Founders: A Novel of the Coming Collapse

10. Courting and Quirting

Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana

March, the Second Year

Since the U.S. dollar was worthless and by extension any check issued by any government entity was worthless, the cadre at Malmstrom resorted to barter. The coin of the realm was JP-4 jet fuel.

One of the tenant units at Malmstrom had been the 301st Air Refueling Wing, which was inactivated in 1992. When the 301st deactivated, it left behind a huge pair of fuel tanks—S-1 and S-2. These each held 1,050,000 gallons. The year before the Crunch, a Strategic Air Command (SAC) order designated Malmstrom as an alternate base of operations for the 305th Air Mobility Wing, which was normally based at McGuire AFB in New Jersey. SAC’s contingency was for KC-10s of the 305th to be able to operate out of Malmstrom in the event of hostilities in Korea or the Taiwan Strait. (For proximity, they wanted to be able to use an Air Force base in the northwest, but runway and fuel tank farms at McChord AFB, near Tacoma, Washington, and at Fairchild AFB, near Spokane, Washington, were already in full use.) So the formerly mothballed S-1 and S-2 fuel tanks were again both filled with JP-4.

Meanwhile, Malmstrom’s H-1 and H-2 fuel tanks normally used by the 40th Helicopter Squadron (each with 210,000-gallon capacity) were kept full with JP-4 and JP-8, respectively. With more than two million gallons of fuel available for their own operations and for barter, Woolson found that his units at Malmstrom could still carry on with a reasonable level of activity.

Nearly 800,000 gallons of the fuel were held in reserve for use by the 341st Security Forces Group and the 40th Helicopter Squadron, which still had four airworthy UH1-N Huey helicopters. The rest of the JP-4 was made available for barter. This was traded to local farmers and even backyard gardeners. Depending on their rank, each airman still on active duty was given vouchers for 40 to 110 gallons of fuel per month in lieu of pay, and those on “special reserve” status were given an average of 165 gallons of fuel per year. This didn’t include the fuel allocated for facilities patrolling, which was variable, depending on the distances driven.

Since JP-4 and JP-8 can be used as substitutes for both diesel fuel and home heating oil, there were plenty of locals who were eager to barter. The base also bartered from the RED HORSE Squadron’s enormous piles of AM-2 airfield matting. These pierced aluminum mats were designed to link together on leveled ground to form runways and taxiways. The local ranchers soon learned how to use them for livestock corral panels. The panel fences were quicker and easier to construct than building with wood.

The RED HORSE Squadron was unusual. RED HORSE was an acronym that stood for Rapid Engineer Deployable Heavy Operational Repair Squadron Engineers. It was a composite unit that included both active Air Force and Air National Guard (ANG) units, one of the first ever created by the Air Force.

Other tenant units at Malmstrom included the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, Civil Air Patrol, and the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office. Malmstrom also had offices for on-site contractors from Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and ATK. A few years before, when the Guidance Replacement Program (GRP) was still in progress, there had been a lot more contractors from Northrop Grumman and subcontractors out at the launch facilities, but that number had dwindled, as they reverted to routine maintenance and minor upgrades, mainly with communications systems. When the Crunch set in, all but a handful of the contractor staff evaporated.

Some of the most demanding maintenance tasks were “down hole” at the LCCs and LFs, and involved removing floor plates. These covered both battery compartments and storage compartments for survival kits.

Battery maintenance at one LCC or LF was a chore, but driving many miles between LCCs and repeating the exact same steps five or six times over and then documenting every detail of the tasks became absolute drudgery.

Joshua often used a T handle floor plate removal tool to lift up the floor plates to access the survival kit supplies and/or maintenance teams accessing the batteries. The floor plate screws were loosened using a large screwdriver. Then the T handles were screwed into the threaded holes and used to lift up the heavy floor plates. Depending on the size of the floor plate, one person could lift it, but it was easier with two.

In the capsule, seventy-five feet underground, electronics racks lined both walls. During alerts, officers sat in red-upholstered, high-backed swivel chairs. At one end was a cot with a hospital ward–style curtain designed to block light and sound so that one man could sleep, but it wasn’t very effective.

The electronic equipment was a mix of old and new. Since the system was more than four decades old, some of the older components looked very 1970s. A couple of places hidden inside the racks, he found “Dharma” and “180” graffiti—references to the communications bunker in the television series Lost.

Fifty missile silos in Toole and Pondera counties were deactivated between 2007 and 2011, and their facilities were stripped of all useful equipment for recycling by the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office (DRMO). When the Crunch came, some of that gear was still heaped in the DRMO warehouses, awaiting surplus and scrap sales.

The DRMO yard became the hub for Malmstrom’s barter economy. In addition to trading JP-4 fuel, some glass windowpane units salvaged from Malmstrom’s many disused buildings were bartered for food. Locals from all around Great Falls wanted windows for building home greenhouses. These became the rage in the post-collapse economy throughout the northern states.

After September 11, 2001, security upgrades to the Minuteman III defense system began in earnest. Contractors poured thicker concrete around the silos, while others installed new security cameras and upgraded passive IR sensors. The rapid response team from the 341st Security Forces Squadron was expanded and issued new equipment.

Great Falls, Montana

One Year Before the Crunch

Joshua had been introduced to Kelly Monroe at a church picnic, just a year before the economic turmoil engulfed the nation. Peter Blanchard, a missileer lieutenant in the 10th Squadron, had invited Joshua to come with him to the harvest picnic. They wore casual civilian clothes, so only their severe short-cropped haircuts signaled that they were from Malmstrom.

Peter Blanchard had said that he was interested in dating a young lady named Stacia, but she wasn’t there. Peter and Joshua walked over to Stacia’s friend Kelly. Peter said, “Hi! This is Joshua, from the base.”

Kelly said hello back with a smile.

“Where’s Stacia?” Peter asked.

“Sorry, she had to work today. But she should be at church tomorrow.”

“Oh. So I don’t suppose she’ll be at the Hawk Nelson concert tonight, either.”

“Nope. She said that she has to work until nine this evening. Sorry.”

Peter muttered, “I don’t know how I’ll ever have my schedule match up with hers so we can go to a concert or a dance.”

Then he elbowed Joshua and joked, “Joshua here already has Shirley, so his dance card is full.”

Joshua laughed and said cryptically, “I can get Shirley to trot, but she doesn’t foxtrot.”

Kelly cocked her head and asked, “Are we talking about a young lady, or a horse?”

“You nailed it. Shirley is my mare.”

“What breed?

“An American Bashkir Curly.”

Kelly beamed. “Those are gorgeous. How tall and how old is she?”

“She’s just shy of fifteen hands, and four years old. Her ground manners are a little lacking, but I’m working diligently on training her.”

“My horse is a bit of a brat, too. He’s a standard-bred gelding, three years old—”

“Well, my eyes are glazing over,” Peter interrupted, “so I’ll leave you two avid equestrians to talk while I get myself a hamburger.” He stepped away.

Kelly asked, “Is he like that at the Bachelor Officers Quarters, too?”

“I wouldn’t know. I live off-base. And I don’t spend that much time with the officers. I’m just here because the lieutenant knew that I’m a Christian, and he thought that I’d enjoy the company.”

“You love the Lord?” Kelly asked in a more serious tone.

“Oh yes, with all my heart. I was saved when I was twelve.”

Kelly blinked and said, “Coming here with Peter, I just assumed that you were an officer, too.”

“No. I’m just a lowly E-4.”

“Is that like a corporal in the Army?”

“Yeah. It’s the same pay grade.”

Kelly smiled and said, “My dad was a corporal in the Army. He was in the Field Artillery. He drove a multiple rocket transport thingy. He didn’t like the Army much.”

Joshua liked Kelly’s smile, and her expressive blue eyes. She was above average height, slender, and had a fairly plain face. There was a two-inch-long jagged upward-curving white scar on her chin and left cheek that he later learned was from when she had been thrown from a horse onto a barbed wire fence. That had happened when she was ten years old. Her hair was dark brown, worn in a ponytail, mostly hidden by a brown suede baseball cap. The hat had a stylized horse’s head and shoulders with a flowing mane embroidered on it. She was twenty years old, but looked a bit older since she had spent so much time outdoors.

Kelly wore Wrangler jeans, scuffed Durango saddle boots, and a turquoise short-sleeve plaid shirt. In keeping with her no-nonsense style, Kelly wore no jewelry other than a fairly ornate silver belt buckle.

“How long’ve you been a rider?” she asked.

“Since I was old enough to walk.”

She grinned. “Me, too.”

They stared at each other’s face for a while, smiling.

Joshua was so caught up in the moment, he asked, “Would you like to go for a ride somewhere tomorrow after church?”

Kelly laughed, and said, “Whoa there, cowboy. Could we get past some preliminaries first, like your family name, and the church you attend and such?”

Over lunch, they plunged into a wide-ranging two-hour conversation. As the picnic gathering broke up, they scheduled a horseback ride at Buffalo Jump State Park, ten miles south of Great Falls.

At just before two the next afternoon, Kelly Monroe pulled her pickup and trailer into the dusty extension lot at the park, beyond the pavement. There were seven pickups with horse trailers there. She could see that Joshua already had his horse saddled and waiting.

She said simply, “Hi!” and stepped out of the cab. Joshua led his horse over to the front of Kelly’s horse trailer, and fastened his mare’s reins to a tie-down.

“I’d like you to meet Shirley Temple,” he said.

Kelly approached the big chesnut mare and exclaimed, “Oh, she’s a beauty. The waves in her coat are just amazing.”

“And that’s just her summer coat. You ought to see her in the winter. It has little ringlets.”

Kelly walked around and sized up the mare. She said simply, “Wow.” Then she added, “Her eyes have a strange look to them. Kinda sleepy-looking.”

“Yeah, that’s a trait of American Bashkirs. Slanty eyes. Just like us Nipponese.”

They both laughed.

Kelly asked, “How much of the Russian blood does she have?”

Joshua shook his head and said, “Oh, now I must warn you that you’re veering off into myth, legend, and Breed Association marketing hype. Truth be told, and after all the genetic tests were run, the American Bashkir Curlies were proven not related at all to the original Russian Bashkirs. They just both happen to have the same genetic abnormality that produces a curly coat. Near as I can figure, the real root stock of the American Bashkir is just a Morgan Horse having a bad hair day. But of course that reality doesn’t stop the breeders from playing up the Russian angle.” Joshua chuckled. “Ready to unload?”

After so many years of practice, it took just a minute for Kelly to unload her gelding, Fritz. Tacking him up was also remarkably quick, as she worked with practiced precision. Joshua was impressed by the way Kelly had set up the inside of the front door of her horse trailer with a peg board with hooks for hoof care tools and grooming supplies, two leads, a quirt, and two sets of hobbles. The items were all in neat rows and bundled with rubber bands. After buttoning up the back of the trailer, Kelly said, “Okay, let’s roll.”

They mounted their horses and started off at a loose-reined walk. Since it was a hot afternoon, they never advanced the gait beyond a trot. And, as they both desired anyway, a walking pace was more conducive to conversation. They stopped frequently to drink, to check hooves, and to let the horses rest.

Kelly’s horse was a seal brown, a deep brown with lighter points—what was sometimes called a “copper-nosed” brown. Fritz was just half a hand taller than Shirley. Shirley’s height was considered atypical of American Bashkirs, since the mares were rarely more than fourteen hands tall.

A couple of times the horses were startled by darting ground squirrels which were present in large numbers at the park. Kelly commented, “It’s a good thing my dog isn’t here. She’d be going crazy.”

They rode all of the trails that were open to horses that afternoon, ranging around three sides of the dramatic jump cliff at the 1,400-acre park, staying until just before the park closed at 6 p.m. They watered their horses before loading them back into their respective trailers.

Part of how Joshua and Kelly apprized each other was through horsemanship. Both of them were favorably impressed. Kelly took particular note of Joshua’s quiet humility. He wasn’t a braggart or a show-off. Kelly liked that. She also thought that he had a remarkable vocabulary for someone without a college degree. Joshua felt himself drawn to Kelly like no woman he had ever met before. He felt blessed to have found a young woman who was a fellow Christian, and with whom he had so many things in common. And seeing Kelly astride her horse, handling him so expertly, greatly impressed Joshua.

Joshua’s next short duty day was the following Friday. It was Kelly who had suggested a rendezvous. As well-educated Christians, they both disliked the word “dating,” since both properly saw their meetings as courting for marriage. As Kelly put it, “I never get beyond the ‘howdy-dos’ unless I think a man is fit for marriage.”

They met for dinner at Jaker’s steak house. The attire there was casual, so both Joshua and Kelly dressed up only to the extent of wearing freshly laundered jeans and nicer shirts.

Two items of clothing never seemed to change, regardless of Kelly’s wardrobe: a brown and black horsehair western belt from Deer Lodge, and her embroidered brown suede horse logo baseball cap. Whenever she wasn’t wearing the baseball cap, she habitually carried it clipped on a mini-carabiner on a belt loop—the same carabiner where she carried her key ring. She refused to carry a purse.

When Joshua noticed that Kelly wore no makeup, his estimation of her went up immensely. Here at last was an honest-to-goodness rancher’s daughter with no pretensions, even when out on the town for a dinner and talking about marriage. There was something about Kelly that Joshua couldn’t pin down. It was something beyond her smile and her figure. It was also something beyond the common ground that they found in their faith in Christ. Joshua couldn’t say just what it was, but she definitely had it. And whatever it was, Joshua was thoroughly smitten.

They nibbled on salad while waiting for their steaks. Kelly filled Joshua in about her family’s history: Her father, Jim Monroe, had been raised on a cattle ranch a few miles south of the whistle-stop town of Raynesford, which was fifteen miles southeast of Great Falls. The “town” consisted of just a post office, a church, and a few houses. The eighty-acre ranch straddled Big Otter Creek. It had thirty-seven acres of hayfields. It also included an adjoining 320-acre seasonal grazing permit in the Lewis and Clark National Forest. The grazing permit land stretched up toward Peterson Mountain. This was a ten-year renewable lease. The Monroe family fenced the leased land just like their deeded acres. From a practical standpoint, the only difference was that they couldn’t stop anyone from using the 320 acres of Forest Service land for hunting, and they couldn’t build any structures on it.

As the second-born son, Jim was not in line to inherit the ranch, so he enlisted in the Army. But while he was off on active duty, his elder brother botched running the ranch—incurring too many debts and mismanaging the livestock, which cost the lives of five calves.

When Jim was released from active duty, his brother declared, “I’m just not cut out for raising cattle. I want to go into sales. What do you say I sign the ranch and livestock over to you, in exchange for an informal note for $100,000, with payments only in the years that you turn a profit, plus hunting on the ranch for life, plus all the beef I need for my family for life?”

The deal was sealed with a handshake, and no papers were signed except for the quit claim deed on the ranch. The ranch was paid off in 2007. Kelly’s uncle, who lived in Rapid City, still came each November for elk season and to collect an aged side of beef.

Kelly asked, “What about your family?”

Joshua began, “My great-grandfather Watanabe immigrated from eastern Japan to Hawaii in 1890. He was a farmer. In 1927 he moved to eastern Washington, in what is now called the Tri-Cities area, near Kennewick. My grandparents and great-grandparents were spared the ignominy of being placed in an internment camp during the Second World War. Only Japanese families who lived in the Coastal Exclusion Zone were required to relocate.”

Kelly nodded, and Joshua went on. “There was a great irony in this, though, since the family farm was just twenty miles east of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where plutonium was produced as part of the Manhattan Project. But very few people knew that the plutonium used in making the bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki came from the Hanford site. Most of the locals didn’t find out about that until the 1950s.”

He laughed, and continued, “So now, seven decades later, I’m entrusted with the maintenance on MIRVed strategic nuclear missiles that are capable of wiping out millions of people in a matter of minutes. And for all I know, those warheads include plutonium that was originally processed just twenty miles from where I grew up.”

Kelly nodded again, and said, “That’s doubly ironic.”

“It also shows you that we are living in the greatest nation on earth. In almost every other country, immigrants get treated like dirt. Here in America, any citizen who is willing to learn English, study, and work hard can be successful.”

Kelly smiled and nodded. Then she asked, “Tell me about how you got Shirley.”

Joshua leaned back in his booth seat and said, “On my first leave after getting reassigned to Malmstrom—that was right after I got promoted to E-4—I told my folks how bored I was and how I missed being in the saddle. I basically begged my dad to lend me one of his Bashkir Curlies. He breeds them, you know. He said he wouldn’t lend me one, but he would give me one—his ‘problem child,’ Shirley. Originally, he wanted to keep her as a brood mare, but she didn’t get along well with the other horses, even for that. She’s a biter, at least in a pasture with other mares. So my dad gave me both Shirley and his old two-horse trailer. He helped me wire the trailer lights to my pickup, and off we went. I had to board her at a stable near Belt for the first few months. Then I found the rental house out by Fife. That, of course, required permission.”

Kelly cocked her head. “Permission?”

“Let me explain a recent change of policy. Traditionally, once you became an E-3 with three years of service, you could live off-base. But last year, as a cost reduction measure, anyone who was unmarried that was E-4 or below was required to live in on-base dormitories. Under the new policy, you can’t live off-base until you become a staff sergeant. That’s an E-5. So I guess I’m the ‘exceptional exception,’ because of Shirley. But I had to get permission from my squadron commander. He was willing to approve it, after my NCOIC vouched that I had, quote, ‘exceptional maturity and potential for commissioning.’”

Their steaks and baked potatoes arrived and they dug in. Kelly was pleased to see that Joshua asked only for a glass of iced tea with his dinner. Their conversation shifted to religion and they spent a half hour discussing Christian doctrine. They were in full agreement on Calvinist principles except for the issue of election. Kelly believed in election, but Joshua held to free will.

“Someday, let’s do a Bible study,” Kelly suggested. “We’ll take a concordance and go through each instance where the words ‘chosen,’ ‘predestined,’ and ‘elect’ are used. There are a lot of them, believe me. After that, I’m confident that you’ll come around to my way of thinking.”

Joshua countered, “So when I was twelve years old and I recognized that Christ is the Son of God and I asked for forgiveness of my sins, that wasn’t my choice?”

“No, I believe that what we have is the illusion of free will. We were chosen unto salvation by God before the foundations of the earth. How can God be truly all powerful and all knowing if he couldn’t see into the future who would ‘choose’ to be saved, and ordain it? Yes, it is mysterious, but if God truly is Sovereign then there is only one explanation. God’s predestination of the Elect is a mystery that we need to accept without fully understanding in this mortal life.”

Joshua grinned. “You are a woman of powerful conviction.” After a moment he added, choosing his words carefully, “We may have a minor difference on election, but when it comes to the other aspects of God’s guiding hand, I believe that nothing happens by chance. I want to make it clear that I am courting you for marriage. I don’t believe in flirtations or trifling relationships. I wouldn’t be sitting across from you right now unless I thought that you were someone worthy of marriage. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation if it wasn’t God’s will. Nothing happens by chance.”

Kelly threw in, “My point, exactly.”

Joshua’s first visit to the Monroe ranch came a week later. The ranch house had been built in the 1970s, following a chimney fire that had destroyed the original homestead cabin. The house was utilitarian, furnished with indestructible brown Naugahyde chairs and couches. Kelly had grown up hearing a standing joke about “those poor, defenseless Naugas that gave their lives for our furniture.”

The living room and family room were lightly decorated with a few Charles M. Russell western prints that seemed almost obligatory anywhere within a 100-mile radius of Great Falls. The walls of the living room and family room were lined with mounted trophies and antlers from more than a dozen mule deer, elk, and antelope. There was also a black bear skin and two bobcat hides.

Kelly was the Monroes’ only child. Her mother, Rhonda, was lean and energetic, and a great cook. Her health, ranching background, and her temperament made her well prepared for hard times. Jim Monroe’s only active preparation, early in the Crunch, had been acquiring a four-year-old Guernsey milk cow that had always been hand-milked. He got the cow in trade for six 1,200-pound steers that were eighteen months old. Jim had grown up hearing his father and grandfather talk about the Great Depression. So getting a reliable milk cow seemed a logical thing to do. Rhonda had stocked up on canned goods, bulk rice, and beans as best she could as the buying power of their savings evaporated.

As the Crunch set in, the Monroes had sixty-eight Charolais and Charolais-Hereford cross cattle. The ranch had at one time carried more than 100 head, but Jim had scaled back, in part to discourage the advance of noxious weeds—since more intensive grazing encouraged weeds to gain ground—and in part because Jim had a bad back and could no longer tolerate the extra hours working outdoors to manage a large herd.

They also had four saddle horses, including Kelly’s gelding, Fritz. Rhonda Monroe owned a Paint mare named Beverly. The horse was named after the western artist Bev Doolittle, whose paintings often featured Paint horses. The master bedroom in the house was decorated with four serialized Bev Doolittle prints, all depicting Paint horses.

As Kelly showed Joshua around the ranch, the only thing that seemed out of the ordinary was a Unimog truck. Kelly mentioned that her father had become fascinated by Unimogs when he was stationed in Germany. In 1995, he bought one from Cold War Remarketing, a military vehicle dealer in Englewood, Colorado. This Unimog had originally been a radio vehicle for the West German Bundeswehr. Jim Monroe used the “Mog” as a snowplow in the winter (with chains on all four wheels), and as a mobile hunting cabin each fall. He had equipped it with a tiny woodstove that had originally been designed for use in hunting guide wall tents.

That day they took a long horseback ride from the ranch to the ghost town of Hughesville. The town had been abandoned in 1943, but its heyday was in the 1890s, so most of the buildings were very old. Many of them were collapsed or semi-collapsed and not safe to enter. It was the first time that Joshua had been there—and in fact the first time he had been in any ghost town—but Kelly had been there many times. She showed him some interesting buildings that most tourists overlooked. One of them was a cabin that was up in a side canyon. When they walked in the door, Joshua was surprised to see that there were still some rusty pans on the stove and chairs under the table. This cabin was the highlight of the town for Joshua, because its contents were so intact. There were even a few McCall’s, National Geographic, and Saturday Evening Post magazines from the 1930s and early 1940s on a shelf. Their edges had been ravaged by packrats and mice, but the magazines were still largely intact and legible. They left the cabin just as they had found it, carefully wedging the door shut with a twig to keep the weather out.

It was while they were riding home from Hughesville that Joshua first proposed marriage. Kelly rebuffed him, but Joshua was persistent and optimistic. He was falling deeply in love with Kelly, and he hoped that she felt the same. It was the pragmatist in her that triggered her first refusal.