Really cool survival and coming of age piece. Love your style.

Amazing what we can learn to do without, and what we can use as subs.

I laughed really hard at your description of doing the laundry by hand. Where I grew up — Portugal, in the ’50s — the only way we had of doing laundry was outside, using three big soapstone tubs. One for pre-soak — one for scrub, rub and wash and the last for rinsing.

Luckily — we had running water and we had electricity — sometimes. The Electricity was subject to the big Cabra Dam not screwing up, which it did a lot.

My parents kept candles and hurricane lamps arund and also big, heavy duty flashlights.