the shop and made a pair of really strong clothesline posts and also made provisions for clotheslines in the room with the wood stove for winter time use. That was the end of the electric clothes dryer and its' big electric bill. More insulation in the attic and some new storm doors reduced the amount of firewood we needed. I built a 2 wheel trailer out of shop leftovers and bought a new small chain saw. Our kids had property with 30 acres of woods not too far away, so that took care of the firewood problem.
Not many more projects were possible on our place, but I thought I could squeeze in some chickens. I added on to the little storage barn out back. I built their feeder out of old galvanized round furnace pipe and an oil changing pan that had seen better days. A neighbor gave me his old windows when he bought new ones for his place and I found a door at the county landfill. The metal roofing came from the junkyard so all I paid for was the framing lumber and the concrete floor.
I bought shelled corn and wheat from neighboring farmers and stored it in barrels we got at the junkyard for a couple bucks each. I used the inert gas from my MIG welder to gas the grain in the barrels so bugs couldn't invade it. A heavy duty electric burr mill made grinding feed easy. We installed 6 Golden Comet hens and had all the eggs that we and our married kids could use for about 1/3 of store price. The chickens didn't get any of the noxious hormones and chemicals common to the industry, either. They got to pasture in the gardens after harvest and thrived.
By that time, our grocery bill didn't amount to much. The only bills we had were license and insurance on the trucks, Medicare and supplement insurance, homeowners insurance, and the electric bill. I had bought some solar panels and gadgets to go with them, planning to put those up the next summer. We were feeling pretty snug with our one acre "homestead". That had all worked nice for a couple years.
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Chapter 2
"Did you see this Jack?" Brenda was on the computer while she finished her morning coffee.
"What is it?"
"There is some bank stuff in the news. I know you watch this sort of thing."
I thought I had probably seen the latest on Zerohedge, a website I hit every morning with my first cup of coffee. They seemed to be ahead of everybody reporting financial news. But I went to look anyway. Sometimes she found some neat stuff.
"Oh, crap," I said.
"What's that mean," she asked.
"Uh, it's complicated. This is bad news. We've got a big problem."
"What is bad news?"
I was reading the details on the crash of the 10 year T-bond, and trying to digest it.
"Uh, we better do something pretty quick. I wish I knew better WHAT to do!"
"What are you talking about?"
"The ten year bond just went to 4% and is climbing. Let me see what Bloomberg says about it," I said and took her place at the computer.
I pulled up the site and saw it was quoted at 4. 76% now. The graph looked like a hockey stick, headed straight up from yesterday. My face must have looked pretty bad, because it scared my wife pretty badly.
"Jack Hesston, you explain to me what's going on!"
"Okay! Okay! Give me a second, all right?"
I tried to collect my thoughts at the same time I was trying to both understand what might happen next, and also figure out what we needed to do before it was too late. When I looked up from the screen, my wife was pretty upset.
"It's what I've been worrying about for the past several years. Unless they can pull another rabbit out of their hat, or someplace, the dollar is going to crash. I can't be absolutely sure yet, but we'd better go to the bank and get our money out quick. If this goes really sour from here, the bank won't be open tomorrow. Hell, it might close today. Get your coat if you're going along. I'll explain on the way. Make sure you've got your phone with you."
I grabbed the checkbook and my work coat and was out the door.
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I talked as I drove.
"Remember the deal when the banks in Cyprus crashed a while back? They took money from depositors to keep the bank afloat. They called it a "bail-IN". They simply stole depositors' money and gave them worthless stock in the bank that was bankrupt. That little country is in a shambles now. People lost their retirement savings overnight."
"You said something about it, I think."
"Well, several countries passed laws to allow that since then. We're headed for big trouble in this country with Bond yields going nuts. There are huge bets made on interest rates, called derivatives, and they are all going to pop if this gets much worse. The banks can't make good on their bets, so they'll be broke in a matter of hours. Maybe less."
"So, you're going to get our money out, right?"
"If I can. That could be a big IF. What have we got in checking?"
"I'll look. Uh, a little over $9,700. That's too much to lose."
"I know. That's why I'm not wasting any time."
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I left $50 in the account and walked out with $9,714. The head cashier lady didn't like it at all, but she did give me the money. She asked me to come to her office to talk about it.
"You know I have to file a Federal form when you take out an unusual amount of money, don't you? Especially this large an amount."
"Yes, I know. Doesn't matter to me. "
"What are you going to do with the money?"
"If you must know, I'm going to spend it before the value of it falls too far. Not that it's anyone's business, it being our money."
I was not happy about this and I cared little who knew it. This lady was all right though, and was looking out for me. I knew her slightly and understood that. So, more politely I said, "You should give some thought to doing that yourself."
"Why do you say that?"
"Because the 10 year T Bond yield blew out close to 5% the last I saw and is going out of sight. That means somebody doesn't like US Bonds and that is about the same as Dollars. Before long the prices of everything you can think of will go crazy. I could be wrong, but I doubt it."
"I hadn't seen that."
"That's what we saw on Bloomberg News a few minutes ago. Check it out. If this bank has any interest rate bets, you'd better get out while the getting is good."
The interview got cut short because her boss came out of his office and beckoned to her. I thanked her and left, with the envelope full of cash in my inside coat pocket. My wife had been silent through all this. After we were inside the truck she asked, "What do you have in mind now?"
"We need to spend some money fast, but I'm not sure what all we should buy. Food is first, and while you are doing that, I'll be thinking. First, you should call any of your folks that you think will listen and tell them to go get their money. Actually, that may be illegal, because it could be called inciting a bank run. Better be careful how you say it. And don't say anything in public about it. People are going to figure this out soon and when they do all hell will break loose."
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We decided to go to the Wal Mart in the next town 25 miles away. I turned on the radio and before we got out of town the Public Radio staiton was talking about this, saying it would all be okay and the newly appointed Chairperson of the Federal Reserve had noted that they would buy whatever it took to get Treasury Bonds stabilized.
I told my wife, "Yeah, they'll do that all right, with money created by a computer keystroke. The dollar index will be off a cliff before they get done talking about it. We better buy another freezer, a cheap one, and fill it with meat. I need to stop at home and pick up a phone book. On the way to Wal Mart, you can call the LP gas guy and have them top off our tank. You got a piece of paper to make a list?"
"Yes, in my purse somewhere."
I chuckled at that. "Maybe I should find a pad at home and get it faster."
She ignored the gibe about her huge purse and dug in it. Amazingly, she pulled out a small pad and began to write, then said, "I'm calling the kids."
"Good idea."
We made a fast stop at home where I got a phone book and a fast cup of instant coffee courtesy of the microwave. I made sure the dog was in the house while she picked up a bundle of bills and a calculator off the desk. We both made a stop at the bathroom and hustled out to the truck. She called our son and explained what we were doing and why. He snapped to it right away and said he'd call his wife and have her make a bank run, and he would call his sister. Brad said he would stay at work the rest of the day, it being a Thursday and he would get paid today. Then he'd cash his check and do some shopping on the way home before he and his wife went out to get serious about it. Brad and I had covered this ground a few times, and he was maybe more paranoid about banks than I was. I doubted if they kept much in their bank, which turned out to be true. Brad was partial to cash.
Brenda was on the phone for the next 30 minutes while I drove. She talked to her younger brother and one sister and said they would pass the word along through the family. I had only a couple older cousins still living, so she looked them up and gave them a call. Carl was receptive because he had been burned in the 2008 crash, and Eugene had never trusted banks anyway, having been told by his Dad who lost his farm during the 1930's to a bank in a shady deal. Having known that uncle of mine, it's a wonder he didn't wring somebody's neck over that.
Brenda smiled and said Eugene thanked her repeatedly for calling him. "I always liked him."
"It's not because of his looks, that's for sure. He was homely as a mud fence when he was young, and he didn't get any better looking with age."
"Yes, but he's a really kind person. And he's a marvelous dancer!"
I suppose I'll never understand what attracts a woman.
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