ncsfsgm
Senior Member
Prologue
Mitch Baker arrived at the GPS coordinates, got out of the restored Series III Land Rover and looked around. The large machine shop looking building looked desolate and uncared for. He walked through the weeds, unlocked the heavy padlock, opened the side entrance door and the interior showed that it definitely was not unkept. The place was clean and the two tractors, though old, were in pristine condition and somehow dust free. Someone had been caring for them. He walked around inside the building and everything was neat and orderly. Mitch left the building and secured the door, returning to the Land Rover. Driving the last 200 meters up to the house, Mitch stopped and stared for a moment. As he was getting out of the truck, the older man came out on the porch.
“Welcome home, Mitch.”
“Hello Bailey.”
Chapter 1
Before, during and after World War II, Davis Baker watched the change in America’s freight business. His grandfather before him had run freight businesses, hauling goods from the railheads to outlying towns. He had gotten rich off of that. As the early 20th century saw the rapid transition from mule drawn freight wagons to motor freight, the Baker family was ahead of the transition, even having trucks built to their own specifications. They suffered with everyone else through the Depression with barely making ends meet, but they paid their bills and fed their families, much from the livestock and truck gardens they grew. As the climate for war heated up, Davis Baker watched the movement of cargo essentially stayed the same. Freight was moved by trains and delivered to its destination by trucks. Davis was quick to get into the early government contracting on moving supplies for the war before America lost its first son.
After the war, the need for more trucking didn’t dissipate. Returning soldiers had seen a lot of different places other than the farms of Iowa and the streets of Buffalo and they were itching to see more and the migrations away from the railheads began. Davis and his sons expanded until they had a virtual trucking empire under several different names and that grew into even more companies with offices in every state and representation in every major port. In the mid 50’s something went wrong. The Baker Family were no longer living long and bountiful lives. Oh, they were still making millions, but the family members were slowly dying out before they reached their 50th birthday. Davis himself, lived until he was 90 but his grandchildren were dying before their time. But he had a plan to keep the family line from disappearing.
It was a simple, but smart country doctor that came up with the first answer. There was something wrong with Baker bloodline after a certain period, of that, they were certain. Orphanages were abundant so Davis had private investigators search out two male babies and had two of his grandsons bring them into their families. After a time, you would never have known they weren’t blood relatives. They were absorbed into the Baker family and from an early age, were trained in the businesses of the family. Each summer, from the time they were 6, they would spend time at one of the many poultry, hog or cattle operations the family expanded into. They were introduced into scouting before the perverts took the program over and were trained by family members in hunting fishing and surviving on their own. And it wasn’t only the manly things they were trained in. The farm women also trained them on how to cook a decent meal and how to take care of a home.
The Bakers could never be called ostentatious, no matter what the family was worth. Davis made sure of that. They all were hard workers, and they lived well. But as far as anyone knew, they were all middle income families.
Both embedded boys became true Bakers, even if not of the true bloodline. Many said they were the spit right out of their grandfather’s mouth and Davis was proud of them too
Back in the late 50’s Davis bought up a lot of land in areas that looked like would see growth in the coming decades, and some that probably wouldn’t but Davis snatched it up because it was dirt cheap, no pun intended. After seeing what had happened in the Depression, he wouldn’t touch the stock market and invested in his businesses and real estate. One of the properties of around 3600 acres in the northern part of Missouri, became instrumental in the life of one of his grandsons in the coming years.
In the tense climate of the Cold War era, the U.S. Government was constantly reinforcing its security infrastructure. Hardened missile silos were built. Sites for the continuation of government were built. Civil Defense was instituted and communications were expanded and hardened.
In the 1960’s AT&T built a series of underground terminal and repeater stations for the hardened analog L4 carrier cable (coax) that went from the east coast terminals to major cities and military bases in the middle of the United States carrying general toll circuits and critical military communication circuits. Each site housed an AUTOVON 4-wire switch as part of the switching fabric of that critical global military communications network. Towers were built at each site for the microwave relay system that was a part of the AT&T Long Lines network that covered both civilian and backup military communications. The government decided that a portion of the Baker’s land holdings were needed for one of the sites.
Davis was smart though. He leased, rather than sold them the site for $1.00 but with the stipulation that they would turn the site back over to him when it was no longer in need. The short-sighted bureaucrats laughed because there would always be a need for national security. What they didn’t see, and Davis did, was that technological changes are like dominos, when one piece falls the whole bunch falls. Davis had faith that in a few years, technology would leave such sites obsolete in the big picture of things. So, he waited. The site, costing a few hundred million dollars, was built on 50 acres in northern Missouri, the closest town was 12 miles away with a population of less than 2000 people. The closest town of any large size was over 124 miles away. As some of the workers at the site would often repeat, “It was in the middle of no-where.” Normally, these sites occupied around two acres of land, had 1,800 square feet worth of bunker and a 200 foot microwave tower. This site had been some type of node of some kind and was a heck of a lot bigger.
“Have a good trip?” Bailey asked.
“Yeah, I took it easy. I was in no hurry.”
“Want a beer?”
“Yeah, I could use one, but first, I want a glass of that cold well water I remember.”
Bailey chuckled. “It ain’t changed, not a bit.”
Mitch sat down on the steps and leaned against a post.
Bailey came back out with two tall cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a tall glass of cold well water, the condensation already forming and running down the sides of the glass.
“Bailey! Are you still drinking this rot-gut crap?”
Bailey chuckled. “It’s a man’s beer! Biddie brings me out a case every couple of weeks.”
“She’s old enough to buy alcohol?”
“Mitch, it’s been awhile since you’ve been back here.”
“Where’s she living now?”
“She’s living down in Kansas City. She co-owns a flower shop there. She was up here last week. When she found out you were coming home, she got a couple of women from somewhere and they went through the cabin, cleaned and aired it out and even stocked the freezer. It’s all ready for you.”
“Well, I better go and check things out. I’ll need to go into Unionville and stock up on perishables and such. Is Harley’s still there?”
“Oh no. He retired a few years ago. They now have a Hy-Vee and Bob’s Food Mart. Even have a restaurant, Leo’s Café.”
“Oh! Coming up in the world. What’s the population now, around thirteen hundred?”
“I think the last count was around 1700 or so.”
“Well, I’m going to drop my stuff at the cabin and go grocery shopping. Anything I can pick up for you?”
“No, Biddie keeps me up on groceries.”
“Okay, I’ll see you later.”
Mitch got in the Land Rover and drove on up through the trees to the cabin. The cabin sat on the foundation of what once was the entrance building of the underground complex. The architect had designed the one story cabin to cover what was once the foundation and now you couldn’t tell anything else had ever been there. After the government had moved everything out that they were going to, they still left a lot of stuff behind. The emergency 60KW generators were still in place, all the wiring was complete and a lot of the big storage cabinets were still there. Brad Baker had talked to the government into letting them arrange for the microwave relay tower to be taken down instead of the government going to the expense and they had been given 90 days to take it down. Normally the government would let some military unit come in and destroy it with explosives for practice but they still had to go through the expense of removing the debris. Brad had a tower company come in and dismantle the tower and the pieces were still stacked under the trees. The steel had been used for various things over the years and there was still a lot of it left. Now, you could barely tell, unless you were looking for signs, there had been a multi-million dollar installation lying right under your feet. Native trees and shrubs had been replanted after the construction was complete and it looked like part of the forest. With the tower gone, the was no indication of anything else being there, other than the cabin and three other buildings being noticeable.
Mitch pulled in front of the door and got out. He unlocked the door and went in, noting that everything was clean. He opened some windows for cross ventilation and began unloading the Rover. The only bed that was made was in the master bedroom, so that’s where he put his bags. He went out to the kitchen and checked the refrigerator and it was bare, as was the pantry. Still in the pantry was the laminated checklist so he sat down with it and made a list of things to buy on his phone. Mitch was like Bailey in that he didn’t want to be going into town that much. He was going into buy what would tide him over for the remainder of the week and make his big haul on Saturday. Mitch was going back to his old ways.
It wasn’t until the more advanced studies in heredity diseases began to take place that the Baker family had an inkling of what their short life span was being caused by. Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (Alpha-1) is a genetic (inherited) condition – it is passed from parents to their children through their genes. Alpha-1 may result in serious lung disease in adults and/or liver disease at any age. All the members of the family were tested and it seemed the ones effected were the second generation after Davis Baker and practically everyone after that. Only Mitch and his cousin Perry didn’t have the Alpha-1 gene. The family had been coping by having as many children as they could. Some of the descendants weren’t affected for some reason, but that was the exception, and lived long lives. The rest rarely lived to 60 years of age.
Both Perry and Mitch finished college and joined the National Guard. Perry was a Captain in an engineer unit and Mitch flew helicopters with the 135th Aviation Regiment of the Missouri National Guard. Both did tours in Afghanistan, only Mitch made it back alive.
After Mitch got back his obligation to the Guard was up and he got out. He went to work in one of the freight hauling companies and was doing well when Davis, getting near the end of his life, decided to sell the trucking companies and divvy out the other companies to the family. It didn’t bother Mitch. He stayed with the company when it was sold but he only worked to keep from being bored. He already had more money than he would ever spend as long he remained sensible. When Davis Baker passed away, even more money was added to private accounts and Mitch ended up with the cabin and land on Blackbird Creek. The closest relative he had owned one of the pig farms about 20 miles away.
Mitch needed to come here. There was nothing left for him back in Springfield.
Mitch finished his list and didn’t even lock the door when he left. He drove at a moderate speed into Unionville just taking in the scenery. Not much had changed since he was last around here. Hy-Vee had everything he needed so he didn’t bother going to Bob’s. He got a few staples and some fresh vegetables along with some ice cream and on second thought a Styrofoam cooler to keep the ice cream from melting. A couple of small frozen pizzas went into the cooler also. He got enough groceries to last him until Saturday and then he would take a trip to Des Moines and pick up more things to fill the pantry. He would just take the pantry inventory list with him and pick up more vegetables and other perishables when he came back through Unionville.
Mitch Baker arrived at the GPS coordinates, got out of the restored Series III Land Rover and looked around. The large machine shop looking building looked desolate and uncared for. He walked through the weeds, unlocked the heavy padlock, opened the side entrance door and the interior showed that it definitely was not unkept. The place was clean and the two tractors, though old, were in pristine condition and somehow dust free. Someone had been caring for them. He walked around inside the building and everything was neat and orderly. Mitch left the building and secured the door, returning to the Land Rover. Driving the last 200 meters up to the house, Mitch stopped and stared for a moment. As he was getting out of the truck, the older man came out on the porch.
“Welcome home, Mitch.”
“Hello Bailey.”
Chapter 1
Before, during and after World War II, Davis Baker watched the change in America’s freight business. His grandfather before him had run freight businesses, hauling goods from the railheads to outlying towns. He had gotten rich off of that. As the early 20th century saw the rapid transition from mule drawn freight wagons to motor freight, the Baker family was ahead of the transition, even having trucks built to their own specifications. They suffered with everyone else through the Depression with barely making ends meet, but they paid their bills and fed their families, much from the livestock and truck gardens they grew. As the climate for war heated up, Davis Baker watched the movement of cargo essentially stayed the same. Freight was moved by trains and delivered to its destination by trucks. Davis was quick to get into the early government contracting on moving supplies for the war before America lost its first son.
After the war, the need for more trucking didn’t dissipate. Returning soldiers had seen a lot of different places other than the farms of Iowa and the streets of Buffalo and they were itching to see more and the migrations away from the railheads began. Davis and his sons expanded until they had a virtual trucking empire under several different names and that grew into even more companies with offices in every state and representation in every major port. In the mid 50’s something went wrong. The Baker Family were no longer living long and bountiful lives. Oh, they were still making millions, but the family members were slowly dying out before they reached their 50th birthday. Davis himself, lived until he was 90 but his grandchildren were dying before their time. But he had a plan to keep the family line from disappearing.
It was a simple, but smart country doctor that came up with the first answer. There was something wrong with Baker bloodline after a certain period, of that, they were certain. Orphanages were abundant so Davis had private investigators search out two male babies and had two of his grandsons bring them into their families. After a time, you would never have known they weren’t blood relatives. They were absorbed into the Baker family and from an early age, were trained in the businesses of the family. Each summer, from the time they were 6, they would spend time at one of the many poultry, hog or cattle operations the family expanded into. They were introduced into scouting before the perverts took the program over and were trained by family members in hunting fishing and surviving on their own. And it wasn’t only the manly things they were trained in. The farm women also trained them on how to cook a decent meal and how to take care of a home.
The Bakers could never be called ostentatious, no matter what the family was worth. Davis made sure of that. They all were hard workers, and they lived well. But as far as anyone knew, they were all middle income families.
Both embedded boys became true Bakers, even if not of the true bloodline. Many said they were the spit right out of their grandfather’s mouth and Davis was proud of them too
Back in the late 50’s Davis bought up a lot of land in areas that looked like would see growth in the coming decades, and some that probably wouldn’t but Davis snatched it up because it was dirt cheap, no pun intended. After seeing what had happened in the Depression, he wouldn’t touch the stock market and invested in his businesses and real estate. One of the properties of around 3600 acres in the northern part of Missouri, became instrumental in the life of one of his grandsons in the coming years.
In the tense climate of the Cold War era, the U.S. Government was constantly reinforcing its security infrastructure. Hardened missile silos were built. Sites for the continuation of government were built. Civil Defense was instituted and communications were expanded and hardened.
In the 1960’s AT&T built a series of underground terminal and repeater stations for the hardened analog L4 carrier cable (coax) that went from the east coast terminals to major cities and military bases in the middle of the United States carrying general toll circuits and critical military communication circuits. Each site housed an AUTOVON 4-wire switch as part of the switching fabric of that critical global military communications network. Towers were built at each site for the microwave relay system that was a part of the AT&T Long Lines network that covered both civilian and backup military communications. The government decided that a portion of the Baker’s land holdings were needed for one of the sites.
Davis was smart though. He leased, rather than sold them the site for $1.00 but with the stipulation that they would turn the site back over to him when it was no longer in need. The short-sighted bureaucrats laughed because there would always be a need for national security. What they didn’t see, and Davis did, was that technological changes are like dominos, when one piece falls the whole bunch falls. Davis had faith that in a few years, technology would leave such sites obsolete in the big picture of things. So, he waited. The site, costing a few hundred million dollars, was built on 50 acres in northern Missouri, the closest town was 12 miles away with a population of less than 2000 people. The closest town of any large size was over 124 miles away. As some of the workers at the site would often repeat, “It was in the middle of no-where.” Normally, these sites occupied around two acres of land, had 1,800 square feet worth of bunker and a 200 foot microwave tower. This site had been some type of node of some kind and was a heck of a lot bigger.
“Have a good trip?” Bailey asked.
“Yeah, I took it easy. I was in no hurry.”
“Want a beer?”
“Yeah, I could use one, but first, I want a glass of that cold well water I remember.”
Bailey chuckled. “It ain’t changed, not a bit.”
Mitch sat down on the steps and leaned against a post.
Bailey came back out with two tall cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a tall glass of cold well water, the condensation already forming and running down the sides of the glass.
“Bailey! Are you still drinking this rot-gut crap?”
Bailey chuckled. “It’s a man’s beer! Biddie brings me out a case every couple of weeks.”
“She’s old enough to buy alcohol?”
“Mitch, it’s been awhile since you’ve been back here.”
“Where’s she living now?”
“She’s living down in Kansas City. She co-owns a flower shop there. She was up here last week. When she found out you were coming home, she got a couple of women from somewhere and they went through the cabin, cleaned and aired it out and even stocked the freezer. It’s all ready for you.”
“Well, I better go and check things out. I’ll need to go into Unionville and stock up on perishables and such. Is Harley’s still there?”
“Oh no. He retired a few years ago. They now have a Hy-Vee and Bob’s Food Mart. Even have a restaurant, Leo’s Café.”
“Oh! Coming up in the world. What’s the population now, around thirteen hundred?”
“I think the last count was around 1700 or so.”
“Well, I’m going to drop my stuff at the cabin and go grocery shopping. Anything I can pick up for you?”
“No, Biddie keeps me up on groceries.”
“Okay, I’ll see you later.”
Mitch got in the Land Rover and drove on up through the trees to the cabin. The cabin sat on the foundation of what once was the entrance building of the underground complex. The architect had designed the one story cabin to cover what was once the foundation and now you couldn’t tell anything else had ever been there. After the government had moved everything out that they were going to, they still left a lot of stuff behind. The emergency 60KW generators were still in place, all the wiring was complete and a lot of the big storage cabinets were still there. Brad Baker had talked to the government into letting them arrange for the microwave relay tower to be taken down instead of the government going to the expense and they had been given 90 days to take it down. Normally the government would let some military unit come in and destroy it with explosives for practice but they still had to go through the expense of removing the debris. Brad had a tower company come in and dismantle the tower and the pieces were still stacked under the trees. The steel had been used for various things over the years and there was still a lot of it left. Now, you could barely tell, unless you were looking for signs, there had been a multi-million dollar installation lying right under your feet. Native trees and shrubs had been replanted after the construction was complete and it looked like part of the forest. With the tower gone, the was no indication of anything else being there, other than the cabin and three other buildings being noticeable.
Mitch pulled in front of the door and got out. He unlocked the door and went in, noting that everything was clean. He opened some windows for cross ventilation and began unloading the Rover. The only bed that was made was in the master bedroom, so that’s where he put his bags. He went out to the kitchen and checked the refrigerator and it was bare, as was the pantry. Still in the pantry was the laminated checklist so he sat down with it and made a list of things to buy on his phone. Mitch was like Bailey in that he didn’t want to be going into town that much. He was going into buy what would tide him over for the remainder of the week and make his big haul on Saturday. Mitch was going back to his old ways.
It wasn’t until the more advanced studies in heredity diseases began to take place that the Baker family had an inkling of what their short life span was being caused by. Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency (Alpha-1) is a genetic (inherited) condition – it is passed from parents to their children through their genes. Alpha-1 may result in serious lung disease in adults and/or liver disease at any age. All the members of the family were tested and it seemed the ones effected were the second generation after Davis Baker and practically everyone after that. Only Mitch and his cousin Perry didn’t have the Alpha-1 gene. The family had been coping by having as many children as they could. Some of the descendants weren’t affected for some reason, but that was the exception, and lived long lives. The rest rarely lived to 60 years of age.
Both Perry and Mitch finished college and joined the National Guard. Perry was a Captain in an engineer unit and Mitch flew helicopters with the 135th Aviation Regiment of the Missouri National Guard. Both did tours in Afghanistan, only Mitch made it back alive.
After Mitch got back his obligation to the Guard was up and he got out. He went to work in one of the freight hauling companies and was doing well when Davis, getting near the end of his life, decided to sell the trucking companies and divvy out the other companies to the family. It didn’t bother Mitch. He stayed with the company when it was sold but he only worked to keep from being bored. He already had more money than he would ever spend as long he remained sensible. When Davis Baker passed away, even more money was added to private accounts and Mitch ended up with the cabin and land on Blackbird Creek. The closest relative he had owned one of the pig farms about 20 miles away.
Mitch needed to come here. There was nothing left for him back in Springfield.
Mitch finished his list and didn’t even lock the door when he left. He drove at a moderate speed into Unionville just taking in the scenery. Not much had changed since he was last around here. Hy-Vee had everything he needed so he didn’t bother going to Bob’s. He got a few staples and some fresh vegetables along with some ice cream and on second thought a Styrofoam cooler to keep the ice cream from melting. A couple of small frozen pizzas went into the cooler also. He got enough groceries to last him until Saturday and then he would take a trip to Des Moines and pick up more things to fill the pantry. He would just take the pantry inventory list with him and pick up more vegetables and other perishables when he came back through Unionville.
