When I first read about the Cornavirus health issue, it was on the other side of the world. At that time a health problem in China didn’t concern me.
I know something about China for when I was a youngster, I liked to dig holes. And when I was digging holes my mother warned me to be careful. She warned if I was careless and dug a deep hole I might strike a Chinaman with the point of my shovel. I had visions of an angry Chinaman with blood streaming down his face jumping out of the hole and chasing me.
Dad never told me to look out for an angry Chinaman but he did warn me not to dig too deep in case the walls of my hole might collapse. Dad never knowingly let me dig a real cave with a real dirt ceiling though I did do so once (more about that later). He did let me dig holes. I could then shore the ceiling with 4x4 beams and wooden grain doors once used to seal box cars. Once the wood was in place, I was allowed to shovel dirt back on top. To me, the finished product looked somewhat like the old igloo-style ammunition bunkers at the Hastings Naval Ammunition Depot.
My goal was to place the dirt so it would keep rain water from entering the cave. A more proper name for my underground play houses would probably have been dugouts but I preferred to call them caves. Though smaller than the pioneers’ dugouts, they were similar to the dugouts the early settlers used for homes on the plains.
My caves didn’t have any windows for light, the air was heavy and dank, and they leaked when it rained. But I had fun building and playing in them.
One weekend I helped a friend build one on a Graves Trucking Company lot at Salina. For the roof of that make-believe cave, we substituted material salvaged from a wrecked semi-trailer for the grain doors. In have since wondered what the Graves folks thought when they returned to work on Monday and discovered what the neighborhood youngsters had built while the terminal was closed.
Once a buddy with a long-handled shovel helped me enlarge a badger hole with the goal of turning it into a cave. The badger had dug into the side of a bank. The location made for a more realistic cave but I remembered my father’s warning about the instability of the soil on Blauvelt’s Hill. I never entered the badger cave, I just played outside of it on the shelf made from the removed dirt and dreamed about how nice the interior would be when finished. When not playing there, we closed the entrance with a galvanized wash tub for we didn’t want to share the space with an angry badger. The first rain washed away our shelf and we lost interest in the cave.
A trench collapse which took the life of a neighbor girl’s husband helped me share my father’s fear about collapsing caves.
Another time I found a washout along the highway had hollowed out a multistory room. With a friend, I crept up to the bottom opening where the water came out and looked inside. It was neat the way the light filtered in from the top. We knew better than to enter or walk on the top for it had to be unstable. We probably should not have looked into the bottom side. If the roof had collapsed, we may have been caught by the cascading dirt.
As I look back on my childhood adventures, I wonder what benefit they may be today.
When the virus was concentrated in China, I wasn’t concerned for I learned a long time ago that China is a long way from here.
This week, with the virus in Kansas and Nebraska, I am more concerned. I have read social media posts in which the posters claimed something they had done in their childhood would give them immunity.
One said, “If you licked the salt block offered to livestock or drank from the garden hose while growing up, you’re probably immune to the Coronavirus.” That was reassuring for I had done both. Another reader asked if eating the pellets designed as hog feed and chewing on paint chips added immunity. Others suggested swimming in a cattle tank, drinking water from the river, tasting mud pies, drinking milk fresh from the cow, playing in farm ponds and eating freshly picked but unwashed fruit and vegetables to the list of activities which may give immunity. I could add eating peach pits, apple seeds and potato peels.
From the suggested list, the only thing I didn’t do was chew on a paint chip. If I contract the virus, I’ll think I should have chewed on paint chips--the kind made of lead paint. For if lead paint is as dangerous as we are told it is, I most likely wouldn’t be concerned about Cornavirus. Instead, I probably would have died long before Cornavirus had a chance to get me.
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