Here it is. Another week. Same old Corona virus. Well not really. But it does make me think of the old 1918 Spanish Flu that swept the world. In 1918 there was not much radio and no TV. News traveled slow. Grandpa probably had heard little about the flu when he boarded the train there in Wister to travel to Fort Smith for a song leader’s conference. George Boyd was the song leader at the Free Will Baptist Church there in Liberty, a nice little church next to Mountain Creek in the shadow of Wolf Mountain.

When George returned, he was feverish and the next day was dead from the now famous Spanish Flu. My other grandpa that be, J. T. Bullard, helped lay Mr. Boyd out, built a wooden coffin and saw that he was properly buried over in Maxie cemetery. A quick check of the cemetery shows that there were a lot of burials in that sad April of 1918. George left his widow Julia, my mom and her twin sister Cora, along with Lora and Ruth without support.

President Wilson had refused to close theatres, churches and/or other meeting places because he felt that it wasn’t wise to let the enemy (Germans) know how bad it was or that thousands of our young soldiers had already died of the virus. The epidemic got worse and in a hurry thanks to Mr. Wilson.

Another deadly virus invaded America in the 1940’s. Polio. This time we had a well-developed radio network and a president who himself had experienced polio himself. Franklin D. Roosevelt in his brush with polio was left with crippled legs and although he tried to conceal from the voters just how crippled he was I think most Americans knew. I never thought much about polio when I was a kid until some of my peers came down with it. And there was a guy named Monte Bell over at KADA radio. This radio station in Ada was the only station in the county. No TV. But radio was big in those years. And so was Monte Bell who signed the station on the air every morning with a request line and talk show.

Billy (from Oklahoma City) was spending the summer in Stonewall with his grandma. He and I rode our bikes those hot summertime days. One morning I rode down to his grandma’s place and saw cars parked up and down the street. I went in the house and found lots of people just sitting around. Billy was laying on a bed in the front bedroom. Dead. They knew who I was, and the granny took me back and had me sit with him a little bit. I never saw him again. Mom was very unhappy to hear I had sat on his bed. I felt like Typhoid Mary.

About that same time a girl named Jackie got sick in Sunday School, went outside and vomited on the steps. Of course, I stepped in it. It was time for church services and Jackie’s mom played the organ. I don’t know who told Ruth Harrell her daughter was sick, but she got up and left the organ took her daughter home and then on to Valley View Hospital in Ada. By mid-afternoon Jackie was dead. Jackie was a popular and pretty teen in the Baptist Church and her dad was the high school principal. Her mom taught English. That week it seemed that a child died every day in our area and Monte Bell was right there on it. Pontotoc County went into a well shared panic.

Every day Monte would broadcast his latest to keep us from catching this scary disease. The week he “discovered” that polio was spread via the toilet bowls my mom nearly ruined our commode with excess scrubbing. Monte heard it was from the City Water, we went to boiling our drinking water. Then it was movie theatres. Monte told us that a sore throat was a first symptom and, of course, swimming was nixed. But people continued to die and the six iron lungs in Ada were in constant use and nothing helped until Jonas Salk perfected his polio vaccine. But by then, Ada’s beloved Monte Bell had been silenced by a heart attack. Much to my mom’s surprise, none of the Bullard’s ever caught this hated disease.

Meanwhile, since there is no vaccine for this Corona Virus, no Monte Bell to warn us and my mom isn’t around anymore we’ll all just have to be careful. And be sure and go to church this Sunday. Oh wait. Is that still allowed?

Wayne Bullard,

DPh

cwaynebullard@gmail.com