Apr 2, 2020 5 min read

The times, they are a changing.

A writer can be doing his job by just reporting what he has seen or heard. I heard today a state prison is in quarantine, too. Does this sound a little strange to you? I thought the inmates were already in jail. This is how you know things are really bad.

I am just trying to lighten things up a bit. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but let’s put aside the doom and the gloom and search for the light at the end of the tunnel.

Someone asked me, over the phone, of course, if I had ever met Buffalo Bill Cody. The person was very young and was serious. This, at once, made me remember the time I received free ice cream. It was a hot summer day and I drove to Brusters, near what is now Gabe’s, in South Strabane Township. Remember that place used to put out a sign on certain days that said they were providing free ice cream to veterans?

Well, here is how it happened: The young lady selling ice cream asked me what I would like. I told her I was a hero at Pickett’s Charge in Gettysburg and wanted a large strawberry milkshake. Really, I was just being funny as I told her that 4,300 of us had charged and held the cemetery ridge but only 27 of us had survived. She looked at me and said that under those circumstances my milkshake was free and handed me a large strawberry shake she had been making. After trying to explain to her I was just joking, I drank my shake and shook my head, amazed that she believed me.

I feel for all the people who have lost a friend or a parent during this crisis, but perhaps some good will come from this experience. We have created a selfish society, where we aren’t satisfied with two cars in the driveway but need three or four, even if we have but two drivers. Televisions everywhere and gadgets galore, one breaks and out it goes and we buy a new one. We have all but covered the globe in plastic and waste. What about recycling things like we did back in the great depression? Now might be a chance for Mother Nature to make a comeback.

Those of us older-generation survivors might become of great value as we remember how to do those things that are long forgotten. We remember surviving without quick foods or takeout. Canning was a necessity, as was starting tomato and pepper plants on the window sills. Parents stayed home with kids and jobs were eight hours long. People still worked hard and sometimes long hours, but someone took care of the kids. Schools were valued places of learning and teachers were fed and taken care of. Kids were taught to respect older people, who were considered of value for their knowledge. We would not have survived without grandma telling us how to do some things during those bad times. Now, I know you are thinking we have come a long way from then, but that is not the point.

We are back in the day when we are stuck in the house. The cars have slowed on the highways and airlines aren’t flying around as much. Plastic bags in the yards are being picked up by bored people walking about wearing gloves. My daughter put tomato and pepper plants on the window sill after consulting her wise old father.

Yes, I have reloaded a bunch of ammo and do see the value of my .22 for guarding her coming garden against groundhog invasion. The air is getting cleaner every day this goes on. People are resting and working on projects. We are all fighting to stay healthy and scientists are making headway on cures and vaccines. Together, people are talking to compare recipes and ideas to stay at home safely while entertaining the kids. Education is online and no schools are being shot up. Parents are being forced to help educate their own children. More homeowners now are protecting their own homes with a gun and understand the importance more than ever of the second amendment. Hopefully, they have taken time out to secure the gun and understand it.

So, you see where this is heading. Some good might come out of all of this. When we come out on the other side of corona-gedon I hope someone studies it to see the impact it had on the environment. In my lifetime, we survived the depression, the Big War, the atomic bomb, a president resigning and hopefully this virus. Maybe that makes me feel a little better about being old. Knowledge is powerful and these days we have so much technology that we never had back then but there are some things only experience can teach. There is hope and next week I hope to be here to display it in words as the spring flowers begin to prove as much.