The Neighborhood: Vol. 1

#34

JOURNAL ENTRY #1

I once heard Robert Duvall say in the movie Apocalypse Now, I love the smell of napalm in the morning. Although I can’t relate to the smell of napalm, I understand what he meant. That smell, no matter how strange it seems to those of us who have never got a whiff of it, brought him comfort. It made him feel at home, albeit, in a twisted sort of way. He was watching bombs go off around him in the jungles of Vietnam. The aroma from the napalm gas reminded him of victory.

This morning, I am watching a squirrel in the trees behind my house. The smell of dew, which permeates the air, brings me a tremendous amount of comfort. It reminds me of a time not so chaotic...a time of running around my old neighborhood as a child. We would leap out of bed early, shortly after sunrise, get dressed and roam from house to house collecting all of our friends to get a game of football going. The smell of dew was always present.

It also prompts me to reflect on my own children and how much they love going out to play in the morning. Ironically, as an adult, dew has become a sort of annoyance to me as I watch my own children running around in it. The dew gets their pant legs wet, then the dirt sticks to them, then my wife freaks out about their clothes getting dirty. But it is always worth it to me to have my wife freak out. Watching those kids run around without a care in the world is simply priceless. The shouts of joy as they run around playing freeze tag, the half-faked screams of fear from the girls as they are chased by boys carrying a lizard, and the steady streams of laughter as they play are all noises that warm my heart. I love to sit in the dewy grass, sometimes with one of my baby boys, and watch the madness of children exploring the world around them, in the haphazard way that children do. I think it was Shakespeare who said it best, The blessedness of being little....

Today, as I inhale that glorious smell of fresh dew, all of those visions run through my head. I am getting ready to do my daily morning scan of the patch of woods behind my house. Winter is coming to an end, and the leaves have not yet begun to sprout on the trees. It is much easier to do my scan in the winter, compared with the spring and summer, when the underbrush and leaves fill the ground and sky. Still, all things being equal, I am looking forward to the warm weather which has already begun to creep in. Up here in North Georgia, spring always comes around the end of March.

I am up on my back deck which hangs about 12 feet above the ground. It is the perfect sort of tower to view the back of our neighborhood, allowing me to see a good 100 yards in both directions. Unfortunately... and thankfully (this conundrum will make sense as my journal grows), there is no other movement than that squirrel. Content with what I have seen, I crack open my double barrel shotgun and remove the birdshot, replacing them with buck shot, before laying the gun on the patio table. Next, I lay my Smith and Wesson .40 caliber on the table and pick up the high powered BB gun with scope. Putting it to my shoulder, I line up the squirrel in my crosshairs. I am excited that protein will be on the menu for breakfast.

I love the smell of squirrel meat in the morning...

JOURNAL ENTRY #2

I realize after reading my first entry that I may have left a lot of questions in your mind. You’ll have to forgive me. You see, I have been putting off writing this journal for some time now, and in my haste to get underway, I just started putting words on the paper. For the sake of anyone who is reading this, I suppose it would make sense to start over and give a general overview of what the heck I am writing about and why. It is also worth pausing here and noting, that with the exception of my family, this journal is not being written for a present-day audience (on the contrary actually). I am writing this for an unknown future generation of Americans. I am assuming that 100 years from now history books will give a macro view of what has happened during this time. My endeavor here is to give a micro view of one man’s perspective, from one region, during one generation. To give a very bad analogy...I am trying to be a poor man’s Anne Frank. While history books have taught us about Hitler and the persecution the Jews encountered, Anne Frank was able to illuminate those times in very specific details.

First of all, allow me to introduce myself. My name is Grey Nathan. As noted in my first entry, I live up in the North Georgia area with my wife and children. My wife Marie and I are both 35 years old, even if we both refuse to acknowledge we’re past our 20’s. We have two twin six year-old boys that we are absolutely crazy about. Since I am going to be documenting our lives in this journal, I have decided to not disclose their names. I’m not sure exactly how much I will be revealing in my writings, but I plan to be pretty real. Thus, they shall remain nameless for their protection.

In regards to this journal, I will do my best not to be too political, as that is what has gotten this country in the position it is in now. To make a very long story short: At the turn of the century, America began to accumulate unimaginable amounts of debt. It had gotten to the point where a billion dollars of government spending seemed like a grain of sand on an endless coastline. Inflation crept in. Well, actually it roared in. Within a few decades, the dollar collapsed and collapsed hard. Overnight, our currency became worthless. Soon after that, the comforts that we had grown accustomed to such as power and electricity, gasoline, running water, and cable TV either went away or became restricted and rationed. To give an example of what I am talking about, there is no more cable television, yet we have strictly monitored power and running water Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday.

Social services in general are hanging on by a thread. Hospitals and pharmacies are now run by the government. They are usually overflowing with people who are either very sick or faking sickness in an effort to hoard medicines. Simple diseases such as pneumonia are a killer once again. There are still police and fire fighters, though they are spread thin as well, particularly the police. Due to the shortage of gasoline, the police are only able to patrol my area twice a week if we are lucky. At that point, we can discuss any issues we are having or try to find out any information about what’s going on.

Walkie talkies and CB radios have made a comeback. Hard line phones still work, but cell phones no longer have signals (and nobody knows quite why). Making a call from a landline is not easy though. It can take several hours to finally get a line and more often than not, you will be disconnected during your call. The downtown areas in many large cities have become near ghost towns and overrun with criminal activity. For example, I live about 80 miles north of Atlanta. The once flourishing skyscrapers and high rises are now empty. There are a few that still operate, but most are boarded up and/or housing many of the ever rising homeless population. The only good thing I can say about this is that the miserable Atlanta traffic is now gone.

I honestly don’t want to write any more about this today. Every time I think about what’s going on, it causes me to get a bit depressed. I will cover the rest tomorrow...or the day after that.

JOURNAL ENTRY #3

With each passing day the weather gets warmer. Man, I love the spring in Georgia. There is this amazing transformation taking place all around us. The dry, brownish grass is fading, making way for the lush greener grass to spring forth. Berries will soon be growing on the bushes, trees will become fuller, and wildlife ranging from bees to bunnies will start to get active. I consider myself blessed to be able to sit back and watch it all happen.

So, I am sitting on the porch right now, having just completed my morning scan, and it feels right to crack open the journal again. Why am I writing this? This thought crosses my mind even as I pen this sentence. The challenges, fears, successes, failures, and fellowship are all extraordinarily different from what they were just seven or eight years ago. Maybe a century from now, when the country is up and running again (knocking on wood), this journal will be discovered and maybe even treasured. Maybe this is just therapeutic for me.

Regarding the Morning Scan, there are a few of us in the neighborhood that have made a commitment to do at least one every morning. There are two main goals of this scan. The first is for security purposes, and the second is to see if there is any wildlife out there so we can have fresh meat. This particular morning the only thing I saw was some sort of bird. I pegged it with the first shot, but I haven’t gone to retrieve him yet (I’m deadly accurate with that BB gun). He won’t provide much meat, but I like the kids to get a little protein in them whenever possible. Besides, they won’t know that Daddy popped a pretty bird. I’ll tell them it was a squirrel.

Back to what I was talking about a few days ago...

Because the entire social service system has either shut down or has been relegated to being on near life support, typical American jobs have also disappeared. I worked in sales for a large technology company where I sold software equipment to businesses. When the dollar collapsed and the rest of the economy followed, my company quickly went bankrupt, along with almost 95% of businesses nationwide. Automakers, coffee shops, furniture stores, book stores, restaurants...all gone. The only things that have survived are the postal service (which runs worse than ever), grocery stores, pharmacies, hospitals, police and fire stations, and a few other things that I can’t even think of right now. Anything that has survived is government run, with the exception of barter towns (which I will get into later) and individual citizens selling a trade, skill, or product.

Our food is rationed and given to us on set times. For instance, my zone (which consists of my neighborhood and a few others like ours) is visited every Wednesday by government officials. They pass out the food in an orderly manner. This isn’t like George Orwell’s 1984 though. The officials are usually nice people, like you or me, who are just fortunate enough to have a job. The food rations have stayed pretty consistent. Rice, beans, coffee, peanut butter, vitamin supplements, and canned fruits/vegetables are pretty much the norm. I am proud to say that my neighborhood has been very polite and respectful when the aid arrives each week.

We have heard stories of the Aid Teams being overrun and looted for all they have. That’s not the case here. We have a system in place in which the food is passed out in an orderly manner and divided up among the families. I and a few others started our own New Beginning, as we call it, for our neighborhood, but I will go into that in another entry. Due to the lack of meat that we get, many of us have taken to hunting, fishing, and even...shooting squirrels and birds. It’s a good way to make the beans and peanut butter last. I have been able to store up a couple weeks of food for my family in case the Aid Teams were to stop coming. On the rare occurrence that someone in the neighborhood shoots a deer or a bear (yes, a bear), we have a barbeque for all who want to attend. As I mentioned before, running water is available about half the week, so going thirsty is not an issue as we all make sure to fill up our jugs on those days.

In my next entry, I look forward to writing about my neighborhood and the security we have set in place. I gotta get going now; it’s time to get on with my day. I hear my little rascals getting up and coming downstairs. I love them so much it hurts. We will survive this crisis and we will survive anyone who tries to turn this country or my neighborhood into anarchy.

I’ve killed a lot of people.

JOURNAL ENTRY #4

Before I get started today, I would like to apologize. My temper got the best of me as I closed out my last entry. In the blink of an eye, I went from describing the fall of our democracy to telling you I’ve killed a lot of people. Just so you don’t think of me as a total lunatic, let me tell you briefly what happened there at the end of my last entry.

As I was finishing up writing, I could hear by baby boys coming down the stairs. I was sitting out on the porch with the sliding glass door open and I could hear them talking as they were coming downstairs. Their voices and conversations are unbelievably endearing. They’re twin boys...twin six year-old boys. They are so cute when they get to talking. I guess when I heard them coming, it made me think about this world we’re living in, and the hardships that await them. Those hardships may come in the form of lack of provisions, lack of shelter, lack of stability, and a lack of civility by our fellow citizens. The latter is what sparked the anger in me. Without going into too much detail, we have had some...how should I say this... Wild West style skirmishes break out while defending our little piece of turf, i.e. our neighborhood. Those that think they can take by force or intimidation have been known to venture into the area. All have been dispatched unceremoniously, though all were given adequate warnings.

Actually, it’s kind of weird. Before everything came crashing down, I was pretty much your stereotypical middle class American guy. I had a job in sales, we drove a minivan, had barbeques, attended church occasionally, worked in the yard, etc...etc.... When it all stopped, I transformed rather quickly into a man that could pull the trigger without batting an eye. Perhaps it was the primal instinct in me that had lurked deep within. As a teenager, I liked a good dust-up more than the average boy, but I was by no means an aggressor or bully. Some would say I was quick to mix it up when the time arose. But once you’re married and you start having little kids that are depending on you, those wild tendencies tend to dissipate to a place no longer remembered. No more did I look for confrontations, but rather avoided them at all costs, which of course is the way it should be.

Now however, there is reason to let the madman in me flourish. Not all the time mind you, but when the situation calls for it. Believe me when I say, the situation has called for it and then some. We encounter all kinds of people nowadays and not all are friendly. But there is no need to talk further of things that have happened in the past. The goal of this journal is to document the day-to-day events that happen over the course of my lifetime, however long that may be.

To recap it all, let’s just say this. The country has fallen, therefore, the rest of the world has fallen. There is very little information in regards to plans of recovery. It is not yet anarchy, social services still exist minimally. Food is not yet scarce, but also not as bountiful that we Americans had become accustomed to. Power and water are rationed and gasoline is all but non-existent.

So, that’s where we stand. I and my fellow neighbors are intent on rebuilding this country, starting with our neighborhood and then moving beyond. In my next entry, I promise to tell you about this fine group of people I now survive with.

JOURNAL ENTRY #5

I do want to clear one thing up before I get started with today’s entry. I really want to reiterate that our country has not turned into a Hollywood style End of the World movie setting. We have all seen Mad Max or perhaps read the book The Road. A lot of these types of apocalyptic movies contain raggedly clothed survivors wandering aimlessly throughout a scorched or environmentally ravaged America, hoping to avoid mohawked, motorcycle-riding strongmen who rape, pillage, and murder anyone who does not succumb to their wills and desires. Get those images out of your head before reading further. The so-called strongmen that we have had to deal with have usually been alone or in groups of five to seven people. Those that have been alone are usually just some guy looking to steal food or supplies. Little did they know they were wandering into a neighborhood that was well-equipped and prepared for such intruders. The real challenges have come from the small bands of men, sometimes up to a dozen or so, who come to our entrance demanding such provisions. A lot of these groups are what we refer to as militias.

When I was growing up, back when America was still the greatest nation on earth, there were certain pockets or groups of people that banded together and formed militias. For some reason, it seemed like these groups resided in the less-populated states, such as Montana or the Dakotas. Their main goal was usually to separate themselves from the government and live on their own devices. Some were violent, some were dangerous religious cults. But in reality, they were no threat to the general well-being of our thriving economy and society. Most of the time, they kept to themselves, with the exception of some militia or cult that crossed one too many lines, leading to the government stepping in to take them down. We would all watch those stories unfold on the news, see the end result, then turn the channel back to the football game. For those of us not involved or touched by these stories, it was nothing more than a twisted sort of entertainment. However, that is not the case anymore.

Militias are on the rise...and they are no longer something happening in a faraway land. With desperation polluting American minds, criminal activity has increased exponentially. Throw in government corruption, such as hording supplies, food, and medicine, and that leads to once law-abiding citizens taking the law into their own hands. Some of these groups are honestly good folks, who feel they were simply out of options. I am actually friends with a few men that are in a militia. They are solid guys, though they are wired a little too tight for my liking. However, there are others out there that call themselves militia, when in reality they are nothing more than a gang. Those are the ones we have had to deal with in an unkind manner.

The few times that this has happened, the standoff that ensued lasted for several hours or sometimes a couple days, as they were as well-equipped as we were...or better in one instance. Our small, 20 man local police force has aided in our fights on a couple of occasions. But this isn’t like the old days. When you radio for the police, it can be hours before any help comes. Due to them being spread so thin, they are always working some emergency situation, so you literally get put on a list for the next available officer. Even without police support, we have been successful in the few times we have been attacked.

For the purposes of this journal, I think I should describe to you what we have set in place to defend our families and our possessions.

I will start by saying that our neighborhood is basically one big oval. It is not like some of those modern monster neighborhoods that sprawl for several miles, containing several streets and cross streets. There is only one way into Clover Springs (the name of our neighborhood). Picture in your head an oval lying on its side, like an egg lying on a floor. Then draw a line right through the middle of it from the floor to the top of the egg. That is Clover Springs.

The road leading into our neighborhood is called Clover Pass, and it basically divides the oval in half. Clover Loop is the road that makes up the oval. It is a small neighborhood by American standards, containing about 80 houses. The road that connects to our neighborhood (James Street) is not a busy one either. In fact, the only reason you would be on that road was to come to our neighborhood. However, James Street is connected to a once busy street with commercial and residential property. This has prompted us to establish a lookout at the entrance of Clover Springs that can see anyone coming and give us a good 30 second warning if need be.

At the entrance, which is the north side of Clover Springs, we have constructed a makeshift blockade of a broken down truck, a large worn-out couch, and a few small piles of cinder blocks. Doing this has protected us from any unwanted vehicles being able to break through . Two men or a husband and wife team constantly guard this area day and night. When someone from inside needs to take their car out for some reason, we push the truck out of the way (although due to the lack of gasoline, it is extremely rare to drive your car these days for anything other than medical reasons). The homes on the north side that are up against James Street are protected by a brick wall that was put in place when the neighborhood was built. It is about five feet high and guards the entire north side, with the exception of the street entrance leading into the neighborhood itself. Though the wall does not offer complete security from the outside, it is a good deterrent. We have set up a patrol on each side of the oval to watch the wall throughout the night.

Both the east and the west sides of the oval are guarded by large Georgia foothills. The hills are about 50 feet high and possess a small tree line. I suppose it would be possible to get a car through the tree line and down the hill, but the steepness of the decline would probably cause the vehicle to go end over end. Getting down the hill on foot is no picnic either. To offer a bit more security, we have placed a makeshift barbwire fence on the slopes of each hill. Those that live in the houses which back up to the hills were thankful for that.

To the south are woods, containing a small creek and dense trees. The woods go back for a couple of miles and then connect and end at State Road 54. In the summer, it is very difficult to see clearly what is back there. This is what presents our greatest challenge for defense. Although no vehicles can permeate the woods, most attacks still originate there. My house is up against those woods, and this is why I am one of those who does the morning scan. At night, we have two groups of two men stationed back there (in the woods). Believe me when I say, it’s a pretty frightening ordeal to be out there at night on patrol, especially when you hear people coming. Not to mention the fact that all sorts of bugs and snakes roam around you. We eventually got around to building some platforms that we could set up on that stood a few feet off the ground. Perhaps I will write about some of those wild nights in a later entry. Frankly, some of the images of things we have had to do in those woods still haunt me, but I digress.

In addition, during the night we have four men patrolling the street at all times. They basically walk the oval over and over, never being in a position where they can’t see the man in front of them and the man behind them can’t see them. This job consists largely of carrying a flashlight and shining it in between the houses every so often. Due to us only getting power four days a week, the neighborhood’s street lights are not on, causing almost complete darkness on most nights. Moonless and/or rainy nights present a great challenge to this role.

All of these patrols are done in shifts. Every man is assigned a timeslot and a position to patrol. There are over 110 able-bodied men to fulfill these tasks, ranging in age from the few senior citizens we have to some of the older teenage boys. The women on the south side are asked to observe the woods a couple hours during the day with binoculars. They are great at allowing the husbands to rest during the day if they patrolled the night before. Many of the women have volunteered to be a part of the patrol rotation. In most cases, we have found the front blockade or oval patrol is the best position for them. Both sexes have agreed to the way we run security in Clover Springs.

For the most part, that is how we maintain the security here. There are a few more minor details, but all in all, this is how we get things done. As of this day, no man or group has been able to successfully penetrate the borders of our community for more than a brief moment of time.

JOURNAL ENTRY #6

It’s been a few days since I last wrote. Yesterday, we received our food rations from the Aid Teams. Unfortunately, the portions are getting a bit smaller, probably by about ten percent. We called an emergency Town Hall Meeting to discuss our options. Town Hall Meetings are done on Wednesdays and Saturdays. We set up the meeting in the middle of Clover Pass, in order to be in a position to view most of the neighborhood. During these Town Hall’s, we discuss security issues, food, news from the outside (if any) and also plan fun and recreational activities. This is also a good time to discuss any potential feuds that are brewing amongst the neighborhood itself, which thankfully has been a rare thing. We called this meeting on a Friday because of the reduction in food rations.

We decided to work together more to provide food for the neighborhood as a whole. In addition to increasing our gardens and trying to plant more fruit trees, the plan is to ramp up our hunting and fishing expeditions. That may sound like no big deal, but trust me, it is. Leaving the confines and security of Clover Springs is always a potentially dicey situation. The odds