The Grays also started using up the contents of their electric refrigerator and chest freezer. With extended power failures expected, they did not want food to spoil unnecessarily. Todd methodically sliced, marinated, and jerked nearly all of the elk, venison, and salmon in the chest freezer. The exhausting process took five days. With the same thought in mind, Mary took the initiative of recharging all of the nickel metal hydride batteries for their flashlights and various electronic gear. As they only had two small chargers, this took nearly as long as the jerky making.
They didn’t know how rough things might get, or whether or not any of the other group members would show up to help secure the retreat. So Todd completely refilled the firewood storage area in the basement. He told Mary, “It would be ironic to make all these preparations and then get blown away doing something so mundane as walking back and forth to the woodshed.”
As further insurance, Todd and Mary also began carrying their Colt .45 automatics at all times. They also loaded half of the magazines for each of their guns. Todd’s plan was to alternately unload these magazines and load the other half of their magazines twice a year. This would prevent the magazine springs from “taking a set.” On the few trips that he took into town or down the road to Kevin Lendel’s house, Todd carried both his .45 and his short-barreled Remington 870 shotgun. There was no worry of being arrested, as there was no prohibition on carrying a loaded gun in public. In fact, Idaho was one of the few states where citizens could carry a loaded gun in a car. The only prohibition was on carrying a concealed weapon without a state permit. In Idaho, concealed carry permits were easy to obtain.
Surprisingly, the U.S. Postal Service still made regular deliveries until early November. Local mail got through promptly, but longer distance deliveries were sporadic at best. The Grays took advantage of this in several ways. First, they sent letters to their family members, letting them know that they were safe and well. Next they wrote all of the group members still in the Chicago area, once again urging them to “Get out of Dodge.” They hoped that if and when their letters arrived, that the group members would have already departed.
After a long talk, Todd and Mary decided to make an $800 prepayment on their electric power bill. They also sent a check covering the next three years’ property taxes on their farm. Although it appeared that the local government would likely evaporate in the next few weeks, they felt more secure knowing that they wouldn’t lose their farm to taxes as some of their relatives had in the depression of the 1930s. The check to the tax assessor office was relatively small, as their annual tax assessment was only $780 for their house and forty acres.
Writing these two checks brought the balance of their checking account down to $220. Their savings account had long since been cleaned out when they bought the house and upgraded it. One of the reasons they wrote these checks was that the dollars that they represented were rapidly becoming worthless. They agreed that it was better to spend their money on something useful than to see it lost to hyperinflation.
Todd and Mary walked down the hill to their mailbox in silence. Todd had his Remington riot shotgun tucked under his arm. As they got to the box, Todd blurted out, “This seems so absurd. Here we are, mailing checks drawn on a bank that has closed its doors—probably forever, denominated in a currency that is basically worthless, to a couple of organizations that will probably be nonexistent soon after the checks arrive!” He had meant the comment to be funny, but Mary didn’t laugh. She tossed the envelopes in the box, closed the lid, flipped up the flag, and turned back toward their house.
There were tears welling up in her eyes.
Four days after the riots started, Paul and Paula Andersen, the Grays’ neighbors to the south, dropped by the house to explain that they were going to go “double up” at their son’s place. He had a large cattle ranch near Kendrick, about twenty-five miles south of Bovill. The Andersens offered the Grays the use of their house, barn, water supply, firewood, stored hay, and pasture in their absence.
Todd told Paul, “Thanks for the offer, but I probably won’t need to take you up on it. I’ll be happy to keep an eye on your place while you’re gone, though.”
Paul Andersen thanked Todd and handed him a slip of paper, saying, “Here’s my son’s address and phone number in Kendrick. When the phones are working again, give us a call.” They never saw the Andersens again.
The other two neighbors with property contiguous to the Grays’ parcel left under similar circumstances. Most of these neighbors didn’t bother to stop by and make their goodbyes. By the haste of their activity when packing up, Todd presumed that they were in too much of a hurry for formal goodbyes. The neighbors across the county road, the Crabbes, waved to Mary as they pulled their heavily laden flatbed Ford pickup and trailer out their front gate with their last load. Mary later mentioned to Todd that it seemed like a scene out of The Grapes of Wrath. They never saw the Crabbes again, either.
Todd and Mary began hearing the term “doubling up” with great regularity as they tuned from channel to channel on Mary’s CB radio. It was the local parlance that developed for two or more families relocating and setting up mini-strongholds. The residents of Latah County were plain country folks, but they weren’t stupid. When times got tough, most realized that a single family on a remote farm would be no match for a band of looters. It was a natural and logical reaction to cluster into small defensive groups.
Both Todd and Mary had trouble sleeping during the interval between the onset of the riots and when the other members of their retreat group started to arrive. Adrenaline wouldn’t let them sleep. Todd found himself lying awake in bed, listening anxiously for anything that sounded out of place. Every time their dog Shona let out a loud growl or bark, both of them would immediately be on their feet. Todd would look out the back shutters while Mary checked the front.
Once the rest of the group members arrived, they would be able to set up a regular guard schedule at the listening post/observation post (LP/OP) that Todd had prepared. Until then, however, they would have to be light sleepers.
The stress of getting only snatches of sleep began to show after only a few days.
The first of the members of the Group to arrive at the retreat were Mike and Lisa Nelson. They came roaring up in their Bronco and their Mustang, late in the evening of October fifteenth. They reported that they had not run into trouble on their trip, aside from having to pay sixty-five dollars a gallon for gas at one stop. They commented that there were a lot of people on the road, even late at night, and that a lot of the cars they saw were “full to the gunnels and towing U-Haul trailers.”
Mike said that they had both called in sick the day before they left, and that neither he nor Lisa had bothered calling back again. When Todd asked if this was wise, Mike replied, “Todd, if you had seen the panic that we saw, you’d have done the same thing. We’re not going back. Ever. We split the whole program. Besides, at this point, I probably couldn’t get my job back even if I wanted to, so there is no turning back.”
The conversation didn’t go on much longer because they were exhausted and wanted to get some sleep. They had driven straight through from Chicago.
The next to arrive, seventeen hours later, were Dan Fong and Tom Kennedy. By prior arrangement, they had convoyed out west together. Dan was driving his Toyota pickup. Tom’s flat brown-painted Bronco, riding down on its overload springs, followed close behind. After they stopped, Todd noticed that the Toyota’s windshield, passenger side window, and rear window on the camper shell were missing. What clearly looked like bullet holes peppered the passenger side of the camper shell. Their “debriefing” went on much longer than that given by the Nelsons.