City Hall

1978, I had just left the Army and returned to my home town in Arizona. I had gotten a job with a small well drilling outfit and had been working there for about two months. The bosses daughter had taken a liking to me and life was looking pretty rosy.
About a month before I had started work one of the partners had taken a hike with all the company's money leaving the other (my boss) with tons of bills and a company name that was fast sliding into the mud.
I had agreed to work for a low wage in the hopes of a bigger raise when the company got cought up on bills and dug themselves out of the hole. So I stayed out in a small trailer twenty miles from town, putting in 6 ten hour days on a cable tool drilling rig, and getting sundays off to go into town and get supplies and exchange reading material. Back then I was really into how-to books of every description. Mostly new technologies. Solar power was getting a lot of reviews as was wind generators, and Mother Earth News was to me like a Christmas catalog. I was gearing up for a good lession.
My boss was behind in a lot of bills but he had sworn he wasn't going to file bankruptacy, not that the city cared. They started to send collection letters for his utilities and threatened to cut off all power and water. I also tend to think there was other things going that I didn't know about because the city was really digging it to him.
We had just finished a well and had gotten the rig back into town when the city turned off his power and water. and he blew a fuse. After spending a couple of hours cussing and thinking, we got to work.
First we hooked up the welding generator to the house for power and borrowed a stock tank from a friend and filled it up for water storage.The next day we setup the drilling rig in his back yard and started drilling. This was back before you had to have permits and before Arizona passed a law stating all water was owned by the state. While i was running the drilling the boss was digging a hole for a septic tank as they were hooked up to city sewage and he was afraid
they were going to cut that off to. He also pulled a propane refridgerator out of a wrecked rv and spliced into his propane gas line from his tank, it was small but they at least had something to keep his food from spoiling
By the first afternoon the city had sent the police to stop the drilling and they had some lively arguments. The boss knew his drilling laws and there was nothing on the books at the time to stop him so we kept right on going. Over the next two weeks every one of the city officials came by to argue and threaten, they cut off his sewage and trash removel, threatened him with lawsuits and generally made it very entertaining for me.
When we got the well in and the pump set. and pulled the rig off, the city quit comeing around and things got quiet. We moved on to another well outside of town and life for me went back to the day to day routine of work.
About two weeks later when i went into town for supplies, and a little time with the bosses daughter, she told me the city had backed off and would let him make small payments for his utilities (for the sake of his kids) and had apologized ( in their own way) for kicking him when he was down.
What i learned was this, If you are on the grid and get in bad with the city, they have a strong hold on you and can threaten you with cutting off your utilities. but if you are off the grid and have plenty of supplies they seem to be a little more reasonable when you sit down and talk to them. Disasters are often times not caused by the weather and even though it cost more up front and the lifestyle is a little more inconvienent, you sleep a lot better at night knowing that you don't have to beg the city, state, or the feds for help.

First thoughts

Well this is the start of a new adventure. I have never written down my thoughts before and doing so is much harder than i have imagined.
For over thirty years i have lived mostly off the grid and under the radar so to speak. I have tried to never be dependant on the goverment or power companies or anyone else for that matter. For one, depending on someone else is like leaning on a crutch of straw. When you really need the support everyone you have depended on seems to vanish into
thin air.
Now I'm not talking about family. Most families are there in good times and bad, (mostly good, when something good happens all of a sudden you have more relatives then you ever knew). But when there is a major disaster, your the low man on the totem pole, and if you try to get your head up to hollar, everybody above you just shoves you back down.
People who live in temperate zones don't remember most disasters longer than the next season. but for those who live through them, it's a big marker in ones life.
One ( of many) I remember was back about ten years ago in the late 90's. '97 I believe. I was living on my 28' sailboat in Camden Maine, when the big ice storm struck. Knocking power lines down and blocking roads. Power was out for several weeks in some areas, and I was amazed at how unprepared people were. I would sit at the galley table and listen to the stories comeing in over the radio of people dying in their homes from carbon monoxcide poisning from kersosene heaters or gas generators. People who were freezing because all they had was electric heat with no backup. And i would look around at my cozy little boat and marvel at the comfort i had less then twenty miles from a major disaster. I had a propane heater with three backup tanks, 50 gallons of water, a small salt water filter, three solar panels and a wind generator. and three kerosene. lamps for backup lighting, plus a two months food supply.
About a week into the storm I had rowed in to visit the library to get some more reading material when i met a young couple with their four year old son trying to find some books on emergencies and what to do. They had a house with no power, couldn't afford a generator set and were living huddled around a small kerosene stove they used for warmth and cooking.
After talking for awhile, Ioffered to let them sleep on my boat. it would be cramped quarters but it was warm and had most of the amenities. They wound up staying for a week before power was restored in their neighborhood, and we spent hours talking about being prepared and thinking about the future. When they moved back into their home,.
they had a notebook filled with ideas and plans for living a little more off the grid.
One story in the news was about two sisters widowers i think ,who were helping out by letting neighbors take turns staying at their house. They had a wood heating stove, solar panels, propane cookstove and a good supply of water and food. Like me, the only, way they could tell there was a major disaster was by the radio and their neighbors telling them so.
I guess it just seems strange with the technoligies we have now and all the stories coming over the tv, that people still depend on others to save them.
One thing before i close this post. Over the years i have stored lots of eggs outside a cooler and sometimes you don't know if they are edible or not. There are two ways i know of, one is candleing them, ie. holding them up to the light and checking how much air space is inside the fat part of the egg. If you see more than a quarter of an inch of air it's bad. But a more reliable way is putting them in a pan of fresh water, if they stay on the bottom they're fresh but if they start dancing on their tips they are starting to go bad. I have eaten them when they just start to float off the bottom, but when they stay more than an eighth of an inch off the bottom out they go.