Lou’s View: IT’S BEEN A YEAR

By Lou Bernard

I never thought I’d be writing an article about the one-year anniversary of the Coronavirus.
It genuinely never occurred to me that this would stretch out for a whole year. COVID-19 began to spread uncontrollably in early March, 2020—It was here before that, for sure, but March is when it began to get dangerous. That’s when most people began to feel the effect, locally.

The library closed down in mid-March, reasonably early on. The staff was sent home (and I’d like to give credit to our board of directors, for making this process as comfortable as they could.) So, there I was, looking at an unspecified length of time at home with the five-year-old.

Yeah, that happened, too. My son Paul was excited, and having a great time in kindergarten, his first year of school. He was about seven months in, and then it was all closed, and he was sent home.

So I decided to do some teaching myself. Paul had already learned his letters, shapes, and colors, and nobody in their right mind wants me teaching math. So I went with what I know, and taught the kid some survival skills. We built a solar still in the back yard to collect water. I showed him how to signal SOS in Morse Code. We did come first aid on his stuffed animals. I figure he’s going to have an emergency at some point in his life, and he might as well know how to handle things.

I wanted to find a way to help with the pandemic; I really wanted to make a difference. I’d never foreseen a situation where the best way to help would be to stay home and watch DVDs, which seemed unsatisfying somehow. I wound up writing encouraging articles for the newspapers about local disasters in the past, using what sources I could cobble together from home. No, I don’t mean the internet, which I still feel is one of the worst ways to research local history short of consulting psychics. Over the years, I’ve managed to collect a decent amount of books and articles, which I pulled out to keep up on my columns.

In those early days, wthings were still very uncertain, masks were hard to come by. It seems odd to think about now; I probably have ten of them and I can order more from Amazon. But my wife pitched in to help on this—She had me get her sewing machine out of the garage, and sewed masks for everyone. My personal favorite was a mask with little Christmas trees on it, because I grew up on a Christmas tree farm. I had her sew an alien patch on that one, and now there’s really no doubt whose mask it is. She made one for our son, and daughters, and our neighbor down the street, and a couple of my co-workers.

To prevent myself from going crazy, I started an archaeological dig in the backyard. Look, it’s not easy being a stay-at-home paranormal investigator. Pretty early on, Paul and I checked repeatedly for ghosts in our house, which was all we had access to. Also we’re already very familiar with all the ghosts in our house. So I went out back during the day, and started digging.

I took off the top layer with the grass, which I’d never liked mowing anyway. Then I started digging slowly, with a trowel, and sifting each shovel full of dirt to find the little stuff. We found a few small Native American artifacts, some square nails, and an old pocketknife. A lot of glass bits, probably from alcohol bottles. (Admittedly I emptied a few of those myself during all this.) I used some of the dirt to level out the driveway later. There’s still a dirt patch out back where I dug.

A year into this, and I’m back at work, with limitations. My wife is mostly working from home, and my son is doing school online. And if we’re in for another entire year of this I’m going to go insane, so wear your masks. Stay distanced. Get the vaccine when you can.

We’re all in this together. It’s time for some people to begin acting like it.