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We stayed close to home throughout the fall and winter, keeping busy with the garden and fishing. Our store of food from Roswell was depleted, and we all worried about the winter.
The winter brought cold and rainy weather, but no snow. By year-end, all of us girls had a bun in the oven, and our men were happy. The nights were long, and lamp fuel was limited, so we went to bed early and didn’t rise until daybreak.
The spring brought our first visitors. Romero Maldonado came from Atascadero, riding a bike. He was on a scouting expedition, looking for salvage opportunities. He had a holstered pistol, and our experiences with Mexican gangs made us cautious.
Romero quickly detected our reluctance, and said, “You think I could be a gang banger scouting for places to plunder?”
Danny answered, “We’ve seen the results of the gangs, and know there were a lot of them in the valley.”
Romero said, “Fortunately, most of them were in San Luis Obispo when the tidal wave hit. We killed off the rest of them last summer. You won’t find any tats on me.”
At that point he stripped off his shirt, dropped his jeans, and did a 360 before restoring decorum.
Tracy let out a wolf whistle, and everyone cracked up laughing.
We learned that Romero was the youngest in a large family who had run a successful landscaping business before the Event. He reported that their garden results had been poor, since most of the seeds available were GMO verities, not designed for reproduction.
We agreed to provide him a quantity of seeds, in exchange for a commitment to give us ten percent of his crop for the next ten years. He asked us to visit after our garden was planted, and if there was anything in particular we needed.
Trever quickly asked for a sailboat that we could transport down to the water. Romero said he would keep his eyes open. He had seen a big one in the debris from San Luis Obispo, but it was too big to transport, and heavily damaged.
He reported that Atascadero had been badly damaged by the earthquakes and the winds. The war with the gangs had taken several men, including his father and older brother. Less than a thousand people survived the first year. Their priority was to grow enough food to get everyone through the next winter.
The spring also brought heartbreak. Tracy lost her baby, and she was devastated. Everything she went through, plus this loss, was too much. No amount of love and re-assurance seemed to matter. As Alice and I grew bigger, she withdrew more.
The morning of June 15th, the second anniversary of Day 0, she arose early, packed a backpack, and left without saying goodbye. She left a note that said she loved us all, but needed to be alone and find her way, something she could not do with her family.
On his next visit, Romero reported that she had passed through Atascadero, headed north. It took a long time before we heard anything about Tracy.
My Anne and Alice’s Robert arrived in September, and our sadness was mostly replaced with joy.
Our garden did well, and we had a surplus of dried fish. We took most of the surplus fish and a lot of the seed produced to a Harvest Fair in Atascadero. At the fair, we traded for olive oil, almonds, and some good wine from the Paso Robles area. Quakes and an eruption that covered everything east of town in lava and ash had destroyed the downtown area of Paso Robles.
We also traded for a motorized bicycle, which was noisy, smoked a lot, but could run a long way on very little gas.
In November, Romero located a trimaran sailboat, on a trailer. We traded three AR-15s and some ammo for it, and both parties were pleased with the deal. After replacing the trailer tires, we pulled it back to the shop building we had built over the summer.
The fuel tanks at Sam’s station were down to about three quarter’s capacity, and we were careful to avoid unnecessary driving. We did pull several trailer loads of equipment to the site of a formerly productive oil well.
We took a 25% interest in the venture, to recover and crack the oil from the well. It would be a long shot, but our new partners, Daemon Long, and Alden Rodgers, had worked in the oil industry before the Event.
Danny and Trever both worked helping to set up the equipment over the winter. Sam, Alice, and I kept the home fires burning while they were at the well site.
Our men lived in a salvaged trailer at the site, and it was definitely a bachelor’s pad. They usually came home for every other weekend. There was always a list of projects for them.
In February, the first usable fuel was produced. It was only a few gallons of diesel per day. But it was more than enough to keep the plant generator running. By the end of March, Danny and Trever were not needed at the plant, and returned home towing a full 500-gallon tanker trailer.
The availability of fuel sparked a search for working vehicles, particularly farm equipment, generators, and trucks. Romero found a diesel powered dirt bike, and started extending the range of his explorations.
Planting the garden was easier that year with the ancient tractor that somehow kept working.
The guys launched the boat as soon as the garden was finished. It had a little one-lung diesel that made maneuvering in the narrow channel much easier. I was fearful for their safety, until they took Alice, the kids, and me on a pleasure cruise out to the ocean.
I felt a little queasy as we passed through the rolling waves into the ocean. However, it was obvious that the guys knew what they were doing, and the craft was stable and predictable.
The sea life was abundant, and the guys fished all summer. Every two days, a truck would take their catch to a Market in Atascadero. Barter was still the primary method of exchange, either useful salvaged items, livestock (chickens, rabbits, goats, etc.) or junk silver coins.
A weekend open-air market developed in Atascadero, where you could usually swap what you had for what you wanted. People came in and camped there. when they lived too far away to go back and fourth.
By the end of the summer, hunger was no longer a threat in the area, and Romero’s scouting had reached the shallow south end of the Inland Sea. It did not look promising.
Ash covered the area as far as he could see. There was no evidence of any survivors.
The next three years saw the passing of Sam, Danny’s father, and the arrival of our son, Little Sam, and Alice and Trever’s daughter Joan. We buried Big Sam on a ridge crest, overlooking the Pacific, and planted an oak tree as a marker.
Romero brought his new bride up the hill and built a home across the road. According to him, to get away from his lovable but domineering mother. I suspect that the fact that we had a big generator and enough fuel to keep it running may have influenced his decision to locate near us. The generator made it possible for us to use a big salvaged walk-in freezer, where we stored the daily catch, a refrigerator and a washer that helped Alice and me keep up with the diapers.
The guys tapped into a creek, and pumped the water up the hill to a salvaged tank, so we had water pressure all the time. A salvaged on-demand water heater completed the picture, and we all enjoyed the ability to shower frequently.
The gray water was piped to the garden, and the black water went to the expanded and repaired septic system.
We added two new kid bedrooms to the big house, other furniture, and a microwave. We only ran the big generator during daylight hours to save fuel. Danny had rigged a sensor to start it up if the freezer needed to run, but it only happened occasionally.
Many times, Danny and I would wonder how Tracy was doing. Sometimes I doubted we would ever see her again.
