Yup. Been hungry before. I fed my child for ten days on my last ten dollars. I pretended I had already eaten when I gave him his plate. Boiled rice and chicken necks can be a feast. A can of navy beans can be peppered, thinned and mashed to make a good bean soup for two.
I was in a city at the time, and the only help the local churches would give was to allow me to use their phone job searching. After they had the office and sanctuary doors locked. Well, I got work, got a house, and moved the rest of my family there. But I was like Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With the Wind pulling up that carrot and swearing to never go hungry again. I had just enough time before the two back-to-back hurricanes hit to stock up.
It took some thought to find places to put my food and supplies. Most houses aren't just "ate up" with extra closets and storage space. Extreme heat and cold reduce the storage life of many foods. And water. Cases of factory sealed purified water in gallon jugs went under all the beds. The canned goods and such were packed in plastic cases and stacked in the back of the enclosed garage under a tarp. The dry goods packed in the five gallon and two gallon buckets likewise.
I guess Rubbermaid plastic storage boxes would work, but a dozen of those are not cheap, and not very heavy duty and weatherproof when filled with heavy canned goods. I started out using the heavy pasteboard boxes the bottled water came in (never liked chlorinated, flouridated city water). But the search for something better was on. One day I was getting some medicine out of my first aid box and a light bulb lit in my head (see B.C. comic strip). My family medical kit is a 8x8x12" ribbed metal box with steel clasps, gaskets, handles, and a pressure relief valve, a Pelican box on steroids. It was an old Navy aviation electronics test set box. A seperate compartment in the lid was intended for tech manuals, and holds those (first aid references) and bandages.
Patience, I'm getting there!
Now, being in a coastal area with a huge Navy presence, I hit all the surplus stores. I bingoed on one whose load from the DRMO included a bunch of huge plastic cases much like the small version I just mentioned. Most were about 36x36x36", but I found a few 28x28x28. And one 12x12x14. Most, but not all had some sort of defect. Small cracks in the lids or lower corners, bad gaskets, crushed latches. I bought them for a song. $4 each for four of the big ones, $6 each for two of the smaller ones, $8 for the smallest, and five large really busted ones free for parts.
I took them home and stripped the harnesses and suspension systems out, scrubbed them down inside and out, and dried them. Then I gouged out the cracks with a sharp chisel, and using thin strips of the broken ones for rods, welded them up with a soldering iron. I sanded them, painted them gloss gray (surplus spray paint), replaced the bad latches and gaskets from the parts boxes.
If I've either lost you or peaked your curiosity and you want to know what these boxes were originally for, they were shipping containers for helo gyros. They are ribbed for reenforcement, impact resistant, weatherproof, and have bosses top and bottom for positive stacking, latches and spring retracted handles on all sides. They are too heavy to move when filled, so have to be loaded it situ. My stack had camping gear and clothes in the upper ones, heavier items like the canned goods in the lower. My idea was to have my stuff weather and bug proofed if the roof came off my house.
Codger
Did I mention it was FREEZING outside??
