All my life I’ve been fascinated with the 1918 Spanish flu.
If I’m a storyteller, I’m a pale shadow of the storytellers of my youth.
In 1918 my father’s family was if not wealthy, very well to do. The old photographs they had made by professional photographers at the farm, plus Kodak Brownie photos, show these people out of some modern movie about the era.
My great grandmother Paralee, as is our custom, had dictatorial rule of the huge two story home. She declared a quarantine.
They social distanced. They even wore masks.
And none of them caught the flu until—-
The night of November 11, 1918 Humansville threw an enormous celebration.
Her husband, Alvin, was head of the Grand Army of the Republic lodge, so he defied her and the rest of the family went to Humansville,
Paralee drove her carriage over to her daughter in law Cora’s home, because Cora had a small daughter by Elmer, Paralee’s son somewhere in France.
The 13 year old hired boy Alva, as he told this part always cried.
Mama had told us to stay home, now we were so sick we couldn’t even eat.
Finally Eva (a daughter) said Oh my God Alva go fetch Mama, I’m afraid Daddy is about to die.
Alva ran out, tossed himself over a fast horse and sped off to Cora’s in the dead of night.
When he got close Paralee had heard a rider coming and was out side with a shotgun and a latern.
Alva heard Alva’s sad story, from far away.
She said Alva please harness my buggy, and I’ll be along shortly.
Three days later, all the others were nearly well, when Paralee took sick and had a stoke that caused her to vomit blood all over Eva, according to Alva, who told it to me.
She was 69 and her death certificate has no mention of influenza.
The Spanish flu was the worst pandemic since the Black Death.
It may have killed as many as 5% of all souls on earth.
It killed more youth than WW1.
Yet it completely spared every member of Congress and all other major nation’s leaders.
And then after 1920 it vanished off the earth. They had to dig up corpses from the permafrost to find the dead virus, about 80 years later.
The mystery is, when I visited graveyards with those old storytellers pointing out this and that one that died from the 1918 flu, except for Paralee they were all poor, compared to her.
When a tornado hits a small town here in Missouri, ground zero is usually a trailer park.
The well to do have better diet, better medical care, and better clothes.
Buf what does God have against poor folks, Id like to know?