On Wednesday, March 11, 2020, The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a pandemic. On the way home from work that night I stopped by a pharmacy to buy Smith Brothers Cough Drops. It was a way of paying homage to my grandfather, Otto Borchardt, who worked in an auto repair shop as a young man during the 1918 Flu Pandemic. None of the men who worked in the shop ever came down with the deadly flu and they gave credit to the fact that they all sucked on Smith Brothers Cough Drops every day.
Unfortunately, as I came to find out, Smith Brothers Cough Drops had been discontinued.
“Good Lord,” I thought, “we’re all doomed.”
Of course, Smith Brothers Cough Drops were NOT responsible for preventing the 1918 Flu, but it seemed like a nice way to tip my cap to a grandfather I never had the chance to meet.
He came to the United States as a young boy from Germany in the 1890’s. His mother passed away when he was 14 and he had to drop out of school and go to work on a relative’s farm. Despite this, he maintained a broad interest in the world and later in life became president of the local school board. His oldest daughter became a teacher.
Somewhere along the way in his young life he attended a school that taught auto mechanics.
By the time the United States got involved in World War I he had a wife and family and was able to get a deferment.
The remarkable thing about the story of Smith Brothers Cough Drops and the auto mechanics during the 1918 Pandemic is that this particular strain of flu attacked young healthy people so severely. The guys working in the shop were prime targets.
I will get my second COVID-19 vaccine shot on April 20, 2021 and even though I could no longer get Smith Brothers Cough Drops, I did settle on Ricola Cough Drops as a reasonable substitute. I honestly don’t think I went so much as a day without having at least one.
Superstitious? Not really.
I think that the decision to find meaning in something as innocuous as the daily ritual of having a cough drop, and jokingly thinking of it as a protective amulet, and making a mystical connection to a relative I never knew was an act of existential defiance against the chaos of mankind.
A little heavy? Ya, maybe. But the failure of efforts to slow the spread of Coronavirus was a failure of people. The mitigation strategies like wearing masks and social distancing actually did work. The magnitude of this crisis was a failure of selfish and reckless people.
My partner and I made the conscious decision that other people’s chaos ended at our house. Recognizing that ritual and tradition play a role in mental health, we invented all kinds of little traditions and rituals that had a personal meaning for us. We enjoyed them and looked forward to them with a sense of gratitude.
We had to make meaning for ourselves because so many of the leaders of our political and religious institutions failed. We didn’t fall for their Big Lies.
Schmecken! 