This is my last post before Christmas.
Merry Christmas.
It’s easy this time of year to get caught up in materialistic desire. Buy this, buy that; show how much you love them, by getting them this and that. Wants come easy and often.
Gratitude?
This is my post to be thankful.
Despite the fact I like writing about preparedness topics an ruminating on SHTF scenarios, I’m very thankful that no large-scale, systemic collapse of society has happened. I’m thankful that grocery stores shelves are packed with food. I’m thankful that home heating oil still comes delivered to my house. I’m thankful there’s no raging, deadly pandemic. I’m thankful we haven’t been hit by an EMP.
This is a Christmas meal in Smithland, Iowa – 1936 (Great Depression):
(Image source here.) I bet they were thankful just to have Christmas dinner. I showed this picture to my kids. They need to learn to be thankful, too. Read this (source) from a man recalling the Great Depression days:
“I remember one Christmas when the only present I got was a pair of socks, and I was glad to get them,” said Lee Beneke, who grew up on a farm near Laurens in Pocahontas County, Iowa.
Even now, some kids are asking Santa for basic needs instead of toys. Sure most kids are focused on the hottest toys, but some just want a winter coat and new shoes.
Here are a few things I’m thankful for this Christmas:
- I’m thankful for my family’s health. My son has asthma and a peanut allergy, but … things could be worse – A LOT worse.
- I’m thankful I still have a job. My wife was laid off, but things would have been much worse if I’d been laid off. If I’d been laid off the house probably would’ve gone with it.
- I’m thankful we kept full coverage on an older car that we had long since paid off. When it was totaled the insurance check made getting another one a lot easier.
- In blog land, I’m thankful for you faithful readers (slowly growing in number) and that Jarhead Survivor helps carry the torch. Maintaining this blog by myself, while working a full time job and carrying too many home responsibilities, is exceptionally tough. It’s easier with another writer.
What are you thankful for?
– Ranger Man
11 comments
And thank you and Jarhead Survivor for maintaining this blog. I look foreward to it daily. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
Yep! Thats kinda what we re goin back too. Gerald Celente is saying that on the near future, Christmas will be a more subdued affair and more about food and being together than about the gifts and commercialism. Enjoy Christmas while we are still able to celebrate it openly. Merry Christmas……
I am thankful for this blog, my family, my current freedom, and a God that has blessed me beyond deserving.
Wow, all sorts of Iowa shout outs today. 🙂 I grew up in OK, so the dust bowl and great depression remain large sources of inspiration to me in my preps. Since moving to NW Iowa, I have been doing small bits of research into Iowa experiences during the great depression, as well as the normalities of rural life during the winter season before plows were widely used. Very eye opening stuff.
I am thankful for my healthy family and our simple life. I’m thankful we can live on my income and hubby gets to stay home with our son. I’m thankful for the large shelf in the basement full of canned garden goodness.
Merry Christmas to Ranger Man and Jarhead. You are two of the many things that I am thankful for.
Peace, Love and Joy to you and yours.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year and may God bless you all and our country!
merry Christmas to Ranger, Jarhead and all of theirs.
Like you, we are also thankful that SHTF has not happened yet (more time to prepare for the possibilities). Also thankful that we have found some helpful blogs, yours included, to assist in educating, informing and offering useful advice. For that, thank you. Merry Christmas to you and yours.
Merry Christmas guys. I’m thankful for my family and friends, the way my parents raised me, and the community I grew up in. I’m also thankful for finding the preparedness community and all the work people like Ranger Man and Jarhead do that make this community possible.
Merry Christmas SHTFblog, keep up the great work.
For me this time of year reminds me of the 2 main things that I am thankful for, besides the ability to practice my religion of choice (Christianity, I am Baptist), and that is #1 My AWESOME family #2 ALL of the men and women who protect our country and its citizens from threats (both here and abroad), and the families that support/love them.
I feel the need to explain a little about these choices and why I am so thankful for them, so please “indulge” me for a few moments. Most of the people here in the US have not lived overseas, let alone overseas in a SHTF situation. My family was stationed in Panama from 1987-1992, for those of us who know our history, December 1989 was a little known/remembered event called “Operation Just Cause”. A complete A$$HOLE named Manuel Noriega took control of the country of Panama through military force in the months before 12/89, utilizing his money obtained through drug trafficking to further his aspirations of national domination. We were stationed on the main communications base for the US military called Corozal, which is located right on the Panama Canal. In the months before 12/89, when the S truly HTF, all civilians had been restricted to the bases they lived on and were only allowed off base with MP escorts. This meant that even our school buses had 2-4 fully armed MP’s on board along with 2 APC’s and several HMMWV “gun trucks” acting as escorts. There were several times that I can recall where the cowards Noriega had under him fired on my school bus, and there were casualties, although it is not publicized. The forces then in power were attempting to “starve out” the US soldiers and their dependents, meaning that for about 2 months before 12/89, supplies were VERY limited. One morning at about 0400, my mother and father came bursting into the room I shared with my brother. That was when things got REAL BAD, my mother had been awakened by the sound of small arms fire, my father had to go to his duty station with MTMC (to ensure our troops had their “beans & bullets”), leaving my brother, mother and I in our home on Corozal. Before he left, he and my mother set up the “A/C room” (think a medium sized closet with an air handler in it) in our house with a few sleeping bags, water, lanterns and a case of MRE’s. As he was leaving, he gave my mother the Mossberg 500 12ga riot shotgun he had purchased on our last trip to the states, and handed me his Taurus PT92 (I was 8 at the time) with 4 mags and a box of bullets, he then said “If ANYONE comes to the door and does not know our password… shoot… we will figure out what happened after everyone is safe!”. We spent 7 days in that tiny room, listening to the sound of firearms, and mortar shells landing all over the base because of the PDF’s (Panama Defense Force) attempts to knock out the communication systems that were about 200yds from our house. In the early morning hours of Christmas Eve 1989, a group of 4 soldiers came into our home shouting the “password” that our family had established and used for years before. They told us that my father had arranged transportation for all of the civilians that were left on Corozal to be evacuated back to the states. One of them scooped my brother under one arm, and tossed me over his opposite shoulder, they rushed us out to an armored HMMWV and we quickly joined a convoy taking us to meet up with my father. When we met up with him and fairly small convoy of M113 APC’s, and a few HMMWV’s along with 2 Bradley’s at Quarry Heights (the main Operations base in Panama), there wound up being to many people and not enough seats in the vehicles, so my father piled us into his Isuzu Trooper II and we made for Howard AFB. Wile in route we came under fire a few times, the worst was when we were crossing “the Bridge of the Americas”, the convoy was forced to stop and I will never forget the sound of those Bradley’s 25mm main guns “opening up” on the tree line, extinguishing any muzzle flash that became visible. We managed to get to Howard AFB, though a few of the soldiers escorting us and one civilian that I know of were injured. Most of us were loaded up onto a C-141 and about 20 of us (including my mother, brother and I) were put on then Sec. of State Dick Chaney’s leer jet. It seemed like the moment that the engines on the planes turned on the jungle surrounding the base exploded with small arms fire. There were a few RPG’s fired in the direction of our transport as well. I remember my mother crying as my father left the jet after making sure we were secured in our seats, and we were on our way to the states in minutes. We arrived at Andrews AFB in Md, during one of the worst winter storms they had in decades late in the evening of Christmas eve. We were dressed for the tropical weather we had become accustomed to and were freezing (it was 110F in Panama when we left). A female Air Force officer had scrounged up some blankets and jackets for us, and my mother called my grandfather to come and get us. As we waited in the ice cold, tiny terminal building, I remember my mother getting every one there to pray for the soldiers and our loved ones who had risked their lives to get us safely back to the US. About 2 hours later my grandfather came into the terminal with winter clothes for us that he had stopped and purchased on his way there. He drove us back to his house and my grandmother cooked us the first home cooked meal we had in months, “left-over” roasted chicken with hame-canned green beans, potatoes and homemade biscuits with butter and honey. After dropping us off, my grandfather went back out and drove to every store within 40 miles that was still open, taking him almost all night to get my brother and I Christmas presents so that we wouldn’t feel “left out” when the other grandchildren opened their presents. I still have the flashlight, pocket knife and foam disk shooting toy gun that he gave me, the candy did not last very long! We got a call that afternoon from my father letting us know that he was fine and that he would be joining us at Ft Benning GA, were he had been reassigned in a few weeks.
To me, many of us in the US don’t remember what truly matters and what we should truly be thankful for this time of year. Everyone says they are tankful for this or that, and that they appreciate everyone in uniform that is fighting for our safety overseas, but their actions speak differently. While those of us who ARE thankful for the troops pray for them, lets not forget to be thankful for the families that support them as well. I will NEVER forget what our service men/women did for me and my family, and I hope that what my family went through will remind others to not take them for granted either!
Merry Christmas to everyone, and THANK YOU to everyone who has served, is serving or will serve in our military! RangerMan & Jarhead, thank you guys for having an awesome page that lets us express ourselves and share ideas that will hopefully get us through the tough times that are sure to come!