Chapter 8

How amazing the way the world changed in just a few days. I was adjusting to the quiet, so I no longer listened for sounds.

My priority for the day was finding a source for propane and bringing as many bottles to the house as I could find. A quick check of the Yellow Pages gave me five listings for propane dealers in the county, and several weren't that far away.

Two dealers that looked by their ads to be very large were in the Daytona area. It made sense to get the faraway propane first, so I took a car to town and exchanged it for a flat bed I found along the street. It had a Tommy-Lift to help handle the heavy work its front winch system surely wouldn't hurt, either.

I had the phone book with me and set off for Daytona.

Arthea and I had given each other a Garmin GPS, as an anniversary gift one year. I figured the satellites were still up there, so I fired it up, put in the addresses and found the best route to both shops. It was a long drive — about 130 miles, and the trip was lonely, quiet and uneventful.

At the first place, I struck gold. The bottled propane came in 5 to 2500 gallon tanks. They also had exactly the right equipment and trucks to move it; four trucks were loaded for deliveries. I took all four trucks and parked them near the house but a safe distance, in case of fire. If I got as lucky at the other four locations, I might be able to stock up enough to last for years.

The last trip home was at dusk. I thought I needed a big meal after such a hard day. The truck was loaded with all the portable-sized bottles. They were for the gas grill I would be picking up at Home Depot tomorrow. Cooking would become a lot easier, as long as I could find cookable foods. Either way, I could heat water, do a little baking from those "just add water," boxes from the grocery store. I simply had to teach myself how it was done. After all, I was learning lots of other things, why not cooking and baking?

I stopped at a Publix near the Sanford Mall and shopped for dinner. I was hungry, dirty and tired, so I just opened what I liked and ate.

It's amazing how easy it is to drive through Orlando without traffic. Back home I unloaded the truck, parked it back in the street and settled down in the motor home to watch comedy DVDs. One thing Arthea and I loved to do was watch a good movie together.

The night cooled off mercifully. By the time I turned in, the bedroom was cool enough for sleeping.

When things started to get hard for Arthea, we would go out to the lanai and hold hands, watching the stars come out. Many evenings after she seriously declined, we quietly touched shoulders while sitting on the glider, waiting for the stars to appear and entertain us.

Arthea loved to hold hands and cuddle and those last weeks before she was too sick to get out, we spent in total devotion to each other. Her family was nearby and we all used to spend weekends at the lake together.

Her oldest brother, Roy had a speed boat and he taught me to water ski, though I mostly fell down. The whole family loved to remind me of just how klutzy I could be on a pair of skis. We never had a gathering that it didn't come up.

Almost always after skiing, Arthea and I would cuddle together on the front bench of the boat and watch everyone else play. It was our special alone time in a crowd.

I thought about the coming days and decided to pick up all the propane I could find, including all the propane delivery trucks. As soon as that was done, I should start moving tractor-trailer loads of gasoline and diesel near both houses.