Mary then added, “Maybe we ought to just pick up the phone and give Tina Turner a call. Tell her we need her to do a repeat performance as Aunty Entity and supervise this mess. I wonder if she still has her slinky chain-mail?”
There was more laughter.
“Okay,” Mike said, “Now down to serious business. Aside from the kerosene, just what did everyone get in trade?”
Mary spoke up first. “I got three Alpine dairy goats: two does and a dis-related young buck. I traded all three of them for a hundred rounds of .22 long rifle and ten rounds of .308 ball.”
With this comment, Mike let out a whistle. “Not bad, Mrs. Honcho, not bad at all,” he said.
With a note of pride in his voice, Lon Porter said, “I got a six-inch Unimat lathe with a complete set of accessories in exchange for four gallons of gasoline. I even got the guy to provide his own container for the gas. I also bought a pair of moccasins for ten rounds of .22.”
Della raised her hand and then said, “I got a pair of moccasins for the same price at the same time Dad got his. I also got a pair of fence-mending pliers, two wool carding combs, a glass food canning funnel, and a dress. All together, those cost two dollars in ‘junk’ silver dimes that Doug gave me to spend at the Faire.”
After Doug saw that Dell was finished, he said, “I ran into a Templar with an HK91. We both stood there staring at each other for a few seconds. I could see that he was eyeballing my M1A, so I knew that he was thinking the same thing that I was. As I’m sure you all know, the M1A is the group-standard rifle for the Templars, just like the H and K is with ours. After a few offers back and forth, we decided to be reasonable and trade straight across. I gave him my M1A and all eight of my magazines for his HK and nine twenty-rounders. We said that we’d get back together tomorrow and swap our spare parts for the guns. I figured that I’d be better off with a group-standard rifle, and the two guns are basically comparable in quality and function. My gun was National Match grade though, so I suppose that Thomas—the Templar guy—got the better end of the deal.
“The only thing that I don’t like about the Heckler and Koch is that it doesn’t lock open after you fire the last round in a magazine, like M1As and AR-15s do. I guess I can make up for that little shortcoming by loading tracers as the last two or three rounds in each magazine. It’s an old Army trick. When you see a red light, you change magazines. That was my only major purchase, or trade rather, of the day. I also bought two monstrous bags of jerky—one of elk and one of bear—for a pre-’65 quarter. I figure the jerky will be great for patrols and picket duty. Oh yeah, almost forgot. I also got three big fat Seattle phone books. They will be great for toilet paper.”
Obviously anxious to speak, Lisa was next. “I got four little lambs. They are Targhee crosses. Three ewes and a ram. They are soooo cute. They’re already in the back of Kevin’s pickup munching on some grass hay. I traded two salt lick blocks for them. I also got a copy of Raising Sheep the Modern Way, some spare underwear, a hairbrush, and five pounds of homemade saltwater taffy from a really sweet Nez Perce Indian woman. All together, that cost ten rounds of West German seven-point-sixty-two ball. Later in the afternoon, I got four half-grown Khaki Campbell ducks in exchange for sixty sets of wide-mouth Mason jar lids and rings. This particular breed of duck is supposed to be good both for laying and for eating.”
Dan then said, “I traded my Walther P-38, three extra magazines, and two hundred rounds of nine-mil ammo to some dude for a complete fishing outfit, a Bausch and Lomb spotting scope, a Merck Veterinary Manual, a big Craftsman socket set, and a leather working tool kit. The leather working set is pretty cool.
It’s a standard Tandy kit, plus some extras. It has a mallet, about twenty of those miscellaneous patterning tools, a swivel cutting tool, a couple of tubes of Barge cement, a rotary hole punch, a snap-and-riveting kit, and a whole bunch of other items. He also threw in a whole tanned cowhide. It was strange, though, the guy actually seemed more excited about the ammo than the pistol.”
Next, Kevin reported on his transactions. “I got an entire buffalo hide in really good shape for ten rounds of .30-06. I figure that it’ll help keep us warm up at the LP/OP next winter. Another guy traded me a small Bearcat scanner—one of the portable ones the size of a walkie-talkie—for twenty rounds of .45 ACP. It runs off of batteries, and we have plenty of ni-cads, so I thought, ‘why not?’ Not many people have any source of power nowadays. I figure that’s the only reason the guy was willing to sell it so cheap. I also got a pair of Belgian white rabbits—a buck and a doe, for twenty rounds of .22 long rifle. My mother would be proud. She’d say that I got ‘Such a deal!’ The cage for the rabbits cost a lot more, though. For it, I had to give up a whole fifty rounds of .22 and three pre-’65 silver quarters. I think it’s amazing what a few silver dimes or quarters will buy.”
After a pause, Kevin said, “I feel sorry for all those people I knew who bought one-ounce gold coins as a ‘survival hedge.’ I can see now that a full-ounce gold coin is too compact a form of currency, and it isn’t easily divisible.
I suppose that people who bought the gold coins minted in the one-tenth-of-an-ounce weights are more fortunate. What would a full ounce of gold buy?
That Corvette that we saw advertised? A half a dozen cows? Maybe. It certainly wouldn’t do much good for someone trying to buy day-to-day necessities. It’s pretty apparent that our stock of .22-rimfire ammo is a lot more useful as a store of value and as a means of exchange.”
Mike was the last to give his report. “Okay, get this. I ran into a major coup.
I bought a horse. It’s not one of those nags you probably saw people trying to sell, either. It’s a real nice Morgan saddle horse. Three-year-old mare, very gentle. I took the approach of looking at the horses that were tied up along the fence. I looked for groups of two or more horses, all carrying the same brand.
Then I picked out the good-looking ones from those, one at a time, and inquired after their owners. It took most of the day to get anyone to talk a serious deal, though. Most people aren’t in the position that they can spare a horse. This guy, who had four horses before the Crunch hit, and now has six, apparently could. When I first asked if he’d be interested in selling, he just said,
‘Ah, I don’t know, maaaaybe.’ But when I told him that I had stabilized gas to barter, his eyes lit up. I got the horse for forty-five gallons of gas.
“The same guy also sold me a saddle, and a full set of tack, and grooming tools—you know, like a brush and a hoof pick and rasp—for another twelve gallons of gas. The saddle is quite nice, as well. It’s an old original Ray Holes mountain rig, but the leather is still strong and in good shape. The guy, his name is Thebault, lives just west of Troy. I talked with Roger Dunlap about him, and he confirmed that the guy is trustworthy and circumspect, so I described to him how to find our retreat. He’s going to ride over and swap the horse for the gas at the retreat in three days. I can hardly wait.”With a grin that betrayed considerable pride, Mike said, “That was my one and only purchase for the day. Okay, does anyone else have anything important to report that can’t wait until we get back to the hidey-hole? Okay, then.”
After a pause, Mike continued. “Does anyone want to come back tomorrow?”
“Yeah!” they all yelled in a chorus.
“Yikes!” Mike roared. “You all sound like a bunch of cub scouts. I guess that makes me your den mother. When we get back home, we’ll draw lots to see which four of us will have to pull security back at the retreat, so the others can come tomorrow.” Putting on his oft-used John Wayne voice, he said, “Well, pilgrims, we’d better saddle up and head home before it gets dark.”