Survival Kits and Second Chances: A Night at the AMVETS Hall

I was at the AMVETS hall with my dad, playing pool and talking turkey hunting.

It’s become one of our occasional spots. Maybe once a month or every other month when I’m staying with my parents, he’ll suggest we head down there. Twenty-five bucks a year gets me membership through the Sons of AMVETS, something that connects back to my grandfather. He was a veteran who helped get this particular hall started and kept it running. It means a lot to my dad, so when he asked if I wanted to join, I said sure.

The hall sits in a small rural Maine town with one store and not much else to do after dark. Pool tables, dartboards, a jukebox, and cheap drinks. It’s a welcoming place where people gather to talk, play, and just be.

Most folks there live different lives than I do, though maybe not as different as it might seem on the surface. I’ve spent most of my career in white collar work. Elite private schools, launched two companies as an entrepreneur, the whole business world thing.

But I’ve always been drawn to working with my hands too. Construction projects with my dad, renovating our 1980 Airstream for five years, picking up renovation work whenever I can. These days, as part of my Heart-Strong adventure, I’m actually making my living doing home renovation work two or three days a week. So, I walk this line between both worlds. The difference here isn’t really about the work itself. It’s more about the rhythms, the perspectives, the way we move through the world.

I find that politics rarely come up at the AMVETS hall, which is probably for the best. It’s just people being people.

My dad introduced me to a guy who’s into turkey hunting. I’d mentioned wanting to try turkey hunting, and he offered to show me the ropes. I explained why I wanted to try it. I’m primarily plant-based these days, but I’ve eaten meat throughout my life. I think one of the most intimate things you can do is either bring life into the world or take the life of another being for your energy and life. If I’m going to consume meat, I want to understand what it actually means to look an animal in the eye and take its life. I want to take accountability for all the meat I’ve consumed. It’s coming from a place of love, not sport.

We got to talking about the woods, survival skills, bow making. He pointed to a backpack sitting by his chair.

“I bring that with me everywhere,” he said. “I’m a bit of a prepper.”

Not the bunker and canned goods kind of prepper, he explained. Just someone who’s always ready for something to go wrong. The pack was designed to get him through one day if everything fell apart. He wanted to make two more: one for two to three days, and one for “never coming back. Shit hits the fan. I’m out.”

He was planning to make six total. Two of each. One set for him, one for his wife.

As he talked through his survival preparations with methodical detail, I found myself getting curious. Here was someone thinking deeply about worst case scenarios, planning for chaos, preparing to disappear into the wilderness if civilization collapsed.

Then the conversation took an unexpected turn.

Six years ago, he was diagnosed with a terminal illness. Given six to twelve months to live. “Take care of your affairs,” the doctors said. So, he did. He sold everything. Guns, snowmobiles, ATVs. He didn’t want his wife to have to deal with it all.

He’s 61 now but looks older. You can see the illness has been hard on him. He’s still alive, and you can also see he holds anger about being told he was going to die and then not dying.

But he didn’t frame it as a gift.

And now he’s building survival kits.

I’ve been sitting with this conversation for several weeks, trying to understand the paradox.

Here’s someone who was told his time was up, who prepared for the end, who sold everything to spare his wife the burden. Someone whose remaining time could be measured in moments, not decades. And his response to that reality is to prepare elaborate survival plans for scenarios where he might need to live off the grid indefinitely.

Someone facing death by preparing never to die.

It raises questions I’m still wrestling with. If I were in his position, where would I go? What would matter? Would I spend my potentially limited time preparing for a post-apocalyptic world I might not even want to live in? Has he asked himself that question?

Maybe at 61, he still sees a lot of life ahead. Maybe the survival prep gives him a sense of control when everything else feels uncertain. Maybe it’s his way of choosing hope over despair, even if that hope looks like fear to someone else.

Or maybe I’m missing something entirely.

What strikes me is how this unexpected encounter at a small town bar revealed layers of complexity I never would have anticipated. This isn’t a simple story about fear or love, preparation or acceptance. It’s messier than that. More human.

The man I met embodies contradictions I’m still trying to understand. Anger about not dying. Preparation for scenarios that may never come. A terminal diagnosis met with terminal preparedness.

I came to AMVETS to play pool with my dad. I left with questions about mortality, survival, and what we choose to do with whatever time we have.

It’s a reminder that you don’t have to look far to find where love and fear show up in the world. Sometimes they’re sitting right next to you at the bar, packed into a survival kit that might never get used.

If you were facing the harsh reality of your own mortality, where would you go? What would matter? I’m still curious about that question.

And I’m grateful for unexpected teachers in unlikely places.