I don’t know about you, but with the recent spate of mild weather I can feel Spring in the air. Spring. The season when a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love and an old man’s fancy turns to thoughts of pushing up daises. Over in Al Demeter Park, when the sun glints off an empty liquor bottle, the scrub weeds are pushing their prickly heads up through the gravel, as if to say, “Go ahead. Step on me. Make my day.” This Winter, the ski season was almost nonexistent in the park, as was any seasonal excitement, due to the lack of a good snow base on Al’s famous rock. There was one bit of pandemonium created by a landslide when a large clump of snow slid off the rock and startled a goose.
Speaking of rocks, our chief one in the White House finally has come around to reluctantly believing, if not admitting, COVID-19 (coronavirus) is real and not a left-wing hoax created to make him look bad (as if we needed anything more to do that) and has offered Germany $1 Billion to buy their vaccine exclusively for the USA. Well-known, highly-regarded medical expert, Rush Limbaugh, though, said the COVID-19 is nothing worse than a severe cold. Congressman Devin Nuñes said it’s okay to hug others and go out and have fun, despite what any stupid health experts advise. Keep in mind; these are the individuals who deny climate change.
Because the virus started in China, some loyal Americans are justifiably perturbed and are rising to the occasion by taunting and persecuting all Asians, boycotting Asian restaurants, and no longer playing Chinese checkers. They’re the same individuals who, if the French dissed us, would quit eating french fries. I once worked with a fellow who sarcastically said, “You can never underestimate the stupidity of the American people.” Once in a while it happens.
It may be difficult for you readers to believe, but I lived through the great polio epidemic of the 1950s. In one year alone, 1952, 60,000 children were infected, thousands paralyzed, and 3,000 died. It was not a good year if you were a kid. I pictured myself spending my life in a big tin can with just my head sticking out, wondering how I could play marbles this way. Because no adults could figure out where polio came from, public swimming pools closed, kids couldn’t go to the beach, apparently where president Franklin Delano Roosevelt was stricken, or couldn’t get close to other children. Needles poking into me wasn’t high on my kid bucket list, so when it came time to get my polio shot, I thought maybe the iron lung wouldn’t be so bad after all. When Dr. Salk finally had concocted the vaccine now surging through my juvenile body, newsman Edward R. Murrow asked him who owned the patent. The doctor replied, “There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?” Can you imagine that happening today? Big pharma companies would be tripping over themselves to be the first to get a patent so they could sell the vaccine for a couple thousand dollars a shot.
This late in the game, other countries are ahead of us in combatting the virus. South Korea has centers with test kits available for anybody who wants to walk in and be tested. I’m not concerned, though. Rather than spraying the Korean lady at the dry cleaners shop with Lysol or dipping my egg rolls in glutaraldehyde, I’ve gathered mass quantities of grain beverage for consumption during any government-imposed quarantine. And as foolproof protection, I have Norton Antivirus loaded on a flash drive, which, when the time is right, I’ll insert into a convenient body opening. I have nothing to worry about. Sitting may be uncomfortable for some time, but hey, that’s the price I’m willing to pay for safety.