The date is Monday, March 16, 2020. As I write this article, the county, state, nation and world is in a state of unrest due to Coronavirus. Today the U. S. Stock Market took its sharpest dive since 1987, when Ronald Reagan was president. Amazing to me, especially as it was just a few days ago that it showed a dramatic one day increase! This is just evidence of how fast things change in an uncertain and fearful world.

I promised you last week an article on encouragement, and if one was ever needed, now seems like a good time. Hopefully this won’t turn out like Scrooge’s visit from the ghost of his former business partner, Jacob Marley. One of my favorite lines in all moviedom is the reply Scrooge received when he asked the ghost to speak comfort to him. The ghost replied, “I have none to give.”

And indeed Scrooge did have to undergo some difficulty. He was visited by three spirits, all of whom showed him what a miserable waste he had made of his entire life. Yet, in the end, Scrooge was granted a second chance to make things right, which he very wisely took full advantage of, and the story had a happy ending for Scrooge and all affiliated with him.

Take tonight, for example. My wife requested that I come home to take her to Wal*Mart. This after President Trump himself, I believe it was (or was it the governor of Tennessee?), told the nation (state?) to avoid crowds of more than ten people.

It turns out the wife didn’t go to Wal*Mart but sent me to several other places instead. And I don’t believe I saw more than ten people at any location I patronized. First, I went to Pet Supplies Plus on Broadway to buy our Precious Kitty some cat litter and dry food. I was able to accomplish 100% of this portion of my mission. There was no shortage of either, and I mused that if times get incredibly bad that I might be sharing Precious Kitty’s food and using her litter, especially in the absence of toilet paper (more on this shortly) and loss of public water and sewer services.

Next I went to Weigels on Maynardville Highway. I bought three gallons of milk per my wife’s instructions. When I took my three gallons of skim milk to checkout, the cashier assured me that Weigels would not run out of milk as they had their own dairy. She was not able to comfort me regarding the supply of toilet paper, as that product is not a Weigels’ specialty.

Next, to the Dollar Tree in Halls. There I was able to fulfill other parts of my task. There was not one roll of toilet paper in that store, nor one container of bleach. The cashier told me that there was a shortage in their establishment of these items as well as tortilla shells. I am almost as mystified at the shortage of a Mexican food item as I am at a universal product like toilet paper. Personally, I can survive better without tortilla shells (which were not on any of my “honey-do” lists) than without toilet paper.

The shortage of toilet paper reminds me of a tired old joke we used to play on each other in elementary school. We would shake another student’s hand heartily as we introduced ourselves as a creature from another planet. During the introduction, we would make the point that on our planet there was no toilet paper—we used our hands to wipe. I was so thrilled at this inane joke the first time I heard it that I went home and played it on my mother. I’m sure no one will be surprised to know that she did not find it in any way amusing. Other than the concern about spreading germs, could this be another reason that hand shaking is frowned upon these days?

The shortage of toilet paper is a much greater concern to people of the present time than it was to our forebears. They at least had the Sears-“Rareback” catalog pages, but thanks to an infusion of online ordering and technological advances mail-order catalogs are practically non-existent. Our country ancestors would probably have been more distressed over the potential loss of the Sears catalog than we are at the prospect of no toilet paper—it seems there were multiple uses for the catalog (wishing, Christmas shopping, keeping wayward children occupied, building fires, papering walls, filling in cracked window panes), but toilet paper by comparison today seems much more limited in its use.

I remember several years ago sitting on the front porch of Ailor Mortuary, talking to none other than owner E. J. Ailor himself. I always found E. J. quite the interesting character. That particular day he went into some detail about how the deceased in older days were not as clean as in modern times due to the lack of toilet paper. I said, “E. J., that’s just a little too much information for me.”

E. J. could be prophetic at times. I once asked him when I went to view a lady I had known as a child, “E. J., what killed this woman?” He replied in that booming voice of his, “Well, Ronnie, I’ll just tell you—her heart quit beating.” Quite an analysis of the cause of death from the former county coroner!

One more E. J. Ailor story. I was helping work an event for Union County’s Homecoming ’86. I believe it was the Tennessee State Museum’s traveling exhibit. Then legendary Union County Historian Ms. Winnie Palmer McDonald was present, and E. J. questioned her about Roy Acuff’s name being removed from the front of the Union County Museum. If my memory serves correctly, the museum was originally named the “Roy Acuff Union Heritage Museum”. The longer E. J. talked the more passionate about the subject he got, and as his passion rose so did his voice. Someone who did not know either E. J. or Ms. Winnie inquired as to why he was talking so loudly to that poor woman. Sherrie Collins (nèe Robbins) replied, “Oh, that’s just the funeral home guy.” I sometimes wondered myself if E. J. talked so loudly as to get the deceased to hear.

Back to the Dollar Tree. I was able to find there a meager supply of chewy granola bars, plain and BBQ pork rinds (no carbs and very little if any sugar included), and Vienna sausage. I love a good snack of a can of original Vienna sausage, crackers, and store-bought buttermilk. In the absence of Vienna sausage cheese is a good substitute. Peanut butter and buttermilk never complement each other in my taste.

As Robert Frost said, “ . . .miles to go before I sleep . . .” My final shopping stop for the evening was at Food City in Maynardville. There I purchased what must have been the last and most expensive bottle of bleach in Union County. There were neither Idaho nor russet potatoes—only a very few small red potatoes like those found in beef stew or vegetable soup. I did happily find toilet tissue, at a reasonable price ($1.99 for a four roll package), though had it not been for the wisdom of store management limiting their supply to two per customer the item would undoubtedly have been long gone, as it was elsewhere. I did find the wife’s requested bag of sweet onions and two eight roll packages of the very specific type of paper towel she wanted.

All in all not a bad evening. Only one item not found in any quantity at all, though it took two hours, four stops and a fifty mile round trip to accomplish my mission. And an even happier ending—my dear wife had a wonderful stew and a skillet of fried corn bread waiting for me, and I washed down a heaping portion of this wonderful food with a good glass of cold store-bought buttermilk and a cup of just perfect temperature coffee.

Regardless of personal feelings, I would not dare trivialize the menace presented by the Coronavirus, but humor does help folks more easily bear the storms of life. During the Civil War, Lincoln was often criticized for going to the theater (and that didn’t work out well for him in the end) and telling outrageous jokes. When chided, Lincoln is variously replied to have said something to the effect that he could not survive the difficulties he was enduring if he could not laugh, that he must laugh rather than cry.

As the winter season has passed and the light green spring is blossoming, next week I’ll share a few thoughts and personal experiences about camping. Please, Faithful Reader, stay safe and be healthy. I leave you with another insight from my world of email:

All the toilets in New York’s police stations have been stolen.
As of now, it appears the police have nothing to go on.