It has been two months since the Iowa State Hygienic Laboratory in Coralville reported the first positive test results for COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
We look forward to returning to a semblance of our pre-pandemic lives. We also know our lives won’t be the same as the pandemic could continue until there is a cure a year or two from now.
I could have continued to work at the home, farm and auto supply store. Because of my age I chose a voluntary COVID-19 leave of absence, then retired after the first thirty days ended. Not everyone has these choices.
One hopes a better society emerges from the chaos the virus and its inseparable economic depression have wrought. Our president’s reaction to the pandemic cost us the strong economy he inherited and caused preventable mass death. It is delusional to believe informed people will accept his work and re-elect him for another four years. We have to work to make sure someone else, presumably Joe Biden, is elected to stop the destruction caused by the current response to the pandemic.
There is also more to life than politics.
In a series of posts I plan to write about the worklife I have known and how it may change after the pandemic. There is a clear delineation of my personal work timeline into several periods.
When I began outside work in grade school as a newspaper carrier there were expectations of knowing what types of jobs were available and then securing them. After college graduation the workplace had changed, offering few positions in which I found interest. This led to frustration and then entering the military.
After returning from overseas I went to graduate school. When finished I found even less desirable opportunity than five years previously. When I eventually found work in the transportation and logistics field it was a compromise between what I wanted to do and producing enough income to support our young family. It was never the best, but it accomplished a degree of financial security.
When I took early retirement in 2009 I wasn’t sure what the future would hold. I used part of our retirement savings and entered a series of low-paying jobs that helped pay bills but did little else to advance us financially. I’ve written often about this and hope to bring a new perspective to it. During and after the pandemic there will be another phase of worklife. In some ways it is a journey home to being the person I was when this all began.
The president and governor say it’s time to reopen the economy and our lives. From my perch in Big Grove Township the economy never fully closed and the first wave of the pandemic is not finished. To understand how we can restructure our lives in society we must understand from where we are coming. That’s the hope of the next series of posts.
The lilacs will soon be in full bloom. They don’t last long. What does?
Social distancing in the coronavirus pandemic has me well ahead in the garden, creating an in between time to consider life’s possibilities.
This week I plan to plant tomato and pepper seedlings and get everything I can into the ground. We are past the last frost, although with as chilly as it’s been, things aren’t growing well yet. There’s no hurry.
That said, there has been plenty of arugula, lettuce, spinach, spring garlic, pak choy, mustard greens and spring onions. What we don’t get in greens from our garden we get from the CSA spring share. I have big salads on the dinner menu three times this week and side dishes of stir fried greens every other day but Friday. When I was a younger gardener I didn’t understand the importance of greens to the enterprise. Now I do.
I’ve taken to hanging a U.S. flag over the garage door. The one I use flew over the U.S. Capitol. I paid $16 for it through our congressman. For a long while I flew the flag I took with us on field maneuvers in the Army. I flew that one from the radio antenna during non-tactical road marches. It got worn so I replaced it. Flags wear out. Everything does.
I’m down to my last face mask so Jacque has been getting input on what kind she should make for me. The one I have is a dust mask from the garage workshop. It fits snugly. It serves. The new one will have parts of an obsolete vacuum cleaner bag as the filter medium. While Americans have poor discipline in their behavior to prevent spread of COVID-19 (or lack of discipline, more likely), we’ll do our best not to catch it or transmit. The main thing is going out only when we need to. With the garden and plenty to do inside it shouldn’t be a problem. It’s better for us anyway.
Today’s challenge is figuring out what to do beyond getting through each day. I’d been dodging the idea of retirement and now that the pandemic flipped me to this new status I’m not sure what to do with the rest of my life. I’m not used to working without a clear plan. I need to make one and for that I need new priorities. It’s an in between time for now and those decisions will be delayed for another day.
For the time being, the allure of lilac scent beckons me outside.
When I was a grader, Mother would send me to the corner grocery store to secure provisions for the evening meal.
We had a corner grocery store. It was a block and a half away from home. There were no supermarkets within walking distance.
I don’t recall its name. A family owned it and the husband was the butcher. When it closed, run out of business by the multi-location Geifman Food Store that situated a block and a half away, they moved to the west end of town where the butcher was murdered in his store.
I was a paper boy for the Times-Democrat. The hyphenated name is from a 1964 merger into what eventually became part of Lee Enterprises and is now the Quad-City Times. I delivered the evening edition after school and the corner grocery was near the end of my route. At that time paper boys collected subscriptions directly from customers. When I finished weekly collections I’d stop at the store to buy a package of baseball cards or a candy bar. I remember a six-pack of 10 ounce bottles of Pepsi sold for 60 cents, the lesser known sodas bottled a few blocks away sold for 54 cents. Mother discouraged us from drinking soda.
The corner grocery store was an important part of our family life. Then it wasn’t.
Grandmother grew up on a farm and knew how to cook. She knew where food came from and how to prepare a live chicken. In our early years she lived near us, next door when I was a toddler, upstairs when I was in the first grade. After that she was a regular guest for Sunday dinners and special occasions like Easter when she checked in with her grandchildren and helped mom in the kitchen.
In the 1960s we began to eat more food prepared outside our home. Mom also began experimenting with different food preparations. We developed a taste for tacos and I recall the corner grocery didn’t carry some Mexican ingredients we liked, requiring me to walk to nearby Geifman’s. It was a sign of the end of the corner store.
In 1966 Joe Whitty moved to Davenport and ended up living with his young family in a rental the second house north from ours. It was across the street from a family that owned the dairy. He worked at the nearby hospital where I had been born, first as a baker, then as dietary director. He went on to establish a chain of pizza and ice cream stores. One of the ice cream stores ended up on the lot where the corner grocery store had been, although after I left Davenport.
On the other side of the church where I was baptized, about two blocks away from home and next to the Geifman Food Store, was a restaurant called Chicken Delight. They had a radio jingle, “Don’t cook tonight, call Chicken Delight.” The chain was founded in Illinois in 1952 and grew to have more than 1,000 locations. It was a take out and delivery only place and I don’t recall eating their chicken during the eleven years I lived at home there. Without the dining room we had little interest. If we had their product at home, I have no memory of it.
Chicken Delight was not known for its quality as each store followed their own cooking process, sometimes with their own equipment. That’s unlike the McDonald’s franchises which grew to prominence in the 1960s. McDonald’s prided itself on consistent quality in all their stores. They even had a “Hamburger University” near Chicago to train managers in how to operate with consistent results. Today there are not many Chicken Delight stores and most that remain are located in Canada. The women in our house knew how to make chicken and the family consensus was ours was better. Eventually one of the former neighbor’s pizza restaurants located in the Chicken Delight space.
That’s not to say we didn’t dine out in the 1960s, we did. We favored local, family run restaurants like Riefe’s Family Restaurant and Bell Eat Shop. Our parents knew both families. When McDonald’s built a restaurant on Brady Street we drove over there as a family once in a while. Their burgers and fries were different from Mother’s. They were cheap too. We ate in the car. We also drove to the A&W Root Beer stand where servers brought trays of food and drinks that hung on our car windows. The rise of automobile culture made home delivery pizza popular and inexpensive.
Grandmother would take us to Bishop’s Buffet on special occasions. We enjoyed being able to pick what we wanted from a generous selection of items like Mom and Grandmother made at home. In some ways it was a form of nostalgia. Grandmother insisted on paying the bill. These family events were important to her.
That’s the range of our 1960s dining experience outside home. A lot has changed since then. When Grandmother was born in the 19th Century people cooked most meals at home or took a dish to a potluck for weddings, funerals or other occasions where they ate what others had prepared. Prior to the current pandemic food prepared outside home comprised more than half of American diets according to the USDA. When the coronavirus recedes I expect there will be a rebound in restaurant eating.
It takes work to remember these things. Memories are not always accurate. What is important now may not have been important then. In the end, it is up to the author to research and present each story leaning on known facts. We must resist the temptation to tell a story only because the narrative flows or with ideological intent. It is hard to listen to one’s own voice and ignore what others may have experienced or have to say about something. We each own our memories even though there are shared experiences. We must be true to ourselves.
I’d like to be writing more pieces like this. I hope I will.
In an effort to move on to what’s next, here’s another post about the coronavirus pandemic.
Please bear with me. There is a “what’s next” although it will be different from what we would have expected a few months ago.
The threat of COVID-19 spreading into our household had me retire from the home, farm and auto supply store. It was inevitable I would do so soon. The pandemic flipped the switch. Now I’m done with outside-the-home work except for what I do in the local food system a few hours each week.
As I pointed out Thursday, we are in the pandemic for a couple of years or at least until a cure is in place. I believe there will be a cure in the form of a vaccine simply because there are so many bright minds and dollars being invested in this work. No one knows for certain how long it will take to develop and implement a cure, so if we’re smart, we will adopt a long-term perspective in order to keep our sanity.
For our household, with two retirees, resolution of the pandemic is to retire from society until there is a cure and life returns to some sense of “normal,” if that’s possible. While phone calls, social media, video conferences and the like will be an important means of communicating, it’s no substitute for every day activities to which we are accustomed. We yearn to return to those things and validate the Joni Mitchell lyrics from my college years, “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.”
Returning to what was is not possible because the coronavirus is only the next in a series of pandemics expected as humans continue to exploit the natural environment and live in an increasingly connected society. To be resilient, our choices now have to prepare us for what I believe is that eventuality.
I don’t know what I would do if I were in my prime earning years like our daughter currently is. Our assumptions about what we are doing have to change. A simple truth is the life I wanted and thought I would have when I entered the post-college workforce was gone by the time I got there. What we’ve made for ourselves relies heavily on federal government programs of Medicare and Social Security. We are vulnerable to a major change in these programs, but so are a lot of people and I expect there will be sufficient political will to resist changes to the core programs of the pension and providing health care for the elderly.
For now, I’m working on projects: writing and gardening mostly. This in addition to checking in with key family and friends is a mainstay, one that will help me survive through the end of the coronavirus pandemic. If the future is uncertain, I am resolved to make it through. I appreciate readers sticking with me as I write to understand who I am and how we can adapt to the new world made for us in 2020.
Since retiring on Tuesday there has been one good day to work outside.
Tuesday and Wednesday were cool and dark with scattered showers. I read two books, reworked the family budget, and spent most of my time indoors.
Thursday was a glorious spring day when I measured and cleared the remaining three garden plots and planned the sequence of events and layouts. Today looks equally nice and an opportunity to start direct seeding and planting from the greenhouse.
This year may be the best yet start to the garden. I’m hopeful even though a lot of weeding and combating pests lies ahead.
There will be spring garlic from the volunteer patch and arugula planted March 2 is ready to harvest. I’m reviewing cook books for ideas, seeking a spring pasta dish as a chance to combine fresh arugula and last season’s garlic. Repetition is anathema to having a kitchen garden so a key ingredient will be spontaneity.
Mario Batali has a recipe using fresh mushrooms cooked in sweet vermouth with ten cloves of garlic. It sounds good. I have the garlic, but no vermouth and only canned mushrooms from the wholesale club. A recipe I remember from television is Jaime Oliver and Gennaro Contaldo making pasta using wild rocket they found growing in London. The spontaneity of their process is more what I’m after. Deborah Madison has a recipe called spaghetti with overgrown arugula and sheep’s milk ricotta. It’s closest to the ingredients on hand. Where our ice box is lacking and could improve is by having some pecorino or any kind of ricotta cheese. I make this once a year, so I’m in no hurry to get into the kitchen. Because of the coronavirus pandemic, I’ll use whatever ingredients are on hand.
Another spring-use-it-up recipe is a quick version of eggplant Parmesan. When the eggplant harvest comes in, I cut large ones into half-inch disks, roast and freeze them. Every so often I get fresh mozzarella pre-cut in disks from the wholesale club. Canned tomatoes are always in abundance and these three things together make a dish.
Make a simple tomato sauce using canned tomatoes (reserving the juice for soup), basil, dried onions and dried garlic. Whatever you like is fine, even a prepared pasta sauce. Place a few tablespoons of tomato sauce to coat the bottom of the baking dish. Seat frozen eggplant disks in the sauce and cover them with more sauce. Next, a disk of fresh mozzarella on each piece of eggplant. Sprinkle Parmesan cheese over the top and bake in a 400 degree oven on the low-middle shelf. It’s ready as soon as the mozzarella begins to brown. I usually make individual servings in small baking dishes.
A last spring tradition for today is vegetable soup using fresh greens and whatever is in the freezer that needs using up. I always begin with onions, carrots, celery and bay leaves. Key ingredients were a bunch of fresh greens roughly chopped, a quart of canned tomatoes, two quarts of vegetable broth, frozen sweet corn, frozen grated zucchini, and a quarter cup each of dried lentils and barley. There are few rules other than starting with mirepoix and whatever diners like and needs to be used up. It made about a gallon of soup.
Living with a kitchen garden is the center of so much. When arugula, garlic and spring onions start to come in we are ready to break the long winter absence of fresh vegetables.
She danced with Rudy at the Junior Senior Prom on Saturday, May 21, 1927, in the Lake Front Pavilion.
They quoted Milton on the dance card, “Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee, Jest, and youthful jollity.”
Rudy signed it ten times, although toward the end of the event he began using ditto marks. Maybe she wrote his name, it’s not clear. The enthusiasm of seeing Rudy’s name written waned by music from the Play Boy Orchestra near Lake Michigan. Ditto marks came to mean something else for the cohort of their children.
The couple married and lived a long life. The reason I know and have these souvenirs is they were abandoned in a box I bought for a buck at their estate auction.
I can’t keep them forever either.
Outside after waking, the sky was clear, the stars bright. A lone aircraft made its way to the Cedar Rapids airport, crossing the starry night southwest of me. It violated a serenity of wonder… about the stars, about the dancing couple before the financial crash that ended the era.
I’m left with signatures on a dance card, but not the dance. It would take a partner to reenact the dance. My partner is sleeping and I’m alone under this starry night still full of wonder.
Identifying the Logitech C250 web camera to find a driver.
It’s been 21 straight days of posting about life in the coronavirus pandemic. Thanks for reading. Two things became clear:
First, life as we knew it was scrambled and for the most part that’s been a good thing. When social good comes in the form of staying at home and distancing from others in public to avoid spread of the virus, it’s not a huge personal challenge for a retiree. Many of us needed relief from a busy schedule where it was hard to keep up anyway. The least important parts of my to-do list have fallen off, enabling focus on better priorities.
Second, the coronavirus will be around for a while, into 2022 at least. Once a vaccine is developed, we expect COVID-19 will be among the diseases addressed in annual flu shots. For those of us who get our flu shots, that’s a positive. We’re not there yet, but there is confidence in scientists working to understand the virus and developing a response. For now, we wait. What else is there to do as vaccine development takes time.
My last shift at the home, farm and auto supply store was on April 2 before taking a coronavirus leave of absence. I’ve gone to the farm for two shifts with another today. We practice social distancing in the greenhouse, which means most of my time is spent alone, doing my work. I’ve been grocery shopping twice, wearing a mask and trying to stay away from other shoppers and staff. I picked up volunteer work for my spouse at the library where the worker brought it to the door. We maintained a distance and chatted for a couple of minutes. She’s also one of my kale customers.
There is already pent up demand to get among people again, not just for me, but generally. In Iowa the number of confirmed tests for COVID-19 is still increasing, as are the number of daily deaths reported by the Iowa Department of Public Health. We are a distance from resuming normal activities as the “curve” is still progressing on the upward side of the bell. So we wait.
When I interviewed a U.S. Senate candidate on Thursday, we used the newly popular video conferencing platform Zoom. Since I didn’t know we were using Zoom until minutes before I was to log in, I didn’t have time to address my lack of a web camera. It looked pretty lame for just my name to show on the screen, although the interview went reasonably well.
A physician friend gave me his old monitor for my desktop when he upgraded. It has an October 2003 manufacture date. My technology works, but it’s old.
Digging through boxes of electronic gear, of which there seem to be a large number, I found the Logitech C250 web camera that plugs into a USB port, downloaded the driver, and am now ready to go on Zoom, Skype or whatever platform requires it. With social distancing, I’ll need it, probably.
No end to the pandemic is on the horizon. At the same time, the advent of spring is undeniable. A time of hope, of making plans, and for planting seeds. This year I’m increasing the productivity of the garden by using more space. Friends and neighbors may need the produce as the coronavirus pandemic continues.
At noon yesterday I decided to take a 15-hour break from reading news.
I got work done in the house, including making the crackers in this photo.
I slept through the night and feel ready to go. There is pent up demand to get outside in the garden, conditions are favorable, it’s all systems go.
Part of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic is managing time while social distancing. When the weather keeps us indoors for a couple of days we don’t want to go crazy. The news makes me crazy. Now that I recognize that, it’s possible to do something about it.
Once the sun comes up, it’s out to the garden I go.
Last night’s snowfall should melt by sunset as the forecast is ambient temperatures in the 40s. The sound of melting snow moving in the gutter is already background for this morning’s work.
Three inches of heavy, wet snow is melting on the car parked in the driveway. I won’t get into the garden again today. Early vegetables are in, so no worries.
Last night I participated in a Facebook live interview of former Admiral Michael Franken who is running in the June 2 Democratic primary election for U.S. Senate. With the coronavirus pandemic, in person interviews are taboo. We discussed his name recognition, the climate crisis, arms control, media reform, the postal service, federal research funding of infectious disease in livestock, unions, China, and the military budget. Here’s the link. My interview ran about an hour.
We received a package from our daughter who, along with tens of thousands of employees and contractors at the Walt Disney Company, is going on furlough Sunday, April 19. According to artifacts unearthed in the box, I am the “world’s best Dad.”
Journey Home 
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