Episode 376 - Personal SHTF Anniversary

0:00Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated. For Lauren, even. Like your efforts are futile. And you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just... fine. Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations. Because we find the right people for your roles fast. Which is our absolute favorite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder, get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic! So, whether you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zippercruder for free. Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip. But finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip.

1:01Good morning. This is Emma. And today is the 11th of March. Um, it's dark because it's not quite 730, but it's barely getting light and it's raining. So, there's that. Uh, I don't know if we'll be able to record this one. If not, I'll re-record it this afternoon on the way home. But it's raining in it. And if I have turned the windshield wipers on very hard, which it may be, we may have to do that. Uh, it will be loud. So, we'll see. Today, we're going to talk about an anniversary. This is March 11th. And this is the 57th anniversary of the first, um, in my life, I experienced an SHTF. You know, we talk about there's so many acronyms in the peripheral. If you've got, um, uh, uh, SHTF,

2:04you've got Tia Tawaki, you've got all the different things that preppers have taken all these, these sayings and turn them into acronyms. And so, they're Tia Tawaki being the end of the world as we know it. Now, all of those things tend to be for general events, you know, that would, uh, affect everybody. Obviously, the pandemic was one of those when we shut down my whole planet, which is a mind boggling thing. I would have never in a million years thought that was an option to shut down my whole planet. But we did. It was kind of an interesting time. Uh, but this was a personal SHTF. And one of the things that, uh, I didn't realize at the time, because I was a whopping 17 years old, is that it was,

3:07in the proper world, it's, you know, people are always looking at what's going on around them and, and, you know, deciding that the world is going to, as I said yesterday, egg in a hand basket or ill in a hand basket, we might be to the health part right now. Uh, and that's true. But sometimes, in many times, and I will say, all the personal ones I've had in my lifetime have been ones for which there were no, was no warning. And this is, this was the very first one. I was 17 years old. Okay. So, 17 years old, I was a senior in high school, and it was March, and I was going to graduate in May. So, I was all, you know, I was all about senior stuff. You know, we were doing everything for the last time in high school. And, you know, we did all the, uh, I was a band nerd. So, you know, we have, there's a lot of band competitions in the spring.

4:07And, um, so, you know, we had, uh, senior parties, and we had prom, and we had senior banquet, and we had all kinds of stuff we were planning. And, you know, we're all going to college. And, you know, we had, uh, all the things, whoops, those are dogs, like, I think. Those, I don't know what they were, but they were huge. I was trying to figure it out, I don't know if they were a deer, or if we may have a deer to walk a year, if I don't, uh, if I, if things gonna jump out at me, uh, what I'm trying to draw down the highway. Uh, they looked like, uh, that maybe they were pair of knees, and those were some of the biggest dogs I believe I've ever seen. Uh, anyway, because I, you know, I'm used to having deer on this road, but that was the first. Uh, maybe they live, there's been a few new houses built in that direction. So, maybe they live in, uh, or belong to one of those new houses. Okay, back to my subject today.

5:09So, you know, as a senior high school, I'm all about senior stuff. And, um, my father was, as I've said before, was a pipeline welder, so he worked away from home. Well, by now, I'm 17, I have my driver's license, my little brother is 14, and so now, you know, when, when I was, when I was younger, uh, before I had my driver's license, you know, we did not travel, except on the weekend to see my father when he was working away from home. So, now that I was able to drive, and we were teenagers, and, you know, by the time my mother was 18, she was married. Uh, so we were considered, uh, able to take care of ourselves at that point. I don't know that people feel that way now, but it was back then. And so, my mother would go off with my father on a job, and it was our job at the house to take care of the cows and the place, and, you know, get up every morning, go to school. And so, we did that day.

6:10Now, it was a muggy day, and today's in the 60s, and it's probably about like that. It was a muggy day. It had not rained for a while, uh, before this day, and it had, um, uh, just drizzled a little bit. And so, it had not rained enough, as it has, like, today, through the night, to wash the, all off the roads, but it had basically made them really slick. And that's probably one of the most dangerous times to drive on the road, is not when it's actually raining hard, but when it has only rained a little bit, and it hasn't rained for a long time. So, uh, it makes roads particularly slick. Sometimes folks forget that. Okay. So, my, I want to say my father was down around Fairfield, somewhere, and so, my mother stopped. She, you know, but he was moving. They were going to a different place, and I don't know if he was going to a different job,

7:10or if he was, like, working for a different contractor, or he was going to work for, uh, same contractor in his different location. But he was going, when he left that morning, he left Fairfield going to somewhere up between Sherman and Denison. Well, Fairfield is south of Dallas, and Sherman and Denison are north of Dallas. So, that's a pretty good distance. He was, he wasn't anywhere close, and this was 1974. So, there wasn't such thing as a cell phone. Okay. So, my mother stopped on her way home at, at her parent's house, to visit with them for a little bit, and then she came, oh, oh. And she was probably less than, I'm going to say, maybe 30 minutes, maybe 20 minutes for home. And she, there, I guess she hit a slick spot in the road,

8:15and she lost control of the car, and she was spinning, and the car coming from the other direction hit her, and basically hit her kind of in the, I guess, the car kind of looked like a banana. So, I'm going to say it hit on the, in the door. But this was also 74. People did not wear seat belts in 74. That was not a thing. Now, you can't get in your vehicle and be in it, because the seat belt will not allow you to go anywhere without putting it on. But, you know, 74, we didn't wear seat belts. So, she was thrown out, she was driving, she was by herself. So, she was thrown out of the car on the passenger side. And somewhere in that trip, her foot got caught on something, they think. And that broke her hip.

9:17And as she went out the window on the passenger side, she hit, like, in her rib cage area, and broke four ribs. She had a hole in her diaphragm, and her liver was in her chest. So, she was a pretty bad shape, and she was outside. So, this was probably about 10 o'clock in the morning, I think, and, you know, I'm in, I'm in high school. Now, I was thinking about that this last night, and I was thinking about the logistics of that day. And there's a whole bunch of logistics I don't, I don't remember. You know, I was driving the pickup, because she was driving the car. So, you know, and I had taken my little brother to junior high, and I was in high school. And so, I don't know how, if somebody went to get him, because I don't think I did. And I don't know how I ever got, because when I, when I was told about it at the high school,

10:20the principal took me to the hospital. So, I wouldn't have had the, somehow another, I got the pickup back. I don't know how that happened, but anyway. So, you know, we live in a small, or we live close to a small town. Same small town I live close to, now I have moved anywhere. And for, and small hospitals are mostly first aid stations. And I will say that probably at this point, this, this hospital is now part of a larger hospital system, which feeds into almost like parent hospitals in a larger, kind of like a small city. And so, I don't think this would have been the case at that point in time. In fact, I want to say they probably would have, would have called a helicopter if this happened today. But back then, they didn't do helicopters, okay? So, you know, and there was no cell phones.

11:24So, somewhere along the line, I don't know if somebody there, if, you know, like a house that was there, would have called for an ambulance. And this was before 911. So, you know, there wasn't that either. So, you would have had to call for an ambulance, you know, and somebody would have had told the highway patrol. And so, you know, would take it a while for people to get there. I don't know how long. I did not know about this until noon. You know, we'd all gone to lunch at school. And after we ate, we all standing out of a breezeway, visiting with each other until it was time to go to our next class. And so, we're all standing on the breezeway. It's about 12 o'clock, and waiting for the bail to ring. And the assistant principal comes to get me. And he takes me to his office. And I'm like, you know, we're a good addition to squirrels. We're not ever in trouble. So, why is he coming to get me? I had no idea. So, I get to his office. And he tells me that my mother has had a wreck. And she's in the hospital. And her life is not in danger. Well, that right

12:28there was the first life somebody told me. Now, I know him. He was assistant principal when I told school. So, I, you know, I'm sure he did not lie to me on purpose. I suspect he was told that by the folks at the hospital. And while they would do that, I don't know what they did. Okay. So, he takes me to the hospital. And he leaves me there. And I remember I'm 17. Okay. I can count literally on one hand. How many times I've seen the inside of a hospital at this point. And I go to the room where my mother is. And, you know, she is not conscious. She's breathing kind of, but she seems to be having trouble breathing. The doctor comes in and tells me he wants to transfer her to another hospital in another small town. Well, he basically gave me two choices

13:29of two hospitals. One in a slightly larger town and one in a town that was the same size as ours because she of her broken hip and that, you know, there was not an orthopedic surgeon on staff at our hospital. So, she needed to go to another hospital where there wasn't orthopedic surgeon. Well, her hip, you know, as painful as it was, was the least of her issues. So, anyway, I knew that my father, you know, again, there's no cell phones in 1974. And I don't even, I have absolutely no idea where he is literally. And so, he, the highway patrols, I guess, began to try to track him down. Somehow another they would have found out who he was working for. They'd had to because they did eventually track him down and he called me before he started this

14:31direction. Okay, but, and that's an interesting concept because I do not know how they would have gone about, they would have had to somehow another no, they would have had to find out who he was working for. I don't, and there is, because he worked for a whole bunch of people and he would have never, I mean, you know, I don't think mom was in any case, James Tellum, but anyway, that's an interesting question. I do not know. The, so, you know, I was left with this dilemma. Well, I knew that, I knew that my father didn't want her to go to this other little hospital because that didn't make any sense. And if you're only talking about a broken hip, nobody's going to die from that. And that's what I was told. Her life was not in danger. And so I thought, you know, that my choice would have been for the slightly larger town or the actual more larger town that had,

15:37you know, a bigger hospital is what my two choices should have been. Okay, so eventually my father calls and he says, I said, where do you want her to go? And he said, well, call our doctor and find out. Well, our doctor was in an even smaller town. And so I call the doctor and the doctor is gone for a week on a medical and my cousin worked for him. And so I asked for her, well, she wasn't there either. So I was back to the, I don't know where she needs to go. And there is nobody there to help me make this decision at 17. And honestly, looking back as an adult, nobody should have expected me to make this decision at 17, but that's a whole other story. Just because somebody doesn't expect you to, doesn't mean you don't actually have to. And I am living proof of that. So finally, as I watched her get worse and worse during the day, I finally said to the doctor,

16:42I want to take her to the slightly larger hospital. Okay, not the little one. So they put her in an ambulance and they send her to the slightly larger town. And she gets to that hospital and he didn't call the hospital to tell them she was coming. So she is just literally on a gurney in the hall in the emergency room. And they don't know really what to do with her because they didn't know she was coming. And finally, they round up a doctor and he looks at her and he says, I'm sorry, this lady is too bad for us. And so he puts her back in the ambulance and sends her to the larger town, which is where she should have gone in the first place. So by the end, it's 10 o'clock at night. And this wreck happened at 10 o'clock in the morning. And they work on her for most of the night. Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure,

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18:48Like your efforts are futile and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, Zippercrooter figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try Zippercrooter for free at zippercrooter.com slash zip. With Zippercrooter, you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite effort. In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercrooter get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic. So whether you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to zippercrooter.com slash zip to try Zippercrooter for free. Don't forget that zippercrooter.com slash zip. Finally, that zippercrooter.com slash zip. I will say the end of this story, the good news is she did survive. Her oxygen count got down to about 56%, which is extremely low. I think 50 is about as far as you

19:49can go before you die. And so she was working off a deprived low oxygen count for a really long time. And that did have some residual effects for her future. Because as I said, she had four broken ribs and her liver was in her chest. There was a hole in her diaphragm. Her liver was in her chest and she had to collapse long. So that's where the oxygen problem came. So she was so bad off. I had to put a tube in, but they couldn't give her any kind of anesthetic because she wouldn't, I mean, they wouldn't have been able to bring her back. So they had to do that without that. So, you know, then we got to listen to her screams. So that was fun. But this is a, and as I say, she was in ICU for a week and then she was in the hospital probably another two weeks. So, and eventually she came home. And of course, I was still in school. I missed,

20:56I don't, I want to say, I missed the three weeks she was in the hospital. But I don't know that I missed, and I think I, and I did not miss any after that. Well, I say that there was, I did miss some time later on, but it was like one or two days. But I missed three weeks. This isn't the middle of the second semester of my senior year. And, you know, I mean, all the events cases. So, you know, I'm sitting there in the hospital trying to do my homework. But this is, the whole point of this is that many times, all the time in my lifetime, that there has been a, an SHTF event. It has come out of the clear blue sky. I had, or a rainy sky in this case. I had no warning that something was going to happen. And was ill prepared for it when it did. Now, is there a way to, to mitigate that?

21:59In some cases, maybe in other cases, not. At 17, you know, the last thing on my mind was that I was going to need to take over from my mother, you know, at the house. And to take care of somebody who was in a wheelchair at that point. But that's what, that's what, and try to graduate from my school at the same time. So, and, you know, I'm not the only, that I'm not doing this to poor, pitiful me, because, as I said, she did, she lived, and she got over it, and, and she was very, you know, she seemed to be fine for, for a long time. She eventually had to have her hip replaced at that point that she put a pin in it. But it did have, I think, residual effects later on, because I honestly believe this is part of the reason why she developed a dementia later in life is because of the, she didn't, they said she didn't have a concussion. I don't know how in the world she didn't, because she hit, is she cleared the glass on the passenger side with her head.

23:04So, I, I mean, I just don't know how you not have a concussion from that. But that's what the neurosurgeon said at the time. But back to the, you know, your world changes, and it's never the same again. A big part of that is, has to be mental, okay, and you have to have a strong foundation to be able to do that. And that is where I think faith makes all the difference in the world, because faith, because a relationship with God gives you a foundation to hang on to when things are really, really bad. And things don't have to be, you don't have to have a, you know, war or more pandemic or some kind of global crisis. You can just have something happen in your world,

24:07and your world is going to be the most important one to you, and it's going to have the most profound effect on you. And this happens to people all the time. We have somebody in our church who, a family that, I won't say their daughter, she was early 20s, just, I think she just graduated from college. She was coming back to our hometown, and somebody was on the wrong side of the highway and hit her head up, and she is in a coma, and I don't know that they're getting a whole lot of brain activity. They may be getting some. And obviously, everybody is praying for her recovery, recovery for her may look completely different than what we'd like recovery to be. Their world has completely changed. Obviously, her world has completely changed. And so,

25:10those are the kinds of things that I don't know ways you can prepare for things that happen like this because you don't ever know when they will. But a good example of preparation or being ill-prepared was the day my father came to me in the hospital and said, I've got to learn how to pay the bills so I can teach you. Because again, this was not the time. Now we have online bill paying where it just happens. Well, we didn't. And 74, you actually had to go, you either mailed in a check or you went somewhere and paid the bill. And so, you know, the light bill, the gas bill, the, all that kind of stuff, I think they still had a, I'm pretty sure they did a mortgage on the house. So, you know, you had to pay the house payment, you had all these things that you had to, that he had to have supplies for his welding trucks. So, many times that meant going to the

26:17welding supply store and getting various and sundry things that he needed. It just kind of depended on what needed to be paid. Feed bill, we had to go get feed for the cows, so there was that. So, there's always different things that needed to be paid. And he was, he was of the mindset that it was his job to go out and make the money. And Mama was the one who always paid all the bills and took care of the business and all that kind of stuff. So, literally, he did not know how to pay a bill. And he needed to learn how to pay a bill so he could teach me how to pay a bill. So, I could take over for her. So, were these things that we could have had in place before in case something happened? Yes, because that would have been helpful to be able to know logistics. So, that's a good question. Do our families know how to do things if something happens to us?

27:21That's one of the things that we did when we were expecting the, well, no, when the water was off and I was up at the well house looking to see if I can tell what was wrong with it. I was, literally, I was looking at the pressure gauge because if the pressure gauge was zero, then it was most likely the pressure switch. But, unbeknownst to me, the pressure gauge was also bad. So, that's why I was showing a pressure when it wasn't. So, I took that opportunity to explain to niece how the eco flows go together and where she would or the big generator, I have a dual fuel there too, to where you plug that in, what that process looks like to put all that together. And so, that if I'm not around for some reason and they don't have electricity and they need to run the well, that they would have the ability to do that. There's probably a whole bunch more

28:22things like that I need to do because it doesn't work very well when only one person in the household knows how to do stuff and that was the problem in our case. My mother was the one that kept everything going at home and so, all the things that she did, my father didn't have a clue, he just turned him over to her and she took care of them. Well, here she was, she wasn't able to do that and see because he was gone, he worked away from home, she tended to know how to do what he did at home, she knew how to work on the well pump, she knew how to, because that was before it was submersible, she knew how to start the tractor or we all knew how to fix fans, all those kinds of things because we had to do that in his absence, but the problem was she was never absent and so, but now that she was not able to do those things, he had to learn how so he could, as he said,

29:25teach me. Okay, so I don't want this to be a sad anniversary, it was traumatic obviously. As I said, the number one thing for something, when you have something catastrophic happened, the most important thing is to have a foundation to survive catastrophic events and because that makes all the difference in the world. As I said, my mother passed away from dementia, I think this was the catalyst for that dementia, but my father died in an accident, so that was a whole different SHTF for which there was no warning as well, but we'll talk about that another time. Okay, I met work and I got stuff to do, so I will talk to you tomorrow. Today is Wednesday, so tomorrow is Texas history. Thursday, so we will finish up our story of Levenia Roberts

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