From the Desk of The DBeazy One-Man-Think-Tank

With the ABSOLUTE HYSTERIA of the last few weeks regarding the dreaded Coronavirus, or to sound really intelligent, COVID-19, I’ve been thinking about all of this nonsense and honestly, I’m just stunned.  Is this thing maybe just a little scary? Hell yeah, it is.  But to me it isn’t because I’m worried about getting sick. I’m worried about how this is going to affect a lot of people around me as I work in the healthcare field.  Just knowing what idiots are capable of.  All of this got me to thinking as well.  Thinking about simpler times; times when we weren’t bombarded totally by round-the-clock news and up-to-the-minute coverage of events.  So I’m offering a break from the total and complete bullshit, hopefully by bringing a lighter option that will maybe take your minds off of current events.

For those of you who aren’t aware, I am an identical twin.  My brother and I were children numbers 4 and 5.  I was number 5.  Our parents were school teachers and we lived in on-campus housing not 30 yards from the school.  The mid to late 1960s were certainly simpler times. I guess we were poor, but I never knew it.

We lived in the small town of Varnado, Louisiana.  Varnado High School is situated to the East of Louisiana Highway 21. Basically, from the ages of 4 to 7, Johnny and I had free reign from Highway 21 to the railroad tracks and as far as I can recall, there were no limitations in the other directions.  Ahhhh man, simpler times, simpler times.

Looking back, I can’t say if Mom was just so worn out from being mother to 5 kids, or if things were so different that parents could feed their kids breakfast and feel free to let them go outside alone and out of sight for hours and hours at time.  No, wait.  That is what it was.  That is exactly what it was.  The world outside was a huge place and we just stayed with no particular plans, it is just what we did.  We had many big adventures.

We had friends around a lot of the time, and there was a time when we found two old lawn mower frames with just the wheels. No motor or handlebars.  One was red and one was green and we found some rope and tied to them.  I think the plan was to somehow get a seat attached to them and have a downhill race down a bluff beside the railroad tracks, though we never did.  But I remember the bluff and the tracks and the ditch that ran alongside the tracks.

Living on campus had its perks as well.  To 7-year-olds, we just had a lot to do there.  There was the playground, there was the football field, the bleachers and press box, then the cafeteria.  Wow, that cafeteria was a building build upon blocks about 3 feet off the ground with wooden flooring.  Immediately upon entering to the left was a long handwashing trough and all of the students first grade through twelfth went in single file, slowing to wash hands, dry them with brown paper towels, and advance in line to get a tray.  There was a knothole in the floor on the floor by the water trough and the older kids would drop change through the hole like it was a wishing well.  Occasionally Johnny and I would crawl underneath the cafeteria and collect the change.

There was another income producer on campus as well.  Right outside each entrance to the school was a stand that held wooden coke bottle crates.  These were placed so that soft drink bottles could be returned instead of throwing them away. I’m assuming the school would get credit for any empties returned to the beverage company.  In the 1960s Johnny and I would hunt for empty bottles in the ditches and so forth and return them to the store for the deposit.  And on occasion, maybe, just maybe, we might have supplemented our ditch bottles with a few of the school’s empties.

Then the event that probably shaped our lives for many years happened on the campus at Varnado High. Varnado had not had a football team in a while, but for whatever reason, they established a football program for the first time in years.  At any rate, we watched at a distance as they moved the benches in the field house, and the equipment was unpacked, and finally, the brand new football helmets arrived, white with a blue “V” on each side. Then on the weekend, Johnny and I started trying to find a way to get into that building.  We wanted to get a closer look. I suffered a pretty good cut on my left index finger, after Johnny held me up on his shoulders so that I could slide through a high window. The scar is still faintly visible after all of these years, but we didn’t get arrested for breaking and entering. We got in and we tried on the helmets and the shoulder pads and marveled at everything there. Johnny and I watched most practices and football was a major part of our lives.  We both went on to play through high school.

As we got a year or two older, maybe 8 years old, we got bicycles. We spent hours and hours, stretching our boundaries and Mama never knew that we even crossed Highway 21 and crossed the railroad tracks on those bikes.  Then one day, we were riding down the railroad tracks and at the trestle, we would normally turn around, but on this day we kept going.  Of course, we got about halfway and heard the train.  We turned and hauled it, running with our bikes and I guess we didn’t think we would make it, so we threw our bikes over the side and Johnny jumped.  I was farther away and it was much too high to jump, so I climbed over the side. Looking back, I don’t think it was all that close, but I was still climbing down when the train crossed above.

One night, we were out way after dark with some friends.  We were riding bikes and stopped at a door at the back of a building, which I may be confused, but I’m thinking that it was an apartment off the back of the public library. Inside, a guy of indeterminate age was stuffing bats for a taxidermy school assignment. In the year 2020, if four 8-10-year-old boys went into the apartment of an older guy at night, who was stuffing bats, well, you just automatically think of some CSI Special Victims Unit episode. And I think, “Where in the hell did my mother think we were?”

In the town of Varnado, there was a large black mule.  I’m sure someone owned him because his name was Ike. But in the spring, it was common to see a car driving very slowly with the window down and the driver leading Ike to plow a garden. He was the community mule. How simple is that?

But that’s just it. That is the entire point. Where are those times, those simple, simple times when people didn’t have to lock their doors? When kids weren’t stuck in front of a TV or a video game console? When the news had to wait until 5:00, 6:00, or 10:00 o’clock? A trip to the “swim hole” was the highlight of a summer day, and people would drop by to sit on the porch to visit.

Compare this to what we are experiencing today.  While I love technology as much as the next person, I sometimes long for those simple times.

And after re-reading this small look into the lives of two boys in the 1960s, I’m thinking this. It is a thousand wonders that I am alive today.  Putting this biographical text to virtual paper, I’m thinking that I could have turned out to be a con artist, a thief, paralyzed from a downhill lawnmower accident, dead from getting run over by a train, or a human stuffed by a perverted pedophile taxidermist.

So I am encouraged that while my end may come after some horror and long-suffering, I’m pretty sure today that it won’t be from a virus named after a beer.