Social distancing, the need to wear masks, lockdowns, frontline workers – suddenly this has become routine. Not to mention daily death reports and illness totals. I am absolutely dumbfounded that we are living in such times. (Why I am dumbfounded is also puzzling, but I am.) This has been our routine since March. As many communities begin to open, the lockdown continues in my hometown in Johnson County, Iowa.  

So far, no one in my large extended family has reported any illness, and we are spread across the U.S. Of course, many are out of work! The economic fallout will surely be horrible. But hopefully we’ll be spared any loss of life.

In order to make some sense of this time, I’ve looked into the past. How did my family manage during the pandemic of 1918, the Spanish Flu? I discovered that our family has no tales from this time period, except for one.  And I’m not certain that it occurred during the Spanish Flu year.

Moiselle (Stoney) Burbidge, a great-grandmother of my children, often told of the time she was quarantined with her parents, Charles Thomas and Lulu (Gass) Stoney and her younger sister, Wiora. They then lived at 713 1^st Avenue in Salt Lake City, Utah. Also living in the home, were Moiselle’s older step-brothers and sisters —Leon, Claude, Lois and Oral. 

According to my mother, Moiselle, her mother, would have been about ten years old, which places the story well into 1918. At that time, once a home was quarantined, from the Spanish flu or measles or polio or whatever infectious disease was afflicting a household, no one could go in or out. And once a person entered the home, they could not leave. Well, they could but they were then sought out by the health department. And they could be arrested.

Her two brothers were the ones with jobs and indeed supported the family. Since they were working, they were not allowed back into the home. I suspect it was their father who refused them entrance. They dutifully brought meals to the doorstep. And, according to the story, after delivering the food, they would stand outside and cry because they couldn’t go in. 

They were then young men in their early twenties, and not given to tears. I suspect, they must have been frightened and somewhat desperate to stand outside and cry.

As plague stories go it’s not very traumatic. I’ve read newspaper accounts from that time. Many young children were orphaned. Parents lost children and not those they expected to lose in a time of war. 

In one reported case, everyone in the home was so ill, there was no one well enough to be caretakers. Apparently by the time the local authorities made it to the home, they were in desperate shape. In another home, a mother was so frightened of catching the flu, she refused to care for her daughter!

Besides these stories I’ve read about the shortage of doctors and nurses. Some small towns were left without any medical care when their only doctor died of the disease. Salt Lake City began using out-of-work teachers to be home-care nursing assistants. 

Sports and concerts and church meetings were canceled. Business leaders complained about the disparity between businesses, some shut down and some allowed to stay open. Some communities quarantined themselves against others. Notably, Park City kept out Salt Lake citizens, but eventually, the flu got in. As it does.

The wearing of masks, layers of gauze, was ordered when caring for the sick and various groups volunteered to make them. Eventually, the public was required to wear them in certain situations.

Hope was in short supply. There were many advertisements touting one cure or another. None more than charlatans selling snake oil. By November, in Salt Lake City, people were being vaccinated, but there was then no vaccine proven to work against the Spanish Flu. The vaccines, and the snake oil, were efforts at hope.

People it seems are simply human and how we respond changes very little, especially when there are no certain cures and we must depend on nothing but hope.