After a few chugs, he was now wide awake and alert, sitting in his easy chair, skimming the daily headlines over at Canon 212 traditional Catholic news conglomerate, and the secular conservative news conglomerate Citizen's Free Press. Glancing down at his phone screen, he read through one intro of an article saying "Congress passes new supreme court packing law, expanding the Court to 20 Justices, all leftists appointed by President Kamala Harris, expected to overturn the overturn of Roe vs. Wade by the summer of 2023."
"Good grief," said Joe quietly to himself, the kids themselves sitting quietly at the table across the room eating their morning oatmeal, and drinking their raw milk from their homestead cow. At that moment, the cookoo-clock he inherited from his German grandmother coo-koo-ed it was now 7 am.
Then glancing at another headline, Joe was instantly shocked with disbelief to read "Putin nukes Los Angeles at 4 am, Pacific Standard Time. 20,000 Expected Dead."
Suddenly at that very moment hyperactive Shantelle jumped up on her daddy's lap pleading for a story. Earlier that year, Joe and his wife added a newly adopted child to their family, through the foster care system, a Black American named Shantelle. Her biological mother was a meth addict serving twenty years for second degree murder. Since her middle name was equally, decidedly not a biblical name, and since she was now four years old, there wasn't much else they could do. Except pledge to bring her up to be a good Christian woman of Christian Western Civilization, not affected by the dark, non-Christian subculture that too often plagues the ethnic group of her origin.
But we digress. Joe immediately sat Shantelle down near the wood burning stove to read a Little House on the Prairie book, while he immediately took his wife Becky out in the back yard for a private discussion away from the kids.
"Beck, you've got to read this," earnestly handing his phone over to his wife. "Dear God in heaven, Joe, is this real? Did Putin really nuke Los Angeles? I have to call my sister to make sure she is alright (her sister works as a hospital nurse in LA)."
'Yes, I'm afraid it's true," Joe said calmly.
In a flash, Joe's intuition told him that society was going to become chaotic very, very quickly, and that he needed to take a few minutes alone to reflect on a new action plan for that day going forward. He was thankful that God had inspired him to start "prepping," back in February of 2022, the day Putin invaded Ukraine to liberate ethnic Russian Ukrainians persecuted by the US/NATO/Zelensky puppet government for eight years.
Joe went over to his garage workshop, what he called his man cave retreat, which he built with old scrap metal on his two acre homestead five miles outside of St. Mary's, and sat down in his old, beat up rocking chair. Peanut his aging Dauchshund jumped on his lap. He turned on his nineteen inch flatscreen TV, which he bought in a pawnshop for $40, the only TV on the property, he had mounted over his workbench, and tuned into News Max via his internet modem.
Reports were scattered and incomplete. At least 20,000 instantly killed from the blast, caused by a Russian nuke targeting a large facility making military weapons, on the outskirts of east LA. Likely another 30,000 expected to die from radiation sickness within the next 48 hours.
Sitting in their pajamas live streaming from their home offices, Oliver North joined the discussion of pundits with Mitt Romney and Mitch McConnell, feverishly condemning Putin, calling for yet another multi-billion dollar war machine package to be delivered to Ukraine's Zelensky, now hiding in a bunker under Kiev, begging Ukraine be accepted finally into NATO.
"Good grief. Those foolish neocons. Don't they realize this kind of talk is only going to result in all out global, nuclear war? Steve Bannon is going to roast them later today, I guarantee," said Joe, grabbing from his pocket his pocket notebook to update that day's To-Do-List, to compensate for the nuclear attack.
By the way, Joe likes to say the phrase "good grief," as an alternative to blasphemous phrases expressing exasperation.
"Honey, is everything okay? What are your plans for today?" Becky called out from the backyard as she tossed chicken feed to the chickens.
"Well, I've got two job interviews in Topeka this morning for a welder position, and then when I get back I need to finish butchering the raccoons and opossums I trapped yesterday over in old Mr. Flannegin's woods. But before that, I need to run by the house of a couple of the senior men from the men's choir, to ask what they're hearing. I'm thinking some of the trad men in town need to have a meeting about what's next with the war, and what to do as a town" said Joe.
"That's an excellent plan," Becky said lovingly to her husband of twelve years.
Fortunately based on what they had learned from Dave Ramsey years before, Joe and Becky had made sure to have at least six months of savings to cover expenses, and a pantry of at least six months of food, in case of emergencies. Things like five gallon buckets of rice and beans stored first in sealed Mylar bags.
Joe had been let go a few months before from his welding job a couple towns over, when the large, national corporation required the covid clot shot vaccine of all employees, and he refused based on his Catholic Faith. And not wanting to die of a sudden stroke. But God was preserving their needs, and Joe was hopeful he'd land one of those two jobs over in Topeka. He missed the atmosphere of comradery of working with a team of manly men, doing manly work, and bringing home a decent pay check, truth be told.
Joe went inside and spent a minute at the mirror straightening his hereditary cowlick, grabbed a tie from the closet, made the sign of the cross on the forehead of his wife and children, grabbed a Quest bar for the road, and headed on out of his homestead, down the country dirt road to the highway leading to Topeka. It was a good forty minute drive, which gave Joe time to say extra morning prayers for peace and preparedness, and review his mental notes for that morning's job interviews. In the far reaches of his mind, he knew the US could nuke Russia that day, resulting in MAD, that is "mutually assured destruction."
But he remembered the story of a Saint playing chess, asked what he'd do if he learned the world was coming to and end, saying he'd trust in God and keep on doing what he was doing, that is playing chess. So that's what Joe did essentially, going to those interviews, and later processing wild game meat to feed his growing family...
STAY TUNED FOR PART TWO...