IT COULD HAPPEN (A bad dream by L.J. McKay)

We had been on vacation in the mountains for several weeks. We camped in a deep canyon,
where radio reception was nil. We had been completely out of touch with our ever worsening world and
had enjoyed it. When our mountain road joined the Freeway, on our way home, I drove for about an
hour before it occurred to me that something was different- something was wrong. I thought about
commenting to my wife, but she was dozing and I did not want to disturb her. I drove another thirty
minutes before it occurred to me that my perturbation was caused by the absence of trucks from the
freeway traffic, neither had we met or passed a train on the track that paralleled the Freeway. Now, for
the first time I turned on the radio and heard the frightening news that a strike had not only tied up all
trucking, but had curtailed rail shipments also.

I awakened my wife and gave her the bad news. We discussed the strike and its probable effect
on us. We now realized just why Church Authorities had been hammering at us for years to accumulate
a year’s supply of food. We had not done it. We are old, in retired status. We had concluded that we
would probably be dead before any emergency arose, necessitating the consumption of the year’s
supply. Now we had been caught with our procrastination showing. We had a small savings account.
We decided that we would use this money to accumulate all the food stuffs it would buy.

When we came into our Home town, we stopped at the first Supermarket we encountered. We
were confronted by a large sign as we entered the door; “ONLY ONE STAPLE TO A CUSTOMER. Two LBS
OF PRODUCE TO A CUSTOMER”. The shelves had a leprous appearance. Many were empty and others
badly depleted with large bare spots. Pushing through the crowded aisles we finally managed to
partially fill one cart. A can of this and a can of that. We got the last sack of flour, but the sugar supply
was exhausted. The produce notice was a laugh. There was none. Meat seemed to be in plentiful
supply, but our freezing compart would only hold so much. We dropped everything and shopped until
padlocks appeared on market doors with a sigh; “CLOSED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE”. We still had money
to spend, but no food was available. We did manage to buy a quarter of beef from a meat market, which
we cut in thin strips and hung on the clothes line to dry. We prayed that it would not rain and took turns
standing guard to fight off stray dogs, who had been released by their owners and were now half wild
and starving.

When we were force to stop buying, we took inventory. We concluded that we had enough food
stuff to last us several weeks, maybe, three or four months if we went on short rations. My wife
sighed; “Well” she said, “I hope the strike is over before we run out of food.” Then she brightened; “but
we can always drive to one of our children in California or Utah”. They have a year’s supply and they all
want us to live with them.” “You forget one thing darling” I answered

“What is that?”

“No gasoline”