N is for Nick!

I see that my last blog post was on Christmas Eve of last year, a bit more than three months ago. A whole quarter of the year gone without your hearing from me!

The last posting was written after we buried my best friend, and I knew I would not be writing any time soon. It never occurred to me that “any time soon” meant three months. I had come to terms with my loss,
and was ready to write again, when life happened. Things got busy at work. Things got busy at my other work. Things got busy at home. And here we are, three months later, ready to go again.

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m going to engage in some sort of discourse on the Wuhan Flu. Wrong! I’ve had enough of it. It is on the television 24/7, it is on the radio 24/7, it is in every issue of my newspaper, and it occupies a fair amount of space in the magazines I read. I’m fed up with this, and I’m quite properly pissed off about it. I am teaching from home using one of those meeting platforms, so it seems that I never leave my home office anymore. I can’t escape by going out to dinner, because the powers that be in the city and state have shut the restaurants down, except for takeout. I can’t go to the movies, because of ditto. But the main thing that I’m pissed about is toilet paper.

My modest little house in Madison has two bathrooms. We generally buy an eight-pack of toilet paper whenever our previous eight-pack gets down to two or three rolls. At the onset of the toilet-paper-hoarding
phase of the pandemic, we had seven rolls in the house. I was not worried, until two subsequent trips to the grocery store in two consecutive weeks indicated that there was no toilet paper in the county.

Amazon was no help. Most storefronts indicated that they were out of toilet paper. The storefronts that said they had toilet paper really didn’t: the delivery times were one to two months out. Ridiculous!

Apparently that part of the crisis is over. I was in Wal-Mart yesterday, and there was a good amount of toilet paper, sitting on two pallets, ready for purchase. We grabbed an eight-pack, breathed a sigh of relief, and headed home.

Seriously, I hope the people who hoarded toilet paper choke on it.

And that’s the extent of my discussion of the Wuhan Flu.

Back some time ago, the 1980s, I think, a fellow named Gurganus wrote a novel entitled Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All. I remember the name Gurganus, because I had an acquaintance named Gurganus. At one time I thought it was a Greek surname, such as Galifianakis, Costa-Gavras, and Savalas. Turns out, it’s Welsh. Oh, well, live and learn.

I’m sure you’ve heard of the director Costa-Gavras, and who hasn’t heard of Telly Savalas? You may wonder about that other name, Galifianakis. Nick Galifianakis was a North Carolina Member of Congress, active in the 60s and 70s. I wasn’t in his district, but the television stations I watched in those days must have broadcast to his district, because every two years his political commercials were on the air. He was a reasonably successful politician, until 1972, when he won the Democratic primary for the United States Senate, and had the misfortune to have as an opponent a fellow named Jesse Helms. That year, for the first time in anyone’s memory, the state of North Carolina went Republican in a big way: Nixon, Holshouser, and Helms.

But I digress. Nick Galifianakis must have employed an outstanding PR firm. To this day, I remember his campaign ditty:

N is for Nick,  Nick Galifianakis,

I is for his integrity,

C is for Congress,

K is for Keep him there!

We need Nick in Washington, DC!

All of this, just because I thought Gurganus was a Greek name!

Sometime in the 1980s, the intellectualoids were all atwitter over this first novel from Gurganus, about the oldest living Confederate widow. Of course, I bought the book, and managed to finish it, how I do not know. It was a bit preachy, smug, and did a disservice, I thought, to the real oldest living Confederate widow, who was still alive at the time. (She died in 2008. The penultimate surviving widow of a Confederate soldier, who happened to be the last widow whose marriage to a Confederate soldier resulted in offspring, died in 2004.)

I gave my copy of that book away, so I cannot check the details, but if I recall correctly, towards the end of what seemed like a never-ending novel, the widow takes a plane flight to Atlanta, and is astonished to see, out the window of the airplane, streaks of dark, luscious green vegetation, much darker and greener than the vegetation she had been seeing. When she asked about it, she was told that the beautiful green vegetation was a result of Sherman’s march. The total destruction by burning of the forests resulted in a growth that was even more hardy, even more green, even more luscious.

I have no idea whether Gurganus made that up, or whether it is actually true. I am inclined to believe that it is actually true. Here is why.

I once lived in the middle of the largest hardwood forest in the eastern half of the United States. I was working for a paper company at the time, and the middle of a huge hardwood forest seemed an ideal
location for a paper mill. In fact, that paper company had three mills in this hardwood forest, stretching from Virginia, through Maryland, and into Pennsylvania. And all the time I lived in that hardwood forest, I never suffered from pollen. Never.

My pollen problems started when I moved to Georgia. Gee, thanks, Sherman!

I understand that a pollen count of around 150 or so is so high as to be considered dangerous. Yesterday’s pollen count: more than 6000. Six thousand!

I mowed the lawn today, and was forced to wear one of those masks you wear when sanding down joints in drywall. I hated it. When I hosed down my truck, a mighty yellow river of pollen rolled out the back
and down the driveway. (We have a Yellow River in Georgia. I wonder how it got its name?) I enjoy fresh air, but only a fool would leave a window open this time of year, even though the temperatures are pleasant. The entire interior of the house would be coated with pollen.

One day, the panic over the Wuhan Flu will be gone. But we’ll always have pollen. Now THAT is something to worry about!