Death Travels Beside You

 Randy Arthur Bradley

1950 - 2011

I know I have been behind in my posts again, but this has been a very intense and emotional time for my family and I. From my previous posts you know that my mother died in April 2011 after an illness in which my brother and I cared for her. In August 2011, my uncle (her brother) was killed in a horrendous auto accident involving two 18-wheelers. Until now we were advised not to talk about the accident. This past week we mediated and settled with one of the trucking companies. As for the other trucking company?... They don't feel like they are responsible for dumping hundreds of gallons of Sodium Hydroxide (lye) on my uncle. We think they are. We are not motivated by money. There is no amount in which it would restore the relationship we have lost with our loved one. However; money is the only avenue in which we can hold them accountable for such a tragedy. We as a family would like inform the public to the danger of what is traveling on the highway with them, and how it could impact their life as it did ours.

It is very hard for me to put in words everything my family and I have endured this past 10 months. But if it saves one life it will be worth any tears I cry as I write this.

Last August I was at my mother's house trying to clear up some of my Mother's affairs. We had her house on the market and there were details to take care of. It was not a good day to began with, as it would have been her 70th birthday. In the afternoon the area had a power outage. After I called the power company and found that power would not be restored until 2am. I called my Uncle Randy. You see, Randy was not the holiday type uncle. He never had kids of his own. So every kid in the family was like his own child to him. He was 10 when I was born. He has held the capacity of Uncle, Father, Brother and most of all, my friend. We hung out and worked together, so it was only natural for me to call him. I think he needed a diversion from grief also because he suggested we go to the Casinos in Shreveport while we waited for them to restore power on an extremely hot August day. In not to long Randy arrived at my Mother's and I rode with him to Shreveport. We spend most of that time hanging out together playing the same machine and rooting for each other to get the jackpot. At shortly after midnight we went to the casino restaurant since all we had consumed for several hours was coke and coffee.

I have to pause here and tell you about our dining experience, since it describes the way Randy was his whole life. We sat and placed our order, then Randy left for the restroom. There was an older lady dining alone in the booth behind me. She had just gotten her appetizer of onion rings. As Randy passed, he smiled and told her "Those onion rings look awesome, young lady" Needless to say, while he was gone the lady came over to me and asks to share her onion rings with him. This was a common occurrence with Randy. He never met a stranger. And I have never seen anyone NOT respond to him, he was just so happy go lucky, you couldn't help but like him.

When we were though eating we left and returned to Mother's house. We arrived just before 2am. Once there, we found that the power was still not on. So I called the power company again. As I listened to their canned recording for the new service restore time, Randy said he was going to the house and I responded that I would be right behind him. In only about a minute I was told that the estimated time of repair was now 4am. So I went up stairs, locked the door and then drove out of the drive that Randy had left less that 5 minutes before. There is no doubt that we will take the same route. I-20 is a common route for our family because it connects all of the small towns in the area where a majority of my family lives. So once on I-20 I set my cruise for 65.

As I neared the truck stop on the east side of Longview, traffic slowed and came to a dead stop. This effectively pinned me in gridlock because I was in the inner lane. No one was moving and everyone was leaving their cars. So I got out and ask a truck driver if he knew what was ahead because I was on one side of a hill and the accident was on the other. He told me there were two 18-wheelers turned over across the interstate. And this is where the nightmare began.

I got back in my car and tried to call Uncle Randy but got no answer. The first call I didn't panic, even though it was strange for him not to warn me of the accident. I thought maybe he got past it, so I tried calling the house although I knew he'd not had time to reach it. As I redialed and prayed, redialed and prayed I kept trying to come up with reasons for him not to answer. I made a desperate attempt not to panic. This is called denial. In the mean time I was trapped with a car in front of me and one in back. I knew I couldn't leave my car and cause another accident, but I knew something was seriously wrong even though I kept making excuses. I finally left my car again and asked the same truck driver if there were any passenger cars involved. He informed me he thought there was a pickup truck involved. I knew then! I returned to my car as others were shifting their cars behind me. I was finally free of the gridlock, so I pulled into the inside ditch and drove over the hill and this is close to what I saw.

I am not entirely sure how I got from the inside ditch to the access road beside the interstate, but I did. I caught the first uniform I saw and ask them the make and model of the pickup. I wanted someone.... anyone.... to tell me I was wrong about what I was seeing. Once the Officer informed me my uncle was dead. I called in the family. We spent several hours standing beside the interstate with my uncle lying dead in the seat of his truck. They could not remove his body because of all of the caustic soda. It was up to the wheels on his truck. In fact he was still in the truck when the above photo was taken because it was breaking daylight before he was removed. That night was a horror that I hope no one else EVER has to endure. My cousin only lives a mile or two from this site. On property that originally belonged to my grandparents. She must pass by this and be reminded of that night on a daily basis.

Now that you understand how we came to be at this spot in time that night, I will tell you about the accident itself. Two 18-wheelers were traveling in the eastbound lane of I-20. One was transporting cars. The second was hauling six 500 or 1000 gallon plastic vats of liquid Sodium Hydroxide. Or in laymen terms LYE, caustic soda. At the very least; he was exposed to 3000 gallons of lye. The transport driver hit the chemical truck in the rear end and by the skid marks they started to go towards the right ditch until they swerved sharply left indicating that the chemical truck driver jerked his steering wheel hard left. This caused both trucks to break though the cable barrier in the median that the State of Texas claims will hold an 18-wheeler. It will NOT, they took out two sections of it. Both trucks came to rest across both lanes of westbound I-20 at the bottom of a hill, The chemical truck was on its side spilling capricious amounts of lye on to the highway toward oncoming traffic. My uncle had the misfortune to be traveling westbound down that hill. According to his skid marks he tried to stop but there was not enough dry pavement before he was hydroplaning on sodium hydroxide, yards from the chemical truck itself. My uncle's truck slammed into the chemical truck on the driver's side causing him to be literally drowned in lye.

We realize that the transport truck initially started the tragic chain of events that night. And they have owned their responsibility. It is our belief; the chemical truck perpetuated it with blind panic. If he had maintained control, both 18-wheelers would have most likely remained on the eastbound side of I-20. Saving the life of someone many people held dear.

As I stated earlier, that night was the beginning of the nightmare. Little did we know it would continue in the months to come. It began it at the funeral home; the judge had ordered an autopsy to determine cause of death. Nowhere could they perform an autopsy. My uncle was too toxic. No one had the ventilation system to handle it. All they could do was a visual exam and blood toxicology. His report states "indications of head and chest trauma" and "excessive exposure to Sodium hydroxide", "alcohol and drugs negative" We will never know what really killed him or how long and to what extent he suffered. Research shows sodium hydroxide in the amount he was exposed to; has the potential to explode the heart.

The next thing we had to endure was his cremation. No one in my family has ever been cremated. But we were not given much choice; again he was just too toxic. We were not allow a viewing or even to be near him to say goodbye.

Then comes the lawyers, unfortunately it is the only way to make someone accountable for their actions. We agreed to a pre-suit mediation in an attempt to have some closure. The transport company quickly owned up to their responsibility and we hammered out an agreement. I know they think they paid too much and we will always think they paid too little. We would return every dime and more if they could bring my uncle back. Through the whole mediation process we had to work around the fact that the chemical company wanted $300,000 for the loss of their truck. But we worked around it and got it settled. Then it was time to mediate with the chemical company. Initially, for whatever the reason, they felt compelled to offer our family $5000. We respectfully declined their pathetic offering. Later, they increased this "offering" to $10,000. Nowhere in my world is a truck worth $300,000 and a life $10,000.

Would you like to know the name of the company that values life at $10,000. It is Cudd Pressure Control. A company rumored to travel mostly at night. I wonder if it has anything to do with weight scales being closed late at night? 

Open reprint permission: Please feel free to share this where ever you think it will serve the public as a caution to avoid these trucks. Especially where people like or are required to travel at night.

Table for One, Please!

Here is the post I promised on what to do with that dehydrated food I talked about in the previous post. I am also going to include some more visual and "fanny" research that I've done since the last post.

Let's start with the additional dry food I found locally.  I found that Drug Emporium carries a pretty wide selection of organic foods. Among these is a wide selection of dried fruits, like mangos, blueberries, strawberries and many other more common fruits. They also had a few dried vegetables that could be put to use in stews and such.  The fruit also had the added advantage of not having any added sugar, unlike the store brands.  My local health food store also had a few things that I picked up, some honey granules and some dry soup mixes where the ingredients were packaged separately. I live in a relatively small town so my sources are limited. Depending on where you are, your possibilities may be more readily available.

So now you have some dry food, what to do with it?  In it's current form it doesn't look very appetizing. The first thing you need to know about cooking dried foods is that it's not instant.  It takes some planning ahead.  You will have to soak those potatoes in water for a bit before you can pan fry them. If you want onions in it you must throw them in with the potatoes too. If you are making a soup or stew then it's just a matter of a longer cooking time.  Dried foods lend themselves to soups the best, but that doesn't mean you can't use them other ways. You can use most dried foods any way you would use fresh, if you understand that their texture maybe slightly different.

If you chose to live in a van, hopefully you planned for how you were going to cook. If you didn't choose it, then maybe this will help. The last few days I have been experimenting with minimal cooking. The one that intrigued me the most was thermos cooking. I own this Thermos (17.00 at walmart). It's not the cadillac of thermoses but neither is it the spiderman lunch box variety (which won't work).  According to some of the sites I read, this is not the best one to use because of the wide mouth top and heat loss.  I did not find this to be true. Also I did somethings intentionally less than perfect.  I started with a simple chicken noodle soup that had dried carrots, noodles, and powdered soup base.  Everything I read said to preheat the thermos with boiling water... I used hot tap water.  But I did use boiling water when I actually made the soup. In 20 minutes I had chicken noodle soup.  Everything was done, but the carrots still had just a hint of crispiness to them.  My next try I used Bear Creek potato soup mix, lately I have been craving a good potato soup.  These soup mixes make a half gallon of soup... waaay too much for me.  The first order was to divide this into four snack size bags (1 cup each).  This mixed with two cups of water will make enough for 1 hearty appetite or 2 smaller ones. Since I am in the latter category I chose to divide one of those bags in half again.  Once again I used hot tap water to preheat the thermos, then used boiling water and the soup mix for making the actual soup. After adding the soup mix (water first), I sealed the thermos and put it's cap on, then gave it a good shake. My final step was to roll it in a towel and lay it on it's side. Laying it on the side gives you more even cooking.  For the next three hours I basically ignored it, except for an occasional shake. When I opened the thermos I had a nice creamy potato soup that was still entirely too hot to eat.  This was my first experience with Bear Creek brand soups, but I have to say this one was surprisingly good for prepackaged.  My only complaint was that it was a bit shy on the potatoes. To remedy this deficiency, I added a heaping spoonful of dried hash brown potatoes to the next batch I cooked. Much better, but I can also see this with some added bacon bits.

As a family of one, I can see great potential for thermos cooking and dried foods. Some of the things I envision making in the thermos are broccoli and rice casserole, mac and cheese, pot roast for one and of course soups. Almost anything that can be cooked in a crock pot would work this way. Also this could be useful in extreme situations, such as being without cooking facilities.  In theory you should be able to fill a thermos with water and heat it in the sun on the dash. Although I should add a few words of caution here. A thermos on the dash has the potential to become extremely hot, don't grab it with bare hands.  Also never leave it unattended. In doing this you have created your own miniature pressure cooker.  If it gets too hot, the pressure inside will build and it will push the top off with force. This is a polite way of saying that it will explode all over your dash or worse. Anyway it is something I will experiment with in the future.

Ultimately this experiment proved to me that my thermos will now go where I do.  It also shows that dehydrated food would be of great benefit to a vandweller. I don't mean just dried beans and rice, but also the more exotic staples such as powder whole eggs, whole milk and sour cream.  Am I going to live on dried foods alone, NO, but I will be sure to carry a basic supply of staples and vegetables.

If you are interested on learning more here are some reference links:
http://theboatgalley.com/thermos-cooking/
http://www.ehow.com/how_2275972_cook-thermos-save-energy-money.html


Here is a link that has some "just add water" mug recipes
http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/recipex/msg0522281311215.html


And last is a link for a free downloadable shelf stable recipe book
http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/2011/04/25/surprise-3-shelf-stable-cookbook/


on this last one keep in mind this was a member created book by proponents of survivalist food storage. Some of them still had a bit of problem thinking in terms of not having a fully stocked kitchen with all of the latest gadgets.  But it is still an amazingly good representation of what you can do with dried and shelf stable food.

Just Add Water

Years ago, I used to spend a couple of weeks dehydrating food for my son's yearly camping trip into the mountains with his uncle. My uncle would get all of the kids in the family, 5 or 6 at the time, load them in a van with tents and camping gear and off they would go for a couple of weeks.  We're not talking high tech camping in a state park, but primitive dispersed camping in the wilderness.  For this trip I would dehydrate fruits, vegetables and meats.

I am not a fan of prepackaged food or can soup. I would rather cook my own with the ingredients I want in it.  So I got to thinking about applying food dehydration to vandwelling. It seems it would be eminently suitable. It is light weight, compact and most re-hydrated things are almost as good as their fresh counterparts. Well thinking for me always equates to researching... so off to the internet I go.

The first thought is how are you going to get or dehydrate food? There are any number of instructables on solar food dehydrators. But this is not something I'm really interested in. So my choice would be to buy it. Unfortunately most of the suppliers of this type of product are survivalist, who want you to buy a years supply (or more) to feed a family of 4.  Although I have found a few where you can get stuff in smaller quantities. Another source for these products are backpacking suppliers. But here the quantities are so small and expensive as to be prohibitive. And then there are the gourmet food suppliers.  GOURMET equals at least double your money, so not much help there.

Ok so I have now done my "fanny" research (sitting on my butt behind the computer).  I thought it time to check out the local Walmart Supercenter.  Most of us eat dehydrated foods on a regular basis. When you buy that bag of noodles for a casserole, you are eating dehydrated food.  After a couple of hours wondering the aisles of the store, poking, prodding and inspecting products I had never paid attention to before and keeping in mind that I only wanted to prepare food for one with a small appetite.  I found that there is quite a bit you can get locally before you have to move on to more expensive or internet based suppliers. The first thing I can tell you is that the potatoes are covered. You can get dehydrated potatoes in almost any fashion you desire.  You just have to think outside of the box (pardon the pun).  That box of au gratin potatoes is nothing more than dehydrated potatoes, cheese powder, powder milk, powder spices, thickener and a few chemicals for good measure. Basically the same with just about any other flavor such as sour cream and chives. Once you have that box you can use those potatoes for about anything you want after you have re-hydrated them. Once re-hydrated you can pan fry them if you choose and save the cheese packet for something else. That box is also designed to feed a family of 3-4.  So as a solo, use only what you need and put the rest in a zipper bag, removing as much air as possible. Ok, now that we have covered the most abundant dried vegetable, and a different way to look at the packaging.  I will endeavor to list some more of the shelf stable items you can find in many local stores.

Whole Milk Powder - Nido - Generally found in the Spanish food section -- Plentiful in the south, not sure about in the north.

Some other useful items found in the Spanish food sections are tomato/chicken, cilantro, garlic and onion bullion. Bullion cubes last for years, but go lightly as they are full of sodium.

There is dried fruit and nuts in the snack section, many of which could be re-hydrated for desserts and smoothies.

Buttermilk powder - in the baking section along with that nasty non-fat powered milk (ok, so some might actually like it).

There are the noodles mentioned earlier and instant rice now comes in white or brown... I know, not as good for you as the other... but the object of this exercise is small portion, light, compact, eatable, shelf stable food.

In the spice section you can get, dried celery, chopped onions, dried chives, among other more commonly used spices.  Oh, and there is Molly Butter which won't give you actual butter but will give you butter flavor.

Let us not forget beef jerky and bacon bits.  I know many would be tempted by the "real" bacon bits.  Don't they won't last as long as the imitation.  The imitation are tolerable if used for cooking with and actually impart more of a bacon flavor to your recipe.  There are some more shelf stable meats available in the grocery but they usually spoil shortly after you open them. Remember I am looking for long term stability. Things that will last at least a month or more. I don't think I would want to eat shelf stable bacon after it had been open and without refrigeration for a month.

I am intentionally skipping the canned goods since most of them are not small enough proportioned for me. I am concentrating on items that you can use as much or as little as you wish and the remainder stays stable till further use.  The only one I will include is can cheese. You know the kind with the spout on top so that you can make fancy designs on your cracker.  This is real cheese that can be used for a variety of cooking applications. It generally comes in american, cheddar and sharp cheddar, it also needs no refrigeration.

What I did not find in the grocery was readily dehydrated quantities of carrots, broccoli, green beans, peas, some of the more obscure powders like tomato, butter, whole egg, and sour cream.  For those I found a couple of websites that deal in smaller quantities.  The first one sells it quart sizes... a quart of diced carrots at the moment is $6.45.  You have to remember these are dehydrated so you are talking around 3 quarts once they have been re-hydrated.  It would take me a few months to use that many carrots as a single person.  If I bought can carrots and discarded what I did not use, I would ultimately spend more that $6.45 for the equivalent amount.  Here is the link if you are interested in checking them out:  http://www.internet-grocer.net/2-half.htm  .  The other place I found has even smaller quantities and smaller prices, so that you could try some of the stuff before you bought for longer term. It is located here:  http://www.barryfarm.com/our_store.htm.  The items this place carries are a little more limited though.

The last dietary staple necessary for some (not all) is meat.  This one you will most likely have to bite the bullet and get in the #10 (gallon) can from a survivalist store.  The place above only carries canned meat and TVP (textured vegetable protein).  You can get actual freeze dried (another form of dehydration) meat and cheese at many survivalist stores.

Ok now that I have shown you where to get the dried food. My next post will deal with what to do with it once you have it ......... buen viaje (safe travels)

Update: 2011 is Gone... YAH!

So I know it has been a few months since my last update.  With the loss of 2 loved ones in 2011, I just had absolutely no time. Especially since the settlement of both estates has fallen to me almost solely.  Mother's house is almost cleared out (thanks to some good friends). It doesn't look like that white elephant is going to sell and no family wants it. So it looks like the finance company will get it.  It is just to much to maintain it all. Especially for someone who was and is trying to simplify their life (me :)).

I have been living in my uncle's house for a bit now. I have been trying to get things organized and cleaned up. He was a bachelor that lived on the road about 50% of the year doing his food concession business.  Needless to say the house was a place that he crashed and recouped once the work was over. That being said most of the house was used for storage and just a small bit to live in.  I now have the storage contained to one room, the rest of the house back to looking sort of like a house. There is still much to do and lots to liquidate, but I am starting to get a handle on it.

All of this has also included dealing with the lawyers and my three week stint of selling fireworks at the end of this year.  So as you can see I have been pretty busy and with intermittent internet, it has been extremely hard to update my blog....but I have not and will not abandon it.