part0025

The next week was busy for Rick and Marsha. They had to arrange for 5G telephone, internet and television service with Bell South. Marsha talked about the bad old days when you had to deal with many companies and a DSL connection or cable was the fastest service you could get. Now that 5G ran at ten or more times the speeds they were in 2014 nothing could beat it. They were talking about 6G but no dates had been set.

They signed up with the electric company at the local Pikeville office. As befitting a small town it was a one-person office and the lady at the desk knew all about their move. She let them know the modular home people contacted them about having a crew available to connect the service to the home.

Rick and Marsha drove out to the home site. There was a flatbed truck parked in the yard and a man digging with a backhoe. Rick introduced himself while Marsha waited in the car. The worker explained that he was getting the water, and septic lines dug up, so they could be connected to the modular home.

He also let them know he surveyed their driveway and let the company know they would have to trim some limbs to get the modular home in, but they were lucky in that no whole trees would have to come down.

They then went over to the barn and found their ATV’s as Jack Nelson said he would leave them. They decided to ride together this trip on the white elephant. The vehicle was officially the ‘The White Elephant’ as the name and a cute white elephant was painted on the side.

They had a topographical map from the US Army Corp of Engineers for navigation. Marsha drove while Rick gave directions. Their goal was to find and review the area that looked best for their home site from the aerial photograph.

They had to wind around several hills to find the site which was about three-quarters of a mile from their starting point. This didn’t seem like much when riding, but they remembered their first trip out. The route they took had a gentle rise, but nothing that would give automobile trouble in the winter on a cleared road.

Once they went up the last rise, they came to an open flat spot at the base of Hinch Mountain. When they had driven by Hinch on the road and seen it from a distance, it looked like a worn hill. Now they were next to it and had seen how difficult it was to get around on these small hills, they realized it was called a Mountain for a reason.

The open area was about twenty acres in size. It was surrounded by another hundred or so acres also level, but tree-covered. The trees were established pines, so there wasn’t much in the way of underbrush. They drove around the area and confirmed its size. As usual with pine needle covered forest floors the sound was deadened to the point that it had a feeling of being in church.

Marsha stopped the ATV, and they just enjoyed the lack of sound. They were far enough from any highway, they couldn’t hear any traffic, and there wasn’t much in this area anyway. At one point they could hear a small aircraft engine, in the distance, but it soon faded. They sat and enjoyed the environment for a while then moved back to the clearing.

Marsha stopped in the center of the clearing. She looked at Rick and asked, “When you first looked at the aerial photographs you mentioned observation posts on some of the hills. What are you thinking?”

“I was wondering when that shoe would drop,” Rick replied. “My thoughts are twofold.

First, a simple camera set up, which wouldn’t be as visible as a camera at the front gate. It would be wireless with a battery power source. There would be a motion detector set up before it, to an alarm in the house, so we could see who was coming before they were in sight of the house. It would be set up for large sizes like a car. Living this far out I want to know who is coming up the driveway, especially after dark.

Secondly, and it’s a distant second if it hit the fan, it would be handy to have firing positions away from the house.

“Do you think it will come to that?”

“If our living a long time happens like it is starting to look, then yes. When is a different question? Will the government collapse in the next ten years, probably not, in the next one hundred a good chance, in the next two hundred, without a doubt?”

“Historically, governments and nations change over time. Seldom have there been major changes without major upheavals. Marsha, as to the direction that this country or its successor will take, your guess is good as mine.”

“What about England, they have been in the same country for almost a thousand years.”

“That is true but there have been many changes in the form of government from Cromwell to Kings by Devine Right to the current parliamentary systems, that does not count the Barons, the bloody additions of Wales, Scotland and Ireland, the loss of most of Ireland, the British Empire, and most of the British Commonwealth. The name may be the same, but that island has changed many times. ”

Marsha asked, “So the trouble is coming from a historical viewpoint, but we don’t know when.”

“You got it hon. Look at it this way, based on not only history but the world as it is today; the United States is an outlier in the scheme of things.”

“Well now, that is enough gloom and doom for today, where should we place our house?”

“Ah, on to the important things,” Rick smiled.

“Yes,” Marsha replied smiling sweetly. “You can’t predict when the nation will come to an end; but if you don’t get our house built, I can predict what will happen!”

“Yes ma’am, right away, ma’am!”

They both broke out laughing at this piece of nonsense. An onlooker who didn’t know them would have guessed their ages to be in the early sixties or younger. As they continued their light banter, they drove around the area.

It became apparent that they’d miss the sunrise as they were right at the base of Hinch Mountain. Well, the sun would rise at their house around ten am. They decided this wouldn’t be a problem for them, but they have to make certain any crops planted were far enough out to catch the morning sun.

The mountain itself made the placing of the house easy. There were two steep ridges about four hundred yards apart going east to west from the mountain. They’d place the house between them with the house facing south. The house would be offset in the pocket formed by the mountain and its ridges. The house was to be situated about one hundred yards from the northern ridge. This allowed maximum daylight to the front of the house.

Protected on three sides with a winding road to get to them wouldn’t protect them from a professional assault but could make any amateur’s life difficult. Rick had some ideas of how to make it even more difficult for the amateurs. If the professionals came, the events were predictable; scouting and an overwhelming force. But then why would they bother?

The rest of July 2022 flew by. Their double-wide trailer was set in place and all the hookups were made. Their furnishings were pulled out of storage and moved in. On August first, they were settled into their new temporary housing.

In the meantime, they interviewed several architects in Chattanooga. They settled on Smith & Evans. They had excellent references and had a catalog of previous homes that fit within what they had in mind. Rob Smith was the senior partner, and they got along with him and Charles Evans very well; even though ‘Charlie’ came across a little too liberal for Ricks's taste.

The architects recommended Rebel Home Builders as their contractor. They had a long-term relationship with John Mertz as a builder. In this case the son, John Jr. would be making it happen.

The house that was settled on, at least Marsha’s idea of settled on, was five bedrooms, six and a half baths, a large kitchen with a breakfast nook, formal dining room, living room, mudroom, family room, library/office (Rick), sewing room (Marsha), the master suite included a walk-in closet with all built-ins and under the house a full basement.

It would be two stories with a roofed porch around the front and west side of the building. A three-car garage attached to the east side of the house. The roof above the porch with an open balcony around the second floor, and bedrooms opening out onto the porch.

In front (south) of the garage was an almost Olympic size heated swimming pool, fenced off with an outdoor kitchen area.

As Marsha reminded Rick, they were building a long term retreat. They had no idea when things or even if they would go bad, they had the money; worthless in the future, so she wanted to spend it on the house she wanted…Now! Rick had been around for over eighty years and he well understood superior logic.

Included in the plans were the blacktopping of the driveway, a new well, septic field, a solar farm, and a five thousand square foot general-purpose metal building with a concrete floor. Even Rob Smith was a little shook up when he presented the estimate of close to seven million dollars. That was a LOT of money for this area.

In private, Rick joked, “This will take us down to our last thirty-five million dollars.”

Marsha smiled and said, “Well, we will need new furniture.”

Rick just groaned, not at the money, but at the shopping. The groaning was just pro forma, Rick’s dirty little secret was that he enjoyed furniture shopping. So take away his man card, he was enjoying bringing their house together.

It was the end of August till they signed off on drawings and signed all the contracts. The estimated completion was late spring of 2023. Work was started immediately on upgrading the road to the property.

It didn’t take long to have the well drilled, tested, chlorinated, retested, re-chlorinated, and finally passed. They were glad they weren’t depending on that well for their immediate needs. It took one day to drill the well and install the pump. It took another three weeks of flushing and re-chlorinating to have the water certified as potable.

The concrete pad for Ricks ‘shed’ was poured and the building was up before the end of the month. The shed was placed to the east of the house across from the garage entrances to limit the amount of blacktop needed. The general-purpose building had its own electrical service panels. Also included was a bathroom, plus a large sink of the mop bucket type. Rick made sure there was a room next to the workbench for a refrigerator, microwave, and there was a small television viewing area set up. With a recliner in front of the TV, a man could make a strategic retreat from the house if needed.

The solar farm was put in place, and the batteries had their own small outbuilding. The solar farm was ground mounted facing south and placed to the west of the house towards the back, almost at the base of the ridge. This gave maximum sunlight, and out of the line of sight for most of the house. The area was set up as two separate sets of one hundred panels each. The site quality was rated at 1145 so each field could produce almost 22, 000 kWh or almost more than twice their estimated annual usage. There were also two separate sets of batteries for redundancy.

The basement digging started immediately. Heavy equipment was brought in. When Rick saw the excavator, he knew he had to have one, why he wasn’t sure but had to have one. Maybe he didn’t have to surrender his man card after all.

When he mentioned his desire to Marsha, she just shook her head and walked away. Rick thought he could hear mutters about, “Boys and their toys,” but he wasn’t about to go there.

Very shortly after the basement was started a major problem emerged, just three feet below the surface was a solid chunk of bedrock. The only way the basement could be dug was with explosives.

Marsha wanted a basement, and Rick was certainly going to give her, her wish. Besides, he could help, couldn’t he? It was quickly made clear to Rick by the experts brought in, that while he may have blown-up people in Viet Nam, that didn’t make him qualified to blow out a basement.

The first thing Rick learned was that they would be using water gel explosives, not dynamite. They would be pumping the liquid slurry into boreholes. He did learn that he could obtain a license to use explosives and keep them, as long as he met the requirements of Federal Regulations in 27CFR Part 555 subpart K. Further research found that he could order a ready-made magazine set in place. They would even register it for him and set him up with the required record keeping.

Rick was warned that since this was going to be a newly registered site, the ATF would most likely check it out quickly, followed by homeland security keeping an eye on him. Since he had no plans to do anything illegal as long as the laws of the United States of America were the law of the land, there was no problem.

Unfortunately, he saw a time coming where this might not hold true. In the meantime, he had a lot of tree stumps to remove and rock to penetrate. He decided this was important enough that he would proceed out of petty cash .

For a mere one hundred thousand dollars, he could be in business. Since Rick wasn’t terminally stupid, the cost also included a class on safe usage and storage. The unit would be delivered in September, and the class the same month, so he had plenty of time to prepare Marsha for the good news.