DD Date 1983.11.16

November 16, 1983

I won the "lottery" at work. The prize was a the stack of newspapers that have collected since the war began. It turned out that the News and the Piedmont cut back production to a few days a week using back up generators and what supplies they have on hand. The paper is a lot smaller and doesn't cover much more than local stuff. I guess there is no way of knowing what is happening anywhere else. The last news from outside of South Carolina is the Sunday paper of September 25th - which is thicker than the rest of the papers put together - didn't mention any reason why Russia might attack us. It was a total surprise. There had been that mess with the Korean Airliner, but the coverage of President Reagan's handling of that, including released synopses of his speech that he was going to make on the 26th, had seemed to be put things in perspective.

Most of the news since then has been about how the cities and the counties of the upstate have come together to work through the crisis. No one seems to have power apart from places with diesel generators and their is very little diesel in tanks. The pipeline that runs from Texas right through the county has stopped running. Trucks have delivered gasoline and diesel from Anderson County storage tanks but have yet to go back for more - if there is more. Getting fuel out of the pipeline is the next problem, but authorities are working on solutions.

Having Bi-Lo headquartered in Mauldin turned out to be a blessing from God. In fact, the Frank Outlaw family - part of whom are members at Second Pres - has worked from the beginning to assure that no one goes hungry. The other super market chains have followed suit, mostly by joint efforts for now, to distribute what they have on their shelves as evenly as possible. The Farmer's Market has become a major player as well. The motto 'Eat local and Ride a bike' has become a way of life!

Some news has come from around the area by way of refugees that keep coming into Greenville. We know from them that at least Columbia and Augusta, the Savannah Nuclear Plant and Charlotte were hit with nuclear bombs. No refugees from Atlanta have come into South Carolina, but many people say they saw the mushroom cloud over the horizon. The pulse wiped out all communication right before most of the bombs hit, so we don't know much more than eyewitness reports. Travel between even Asheville and Greenville has been slow, but we do know that Asheville survived. Some sort of Black Muslim group has taken over down in Anderson according to people who have escaped from down there. I don't know how much to believe about that, but the paper says that some state troopers have moved to secure the fuel storage tanks in Anderson county.

I'm a little worried about Jimmy. He had been more or less been free of seizures, but we had him on medicine to keep them from occurring. The doctors say he has probably outgrown them, but we don't know exactly what to do now that the medicine is no longer available. We pretty much cannot go to the doctors down in Anderson who had been treating him, so we are beginning to bring him to the Greenville doctors at the hospital where Debbie works. So far their advice is more or less "learn to live with it."

Well, Debbie has left for work and the kids are beginning to wake up, so I guess I'd better get to my parenting duties and get some breakfast together. That will be measured oatmeal with a splash of canned milk (we get two cans of it each week but I don't know how long we can keep getting it). I'll open a jar of peaches - not a can, for those are long gone - these are locally 'canned.' More and more of the rations are already coming from local farmers working with Bi-Lo and the FEMA folk still willing to work for an invisible government they haven't heard from in over a month. My guess is they live off of the stuff they are in charge of distributing. They know that at least they won't starve.

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