A quote: “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.” ~~ Daniel J. Boorstin
I’ll start with a story …
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What is it about humans that we don’t take the words “never” or “forever” seriously. Not while the sun is shining, our bellies are full, and the future is just an idea that may come.
And then we’re shocked when “the future” lands on us like cow launched by a trebuchet.
My father – the pessimist’s pessimist – grumbled about The City for years, pointing out trends and Making.Plans. He had me memorize a combo of numbers but wouldn’t tell me what it went to. “You’ll know when you know.”
Hearing that, my husband rolled his eyes and left the room.
The next day, dad, mom and my brothers were gone. Vanished. City’s Helpcarists came by, several times, unconvinced we knew nothing. That startled my husband out of complacency like nothing else had.
So here we are, whittling down our possessions … and we need to go. Now. Opportunities to travel are fewer every day.
I’m ditching almost everything I own but for one thing – nana’s old treadle Singer. If nothing else, I can trade my skills for food. And as I flip the machine on its side to place in a box, I see the tiny door on the bottom and combo lock.
Oh, dad!
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license.
Row after row of shipping containers stretched across the field, filled with every manner of goods. We’d been going through them for weeks, sorting the enormous amount of stuff that had been brought here to Solace after things blew up down in Watts. I don’t know why those gangbangers thought they could go up against the Kitties and win, but it got the whole LA Basin scruffed for their trouble.
Those containers are full of just about anything you could imagine. Near as I can figure, they were all down in the Port of Los Angeles, because we’ve found just about everything you could imagine. One of them was crammed with box after box of shoes. Another had nothing but electronics, components for the most part. I found one whole crate in there full of microcontrollers, the sort based on chips a decade or so ago and used for household appliances. And then there were the ones that seemed to be just random stuff, even downright junk. For all I know, those were from liquidators who were betting on the old saying about one man’s trash being another man’s treasure.
On the other hand, maybe some of the random junk will be more useful than we’d expect. I just found a bunch of old sewing machines in one. I wonder if the Kitties even realized what they’re for. They and most of their sepoy species have full-body pelts, so it’s not like they’ve got all that much use for clothing.
I wonder how much I’d be able to get for some of these, especially the outright antiques. Especially out here on a frontier world, sometimes simpler really is better. You can repair one of these old treadle machines yourself, and you can’t do that with that brand-new fully computerized model that can do twenty-three different fancy stitches at the push of a button.
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