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Prepping

Been there… Yow!

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Holee mackerel!

I can remember smelling the smoke from fires like this when my parents and I lived in Long Beach — back in the Dark Ages. Quite a few ages have passed since those days…and now, here we are again.

Five major fires around L.A. and Malibu… What a horror show! Some estimates claim 11,000 buildings have been torched. Sure am glad I’m not there, these days.

Welp…I guess that yes, I’m glad I’m out of California. It doesn’t say much, though. Arizona is full of forest land, too, equally vulnerable to fires. So far, we’ve been (relatively) lucky. Almost surely, though, as the climate gets hotter and drier, we’ll see more and more fires like this: here, there, and everywhere.

Just look at this stuff. Among the many things that strike you: your dog will have to go to a special animal shelter: you can’t bring him or her with you!

Well…I’d be sleeping on the side of the road with the dog, thank you. But…it strikes me that if one doesn’t have relatives someplace within a far-stretch drive of where one lives, one should make arrangements well before the event for where to go and where to take one’s sidekick. Or always have camping gear stashed in your vehicle, so you and the critters can get up and get out, fast.

Another thing that strikes you: You should keep your gas tank at least 3/4 full. Probably better than that, if at all possible. It means you’d be traipsing to a gas station every time you turn around…but that would be one helluva lot better than running out of gas while you’re on the run from some catastrophe.

Probably also should keep a kit of your regular and emergency medications at hand — either in your car or right by the door you’d go through to get into the car.

Good times, eh?

GAAAAAAHHHHH! Life in the ‘Hood….

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So…how would you like it if you got a call from the kid’s grade school while you were at the office:

“Please come pick up little Ignatius. We’ve had a murder here.”

Noooo kidding. That’s just about what parents here in the’Hood and environs heard today.

La Maya and I met for lunch today, at an old favorite Phoenix standard, a place that We Who Were Parents used to frequent when our urchins were preschool age. In the course of conversation, she remarked that Feeder Street E/W, which runs from Main Drag West through the ‘Hood to the freeway, is said to be closed, because there was a murder just outside MittelAmerica School, which sits on the Hood’s western border. The corpse was found outside the blocks of prison-gray apartments that border the school on the its south side, a few yards west of Conduit of Blight Blvd.

Eeep! thought I. But then not much more of it, since…yeah, that’s life in the Big City.

An hour or so passed as we munched and socialized. Then she went on her way.

I took my ailing laptop over to Best Buy (again!!!!!) and forked it over to the techs. So often do I surface over there at the service desk that His Cuteness recognized me. Alas, though: he was born about 20 years too late.

From there I drove homeward (and homeward…homeward…homeward…) through the unholy surface-street traffic. Made it back to the house. Having no pistol in the car (GOT to fix that little lapse!!!), I inspected the doors and windows before entering the Funny Farm. No sign of any fleeing murderers.

Thank Heaven for small favors, hm?

The school — a grades 6-8 middle-school campus — was roped off with yellow crime-scene tape. So was Feeder Street E/W, which east of Conduit of Blight leads to the Post Office (so much for mailing your bills today, eh?).

Just imagine:

  • Your child’s school wrapped in police crime scene tape.
  • A dead body right across the street from the campus, next to the slum apartments that border the school on the south.
  • Cops ambling about here and ambling about there…

For the love of GOD!

 

 

Where Ya Gunna Go?

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So I’m visiting the Albertson’s down at the corner of Conduit of Blight and Main Drag South. Normally I won’t go in there because I don’t enjoy being panhandled in the parking lot (once I had a bum actually chase me, at a dead run, across the parking lot). Yesterday, though, I wanted a roll of masking tape and, the Albertson’s being a huge general store as well as a grocery store, figured I could find it there.

Plus the store (or maybe the mall owner) has hired an armed guard, who’s posted outside the market’s front door. So I feel fairly confident that if I park close to the front door and walk directly in — and do not carry a purse slung over my shoulder! — I’m probably going to get in and out with a minimum of pestering.

My father would’ve liked that Albertson’s. Because it’s fairly huge, it carries a vast array of products, from pharmaceuticals and personal care products, to house and auto care products, to…of all things…food. But I can tell you for sure he wouldn’t have shopped there, because of the number of black folks who habituate the place. He was, as he liked to crow, “a bigot and proud of it.” The vast blocks of working-class apartments across the street are very similar to the ones where we lived in Southern California…well, except for the black folks. My mother would’ve been outta there like a rocket the instant the first dusky face surfaced. Whereas my father openly bragged about his expertise as a hater, my mother generally kept her mouth shut about her bigotries. But like him, she also lived by them. She wouldn’t have moved into our lily-white neighborhood because of the number of African-Americans dwelling right across the huge main drag that separates the ‘Hood  from the apartment blocks up here.

So as suggested, my father would’ve loved that store…it would have appealed to his workin’class genes. But my mother?… She probably would have thought of it as I do: fine in a pinch, but lacking in some aspects that one would like to have for shopping on a regular basis. Nevertheless, neither of them would have shopped there (or lived here, we might add…) because of the number of black folks among the customers.

My problem with that store, though, is that even though it’s huge and even though it carries most things you’d like to have, its offerings are kinda boring. Prepared foods are by and large additive-laced schlock. AJ’s, it is not. And…if there’s something you want right now and you went there because you were pressed for time and didn’t want to drive halfway to Timbuktu to get it at a Walmart or the Safeway, you can be sure they won’t have it.

On this particular trip, what I wanted was a roll of masking tape.

How hard is this? Masking tape.

Searched from pillar to post.

No masking tape. Picked up a couple of incidental items, though — a chunk of cheese, some fresh produce. But having found no masking tape I was flying down an aisle toward the checkout where…hallelujah! There on a bottom-most shelf next to the floor was one, count it (1) roll of masking tape. Not the blue type that I favor. But was I going to drive across the city to score a role of BLUE masking tape?

Grab!

Out the door, much relieved not to have to schlep to the paint store.

Albertson’s armed guard lurks outside the door, where he oversees the customers’ and the bums’ comings and goings. This is a considerable improvement — in fact, it is THE reason I will go into that store these days. Once a panhandler actually chased me across the parking lot there, at a dead run. With a hired cop-like creature out front, that kind of thing is a lot less likely to happen.

Though…well…yeah. The last time I was there they had a shooting in that parking lot, in front of the block of buildings that houses the T-Mobile store.

Guess you can’t have everything, hm?

Key Shopping Accessory

Drop a Tranquilizer before Visiting a Gas Station…

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{gasp!} {hyperventilate!!!!}

Just back from a junket to Costco…and waypoints. Belief HAS officially been defied now….

The plan was to traipse up to Costco in search of the usual bargain on gasoline. CC routinely underprices every gas retailer within several miles of a given store, right? While there, buy a few not-urgently-needed but nice-to-have grocery & household items, and also renew this year’s membership, which I’m told is officially running out.

Thank gawd they sell wine… That’s all i can say….. 8-o

Drive and drive and drive and drive and…every road in the goddamn city is under construction. Wherever you’re goin’ you really CAN’T get there from here. Arrive at the store north of the Great Desert University (WAY north…), which is about the same distance from here as the store in Paradise Valley but which, because of the relative penury of the surrounding populace (middle-middle class, not upper-middle-class and Richerati) will likely have a lower price on gas.

My membership is running out. Ask the lady at the entrance where to get it renewed; she says the easiest way is just to pay at checkout.

Ramble around the store ogling all the amazing eye-popping goods. Toss a bunch of stuff I don’t need into the cart. Make my way through the checkout line. Offer to pay for the membership renewal. She says I don’t have to do that now.

Yeah? Well…then why are they telling me to do that now? I figure she just doesn’t want to be bothered. Okkkayyyy….

Retrieve the Dog Chariot. Head for the gas pumps.

They’re mobbed.

But, being the canny type, I manage to slither into a line that has only three or four vehicles ahead of me.

Wait and wait and wait and wait, then wait and wait and wait and wait, and then wait some more.

FINALLY pull up to a gas pump.

Stick my Costco card in. Clickety hummedy click. Then stick my debit card in (Costco doesn’t accept AMEX credit cards)…and….

PLONK! Am told my cards are no good.

Annoyed, I stalk across the lot and retrieve the attendant.

No problemo! saith he.

He sticks my Costco card in. Clickety hummedy click. Then sticks my debit card in. And PLONK! We’re both told to take a flyer at the moon.

He proposes to hold up the ever-longer line with some sort of hoop jumps. I say f’geddaboutit! Because I happen to know the QT in Sunnyslop is charging the same rate Costco is.

Drive and drive and drive and drive and drive and dodge construction zones and drive and slip through a short-cut i know and drive and drive and finally arrive at the QT.

Whip up to an unoccupied(!!!!!) pump and…and…lo and sumbiche! Find the price is a bargain $5.21 a gallon — yea, verily:  the same bargain price that Costco was charging!

Five. Dollars. And. Twenty-One. Cents. A. Gallon!!!!!!!!!!!

It cost THIRTY DOLLARS to refill that quarter of a tank.

CAN….YOU…IMAGINE?

Well, thought I crabbily.There go any ideas about a weekend in Prescott. Or maybe in Yarnell. Or, oh Helle’s belles, even in freakin’ Sun City!

Hmmmm…

Okay, so between you’n’me and the lamp-post, that is the LAST time I visit a Costco to buy (or attempt to buy) gasoline. We have not one but two QT’s practically within walking distance of the ’Hood. And since about half the time (or more), the main reason I go to a Costco is not to shop in the CC but to buy gasoline, that is gonna mean a WHOLE lot less of the Funny Farm’s budget will be spent at Costco stores. I may not even bother to renew my membership. Enough being enough, after all.

One is left wondering what this state of annoying affairs foreshadows for supplies of day-to-day cost-of-living goods: food, diapers, soda pop, motor oil, coffee, tea, toothpaste, shampoo, hot dogs, steak, broccoli…. If the cost of fuel has gone up THAT much across the board, then suppliers and marketers will have to raise their prices accordingly.

This probably is a good time to stock up on things like paper goods (a far better time than we saw in the last Great Paper Panic). And on nonperishable foods. And canned goods. And stuff that can be stored in a freezer.

Because…clearly grocery prices are headed for the stratosphere.

And if you garden? Well then, garden like crazy, my friend! I’m thinking I may build a raised garden in the backyard right now. A bunch of things — summer squash and peppers and tomatoes and if you have any skill even things like corn will grow now. Then, in Arizona an amazing variety of veggies and fruits grow in the fall and winter.

It’s never too late to learn the fine art of canning….

Preppin’ Time!

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So yesterday I batted from pillar to post, partly to get a couple of routine errands done but also to…ohhh yes! Stock up for the next chapter of the Armageddon Chronicles.

{sigh} I’m afraid I’m becoming a prepper of the first water.

Water, in fact, was one of the issues.

Here’s the thing: Starting along about on the 17th and going at the least through January 20, I expect we’re going to see rioting and vandalism in the streets of every major city in the land. This civil unrest, inspired by our fine outgoing wannabe emperor, will disrupt commerce. And it may disrupt one helluva lot more than that.

Here in lovely uptown Phoenix, for example:

Water. I live around the corner from the water processing plant that serves the better part of the central city. The place is essentially unprotected, except for an ineffectual wall around it. To cut off the flow of water to thousands of city residents, all a person would have to do is fly a small plane up here and drive it into the ground at that plant.

If suicide were not your thing, you wouldn’t even have to do that: a well-guided drone with a bomb attached to it would do the job.

Electric. The power (as well as Internet service) goes out here every time you bat your eye. All it takes is one good monsoon storm with winds that don’t anywhere near approach hurricane velocity to knock out power to large tracts of the city. Sabotaging the power grid, then, could not be very difficult.

Transit. That one’s vulnerable in two ways. First, of course, is “Electric,” above. Shut off the power and you shut off the traffic signals. Shut off the traffic signals, and you have chaos on every city street. But more to the point: the freeway system here carries the bulk of local and intercity traffic. When one stretch of freeway closes down, the surface streets on both sides are jammed to a standstill for a mile or more on both sides. And how hard would it be to disable those freeways? Lemme tellya how easy it would be:

All you’d need are a half-dozen home-made bombs with enough power to bring down a freeway overpass or blow a hole in the pavement. Set them on timers so they all go off at the same time. Put one on State Route 51 about at Northern Avenue. Put one on the Interstate 17 at about Camelback Road. Put one on the Loop 101 along about Indian School Road, and another on the same freeway at about Tatum. Another would go on the Interstate 10 somewhere along the Broadway Curve into Tempe.  For good measure you could set one just about anywhere on the 17 northbound toward Anthem. Time them all to go off at once and you will bring the ninth-largest city in the land to a dead stop.

Shutting down transit and jamming every road in the city, then, would mean interruptions in access to…

  • Food
  • Emergency services
  • Medical care (including prescription drugs)
  • Schools

And just about everything else you can think of.

Sooo… I figured I’d better get enough stuff in to last me and the dog for at least a week, maybe more. Because of my ongoing prepper projects, the fact is we have enough in the house to survive on, in a pinch…but probably not in the glorious style to which we have become accustomed. Plus in some prior decluttering frenzy, I threw out my big water carboys. Nothing remained in the house to store water but a few old booze bottles I stashed to use as flower vases. Soo…after a trudge to the credit union, it was off to Lowe’s and waypoints in search of a few plastic carboys in which to pour water.

No.

Lowe’s has no such thing.

No.

The neighborhood Walmart market has no such thing. It does have those cinder-block size containers, but stored on a shelf over my head so that I couldn’t get even one of them down and into a market basket. Gave up in disgust and stalked out, figuring to head down to the water store way to hell and gone at 16th Street and Glendale.

Out the door, cruise through the parking lot toward an exit to a south-bound main drag, and on the way find…say what?! A cute little storefront ice cream AND WATER store. Dart into the reserved parking, shoot in, and…yeah! Get two nice big plastic jugs, and the proprietor filled them for me for free!!!

Zowie! Is God on my side or not?

🙂

While indulging in the whirlwind trip to Walmart, I saw I was not the only prepper grabbing every survival item in sight. People were pushing around carts already half filled with bottled water, and a whole bunch of the other stuff we couldn’t get during the last panic.

At the Lowe’s I grabbed a package of D batteries, but didn’t realize I’m out of C batteries — so today will have to schlep out again to get some of those. My camp lantern runs on D’s, but ordinary flashlights, of course, take C’s. {sigh}

There’s no ammunition in common calibers to be had for love nor money, and hasn’t been for several months. I have enough to fool any wannabe vandals who get close enough to the house for me to take accurate aim. But unless I hit one of the bastards dead (heh!) on and it scares off his pals  (they are pretty cowardly after all, so there’s sorta some hope of that), I won’t be able to hold off a targeted assault for any length of time. That, though, I believe to be extremely unlikely.

But then…who would ever have imagined a phenomenon like Donald Trump was likely?

Not my president…

 

Prepping For a Trump Loss

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Opinion polls suggest our President is likely to lose in tomorrow’s elections. Personally, I’ll believe that when I see it, first because I’m not convinced public opinion polls are spectacularly accurate and second because, between you ‘n’ me ‘n’ the lamp-post, I believe Mr. Trump is fully capable of pulling off a coup.

He has  surrounded the White House with an unclimbable wall, and we have seen that he has built and employs his own private militia. And he has effectively issued a call to arms to the nuttier members of his large and nutty following.

One thing we’ve learned, if we’ve learned anything over the past four years: the stability of our republic is nothing like we imagined. Our present predicament — an irresponsible wannabe dictator in the White House whipping up mobs of uneducated, hate-stupefied followers in the mode of Adolf Hitler or Jair Bolsanaro, ripping children out of their mothers’ arms, making fun of disabled people, spreading hate and fear, waving an upside-down Bible in front of a church whose congregation would like nothing to do with him, minimizing a highly contagious, lethal disease: also unimaginable. Merchants and business owners so certainly expect trouble that they’re boarding up shops and business offices.

Given that he’s egging on his followers to block highways and harass those who disagree with them, and that he’s doing what he can to suppress the vote by fear, by intimidation, or by bully posturing, and that a whole lot of crazies have been taken in by him, I think it’s wise to be prepared for unrest — especially if Biden comes out on top.

Before the election results start to come in, stock in food, household supplies, and medications, top off the car’s gas tank, and if you’re armed, keep a supply of ammunition on hand. Since .22-, .38-, and .45-caliber shells are in mighty short supply, a can of bear spray could in theory be used for self-defense.  You should be able to get this at an outdoor store, assuming the stuff is legal in your state.

Crazed “demonstrators” are likely to knock out power. So do have a camp lantern and plenty of batteries in the house, plus a propane grill and plenty of propane. And water. Several days’ supply of water.

This threat will persist over several weeks, until all the ballots are counted and the elections are decided. So it would be wise to have at least a month’s worth of provisions stocked in. More, if possible.