Life Goes On, page 3
part #7 of The Yellowstone Event Series
“Yep. Keep using small words and I’ll stay up with you.”
“Okay, so we hire maybe fifty to seventy five people for initial construction. They’re employed for six to nine months building the RV recycling center for Alaska.
“Once it’s done we send another job call out. This time we’re looking for people to run the recycling center. Managers and supervisors. Sheet metal specialists. Gas and diesel engine mechanics. General laborers. Body work specialists. Drivers. Whatever they need to run the place.
“Again, we only hire Yellowstone refugees. We don’t consider any outsiders unless we can’t find any of the refugees who are qualified.”
“Okay, stop for a minute. Let me pop an ibuprofen. You’re giving me a headache.”
Jamie ignored him and kept talking.
“Then, once the RV recycling centers are operational, we send out another call. Only this time we’re not looking for workers. We’re looking for recreational vehicles.
“We’ll put the word out that we’re looking for the RVs the refugees don’t plan to use any more. And we tell them to bring them to the new recycling centers.”
“Jamie, you’re on drugs. Nobody’s gonna bring them back to us.”
“They will if we offer to pay them.”
Chapter 6
“Now I’m convinced you’ve lost your mind.”
“Why?”
“What makes you think the government is going to purchase an RV that they already paid for once and then gave away?”
“It’s simple economics, really.
“Word has gotten out that the federal government is buying all the recreational vehicles they can get their hands on. In fact, they’ve already bought every new RV at every dealer in the nation. And now they’re buying used ones at exorbitant prices.
“The reason the prices have been jacked up is because people know the federal government will buy anything.
“In a word, the government buyers are getting screwed. Big time.
“Included in the contract the refugees signed when they got their RV was a stipulation that they couldn’t sell it. They couldn’t donate it to charity either. They had to agree to keep it until it turned to dust or to have it scrapped. And then they had to send a disposal certificate to DHS to prove it was scrapped.”
“So?”
“So, we send each of the refugees a letter, telling them there’s now a third option. We send them an amendment to their original contract and ask them to staple the amendment to the back of the contract.
“The amendment will say that they can sell the RV after all, as long as they sell it exclusively to the federal government.
“And that the government will purchase their RV back for a non-negotiable sum of ten thousand dollars.”
“As is?”
“Yes. As is.”
“Man, you’re loony tunes.”
“Why?”
“Let’s see… where do I begin?
“Okay, for starters, the government is not gonna pay ten thousand dollars for something it already paid for.”
“Sure they will. They’re stupid, remember? And besides, like I said, it’s a matter of simple economics. The government is desperate for RVs. So desperate they’re paying eighty, a hundred, a hundred fifty thousand dollars apiece for them.
“But for every used one they can buy off a refugee for ten grand, it’s one fewer they have to pay an outrageous amount for.”
“But why would the refugees sell something so valuable for just ten grand? Won’t they want to negotiate a better price?”
“Sure they will. But they’ll be prohibited from doing so by the new amendment. The amendment will very specifically say that’s all they’re gonna get, take it or leave it, because the government official they’ll have to deal with has no authority to deviate from the terms set in the amendment.
“It’ll be ten grand, take it or leave it.”
“Jamie, nobody’s gonna take ten grand for an RV that’s worth ten times that.”
“You say they won’t. I say that many or most of them will.”
“You say… you say. But why? Why would they?”
“Because most of them won’t have a use for them anymore.
“Most of them are tired of traveling. They’re tired of living in an RV. Most of all they’re tired of anything that reminds them of the Yellowstone volcano.
“They can only sell the RV to the federal government. And the government will only pay them ten thousand for it.
“Meanwhile, they’re in a tight. Their monthly stipend is going to run out on them, and jobs aren’t as plentiful as everyone hoped they were.
“Given a choice between hanging on to a big chunk of metal they’ll probably never use again, or signing it over for a check that’ll feed them for a year while they’re looking for work, and I’ll bet most people will take the deal.
“And if they complain about the amount, our agent can remind them that, hey, they were given the RV free of charge. That the government stepped up and helped them out when they needed it the most. And now they have a chance to return the favor.”
“But… but… what about the stipulation they’ll buy it back as is? Some of them will be trashed. Some will be dented. Some will be beat all to hell.”
“Wow, you’re really a glass is half empty kind of person, aren’t you?”
“I can’t help it. It comes from working for the government.”
“That’s where the recycling center steps in and does their thing, my friend.
“When an RV comes in to be sold, our agent verifies the vehicle identification number to make sure it’s legit. That way thieves can’t steal any old RV and try to sell it for quick cash.
“Once it’s verified our agent makes out a check and takes the keys. It’s then driven over and given a bumper to bumper inspection to determine what it needs.
“If it needs mechanical work it’s sent to our mechanics. Body work? It’ll go to the body shop. If it’s missing any parts or equipment they’ll be replaced.
“I’ll bet a lot of them just need a good thorough cleaning to get all the ash and dust out of their seams.
“Whatever it takes, they’ll be made whole again.”
“So, then what?”
“Many of the refugees we hire will be drivers. Once an RV is made ready they’ll drive it back to the lower forty eight and hand it off to one of the processing centers, where it’ll be given to another refugee on the waiting list.
“Our driver will be given a plane ticket and a ride to the nearest airport, where he’ll fly back to Anchorage, or wherever he originated from, and will do it again.”
“It still sounds like an expensive program to me.”
“Yes. It won’t be cheap. But this thing hasn’t been cheap from the beginning. In the end it’ll get a lot more refugees employed and will save the government at least sixty thousand dollars per unit. How can anyone not like my idea?”
Chapter 7
Jamie’s idea did have merit and was given the attention it deserved when FEMA caught wind of it.
He was given a pat on the back, but none of the millions of dollars his suggestion would save the agency.
Instead he was threatened with being fired if he dared tell the media it was his idea.
Two days later the head of FEMA, a political appointee, announced during a press conference that he’d just developed a new program to buy back used RVs from Yellowstone refugees… at a fraction of the cost of buying new ones.
He went on to say that reusing such vehicles would require a bit of restoration and relocation… and that his new jobs program would provide for that while putting many refugees back to work.
His best friend, the President of the United States who appointed him, lauded his brilliance. He put the director in for the Presidential Medal of Freedom Award.
Only a small handful of people knew the President only appointed the director to the position to wipe out a years-old gambling debt.
Ah, but that’s the way things are done within the beltway in Washington, D.C. The city was built on swamp land and continues to be mired in one. And every politician who claims he’ll get rid of the alligators just replaces them with bigger ones.
That was okay.
Jamie was a good American and a proud patriot. Much more so than the director who took the credit for Jamie’s grand idea.
Jamie wasn’t in it for the glory, or the paycheck.
He was in it for the right reasons. Because he wanted to help America get back on her feet.
In the months and years ahead many of the refugees would make use of Jamie’s insight.
Many would take advantage of the sell-back option and would spend the ten thousand dollars to purchase food until a job became available.
Many others were thankful to find jobs repairing the repurchased RVs, or cleaning them, or driving them back to the lower forty eight where they were needed by the next wave of refugees.
Yes, many of the refugees who’d come to Alaska and were trying to get by would take advantage of Jamie’s idea.
But not Melvyn and Tony.
Melvyn and Tony took a different route.
Melvyn and Tony joined a lot of other men who decided it was silly to sit around all day long while other men and women were working hard to build their cabins, cut down their trees, dig their trenches and put the finishing touches on their new homes.
The two of them sat down one evening and decided there must be a better way.
So they came up with one.
They developed something they called the Etlunka Lake Labor Co-op.
A plain language name for a really simple concept.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency was like most other big and bloated government agencies.
They were long on ideas and short on the abilities and talents to implement them.
Jamie’s idea to recover the used RVs was a case in point.
FEMA had a grand scheme, at the onset of rumblings in the Yellowstone Caldera, that recovery was simply a matter of moving evacuees to safe areas, giving them a few acres of land and a job, and letting them take it from there.
They didn’t progress much beyond that grand scheme when they had the chance… before the volcano blew… and were caught with their pants down.
They assumed their grand scheme was good enough, but it failed to materialize in sufficient numbers to get people working again.
What they needed was a whole bunch of Jamies with a whole bunch of ideas, each one doing its part toward getting to that grand scheme.
They didn’t have that because they didn’t work out plans and programs years in advance.
What they had instead was a lot of refugees with idle time on their hands. Loads of potential labor from men and women who had the talents and the abilities and the desire to work, but little work to do.
It was just… dumb.
It was the government way.
Melvyn and Tony worked out the details of their plan before they called a meeting to spring it on everyone.
“Okay, we’re trying to get a labor co-op going. So that the people who are handy with their hands have something to do besides sit around all day waiting for FEMA to deliver on all those jobs they’ve been promising.
“At the same time, those who aren’t particularly handy with their hands will have help to build their cabins. And even if they can do everything themselves, it’ll go much faster.”
A hand went up at the back of the gathering.
“I’m for anything that’ll get me off my butt and make me productive again. This sitting around waiting for a job to come to me is for the birds. How does your plan work?”
“Simple. You’ll work for credit hours, helping whichever family is in the process of building their cabin or clearing their land. You’ll report to them when you arrive and when you depart. They’ll sign a sheet that says how many hours you helped them, and we’ll log it in and keep track of it.
“You’ll stop being a helper once your own bundle of building supplies arrives. You’ll shift over to your own property, building your own cabin and clearing your own land.
“That’s when you get paid back for helping your neighbors. If you accumulated two hundred hours helping others, we’ll send the new guys over to help you on your cabin until the two hundred hours is paid back.
“In other words, every hour you spend helping someone else will be paid back by someone helping you. And it’ll get you, as you so eloquently put it, ‘off your butt and productive again.’”
Chapter 8
Things were looking up at Etlunka Lake. Gwen and Melvyn and Tony and Hannah hadn’t yet received the building materials they needed to build their cabins. But they were making friends and familiarizing themselves with the area and were finding ways to stay busy and contribute.
They were, to use a tired old term, happy campers.
Even little Samson, Tony and Hannah’s baby boy, seemed pleased as punch. His vocabulary was up to four words now: no, poo-poo, mama and yuck.
And he laughed so freely he brought joy to everyone around him. All the women took turns caring for him while his parents worked with their neighbors, helping them raise their cabins with the expectation those neighbors would return the favor someday.
More than once the sitters joked they wouldn’t be there when Tony and Hannah got back. That they’d take young Samson and abscond with him, finding a new place to settle and keeping him for their very own.
It was all done in good humor. People always threaten to steal very happy babies. Or to trade said happy baby for their own, perhaps less huggable and loveable baby.
Tony and Hannah were careful to hold their tongues, but the truth was the joking threats of kidnapping stung just a bit.
Only their best friends Gwen and Melvyn knew that their baby had been stolen from them on the day he was born. The culprits then were with the Department of Homeland Security. They were trying to silence Hannah, to keep her from sharing with the public what she knew about the pending Yellowstone eruption.
The baby was stolen a second time, this time from the Department, by a government contractor who was emotionally unstable.
Marilyn had lived a very troubled life. She’d been a drug user and a prostitute and had been in and out of jail several times.
Most of her troubles were internal, though.
She had a very damaged mind, both from a life of abuse by others and abuse of her own accord from the drugs she put into her body.
Marilyn had another devastating event in her past. She lost a young son to SIDS. It, more than anything else she’d suffered, destroyed her. It made her empty on the inside.
It made it difficult for her to distinguish fantasy from reality, right from wrong.
She did contract work for the Department of Homeland Security. She was a shady character, sure. But many of the things the DHS was involved in were shady as well. She did the type of work for the agency that people with stronger morals and cleaner pasts would not think of doing.
One was to take the baby the DHS stole from Hannah and care for him until Hannah was released.
The problem was that Marilyn saw this as her one and only chance to replace the baby she’d lost. She took the opportunity to take young Samson Carson and claim him as her very own.
It didn’t end well for her.
The DHS tends to take exception to its employees and contractors who deviate from their assigned duties and cause them problems. Like many government agencies they play fast and loose with the laws and the rules.
They have many secrets, and they guard them closely.
People like Marilyn who could expose such secrets either intentionally or because they are careless are a supreme threat to the DHS and therefore must be neutralized.
Marilyn paid for her sins with her life, and eventually baby Samson made his way back to his parents.
Of all the people at Etlunka Lake only Gwen and Melvyn shared the secret of Samson’s kidnapping. And they, of course, would never dream of telling a soul.
There were others who noticed Hannah’s unease anytime someone praised young Samson for being the perfect baby and jokingly threatened to steal him. Luckily, no one ever asked her why. For that might have torn open an old wound and caused her more pain than she could bear.
Tony thought her to be a very overprotective mother at times.
Hannah saw it differently.
Hannah saw it as insurance she’d never lose her son again.
Chapter 9
The little town of Hays, Kansas is a very long way from Etlunka Lake. Almost twenty seven hundred miles, in fact.
The difference in the moods between the people at those places couldn’t be measured. “Worlds apart” just didn’t seem an adequate description.
Life these days in Hays was miserable for most.
Most of the town was heavily damaged by the eruption.
Many were killed.
Exactly how many couldn’t be ascertained.
Hundreds had evacuated the town in the days prior to the eruption. A lot of them never told anyone.
No one knew for sure how many residents were left when the eruption rocked their world.
Even now, as first responders and volunteers plowed through knee-high ash drifts and went door to door, they were still finding bodies.
The mood was somber and bleak.
Mount Kilgore Regional Medical Center was the closest fully-functional trauma center to ground zero in any direction.
Everyone, without exception, had lost someone.
Many of the staff lost everything: their loved ones, their homes, their reasons for living.
The only thing which kept some of them going was the task at hand, and the desire to make the hurting stop.
For others. Not for themselves.
Actually, that last part isn’t quite true.
