abby « Robin Writes

Yesterday, we looked at a great piece of property that we knew, ahead of time, adjoined a state prison. The one where they house death row inmates. In other words, maximum security.

Now, let’s suppose SHTF happens; every man for himself, so to speak, complete collapse, grid down, etc.

What happens at that prison? Lockdown, certainly, but perhaps a glitch of some sort that throws open the doors.

So here’s the question:

If it’s the latter, certainly we’d be well-prepared already. And I’m not afraid, for several reasons. First, crime is more concentrated in urban areas, so it stands to reason that most inmates are from those urban areas and would like seek to return there. Having been in prison, they aren’t going to be in the best shape for living in the woods, even if they were country boys to begin with. Besides, I’d have to assume they’d be in a big damn hurry to get far away from the place in which they were incarcerated.

But, what if everything shut down, locked up tight? A county jail I know of once had such an event that lasted about 12 hours. I have no idea if anyone—COs—could get out, but I know that no one could get in. It was a big security issue, obviously.

But if everything shut down, and there was no way out, then what? What would you do? What if, just across from the lake on your property, there was a huge secure building and people were stuck?

On the one hand, most of these are criminals, in it for the long haul or only able to leave when they die. Some have shorter sentences, yes, but all the prisoners have been convicted of very serious, or even capital, crimes. Some, of course, would be COs and administrative staff.

On the other hand, people on “the outside” have had the choice to prepare for SHTF; the prisoners have not. Of course, they lost many rights upon conviction and sentencing, but is automatic death included? Those who had the choice to prep and didn’t, well, I might feel sorry for them, but it’s on them—my job is take care of my own family, as is theirs, and they chose not to do so. The prisoners? I don’t know.

What would you do? Could you live with yourself knowing that people were stuck and dying, with no way to even try to help themselves?

We left bright and early Sunday morning and drove three hours to the listing agent’s office, then another 30 minutes or less to the first property we had scheduled.

Trust me, NO ONE would be able to find us back there!

We’d actually planned to look at 50 acres, on the back side of a total of 93; the front half had a cabin and a barn, so we started there.

Well.

First, I’ll tell you that I’m usually a glass-half-full kind of gal. Things like “Ooh, a circle driveway!” and “Hey, look, a ‘no trespassing’ sign—bonus! Save money on signage!” may have escaped my lips . . .

This was off a CR, a county road; gravel. And the driveway was decent—circle, remember? The cabin was adorable, but . . .

The pillars were not sunk into concrete; the subfloor was um, rolling, and the two propane tanks were, shall we say, questionable. Now, the owner had been working on this for quite some time, but at some point he gave up and moved to Florida. And no one seems to know when.

The clearing needed some serious mowing, no big deal, and the barn was fairly close to the house, but it had no floor; best we could tell, it was just sitting there, no anchor, nothing.

Hmmm.

My husband thinks, and I agree, that it would be much easier to start from scratch than try to fix everything. We did get some good info on the solar panel and rainwater systems—but again, what kind of shape are they in? It would be a great project, if it comes down to that.

We drove down the road a bit, alongside the rest of the property. Not bad. In fact, the listing agent told us to make a really low-ball offer on the entire thing! So, maybe . . . plus, she was really interested in my books!

Only two wrong turns later, we arrived at the second property of the day and met up with the listing agent. He was great, but damn, he was in good shape—just trotted all over those 32 acres, even climbing that cliff . . .

So this was the cave property—documented, dug a bit by mostly amateurs, and almost inaccessible. But it does have a flat spot for building, which is more than I can say for most of what we’ve seen so far.

We pulled off the CR and parked, then walked down a nice trail “to the cave.” Sort of. We veered off that nice trail when we reached the bluff on the Little Piney River, and started the climb.

It was steep.

And narrow.

Holy crap.

Slid on my butt for one part, only because I made the mistake of looking down . . . down . . . down. Ack!

So we got to the cave, and man, was it huge! My husband loved it, kept trying to drag me down the dark, low-ceilinged, rocky . . . well, you get the idea. Nice to look at it, but nope, not thrilled about going inside. Of course, I might be able to work my way up to that, someday. Maybe.

Once we finished with this part, we had to go back up. Silly us. The agent said there was “flat” straight up, so we thought sure, why not, take the shortest route.

OMG.

Took forever.

But finally—success!

This could work. Maybe. The section is pretty irregular, but does have road frontage, top and bottom; the bottom is just a hundred yards or so, right by the river and bridge. And there’s a nice trail from the road to the building site.

And yeah, it has a cave . . .