Free The Solitary Man’s Refuge by Ron Foster Page A

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splinter out of your finger increased exponentially so
magnifiers were needed and hey, they could double as fire
starters. These cheap Chinese-made magnifying glasses
would get scratched easily and were not good for any
trying to use for long term reading but they were going to
be in demand, he thought, and gathered up 6 of them in
different sizes. Hey, at a buck apiece, he figured it wasn’t a
waste of money at all. He had already bought several
different pairs of cheap reading glasses from a dollar store,
too. Hell, he needed them himself oftentimes and they
could get used eventually even if he didn’t need to trade
them someday.
    The clerk looked at him funny when he plopped
down on the counter what was probably all the magnifying
glasses the store had in stock but didn’t make any
comments. Donald carried his bag full of prepper products
back to the truck and started reflecting back on the week
that had been.
    He knew he had been pushing himself too hard and
hoped this little trip might do him some good in his outlook
and attitude. Being stuck off by himself was sort of fun at
first. But then it got kind of lonely and what with all the
changes going on both personally and the world had
seemed to cause him to start drinking way too much. Oh,
he got the work done all right, that was also a good way for
him to not touch anything for days as he was just too tired
and dehydrated to even study a beer. His old nemesis,
Jack Daniels had crept back into his life and Donald
wondered why he ever thought about getting back in the
ring with that heavy weight champion of the world. Donald
liked coke and whisky but the whiskey did not like him.
Folks said he changed when he got on that stuff. Donald
had a bit of Indian blood in him and that might be part of it,
but he figured consuming a bottle of it at a time on an
empty stomach might have a lot to do with it, too. He
shook his head to himself in humiliation at the thought that
he had gone off the deep end a while back and went on a
two or three day mind bender drinking from morning and
into the night and had almost screwed up his relationship
with his favorite neighbors Michael and his girlfriend, Amy.
Thankfully, they had overlooked his drunken antics and
feeling sorry for himself and let it pass after promising to
swear off whiskey for good. Donald had had a girlfriend
who had to swear off vodka the same way and if he had
been acting half the fool he thought he had been, could
relate to how crazy some folks could get.
    These two neighbors were great folks to have
around and they had sort of just hit it off at the beginning
as Donald started to settle into getting his place fixed up.
Michael was a retired diesel mechanic and Nam Vet who
was sort of a biker and hippie combined. He had helped
Donald on several projects and Donald was always
amazed at this man’s ingenuity. It was Michael who had
showed him the first day they met a really unique way he
was getting water for his garden from the creek in back of
him.
    He had built a removable wooden box that could fit
into a lawn tractor trailer and mounted a 30-gallon barrel to
the box. His method was to drive his lawnmower down to
the creek and use a small emergency sump pump
powered by the tractors’ battery to fill the tank. He had a
solar trickle charger for the battery when not in use but
Donald had donated a Sears Marine battery and a small
briefcase size charger to the cause of upgrading the
system and seeing just what else Michael could dream up.
Donald was blessed with several extra preps from doing
manufacturers reviews and would often share some of this
wealth by giving it to Michael to help get him more
prepped. These gestures, Donald thought, also helped him
more than they did Michael in that Michael not only
showed him new techniques or uses for an item, but also
vastly increased his chances of survival by adding different
resources he didn’t have yet like the means to transport
water his friend possessed.
    Amy was