hoodaki travel: Convenience, Complacency and Community then, Prepping Now ...

By APN Radio - Sun Jul 15, 1:13 am

By: The MrsVolfie

Last week on the American Preppers Radio MrsVolfie and the newest Honey on the ?Homestead Honey Hour, Michigan Snow Pony talked about the three C?s. The three Cs Represent Convenience, Complacency, and community and although they don?t SOUND like it these three words are forever linked in my mind.

In the last 50 years or so, as a modern day society we have been BOMBARDED with modern conveniences. It wasn?t that long ago when women were expected to stay in the home and look after family and house but WW2 sent women into the work force and when the men came marching home many women were not content to go back to the home and hearth and be ?Just a Housewife?.

Conveniences were beginning to show up in the market place, washers, dryers, dishwashers, central vacuums, garbage disposals, set and forget ovens, all these wonderful things that made life so much easier, ESPECIALLY for the newly working Woman!! Advanced shipping and trucking made all food available to everyone. We no longer had to keep chicken coops, rabbit hutches, and pigeon cotes in our back yards, YES I SAID back yards because when my Dad was a boy in Toronto people still kept critters in coops in their back yards! BEEF became available to everyone, not just for farmers and not just on Sundays! And pre-packaged food was appearing on shelves! The nuclear family was fast disappearing and latch key kids were beginning to turn up on every street.

I was a latch key kid, my mother died when I was 9. I wore a house key on a shoe lace around my neck because I was the youngest but always the first one home. Mind you, even in Toronto our neighborhoods were little communities, we knew EVERYONE on our street!! And quite a few people on the neighboring streets. It was nothing to be up in a tree in someone?s backyard and have a neighbor?s head pop out a door and to hear, ?Beverley! Get out of that tree before you fall and break a bone? Or?be on a neighboring street and have someone say??Bev I heard you dad calling?you better hot foot it or you?re gonna cop it!? We had very few rules?No TV past 1 pm on Saturdays?Come in when the street lights came on?don?t talk to strangers?and you HAD to be within eyesight by the time Dad called you the THIRD time?. or you may get your butt smacked on the way in the door! So what happened?

Remember those conveniences we talked about? They cost MONEY!!!! More and more women were going out into the work force but not as an option?because people were finding these wonderful things we could not live without?were not getting paid off at those low, low monthly payments! Cash was no longer king!! Once the tide had turned from the cash is king nuclear family?(I remember my dad bringing home his pay in a little brown envelope?IN. CASH with his deductions marked on the front) to the two parent working home?things began to snowball?and before we knew it?we had TV?s in our bedrooms?two car homes?TV?s became baby sitters, video games and computers replaced board games and street games of tag, hide and seek and red rover?and parents became trapped in debts that could no longer be easily paid off. ?We became complacent?brainwashed into believing that these do-dads were NEEDED?that banks were necessary?Pay checks, then later direct deposit?replaced the pay packet envelope?That it was DANGEROUS to self-medicate with herbs ..Those Doctors were demi-gods?and our government had OUR BEST interests at heart. Food labeling was minimal and in the beginning unnecessary because chemicals were not yet a large factor in food?so slowly but surely?when it DID become a factor?it was already too late?MANY people had let go of the skills that our grandparents had learned as needed life skills?because we did not need them anymore?who would CAN FOOD when it was already done for you? Who would use herbs when there was aspirin and penicillin? Who made quilts or had time to? Who knit socks when you could buy them so much cheaper?

By the 1980?s people were so busy working to pay for their ?had to Have? things?that there were less people at home to keep an eye on the kids in the street?they had less time to get to know the new neighbors who moved in when older ones died or moved away? communities began to dissolve, so did families?and so do a lot of our heritage. What has this to do with Prepping, homesteading or the back to basics lifestyle? Everything?almost too late many of us have discovered just how fast that snow ball grew?and are trying to slow it down?we are reawakening ourselves to the forgotten life skills?learning that Doctors, governments, pharmaceutical and chemical companies are NOT gods?and we DO have choices?we are building NEW communities, in NEW places?like YouTube and the internet?and here we are! ?Coming together?sharing our experience strength and hope so that we may go forward and relearn our rights, DEMAND our rights?and take back the life that for so long sustained our ancestors! And the others? The ones who refuse to see the writing on the wall? All I can say is?onward and upward my friends. And the devil take the hind most!

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