Collector Bill

       Bill was a collector.  All you had to do was open one of his garage doors to see that.  It was a three-car-plus garage, but you could only count on one bay containing a car.  Jeanie insisted that the  bay closest to the house proper was reserved for her car. 

     There could be another car or two in there, but it would take a goodly while to free it from all the stuff piled on and around it in order to get it out of the garage.

      Two or three times over the years, many of us pitched in and helped Bill clean up his garage so that we, the high school faculty, could hold our annual end-of-school party there.  One year we even took up a collection and hired the DJ who did the high school prom to set up and have a dance for our party in Beamgard's garage.

      For a while the garage would stay neat and organized, but the “rot” always came back and navigating inside the garage would be an arduous task.  One of our number once volunteered to clean up and organize Bill’s garage for him, if. . .if he could keep one of every tool that Bill had duplicates of.

     Bill’s habit was to look for a brief while for a tool or gadget in his garage, but when he couldn’t find it, he simply went downtown and bought another.  He had duplicates and triplicates of quite a few tools.

     The garage clutter attested to the many hobbies that Bill indulged in.  Cars and working on cars were lifelong hobbies.  Flying took a close second.  But he tried many others.  His Brother Rod once said to him, "Bill, if you started right now today working on all the projects you have started, you wouldn't live long enough to finish them." 

     One of the other things he tried was photography.  Back in the day, that meant buying film in cannisters designed to fit your particular camera.  The film came in a yellow box from Kodak, or later from Fujifilm in a green box.

     You put the film in your camera, clicked the shutter and wound the film two or three times to get the exposed film out of the way.  Then you took pictures till the film ran out, usually 8, 16, or 32 frames in my experience. 

      Then you rolled the film back into the cannister and removed it from the camera.  You filled out the form, enclosed a check and the film cannister, and sent it off in the mail.  In a week or two, you would get a fat envelope in the mail containing your prints.  Alternatively, you could take the film to the local drugstore and they would send it off. 

      Many times, it took weeks or even moths to use up a roll of film.  By the time you got it developed, you forgot what shots you had taken.

      Bill thought he could improve upon that.  He read up on film developing, ordered the chemicals for developing colored film, along with proper trays.  One of our acquaintances had an enlarger which Bill borrowed.

       One night, Keith Ross who in his prime stood over six feet and weighed upwards of 250 pounds, Bill, and I found ourselves packed into Bill’s bathroom.  It was the only room any of us could muster that had running water, apparently a necessity for developing film, and no windows to let in light and spoil the developed film.

       We stumbled over each other in the dark trying to develop three rolls of film, one provided by each of us.  Not a pretty picture for sure. 

      About the only other thing I remember from that night was that one step in developing colored film required the processor to select a gray square from a sizable grid of colored squares.  Keith and Bill laughed heartily when I selected a pink square (looked gray to me).  When everything was done, they agreed that I had the most colorful print, three floaty toys, red, yellow and blue, floating in the toilet bowl where number one daughter had put them.

      I was convinced that whatever the cost and delay in getting film professionally developed was worth it.  I never tried developing film again.

      I’m pretty sure that the chemicals and trays found a resting place in Bill’s garage where they remained until they were no longer useful.  Bill would have been among the first to try digital photography.  He had the first mobile phone in the country and must have been among the first to use a cell phone to take a picture.

       Bill collected a lot of things.  Perhaps his best collection was a collection of friends that loved him dearly and would do lots of things for him.  Thus it was when he took on the challenge of building a four-place hangar at the airport, he had lots of volunteer help. 

      Lions Club was also dear to Bill’s heart.  He went through several offices, including district governor and sight chairman.  When he was sight chairman, his garage was a collection point for all the used eye glasses gathered by Lions in our region.  There must  have been thousands of them by time Bill finally took them to Garden City to be cataloged and sent off to distant lands.

      As a Lion, Bill decided the state of Kansas needed a “Sight Bus” (now called a "Mobile Screening Unit," which also does other health screens such as for diabetes), a mobile unit with the equipment to do all sorts of tests on folks’ eyes, all at no cost to the “patient.”  That project took years, but again, Bill had a collection of friends who helped him get it done, and get it done he did.

      I was fortunate to be one in his collection.

 

 

 

 

“Give Him a Ticket!”

       “Give him a ticket!  Give him a ticket!” 

     It had become a chant, like pep clubs of old used to do, back in the olden times when there were such things as pep clubs, when girls were considered too fragile to participate in sports.  Boy!  Have we learned something about girls in the new days.

       It was another football game, this time in Oberlin.  There was a long string of cars ahead of us, all headed to the football game.  Traffic was slow because of road construction.

     While there was no work going on at six in the evening, there was the result of many days of work.  The eastbound lane was nearly completely repaved, smooth sailing, while the westbound lane had been stripped nearly bare of the old pavement.  There was probably a five or six inch drop off from the eastbound lane to the westbound lane.

     The sirens, the ones who tempted Odysseus, not the fire engines, were warming up in Bill’s ears.  When we topped a hill and could see the long line of traffic poking along ahead of us, maybe forty-five miles an hour, and we could also see a completely empty westbound lane, a rather rough westbound lane some six inches below the eastbound lane, the siren song went fortissimo in Bill’s head.

       He couldn’t help himself.  He must pass as many cars as he could before we started back up the incline from the valley we would soon be in.  We were in a smaller car, a bright yellow one, maybe a Horizon, but certainly a Dodge of some kind. 

     Bill pulled off the eastbound lane onto the westbound lane.  Three of the four of us tensed as the little car sashayed while transitioning uneven lanes.  Then we were rattling along the rough road. 

     Bill sped up and we passed quite a few cars before we started back up hill and he felt the need to get back over into the eastbound lane. Bill suddenly realized that dropping off the uneven lanes was one thing.  Climbing back up to the higher lane in the small car was quite another.    

     He slowed and prepared to head into the left ditch if a westbound truck should appear over the crest of the hill.  The cars we had just passed began passing us.  We were at the mercy of some driver who would slow enough for Bill to safely climb back into the right lane.

      We were nearing the crest of the hill when we saw him, sitting at the top of a hill on a little pathway from the highway to some farmer’s pasture.  The state patrolman had his car pointed south so he could observe traffic  headed both east and west.

     The other drivers saw him too and slowed enough for Bill to safely mount the new pavement and back into the line of cars.  Bill knew not to go far.  He pulled over when we came to the next crossroad, which was not far at all.

      The traffic flowed past us, and sure enough, the patrol car, roof-mounted red lights flashing, pulled out of the line of cars and in behind us.  Bill rolled down his window as the patrolman approached.

     He didn’t get to say a word before someone, Jeanie? Said, “Give him a ticket!”  The backseat passengers chipped in and it soon was a chant.  “Give him a ticket!”

     Having had our say, we quieted down and let the cop have his say.  “Do you know how dangerous that was?” etc. etc.

      “Give him a ticket,” got thrown in whenever there was a pause in the lecture. 

     I said, “His son is driving one of those cars we passed.  If  he gets home and finds out his dad didn’t get a ticket for doing what he did, it will set a very bad example for the boy.”

     Part of the problem was that the cop knew Bill.  The cop had been to a Lions meeting recently.  He spoke about safety, of course, and also about his experience as a highway patrolman.   When his presentation was over, he asked for questions.  There were a few.

     Somebody asked about embarrassing moments while on duty.  This was back in the day when Lions clubs were still all male.  The cop laughed a little, then decided to confide in us.

     He told about the little red sports car doing ninety.  He managed to catch up to it and stop it.  When he approached the car, the roof of which was about waist high to him, a window rolled down and he caught sight of a mini skirt a little more than thigh high in the bucket seat.

     “Where’s the fire, Lady?”  He used the old line.

    “I’m sttin’ on it.  Are you man enough to put it out?” was the reply.

     The cop blushed as he recounted his experience.     

     Don’t tell me that reverse psychology doesn’t work.  The same sort of thing happened one other time with four males in the car headed to a football game.  The driver got involved in an engrossing conversation and absent mindedly got a little heavy-footed on the accelerator.

      When the cop stopped him, his good buddies encouraged the cop to give him a ticket.  The driver got off with a warning and a “Have a good time at the football game,” from the cop.

     Bill did not get a ticket.

     Ambivalence:  Bill didn’t know whether to be angry with a wife and two friends who tried their best to get him fined, or happy that a wife and two friends succeeded in preventing his getting fined. 

     We, the passengers were a bit disappointed that he didn’t get a ticket, but also happy that the cop’s warning and the waning traffic, after the delay of the traffic stop, resulted in much saner driving for the rest of our trip.

Bill’s Driving

      Bill Beamgard was a charitable, altruistic person who would do almost anything for almost anybody.  Countless people overnighted at Bill’s house while waiting for repairs to a car at the family’s Dodge dealership.

       Bill once picked up a kid walking along I-70.  The kid had abandoned his car a mile or two back where it had quit on him.  Bill soon elicited the kid’s story:  he lived with  his grandparents in Denver, he was in trouble with the law, he had a court date in a day or two and he was running away. 

     Bill convinced him he needed to return to his worried grandparents, face the music in court, and then to start anew and try to turn his life around.  He took the kid home, had him call his grandparents, kept him until they could get there to pick him up.  Bill also took a trailer and picked up the kids’ broken-down car and kept it until his grandfather could come get it.

     Bill Beamgard behind the wheel of any motor-powered device was an entirely different animal.  Once he dropped a fairly new riding lawn mower into the lake bed while trying to mow too close to the edge of the lake at Lions Park.

     Bill had a competitive spirit which, like al lot of us on the roadways today, turned him into a different breed of animal.  One Christmas long ago, we had been at the country club for some kind of Christmas gathering. 

     The Goodwife and I were in her ’55 Chev.  Bill and Jeanie were in his blue Barracuda.  I made the mistake of getting out of the parking lot ahead of Bill as we left to go  home.  Lake Road parallels the lake shore.  At the northwest point of the lake is a spillway that does double duty as a bridge.  It was built in the 1930’s as a WPA project, I think.

      The spillway bridge is about 100% concrete, concrete floor, concrete posts providing support and serving as railing.  It’s not very wide.  When two cars meet, usually one will stop and wait for the other to clear the bridge before crossing.

     I knew that Bill would have to try to pass me.  I knew the Chev with its little 265 V-8 was no contest for the Barracuda.  I thought maybe I could get to the bridge first and wipe him off there.

    But no, Bill got beside me just as we came to the bridge.  If anybody got wiped off, it would be me.

      There was about Bill the ability to provoke people into doing something they would not ordinarily do.  As a teacher, it was a good thing.  He could goad lackadaisical students out of  their complacency and into attempting something that would help them realize their true potential.   

     This ability to provoke often had a down side.  So it was that rather than backing off and let the Barracuda cross the spillway bridge ahead of me, I held my ground and my speed.  As we entered the narrow bridge side-by-side, the Barracuda’s tail lights were even with the Chev’s door handle. 

      We were probably doing about forty or fifty miles an hour.  It seemed much, much faster.  The Goodwife shied to her left as the cement pillars of the bridge railing whizzed by inches from the Chev’s right window.

      I kept the Barracuda’s fender an inch or two off the Chev’s left side.  I had to let the concrete bridge railing take care of itself.  To glance to the right would have meant dents on my left.  Neither of us applied brakes or backed off the accelerator.

     In the blink of an eye, we zoomed up the incline of the bridge’s west end and out onto the pavement where Bill gunned it and got ahead of me in time to hit the brakes just before the stop sign at the highway.

     He won that one.  It wouldn’t be the last contest we would have.  It was probably the last time our contest would involve automobiles.

     Bill always said, “Never play the other man’s game.  You can’t win at that.”

     I took that lesson to heart, at least when it came to cars.  Bill would always have more powerful, faster vehicles than I cared to have.

     There was another time, years later, when I was on his side in a car.  Involuntarily.  Mark Twain said an innocent bystander was someone who didn’t have sense enough to get out of the way.

     Bill invited Tisha and me to ride to Hoxie with him to a football game.  We were in his fairly new red Omni, I think it was.  It had front wheel drive.  It  had an aluminum flywheel, which allowed it to achieve maximum rpms in a hurry.  It had low-profile tires suitable for racing, but rather rough to ride on.

      The trip over was rather uneventful.  Bill had taught driver’s ed in Nebraska.  He told his students there was only one reason to have a car in front of you:  to pass it.  It was difficult for him to observe that practice on the way to the game because of the long line of traffic headed to Hoxie and the numerous yellow-lined lanes over the hills on the way to Colby.  He had to stay in line.

      He had to do an errand in Colby which put us way behind the crowd for the rest of the trip.  Thus, no cars ahead of us to pass.

     Coming home was a different story.  We weren’t the first out of the gate following the game.  Bill passed a few cars as we headed west towards Colby.  There was one that refused to let us pass.  When Bill started to pull into the left lane, the car sped up.

      It was a big old Ford.  A Ford in front of Bill was a red cape to a bull.  The Ford was driven by Gordon Leadfoot.  He wasn’t about to let us around if he could help it.

     As we approached Colby, Bill realized he would not be able to pass Gordon before we reached Colby.  “I know a shortcut,” he said.

     We turned north and flew over a railroad crossing, past the country club, didn’t observe the stop sign where we turned left on what was the outskirts of Colby in those days.  As we pulled up to the stop sign at Highway 25, Gordon cruised past headed north.

     Bill activated the turbo charger on the red car and we were soon tailgating Gordon.  When we finally reached the flats a few miles north of Colby, Bill made his move.  With no traffic coming south, Bill pulled into the south bound lane and spurred his horse. 

      We pulled up beside Gordon, but it wasn’t a cakewalk.  I could hear the Ford’s tailpipe absolutely gushing, as Gordon had his foot in the carburetor, as we used to say.  It was a matter of some tense seconds before we pulled ahead far enough to return to the north bound lane.

     When we got back in our lane, Gordon conceded and backed off the old Ford.  Bill too slowed down to a more sensible eighty miles an hour, which got us home pretty quickly.    

     When my heartbeat slowed down some, I asked, “Bill, how fast were you going?”

     “I don’t know," he said.  "The speedometer only goes to 120.”

Beamgard’s Nail

     Bill loved gadgets and always wanted to be first to have them.  He was among the first to try computers, which led him to migrate from the math department at school to start the computer classes.

      One of the gadgets he bought was a nail gun.  This was in the days before air nailers took over.  His nail gun used a .22 shell to drive a nail.

     He got the idea from a local carpenter-contractor who had one, so he wasn’t first in that department, but he had to have one.  His nail gun was a single shot model. 

     You had to load the nail in the barrel, like a muzzle-loading gun.  The nails came in different lengths and sizes.  There were different size .22 shells to use for different size nails.

     Each nail had a colored plastic fin on the tip.  Each size nail had a different color.  You sized the shell by the color of the plastic fin.

     One of the biggest nails had a blue fin.  The plastic fin, slightly larger than the barrel diameter, held the nail in place until you set the powder off and embedded the nail in the timber, quite handy, especially if you were nailing with the gun pointing down.

     You fired the gun by striking it with a hammer, like a punch or chisel.  Put the muzzle of the gun where you wanted the nail, strike the  hammer, and voila! You had driven a nail with one light stroke of the hammer.  Be sure to wear ear plugs.  It was a gun firing, after all.

     The plastic fin that started out on the tip of the nail became sort of a washer between the wood and the nail head.  You could also tell what size nail you had used by the color of the fin still visible mashed in the wood around the nail head.

     Bill had the gun, but no project or place to use it.  I was working on putting a bathroom in the basement of our Page Street house.  It was an open basement with no walls when we moved in.  We needed to nail some furring strips to the cinder block exterior basement walls.  The power nails worked fairly well. 

      There was also a steel I-beam running lengthwise down the center of the basement to support the center of the house.  The I-beam was supported by 4-inch steel pipes.  I needed to fasten a 2 X 4 to that pipe to support a wall and a pocket door for the bathroom

     Bill insisted I use the power hammer on the block walls.  He couldn’t be there when I first tried out the power hammer.  When he arrived, I suggested we try fastening a 2 X 4 to the steel pipe using the power hammer.

     He was all for that.  He also wanted to try out his newest gadget for himself.  I busied myself working elsewhere in the small bathroom while Bill worked to nail the 2 X 4 to the pipe, or try to, anyway.

     After a while, the gun fired.  The 2 X 4 slowly leaned to one side and threatened to fall down.  The nail had failed to connect wood with steel.

     Then I looked more closely.  Instead of the tip of the nail being bent or broken projecting through the 2 X 4, what I saw was the nail sticking a way out of the 2 X 4 on the gun side.

     The blue fin of the nail was right there, intact, unfazed, still in perfect shape.  And still on the tip of the nail.

     The head of the nail was embedded in the 2 X 4, maybe half or three-quarters of an inch into the wood.

     Bill, never one to read directions, had put the nail wrong-end-to into the gun barrel.  Most of the nail stuck out from the 2 X 4 as if sticking its tongue out at us.

      We tried again with the nail in the gun the right way, but the nails were no match for the steel pipe.  I don’t remember how I fastened the 2 X 4 to the pipe.

     What I do remember is that Bill had to leave.  It was too good of a chance.  I got some paper and made a sign, “Beamgard’s Nail” printed in bold black letters, with an arrow pointing up.  I hung the paper on the nail, still with the blue fin and nail tip protruding out of the 2 X 4, the black arrow on the sign clearly leading the eye to the nail, the nail with the wrong end stuck in the wood.

     I took a picture.  I don’t remember the circumstances, but a few weeks later, after I got the film developed (you remember those olden days when you had to mail in your roll of film and wait for it to be returned by Kodak or some other developer) I showed it to Bill.

     I am sure I did it when it would embarrass Bill as much as possible.  Sure enough, he was embarrassed.  He wanted to destroy the picture, but I assured him I had the negatives.

     In the end, I guess he got even with me when he turned the mag switch off and on while we flying the Aeronca Champ.

     What are friends for?

Uncle Bill’s Practical Jokes II--Aeronca Champ

Uncle Bill ‘s Practical Jokes I

      Bill apparently always had an ability to annoy or provoke.  I wasn’t around for his childhood, but the story I heard a few times was once when he was  just a kid, he found his way to a roof where a crew was shingling.  When he failed to show up for dinner, his father set out to find him.   Bill was spread-eagled on the roof with nails through his shirt sleeves and pant cuffs, where the roofers left him when they left for their noon break.  I don’t think they did that so he would be sure to be there when they got back.

     His childhood is filled with such stories.  The only other one I can think of was when he got tired of someone getting into his locker at school and taking stuff out of it.  Somehow, he smuggled an automobile battery and horn (readily available at his Dad’s garage) into school and into his locker.  He wired it so when the locker door was opened, a switch connected the battery and the horn.  He had some way of disarming the alarm when he opened the door, but an unsuspecting burglar would not know how to do that. 

      Sure enough, during class time, somebody got excused from  class and went into the hall and opened Bill’s locker.  The auto horn blaring continuously in the hall would have been hard to ignore.  Bill got into some trouble over that one.

      There were other stories, such as hoisting an outhouse to the top of a building in the center of town on Halloween, or cutting kitties with his car on the ice of Lake Atwood, that I don’t know enough about to tell.  But I am quite familiar with his shenanigans as a teacher at the high school.  One I have already recounted: (https://50farm.blogspot.com/2020/01/flatulence.html) 

      Another one already recounted was the story of installing his vent pipe in his remodeled utility room.    http://50farm.blogspot.com/2017/02/bills-vent-pipe.html

      One that I shared at the funeral involved a weight-loss contest between Bill and another teacher.  They both wanted to lose weight, so somehow it evolved into a bet on who could lose the most in something like three months.

     They agreed to weigh in every so often to see how they were doing.  They would meet before school in the wrestling room and use the official scale the wrestlers use to qualify in their weight bracket.  Bill always got there first.  Tom didn’t think much about that until one day he arrived earlier than Bill was expecting him.

     He caught Bill in the act of dropping bags of shotgun pellets into his boot tops.  Why would he do that?  Why would he want to weigh more if the contest was to weigh less? 

     Bill always said “Never play the other guy’s game.  You can’t win at that.”  He certainly had different rules for this contest.  The idea was to give Tom a false sense of security.  Then, towards the end, Bill could gradually make the contest look closer, until the last day when he could jettison all the ballast and win hands down.  I think.

       When Bill had to weigh with the lead out, he was actually ahead.  The contest then kicked into high gear.  Bill eventually won.

     The stakes in the bet were a dinner for four, spouses included, paid for by the loser, which in this case was not the biggest loser.  Arrangements were made and the four of them travelled together to a nice restaurant.

       As the hostess led them to their table, Tom slapped Bill on the back and said, “Congratulations, Bill.  You won.”  What he really did was stick a piece of paper on Bill’s back.  The waitstaff had been alerted to this whole thing, so nobody said anything as they walked to and were seated at their table.

     As the meal came towards an end, a waitress came up to Bill and said, “Sir, you have something stuck to the back of your shirt.  May I remove it?”  Bill readily agreed.  The waitress pulled the sign off his shirt and handed it to Bill.

      The paper said, “I Did It With an Enema.”

   

     

COVID Conundrum

       We were in the middle of the song.  It was about 8:30 p.m.  The phone rang.  I reached in my pocket and tried to mute it.  That failed so I opened it and closed it.  That stops the ringing and hangs up on the caller when you do that with a flip phone, in case you smart phone folks have forgotten.

      I promptly forgot about it.   A few minutes after 9, the phone rang again.  This time I answered.  It was the daughter telling me that the granddaughter had tested positive for COVID that afternoon.  Ouch!

      It was Tuesday.  We had been there the previous Friday and Saturday, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day to celebrate Granddaughter’s fifth birthday and Christmas.  We likely had been exposed.

      And now, I may have exposed eight other old guys to the insidious disease.  I felt bad, but not bad enough to cancel my trip to the bar.  I did wear a mask into the place.

     We were headed for the farm on the next day, Wednesday, and on to a funeral in Burlington on Thursday.  What should I do?

      The first thing I did on Wednesday morning was email the eight guys I had sung with on Tuesday and told them the situation.  I decided to carry on with the funeral plans.  Neither of us felt bad or had any symptoms.

      We had made arrangements with a farm neighbor to ride together to Burlington.  I called him and explained the situation, thinking he may not want to ride in a car for two hours with two possibly infectious people. 

       Neighbor was not too concerned.  I asked him where we might get a test.  He thought to contact the drugstore.  They referred me to the county health nurse.

      At about 3 o’clock, I put in a call to the Lincoln County nurse and explained to her the situation and emphasized that I was supposed to go to a funeral the next day.  She understood.  Come on down, she said.  We will test you twice.

       It wasn’t until later that week that I realized how lucky we were to get right in for testing when all around the state and the nation, people were standing and sitting in cars in long lines waiting to get tested. 

      We arrived just before 4 p.m.  We got the rapid test within five minutes.  Then we were referred next office over where two ladies with the state were doing a more accurate test.  We had to give them a lot of info, including our email addresses.  We both got emails with instructions on how to set up an account, complete with password, so that we could get our test results.

    By the time we had filled out all the information required by the state and got our noses swabbed, the rapid test was nearly done.  We were asked to wait in the car since there were several other people in the office, most getting shots.  We hadn’t been in the car more than two or three minutes when the young lady came out to tell us we both tested negative on the rapid test. 

      The “state” ladies told us we would probably have results for the more accurate test before 10 a.m. tomorrow.  When we got back to the farm, I set up an account as instructed in the email I had received.

      About 6:30 a.m. on Thursday, I was reading my email.  Just before 7:00, I got an email saying my results were available.  I signed in and found the state test had confirmed the rapid test.  We were negative for COVID.

     I took a minute or two to follow up my Wednesday email to my fellow old-guy singers to tell them I had tested negative on both tests.  Then we were off to the funeral. 

      The funeral was at 10:30, but we were asked t be there by 9:30 if we could be.  So we left before 8 and arrived before 9:30.

      We wore our masks during the funeral just in case we should be “late developers”.  Still, it is impossible to wear a mask and take part in a funeral dinner.  Nor did we wear masks in the car.  Conclusion:  It is pretty much impossible to avoid all contact with other folk that might result in spreading the virus.

      Two weeks after possible exposure, we are still healthy and happy, no symptoms. 

 

     Footnote:  COVID has been disastrous for the singing community.  Many of our guys refuse to wear masks to sing.  Others will not attend a meeting if we do NOT wear masks to sing.  Result, our attendance is way down.

     One of the guys who had laid out for nearly two years just started coming back three weeks ago.  He was one whom I had to contact with the news I may have been exposed.  He decided he would stop attending again until things settle down.

     He also admitted that his wife feared he would catch the disease by singing with us and bring it home to her.  I think that is the case with some others, too. 

     I am hopeful that the Omicron version of the disease will, in the end, be a Godsend.  That will be the case if enough folks catch it, suffer through it, survive and become immune to the more deadly varieties of the virus.  Let us hope.

      In the end, I do not want to be “Typhoid Mary”.  I am trying to behave myself, wearing a mask in public places, keeping my distance from others, the whole bit.

     But I still don’t wear a mask to sing.