Surviving II

After having a sale of all of my household and landscaping equipment at my home I took what was left to an auction house and sold that. With the money I took in I paid my rent up to date and my utility bills. Everything that I had left I had packed into my station wagon which was one of two large items I did not sell. The other was an old over the cab, 8 foot pickup camper. I had purchased this because it went with the truck that I bought to do my landscaping. I sold the truck at the sale but not the camper. A friend of my sons got his dad's trailer and loaded it on and pulled it 240 miles north for me. I had kept enough money to pay for his gas. I had the camper put on an acre of ground which I co-own with three of my cousins. It is what remains of my grandfather's farm. The camper had no stove, no refrigator, in fact nothing inside except the table and the seat cushions and a couple of the cupboards for storage. The land is on a county road so it is fairly well travelled. I set the camper on blocks at the back or the acre with the door pointing away from the road. Actually the door pointed east to take advantage of the morning sun and not to be in the hot afternoon sun. I fixed myself a fire pit just outside the door on which I did all of my cooking. I had containers of water which I kept in the sun for warming. This is the water I used for washing myself, my dishes and anything else that needed cleaning. When I needed really hot water, I heated it in a container on the fire. Inside the camper there was no bed in the over the cab space, so I put a false floor on it raising it about eight inches. I used this space in which to store my guns and ammo. The one small closet took care of my clothes, with a box being put on its floor to hold shorts, socks and hankies. There were a couple of small cabinets which were plenty to hold what little food I kept on hand. I had no money to purchase meat or anything like that so I had no use for refrigeration. My fishing equipment and what tools I had kept were kept under one side of the camper with an old tarp hanging down to protect them form the weather and to keep them hidden. I moved to this camper in the beginning of May, as I had to be out of my house by the end of April. I stayed there until mid-September. Next post I will talk about some of the things I did to survive.