Feest Isolation Days – 6 May
The entire world is trying to figure out how to come out of lockdown. What lessons will we learn from each other and how will it look while we wait for Scientists to develop the vaccine that will ultimately end this Pandemic? While there is no doubt that eventually a worldwide vaccine will ultimately stop the spread of the virus, what about the next phase?
It is reassuring that there were so few reported deaths today from the coronavirus, but there was also some published research that suggests that people are unwilling to end the lockdown yet. Here in Bristol, there can be little “herd” immunity as there have been so few cases – less than seven hundred in the entire city. Is it possible that we will have a big second wave of illness and death when the next phase of the lockdown begins? How to move forward is a difficult issue for the government and the many scientists who are working tirelessly on the answers to these problems.
For many, being in lockdown is wearing, but the certainty of the results of staying home far outweigh the uncertainty of what could happen. As Matt Hancock the Health Secretary said a few weeks ago, the best mask for everyone is keeping your front door closed. Of course, the country needs to get back to work, and school, and the rest, and we will eventually. For many of us though, staying put is going to carry on for some time. Let’s hope all goes to plan when the plan becomes known.
When you need that extra bit of grit to keep you going while waiting for that magical vaccine that will change our lives and reopen our front doors once more to family and friends, its often a good time to recount some of those stories that are passed down the generations in a family. Those stories circulate because they often offer a glimpse of something special in the protagonist.
My Great Grandmother Blosick was a formidable woman by all accounts. She was a feisty lady who left the “old country” and sailed to America taking with her the spirit of the times. During her years in America, the government began Prohibition; the legal prevention of the manufacture, sale, and transportation of alcoholic beverages. The dry period, (or semi dry period as it turned out!) lasted for thirteen years. Our months of lockdown suddenly seem a whole different order than those societal changing times in the States! And Prohibition did change society, but not always for the better. A historian writing about the era reminds us that we need to watch out for solutions that end up worse than the problems they set out to solve. Organised crime got its foothold during this time – think of all those old black and white films and the shoot outs in speak easies that occurred.
“Normal” people, having nothing to do with organised crime, also did what they could to supply the alcohol that so many wanted, while helping them to make ends meet. During the Twenties, a tribe of Native American Indians called Hootchinoos, were known for their drunkenness and gave us the term “hooch”.
Great Grandma was one of those who found a market and brewed her own hootch to order. She arrived outside the coal mine in Pennsylvania every morning and collected up the flasks of the men who were working down the pit, and when they returned each evening black faced, sweaty and exhausted, she would hand them back their flasks. Instead of a hot beverage, their flasks were now filled with Grandma’s hootch. When pay day came, she stood outside with the flasks and returned them after she had collected the weekly fee that each man owed her for her troubles.
Great Grand Ma Blosick
Her basement brewery kept the miners going for years. One day, while in charge of my father who couldn’t have been more than about seven at the time, she was called urgently away and left him guarding her still. She handed the little boy an axe and told him if the thing started to blow to hit it with the axe and run like hell!
I don’t think many of us would leave a little boy on his own or in charge of a still, let alone hand him an axe! I’m not surprised that one of her sons, my Grandfather, raised canaries and sold them to the miners though. Needs must!
It is the prohibition that makes anything precious.– Mark Twain
My hooch of choice is wine. Pinot Noir especially and I suspect that many more bottles will be consumed while we wait patiently for the virus to leave us alone. I often wonder what my Great Grandma would have made of the times we live in but I’m pretty certain that she would have offered unfailing encouragement and found ways to cope with the situation. As of course we all will! Enjoy your hooch of choice…
A Coronavirus Tale: Had too much wine last night. Have no idea how I got home from the sofa!
With love
Kathy x