My Great-grandfather, Stephen Jefferson, died at home in Des Plaines, IL on Sept. 18, 1918 of
the Spanish Flu at 83 years old, while I have endured the Corona virus without much thought or
danger. His wife, Maria lived another eleven years.
I and my wife, 88 and 86, have been retired for almost 28 years so the stay-at-home order was
not too much different from what we have done for about the last 10 years or so. My wife,
Moree, belonged to a local garden club that met once a month, a P,E.O. chapter that met twice
per month, her DAR meeting that met once pre month, and volunteered at the local Genealogical
library twice per month so she was most affected by all the closings. I, on the other hand,
cancelled my membership in the American Legion about eight months before the problem started
and long since my SAR membership. We gave up Square Dancing about two years ago. Early in
the shut down, we visited any store that was still opened, but as it progressed, we went grocery
shopping once per week during the senior hour with her taking one section of Kroger's and I the
other cutting our time in the store to about 20-30 minutes. Some of our neighbors call and ask if
we need anything, but Milk is the most important item.. It appears thta we just happened to have
a stash of toilet paper, so we chuckle every time we walked by the empty shelves in the grocery
store. I need several things from Home Depot, but nothing urgent that cannot wait a couple more
weeks. We did have a roof leak, but it was the rainy weather that delayed that, not the virus, We
can work in our yard so we try to do that during the day and watch the old B&W movies in the
evening. We talked about setting up a puzzle, but have not got around to it yet. Our big worry is
we do not use our cars enough to keep them running good. We still do our 4 miles per day walk
unless the weather is too bad, i.e.. thunderstorms. My main thought about the epidemic, is like
the song: "Summertime, and the living is easy...." Our main concern is the amount of money that
the Federal Government is spending that will take forever to collect in taxes.
Thomas Baranski. Memphis, TN
