May 3, 2009
By Rick Montgomery
The Kansas City Star
Ammo. Canned goods. Vegetable seeds. Fortified water by the case.
They are reportedly flying off the shelves, these staples of the stockpile crowd.
Photo: Just planted, the garden of Ron and Jan Owens near Lawson, Mo., is big enough to sustain everyone on their rural cul-de-sac should summer bring disaster — economical or meteorological. “If they’re not as well prepared for whatever might happen, we’d like them to know everything on our property would be theirs, too,” Ron said. (Jill Toyoshiba)
“Survivalist” isn’t the right term, not in a downturn that has got everyone nervous. “Preparedness” or “self-sufficiency” — that is what they are saying.
Adhesive bandages. Gardens in the works — be they victory gardens or, as some prefer, “crisis gardens.”
The closet off the living room in the Owens home near Lawson, Mo., isn’t huge, but it’s organized.
Heavy coats, sweatshirts and Ron Owens’ cap collection greet wife, Jan, as she enters and flips the light. She pulls back the heavy coats.
There, on a rack covering the wall: Nonfat dry milk. Rice. A cast-iron skillet.
“You never know when you’ll need it,” she said of the food supplies she began stockpiling five months ago.
Jan is a cheery person who works in a nursing home. She apologizes for the cramped closet, just up the stairs from the cramped basement bathroom where more essentials are stuffed behind a curtain: Stewed tomatoes. First aid in a suitcase. Large bottles of liquor.
“Er … that’s for snakebite,” deadpans Ron, who works in alternative fuels and holds an MBA.
The couple’s easy disposition — Ron plays mandolin on the porch — belies a worry shared by many in this final year of a stormy decade.
If Sept. 11 wasn’t enough, if Hurricane Katrina and spiking oil prices weren’t enough, if a federal government diving into 14-digit debt wasn’t enough, Jan and others now ask, “What if the banks close?”
Are times that perilous?
Frankly, not to Joe Levy, a clerk at Mickey’s Surplus in Kansas City, Kan., where mannequin heads sport gas masks.
“Compared to the Depression, this is nothing!” said Levy, 78, whose family of German Jews fled the Nazi regime and came to America in 1937. “I have faith in this country. Things will come around.”
Many agree. For the first time in five years, more Americans than not say the country is headed in the right direction, according to an Associated Press poll released last week.
Photo: Among the items in a closet in Ron and Jan Owens’ home near Lawson, Mo., are food supplies she began stockpiling five months ago. (Jill Toyoshiba)
But among the 44 percent who say “wrong direction” and countless others who just wonder if they are prepared for the next blow, natural or man-made, it makes sense to grab 10 cans of corn on sale instead of two.
Nationwide, retailers report shortages of canning jars, water-purification tablets and ammunition — especially ammunition.
For many gun owners, the stockpiling “isn’t just kind of — it’s full on,” said Jeff Neuman of The Bullet Hole gun store and firing range in Overland Park. “We’re real thin on ammunition, same as everywhere.”
Much of the ammunition crunch is tied to concerns other than economic. Gun-rights groups worry that the Obama administration and a Democratic Congress will stiffen firearm restrictions. Some state legislatures are looking at bills that aim to slap serial numbers on bullets.
But area firearm dealers say the creeping unease extends beyond the threat of gun-control forces in positions of power.
“I think it’s all of the above,” said Mike Malone of the Olathe Gun Shop: Global terrorism. National debt. Big banks teetering.
The Department of Homeland Security this month issued a report to law enforcement officials warning that home foreclosures, unemployment and the recession “could create a fertile recruiting environment for right-wing extremists.”
http://www.kansascity.com/news/politics/story/1162649.html