I remember some of the stories my parents and other people told me in the good old days before Covid-19. Just a few months that have changed the world as we know it. I thought it might be a good thing to remember some of the stories. If you have a good one or two send them to us and we’ll share them.
My dad went to Roanoke college in Salem, Virginia. He lived in Richmond which is almost 200 miles away. He had stories galore from that period of time in his life. Dates are in the 1920’s. (Razzmatazz and all that jazz!) One thing I remember is that he went to school there at the same time as Robert Mitchum. I don’t remember any stories with RM and my dad, sad to say. Here are a couple of stories that I do remember. Mi padre went to college and traveled from Richmond to Roanoke College (Salem Virginia) in several different cars. One was an Auburn Roadster that one of his friends owned. The Auburn was a sporty car with a boat looking rear end called a boat tail. It was fast and handled the speed very well my dad mused. Parent and driver/owner of the Auburn were traveling through one of the small towns who had a very low, low speed limit. Being teenagers with a fast and quick car I am sure they were traveling above the legal limit. Almost at the end of town they heard a siren. My dad was surprised that the car was instantly speeding up because his friend was engaging power rather than stopping for the siren. Normally my male parent thought that he would pull over and stop for a police siren. My dad looked at his friend with a questioning glance. The friend smiled, then laughed and pointed behind them with his big grin, My dad looked back and saw that the siren was mounted on a bicycle with the policeman pumping feet on the pedals. He was riding it hard as he could and was fading quickly into their distant past.
The next story he delighted to tell upon occasion was about driving down the highway in an old Ford. This was in the days prior to safety glass. They scared up a flock of chickens with the Ford and one broke the window came through the middle of the windshield and hit the back window of the car. Both men had ducked and weren’t hurt. They did have to stop and clean the car.
Before World War II dear old dad worked in the Blue Ridge Mountains for the Civilian Conservation Corps, called the CCC. It was a tough time in our history and the country was taking care of its people by hiring them to work on infrastructure. They built rock walls around the highways, as well as many other projects in the mountains. The rock walls are still visible there today. While working in Damascus, Virginia he met my mom. They married and I was born in Marion, Virginia. In my first year of life and I don’t know how good it was but my dear old dad made home brew (beer). He made it right there in the apartment they lived in. He needed a place to let it age in the bottles, so he decided the best place for temperature and aging ambiance was underneath my crib. Mom put a stop to it after one of the bottles blew its cap. Maybe that’s the cause of my questionable quirky intelligence or interesting focus on life.
On a different note, let’s talk of our planet as well as ourselves.
Native Americans have a rite of passage they call a Vision Quest that involves young males entering manhood. It marks a significant change in the individual. It his often humbling, singularly powerful and a great opportunity to learn about the nature of the person having the experience and to see oneself in a new light. I think today with Covid-19 we can go on our own new vision quest away from the madding crowd. What will it include? Spending time alone, or with a significant other, passing time in nature or in a favorite room in our home. Being quiet, thoughtful or suspending thought through meditation. Something I recommend would be to write down what your vision is. A. Start with yourself. B. Expand it to family, neighbors and friends. C. Include the world in the way you would want it.
I’ll share some of a vision quest that I might have here and now.
I have a vision of our country instituting the CCC again. Call it the Civilian Conservation Corps or not, what I want to envision is people working together. We are going to have many people out of work now because of the challenges of Coronavirus. Now is the time we can create opportunities to improve, even save our infrastructure with young people and/or aged people wanting to work and needing jobs. If I were younger I’d consider making underwater epoxy and coverings to shore up and save bridges, docks and other over and under-water structures. One of my chemist friends did that some fifty years ago. My vision sees improvements in roads. My vision sees saving, improving and upgrading our brick and mortar buildings. My vision sees batteries on trailers that hook on to electric cars to improve their driving range. My vision sees people driving less, and driving fuel efficient vehicles My vision sees improved rail lines and railroad tracks new and improved. High speed rail is part of my vision going from coast to coast and up and down our coasts. My vision sees a new cooperation with rail and truck deliveries that lowers fuel consumption dramatically. My vision sees an American who can wait patiently for goods and services so thereby we could save energy. My vision sees new cars and trucks that are hydrogen powered with stations to support. Start small and end up with a new environment that benefits the planet and its people. My vision sees renewable energy improvements and placements everywhere. When we drive south out of Las Vegas we see solar power energy generating stations (3) that look wonderful. We can see the reflectors enhancing the sun’s energy and focusing it on the collectors above the desert floor. It is striking and heartening to see. Solar electric energy to be available for all needed homes, factories, commercial buildings, etc. Solar hot water everywhere. My vision quest would see wind energy utilized where it is available. Small wind generators for homes in windy areas. Wave energy on shores that are now unused for tourism and other non people intensive areas. My vision sees a new era of cooperation between government, science, and all people. My vision sees conquest of Covid-19 and all dis-ease and ill-messes with the ingenuity, intelligence and power of science, medicine and the mind. The greatest of these as I travel the world in my vision quest is Mind. With mind engaged all things are possible. When all things are possible to mind then we must focus on the highest and best for each person as well as our planet.
It is difficult for me to believe that the good old days were Christmas of 2019. We hugged our families and friends and neighbors. We shook hands freely. We sat close to people in churches and theaters we traveled freely on foot or bicycles and underground on subways, overground on buses and in the air on airlines. We were close to people anywhere we went we could feel free to be close to people. We could pick up products anywhere and bring them into our homes without fears of infections. The good old days is a relative term nowadays, isn’t it? Think about the good old days of Christmas 2019 and plan to act accordingly until we have a vaccine and do the right thing, the prudent thing until then. Fear not, be not afraid there will come better days. ‘Till then stay safe!
Here are a couple of stories out of my past from the forties and fifties. That is 1940’s and 1950’s. Please note that I was born in 1941. My grandfather in southwest Virginia was an interesting gentleman. I do mean a gentleman. He owned and ran the general store. It sold clothes, food, gifts and etc. One day I picked up a little bird that had hit the big store window. It took a couple of days to nurse it back to health and we let it fly away. It is a memory of one of our vacation trips to Damascus Virginia. I have many good memories of the Blue Ridge Mountain areas of Virginia. Some make me smile, or shudder, sometimes tingle and the most earth-splitting make me shake with memorable feelings. Yes I am a man who has and talks about feelings. The first one I think of and the most memorable story is one when I was much shorter than I am today. My grandfather got a new car, a big car because of his family traveling with him. The owner of the hardware store had bought a Cadillac. Grandpa Wright got a Packard. It had four doors. The back doors were called suicide doors and opened forward. That is the hinges were in the rear of the door and the handle was toward the front. Those doors were easy to get in and out of for passengers, Interestingly they were prone to opening all the way once the latch was open. Since this was a new car we all got in and headed out to Sunday brunch through one of the mountain roads. I was in the back seat with Ma-Wright, my grandmother. I was naturally fooling around like any good child would. This was about 1945 when I was about four. I hit the door handle with my head and the door flew open. The car had a coat sash across the back of the front seats. That was a leather strap that went from one side of the back of the front seats to the other. I grabbed that and my grandmother grabbed my other hand. I can remember seeing the road rushing under me and the rear tire about a foot behind my shoes. Soon the car stopped and everyone picked me up off the pavement and I totally ruined the trip for Sunday brunch. We went back to my grandparents home. There the antiseptic was brought out and it had to be the painful one. I think they called it Merthiolate. Mercurochrome was painless, but that was not for them or me. That night I dreamed of spiders and was awake off and on for most of the night. The next day when I put on my shoes I had the thought it was the first time I wore out the tops of my shoes before the bottoms. A week or so later I heard that Pa-Wright had pulled back on the steering wheel while hollering Whoa to stop his horse that he normally drove. Prior to owning this new car he had a horse and buggy. My dad had to tell him to put his foot on the brake. Evidently I made quite a trip on my knees and tops of shoes. One foot in front of the rear wheels with one hand on the coat sash and grandmothers hand holding me inches away from sure disaster.
Another short tale was the day our family was planning to leave the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains after a summer visit. We were going to drive home to Ohio where we lived. I’m reasonably sure this was after a two week holiday my dad took from work each summer. Note, this was not the same year as the previous adventure. Pa-Wright gave me handfuls of candy in the morning. Being an obstreperous kid I had bugged the store employees and customers so I was given candy bribes to entice me to go away. I remember that I ate most of it before getting in the car. I may have shared one or two pieces with my sister. Guess who got sick? Guess whose mother had to change her dress out beside the barn when my system rejected the overdose of sugar and caffeine? Approximately six or more hours in the car, driving to Worthington, Ohio. Guess who had sugar blues and caffeine paranoia most of the way home? .
On another visit I was walking with cousin Stuart in town. We walked over to the Damascus Methodist church. There was Uncle NS Wright and I think he was digging out part of the foundation and laying bricks with only one or two helpers. I didn’t see anyone else working as diligently as he did in the dirt of what must’ve been going to be the basement. Several people we stood beside were watching him. I stood there and watched. Now I wonder why I didn’t offer to help. Now I wish I had. As they say hindsight is 20-20.
Cousin Nancy and I were playing in the upstairs bedroom of grandma Wright’s home. There was a stairway out the back door to the second floor. Since it went from the ground to the second floor non-stop there seemed like there must have been twenty steps. We envisioned a white bear coming up and down the stairway. The stairway was long and straight. It hugged the outside wall of the back of the house. They were wooden stairs and aged by weather and sunlight. They had no finish on them, but were still in good shape. One long stairway from the ground to second floor. Played on by a single white bear. For me ‘twas a cartoon bear not in the least scary. It had power to fly whenever it wanted. Playful white bear, a friend and imaginary playmate for cousin Nancy and me.
Nancy married a gentleman who was also named Wright. Since she was a Wright the newspaper printed the story headlined as I remember it; two Wrights can’t make a …
Many people knew Grant D. Wright better than I did. Maybe no one respected him more than me. When I was anywhere near the Wright home I enjoyed staying in their spare room.
I remember one day that I got in to Springfield Virginia and Nancy and Grant invited me to stay with them. Their three boys were off somewhere and so the house was uncharacteristically quiet. Nancy suggested that we sit out on their partio . She said that we could visit while she made dinner. I requested garlic grits as one of my treats. Nancy Grant and I sat and talked briskly for about a half an hour. Nancy got up and went in to the kitchen. Grant and I sat in silence for most of the time that it took Nancy to make dinner. Interestingly when we got in to the house to eat, We ate and talked right through the dinner and then into the den and continued the conversation. It was that night that Nancy was the catalyst for conversation. Yet in the silence that Grant and I shared it now seems that we were communicating at a high level.
Ond day in California Grant and I were walking down the street of the area where they lived in ZZZ . We watched the children riding bicycles and laughed when they jumped on and off with alacrity. We decided that there were no older women riding bikes In that neighborhood the mothers could ride to the store, the pool or wherever it was close enough for them to go if they had a three wheel bike. They would be able to ride to the store without burning gas. They would be able to carry groceries home. They could pur a child seat on it and take a youngster with them. They would want a sporty frame and wheels that made sense strength and weight wise. We thought a suspension that allowed the people riding the three wheller to lean into turns. Then we thought that price would eliminate that feature. We wanted to make it buyable for the average household income would have to be able to buy it. The average woman, wife, mother as well as those above average would want them. We never went any further than talking about it. I guarantee you it was fun to talk about. Three months ago, my wife and I were walking by a bike shop in California and there in the outdoor area was a tekkie three wheel bike with electric power. The one thing Grant and I hadn’t considered, rechargeable power units on cool looking and interesting three wheelers any woman would be proud and utility as well as conservation minded women would appreciate. Now just a great sales campaign and three wheelers could be off and running or rolling.
wrong.
Cousin Stuart and I were difficult children. Hard to keep pinned down and stationary. We were continually moving. Prior to driving cars, we played all over the available town, river and islands. The swimming pool was a favorite place to go in summers. Since I mainly visited in summers I was usually in shorts and maybe a t shirt.
On Saturdays when my parents were in town I think it was twenty eight cents that they put in my hand. Cousin Stuart and I would saunter off to the theatre. On Saturday afternoons there was a movie and cartoon and sometimes a serial also. Horatio Hornblower sailing adventure movies were my favorites. The dress and swords and guns and cannons were great. We would get popcorn to help replace the energy that we burned being active boys. I watched the movies enraptured in the adventure of it all.
Then after the movie we would go to the drugstore. The counter at the drugstore served cokes and other drinks with soda and sometimes ice cream. My twenty eight cents afforded me all that fun and food and drink. It was an adventure that lasted fully a half a day.
Then fired up with sugar and caffeine we would grab sticks and go swashbuckling on the high seas with captain Hroatio Hornblower at the helm. We would be buccaneers, seafaring adventurers and winners of every battle. We never battled each other. Too much respect I trust. Sometimes as we swash-buckled over the high seas of the river that flowed through town. Once we got on a little almost island. I remember falling part way in to the river and being humiliated by my coordination or lack thereof.
Later in life when I had a drivers license we would commandeer an old (1949) Mercury from the store and ride, ride, ride. We seemed to always have a great time whenever and wherever we would go riding. I’m sure now that Nancy and Stuart were two of my favorite relatives.
All in all, the time spent in the Blue Ridge was a magical part of my youth. Stuart throwing pillows at Cousin Andy’s legs and him rolling on the house carpet. Riding all over town in the old model T Ford one of the girls dad’s let us drive. Walking miles just to walk and see what was happening around town. Sometimes I’d be walking somewhere to get there on time. Of course it always takes longer than it takes so I was continually late. I remember my Aunts making me wash with a scrub brush because I was so brown. I was suntanned I trust and just not dirty. Bottom line was they thought I was continually dirty. They never seemed to see that there was no difference in my brown-ness as I emerged from the bath.
In the fifties I spent a couple of summers in Damascus mom’s hometown in the southwestern Virginia mountains. It was before I could drive and no TV, of course, so we had fun without what children can or could do today for entertainment. Part of my small town education was how to play Canasta. It was a game of cards. It was supposed to be a game of chance. My aunt and grandmother became partners and contested Cousin Stuart and me. Well here’s how we played it. The first hand was always won by us boys. We had the best cards and won handily. Of course, Stuart and I loaded the deck. We would go in and place cards where we wanted them. Every other card was a good one. So the second and fourth, sixth and eighth, tenth and twelfth cards were the very best cards in the deck and so on. Think about it. We always dealt the first hand and so it would go opponents get card one Stuart or I would get card two. From then on, we get the even number cards which were the best cards. Wow could we win that first hand of Canasta. I don’t remember winning any other hands. The ladies were crafty and good honest players as I remember.
Enough about me. Send us stories we can share about the good old days before Covid-19 and we can share them with other focusuppholosophers,com
I guess we should update our knowledge on Covid-19. If you read our earlier posts you’d know the reasons for the name. Not to be too redundant I’ll do it again here. Co-corona, v-virus, i-infectious, d-disease and 19-2019.
The number of cases continue to grow. Our neighbor believes it is a conspiracy and they are just puffing the numbers of cases What we now believe is that the virus lives in bats who are contemporary animals that have many tendencies that are reptilian. They flap their wings seventeen times per second. This causes stress that is not exhibited in any other mammals because bats are the only mammals that fly extended flights. Extended flight has caused them to be very different from other mammals. Probably the bat gave this Covid-19 virus that does not seem to affect them like it does us, to an animal. In China there are wet markets where live and unprocessed food animals are sold. There is, or was one large wet market in Wuhan, China. Possibly a bat passed it on to an animal in the wet market. Then the infected animal passed it on to a human. It could have been live and sneezed or possibly when eaten. Then the human to human exchange began. To date 6/8/20 we have 7,132,732 cases with 406,959 deaths worldwide. The trend seems to be down a bit this month. Think of it, we are happy with a reduction in cases of still around a hundred thousand people catching the disease daily. Could be our politicians let us down in the very beginning of this Coronavirus pandemic. Where were the scientific and medical minds? There have been many recoveries and this is the good news. The challenge with recoveries is that many will suffer effects lifetime. Either lungs, heart, kidneys, liver or other organs. To summarize, we do not want to get this disease. It is age destructive. The older one is the more apt to die. I guess the good news for my wife and I is that we are old and staying out of as much danger as possible here in Utah. We wear our mask and rotate a different mask and let them rest for four days or wash them. They’re not necessarily pretty, although I have one that’s great, made by daughter Sharon. Wear your mask! We wear disposable gloves when and where necessary.
Worldwide cases of 7 million plus and over 4 hundred thousand deaths. Not a good number but over 3 million have recovered and are still alive. Let’s send good thoughts to those who have it and we trust are recovering and give thanks for those who are on the flip side of the disease and healthy again. We can bless those who have made their transition to the next higher level because of it. Especially first responders, doctors, nurses, volunteers and the like who have transitioned off the planet because of doing good works.
On another possibly more positive note let’s look at some affirmations and quickies that you can use. I won’t always know the origin or creator and if you wish to look them up you can.
- Look for the good and praise it.
- We are here to love people and use things. Not to love things and use people.
- Our friends are our telltales. Our children are our mirrors.
- Time is of the essence. Time and tide for no man wait.
- The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on.
- Change your thinking change your life.
- Some games you’re gonna win, some you’re gonna lose and some will get rained out. Lou Gehrig (1939?)
- Where there is love there is life. Mohandes Gandhi the Mahatma
- Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom Thos. Jefferson
- Folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be Abe Lincoln
- One of my favorite words is obstreperous. One can be interesting and obstreperous. If you’re bored, meditate, read, write, create, learn an instrument, practice what benefits you and/or do something positive for others. Being at home we can be, do and have good, true and lovable times.
Send us your stories, favorite quotes, favorite words, basically anything that motivates you in a positive and focus up direction. focusupphilosophers@gmail.com
Like us, recommend us and use the focus up philosophy for decision making. ergo:
Remember, you can be a Focus Up Philosopher by focusing up into your higher brain. That’s about an inch above and between your upper ears. Decision making is a good time to focus up. While you’re focusing in the upper brain think of the past & past decisions you’ve made. Then think of the future 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, 1 year or a lifetime of yours and others and planetary future. I hear the Japanese are taught to think 150 years in the past & future. Our Focus Up Philosopher Society (FUPS) recommends focusing up once an hour minimum. Sit quietly, focus up for 1-3 minutes. Solve a problem, make a choice, think of a service you can do for another or others and the planet. Focus up time is a good time to do positive thinking.
Weekify: This week if you can please look another human being in the eyes for 5 minutes. Sit a safe distance away and look into a significant other or friend, etc’s. eyes for five full minutes. Time it and give them all your attention. It’s life affirming, even life changing. 5 minutes, 35 minutes a week if you wish to elevate your life and quite possibly the life of another.
Remember to share your ‘Good old days’ (prior to December 31/2019) email: focusupphilosophers@gmail.com.
Blessings, Ernest
P.S. This just in. Featured on MSN .
“When the world looked to Asia for successful examples in handling the novel coronavirus outbreak, much attention and plaudits were paid to South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
But there’s one overlooked success story — Vietnam. The country of 97 million people has not reported a single coronavirus-related death and on Saturday had just 328 confirmed cases, despite its long border with China and the millions of Chinese visitors it receives each year.
This is all the more remarkable considering Vietnam is a low-middle income country with a much less-advanced healthcare system than others in the region. It only has 8 doctors for every 10,000 people, a third of the ratio in South Korea, according to the World Bank.
After a three-week nationwide lockdown, Vietnam lifted social distancing rules in late April. It hasn’t reported any local infections for more than 40 days. Businesses and schools have reopened, and life is gradually returning to normal.
To skeptics, Vietnam’s official numbers may seem too good to be true. But Guy Thwaites, an infectious disease doctor who works in one of the main hospitals designated by the Vietnamese government to treat Covid-19 patients, said the numbers matched the reality on the ground.
“I go to the wards every day, I know the cases, I know there has been no death,” said Thwaites, who also heads the Oxford University Clinical Research Unit in Ho Chi Minh City.
“If you had unreported or uncontrolled community transmission, then we’ll be seeing cases in our hospital, people coming in with chest infections perhaps not diagnosed — that has never happened,” he said.
So how has Vietnam seemingly bucked the global trend and largely escaped the scourge of the coronavirus? The answer, according to public health experts, lies in a combination of factors, from the government’s swift, early response to prevent its spread, to rigorous contact-tracing and quarantining and effective public communication.
Acting early
Vietnam started preparing for a coronavirus outbreak weeks before its first case was detected.
At the time, the Chinese authorities and the World Health Organization had both maintained that there was no “clear evidence” for human-to-human transmission. But Vietnam was not taking any chances.
“We were not only waiting for guidelines from WHO. We used the data we gathered from outside and inside (the country to) decide to take action early,” said Pham Quang Thai, deputy head of the Infection Control Department at the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology in Hanoi.
By early January, temperature screening was already in place for passengers arriving from Wuhan at Hanoi’s international airport. Travelers found with a fever were isolated and closely monitored, the country’s national broadcaster reported at the time.
By mid-January, Deputy Prime Minister Vu Duc Dam was ordering government agencies to take “drastic measures” to prevent the disease from spreading into Vietnam, strengthening medical quarantine at border gates, airports and seaports.”
Thwaites said, “The population is much more respectful of infectious diseases than many perhaps more affluent countries or countries that don’t see as much infectious disease — Europe, the UK and the US for example,” he said.
“The country understands that these things need to be taken seriously and complies with guidance from the government on how to prevent the infection from spreading.” (Thanks MSN)
Please listen to science and medical professionals when there’s a question about your health. Do not listen to politicians for medical or health advice. ESN
P.P.S. Book: We’ll tell you more about the book ‘Splendid South Africa and Swaziland. If you want to consider ordering one on our third printing coming up let us know. Cost is $18.95 plus $4.00 shipping.
P.P.P.S Carole is an artist. Here is a painting or two. Interested in seeing more? Go to www.cqnart.com
