Day 30-Quarantine-Target On My Back

Posted on 16/04/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Wow! The news today has certainly shifted from reporting how many deaths are occurring due to COVID-19 to how soon can we stop the madness created by shutting down the economy. Let the political bickering begin. At least for the past thirty days we didn’t have to endure the constant Trump bashing and democrat accusations about Trump killing people with his new weapon COVID-19. The joke of the day is VP Joe Biden accusing Trump of not taking any responsibility for all the deaths. If anyone in the country took responsibility, it was Trump. He shut off the flights from China, Europe and caused the commerce in our country to nosedive. He warned early on that we would reach a point where a dead economy will cause more harm than the virus, He worked and still works diligently to provide resources to all the fifty lame-ass states that were caught unprepared to handle their citizens. Blame, blame, blame is all I hear today. All of it points at Trump. None of the blame belongs to him.

There is an important fact that we must all remember from our second year high school civics class, i.e. States Rights. Each State is in charge of keeping their residents safe from harm and to provide essential services. States do an outstanding job with police, firemen, and EMT’s but it all stops there. Ask any governor how much he budgets for emergency management. Most likely it is a number close to zero, or the salary of the Emergency Management Czar he appointed to the job.

Democrats place blame on Trump for everything, Republicans accuse him of redistributing the wealth better than a socialist. There doesn’t seem to be any happy medium. In the meantime the president continues to do what he believes is important which is to save our ass from the grave and to restart the engine that drives us all.

The one thing I want to see happen is a continued effort to test people for COVID. I saw a news bit yesterday that praised the Iranians for inventing a COVID meter that detects the virus within 100 meters. Now that’s what I’m talking about!

What a great idea if it really does exist. If it does, why did Iran have to dig mass graves to dump all the COVID bodies? Since I’m in the target age group the virus loves to kill I am concerned. All of  you going back to work with strong immunity and me without any. All I have is social distancing and face masks. I figure by the time we finally get a vaccine for COVID, ninety percent of seniors will be feeding daisies.

My experience with a virus that does not have a vaccine goes back to the polio era of the nineteen thirties to the the nineteen fifties. For twenty years all we had were guidelines, stay away from crowds, stay away from beaches, stay away from people who had it. I don’t remember how many more there were. What I do know is that I didn’t frequent the beaches and I never congregated in crowds, and I still got it. The funny thing is that none of my family, who I  lived with got it, none of my friends that I hung out with got it, nor did anyone I knew got it. My body just couldn’t resist the damn thing. The same will occur with COVID until the vaccine arrives. Our lives will be a crap shoot, on some days we’ll roll seven, or seven-eleven, and on other days we’ll roll snake-eyes. Life will go on, people will die everyday from a thousand things and some will die from COVID. Now that we know how the big-bad-monster behaves it won’t be as scary.

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Day One Of My Corona Quarantine

Posted on 16/03/2020 by Grumpa Joe

Never in my lifetime has the government been so worried about a virus threat. Today, begins a shutdown of many public spaces. My Lions Club activities are shut down, the library is closed, all bars and restaurants are closed, only drive through windows will be open. For the first time in my life I missed a Sunday mass because the church was closed. Food suppliers will remain open. Hopefully, they will have stock to sell. I’m not sure about banks.

Back in the nineteen forties during World War Two we experienced shortages, and blackouts, but I don’t recall shutdowns of any sort. My parents were issued a ration booklet with coupons. The coupons were for food items, gasoline, etc. I know my Mom used them to barter food with friends. Dad did the same with his gasoline coupons. Back then we were fighting Germans and Japanese not an invisible microscopic virus. The Civil Air Patrol watched the skies for enemy airplanes and the Coast Guard patrolled our shores to ward off enemy ships. I remember when we traveled by car to see my grandfather in Michigan we raced PT boats along Lake Michigan shores. Every car trip involved fixing flat tires on the roadside because tires were not available and our car had some pretty bald tires. When we reached the bridge over the St. Joe river there was always a huge navy ship tied up there.

In the nineteen fifties we did have a serious virus attack, Polio was the enemy. It was headlines everyday in all the newspapers, and on radio news. Because we didn’t have TV’s we didn’t have 24 hr news programs spreading panic all about the world. The pictures of people in iron lungs were enough to get our attention. The government recommendation was to stay away from crowded beaches and from mosquitoes. It was August, and I just turned fifteen, I was invincible. That morning I played golf at Jackson Park GC with my buddies, in the afternoon I delivered groceries for a grocery store that was several miles from home. I rode my bicycle to get there. After work, I hung out with the neighborhood gang until ten. The following morning I couldn’t wake up, I had a headache that felt like my skull would blow up, my throat was on fire, and my neck was so stiff I couldn’t bend my head. Mom took my temperature and called our family doctor. He came by at five o’clock after his office hours. An ambulance arrived within two hours to haul my sorry ass to the Contagious Disease Hospital on 26th and California. That is where I existed until October. It wasn’t fun, and I am one lucky man because I recovered with a minimum of paralysis. I thank God for that everyday. The vaccine for polio came a couple of years after I recovered from it. I still think about all the kids I met along the way that didn’t make it. I laugh when reporters question medical authorities for how quickly will a vaccine be available. During polio the vaccine took years to develop. In fact it didn’t happen until the electron microscope was invented and researchers could finally see the virus. President Roosevelt started a private enterprise called the March of Dimes to raise money for research and help for victims. He did that because he had first hand experience with the disease having been paralyzed from the waist down from polio.

At this moment I have two workers in my house sanding my wood floors to refinish them I am sealed off, and by myself in self quarantine. This time I believe the warnings are valid and pertain to me. I am in the primary age group for this bug. I must do everything in my power to stay healthy and away from contagion, or face the music. At the end of February, a close friend of mine died. I went into shock when I learned of it. She got sick suddenly with a lung infection that took her out.  Her family swears it wasn’t Corona, but in my heart I believe it was.

Pray, pray, pray that we will stop this virus in its tracks.

Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, Government, Seniors | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »

I Hate Books That Make Me Think

Posted on 15/05/2019 by Grumpa Joe

Today, I finished reading The Point of it All by Charles Krauthammer. The first anniversary of his death is just around the corner in June. I became aquainted with Charles while watching Fox News. He appeared daily on Bret Baier’s news show. Krauthammer’s analysis and opinions alway impressed me. He spoke with knowledge and conviction. It never mattered what the subject was he spoke eloquently on the topic.

On the very first day I watched him I noticed something about the way he breathed. It reminded me of my polio days when many of my friends breathed funny because their polio affected their chest muscles. In all the years I watched him I never spotted anything like a wheelchair or saw his arms or hands move. Much later when curiosity got the best of me I searched the internet for information about him and learned that he was paralyzed from the chest down. Injured in a diving accident as a student.

Charles never let his handicap interfere with his life. Same with me. He moved forward the best he could with his affirmity. It is strange when positive people have accidents or terribly crippling events in their lives the terribleness never stops them from moving on with life. In my case my dream was to play football in high school. All through my fevered period when the virus spread through my body I kept thinking I have to beat this thing and get to tryouts. A couple of months later the realization that I wasn’t going to make the tryouts hit me, and I shifted gears to learn how to swallow. Swallowing doesn’t sound like much but when the muscles involved in making that normal function stop working your life is on hold. Thankfully, the medicine of the day was advanced enough to thread a feeding tube through my nose into my stomach, and I lived.

It took weeks to learn how to walk and to keep my head from rolling around like it was attached with a slinky. It took months to learn how to smile, and longer to learn how to swallow, All through this rehab I never wavered from getting back to school, but football left my mind.

Charles didn’t allow his paralysis beat him from reaching his goal, he became a doctor, a Psychiatrist. He practiced for a number of years before quitting to become a writer. He died a writer, and a damned good one too.

The problem I have with books like his is that they force me to have to think. That means reading the book is no longer a pleasure it is an effort. Big words, new phraseology of big words all slow me down, and sometimes put me to sleep. Charles succeeded in giving me a nap several times during this read, but it didn’t stop me from completing the book.

He makes so much sense in his thinking, and he is a conservative too. I would have loved to watch a debate between him and the most liberal debater on earth, that is, if one could be found.

Filed under: Book Review, Conservative, family | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

Remember When?

Posted on 17/06/2018 by Grumpa Joe 

Children of the greatest generation

Born in the 1930's to the early 1940's, we exist as a very
 special age group.

We are the smallest group of children born since the early 
1900's.

We are the last generation, climbing out of the depression, 
who can remember the winds of war and the impact of a world at
 war which rattled the structure of our daily lives for years.

We are the last to remember ration books for everything from 
gas to sugar to shoes to stoves.

We saved tin foil and poured fat into tin cans.

We saw cars up on blocks because tires weren't available.

We can remember milk being delivered to our house early in the
 morning and placed in the “milk box” on the porch.

We are the last to see the gold stars in the front windows of 
our grieving neighbors whose sons died in the War.

We saw the 'boys' home from the war, build their little houses
 - Jones Park?

We are the last generation who spent childhood without 
television; instead, we imagined what we heard on the radio.

As we all like to brag, with no TV, we spent our childhood 
"playing outside”.
There was no city playground for kids. Soccer was unheard of.

The lack of television in our early years meant, for most 
of us, that we had little real understanding of what the world
was like.

On Saturday afternoons, the movies gave us newsreels 
sandwiched in between westerns and cartoons that were at least
a week old.
Telephones were one to a house, often shared (party Lines) and
 hung on the wall in the kitchen (no cares about privacy).

Computers were called calculators, they were hand cranked; 
typewriters were driven by pounding fingers, throwing the 
carriage, and changing the ribbon.

The 'INTERNET’ and ‘GOOGLE’ were words that did not exist.

Newspapers and magazines were written for adults and the news 
was broadcast on our radio in the evening by Paul Harvey.

As we grew up, the country was exploding with growth.

The G.I. Bill gave returning veterans the means to get an 
education and spurred colleges to grow.

VA loans fanned a housing boom. Pent up demand coupled with 
new 
installment payment plans opened many factories for work.

New highways would bring jobs and mobility. New cars averaged 
$2,000 full price.

The veterans joined civic clubs and became active in politics.

The radio network expanded from 3 stations to thousands.

Our parents were suddenly free from the confines of the 
depression and the war, and they threw themselves into 
exploring opportunities they had never imagined.

We weren't neglected, but we weren't today's all-consuming 
family focus.

They were glad we played by ourselves until the street lights 
came on or Mom called us for supper - by hollering!

They were busy discovering the post war world.

We entered a world of overflowing plenty and opportunity;
a world where we were welcomed, enjoyed ourselves and felt
secure in our future.

Although depression poverty was deeply remembered.

Polio was still a crippler.

We came of age in the 50s and 60s.

The Korean War was a dark passage in the early 50s and by 
mid-decade school children were ducking under desks for 
Air-Raid training.

Russia built the “Iron Curtain” and China became Red China.

Eisenhower sent the first 'Army Advisers' to Vietnam.

Castro took over in Cuba and Khrushchev came to power in Russia.

We are the last generation to experience an interlude when 
there were no threats to our homeland. The war was over and the 
cold war, Muslim terrorism, “global warming”, and perpetual 
economic insecurity had yet to haunt life with unease.

Only our generation can remember both a time of great war, 
and a time when our world was secure and full of bright promise 
and plenty, we lived through both.

We grew up at the best possible time, a time when the world was 
getting better, not worse."

We are “The Last Ones”.

More than 99 % of us are either retired or deceased, and we feel privileged to have “lived in the best of times”!

Filed under: Aging, Biography, Characters I knew, family, Warm and Fuzzy | Tagged: , , | Leave a comment »

Junior Year-Missing the Ball or Hitting the Net

Posted on 29/05/2011 by Grumpa Joe

 After spending a year convalescing from the polio my being thirsted for involvement in everything that I could get into at Mendel.  I needed to make up for lost time.  Although the polio kept me from playing football I participated by going to the games.  During the second half of sophomore year I became buddies with Stan Kantor, an old rival from Burnside. Stan is one of the tough guys from Avalon Avenue who went to Perry School. He and his neighbors liked to think they were meaner and tougher than the rest of us on Avalon. We were about the same height and weight.  At Mendel, I learned that Stan was one of the nicest guys I ever met. He played quarterback position on the football team.

Father Theis started a booster club which I joined.  We designed and painted posters advertising the football games.  We hung the posters all around school to promote attendance at the games.  Some of my posters were good enough to hang in places where the hall traffic was the heaviest all day long.

My ability to do the posters got me recognized in the school club scene, and Father O’Neil invited me to join the year book staff as art editor.  On the yearbook I met some really nice guys who became great friends.  One of them is Jim Geil.  He and I became inseparable for several years after. Jim and I still correspond regularly by e-mail. because there are eighteen hundred miles between us.

The school dedicated a new chapel and monastery in time for the start of Junior year.  The monastery led me into a new opportunity.  One day, an announcement came over the PA about a job.  I applied, and got the job as the monastery phone receptionist.

In the new monastery, each priest had a room with a pager.  All of the calls came to a single phone in a small cell at the front door. The cell had a desk, a chair, a phone and a large light board on the wall. Each priest’s name was on the board.  If the priest was in, and the light next to his name was on, he took calls.  When the phone rang, I answered it, and determined who the caller wanted.  I placed the caller on hold, and buzzed the priest.  He answered and I announced which line his call was on. The priests let me know when they left the building, and I took messages.   The job required that I be on duty four hours a day from four until eight.  This meant that I got to screw-off after class until four.  Sometimes I walked up to Michigan Avenue.  Most of the time, I did homework, worked on a poster, or the year book.

In the spring, I tried out for baseball and made the fourth string.  Father Burns placed me at third base.  Throughout the time I played sandlot baseball, I always played second base. Third base was never my position but I was happy to play.  I fielded the ball very well; in fact, I robbed some hot-shot hitters of line drives by spearing the ball on the fly.  My reactions were very good.  unfortunately for me, I didn’t have the strength to throw the ball to first base on the fly.

I also tried out for the tennis and made that.  I often played against myself by stroking the ball against the wall of the handball court at Palmer Park. It was another way  to fill time after school before answering phones.  I never played a real game of tennis with anyone so when I joined the team I had to learn the rules as well as the strokes and the serve. That is when I met Jim Murphy.  We became lifetime friends, and roomed together in college. Jim also stood up at my wedding.

Although I played tennis well in practice I never won a match in competition. Years later I realized why.  During a match, I was so worried about making a mistake, I kept seeing myself missing the ball or hitting it into the net.  That problem stayed with me until my forties when I finally realized the power of positive visualization, that is, “see it in your mind and believe it”.  Why did it take me so long to realize that?

By the end of Junior year things were starting to come together for me.  The effects of the polio were still there, but my sports and weight lifting helped me overcome any handicap that I had.  Life was good.

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