No Pissin' In The Coal Bin

By Sue Bergeron

I never throw food in the trash anymore. Every meal for both Ron and me is carefully planned  and measured out. I'm rarely hungry, though. I don't do enough to work up an appetite. I feel like a dog trapped in a cage, going round and round in circles just enough to keep from going crazy. Ron and I are outside dogs. We were always active people who stayed engaged in life. We volunteered our time to many causes and seemed to always be on the go. We enjoyed belonging to social groups, clubs, and sometimes travelled hundreds of miles to visit family---in the Normal World. But the "Normal World" is gone now, maybe for the rest of our lives. Now we are inside dogs. We both accept isolation because we know it's what we must do to stay alive. We are in the target zone for the deadly pandemic. Our state has been not so much lucky as well-managed by a vigilant governor who instituted strict but sensible guidelines and Executive Orders early on, to beat back the spread of the encroaching virus from all sides of our borders. But the ravenous novel virus continues to search for "fresh meat," and for many weeks we've been a shrinking donut hole in the center of a circling scourge.

I live in the smallest state in the union. You can drive all the way across the state in about an hour, so keeping the borders closed is not easy. You can leave anytime you want, but good luck sneaking back in. State troopers will stop you at the border and hand you a quarentine notice, do contact tracing and ground you for 14 days. Of course, they can't catch everyone, but if you decide to leave the state and come back, it's a gamble. This didn't seem like much of a concern to me, since I never go anywhere. Until it reached the point where grocery stores inside the border were no longer able to offer curb-side pick-up or delivery, two weeks out. They suggested I shop at stores across the border, in more rural areas. Only there's one problem: State troopers, quarentine order, and contact tracing. Decided it was not worth it. Milk, eggs, fresh vegetables and fruit are quickly becoming the luxury items for May, 2020.

We are fortunate that we have a chest freezer and have always kept it stocked. We are prone to black-outs on our little peninsula and the freezer acts as a giant cooler when there's no electricity. Soon after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic (March 10---a bit tardy in my opinion) I grabbed Ron and said, "C'mon, we have to stock up. They're soon going to lock us down." He thought I was a little premature but admits now that we did the right thing. We bought a lot of non-perishables. People didn't seem to be interested in beans or peanut butter or macaroni. They had ignored the canned goods aisle and were too busy grabbing for the meat and frozen vegetables and toilet paper. That last shopping trip felt surreal---it was like being trapped in a bizarre episode of Supermarket Sweepstakes. In our homemade masks and nitrile gloves, we dodged and weaved our way through the foot traffic, avoiding other humans whenever possible. We never took more than a reasonable amount of anything---or the last one. It was like that last cookie in the bottom of the bag---you never want to be the jerk who empties the bag. 

The last drugstore run had turned up a jug of Meyers Hand Soap, several bottles of cough syrup and fever medication (Tylenol). But no alcohol was to be found anywhere---except the liquor store. I searched the local packie and scored a two litre bottle of Everclear pure grain alcohol---95%---enough to kill anything, including the poor stew bums living under route 95 who drink it. By mixing the "legal moonshine" with a Dippity Do type hair gel I've been able to make my own disinfectant. It's my own brand. I call it "Route 95." It's really the only alcoholic beverage that's over 60%---the amount necessary to kill the germ. (Most liquor is 40% alcohol or less today.) I sew my own masks, but the entire supply of 1/4 inch elastic has already been sold out from every store and is on back order for months. I found a Chinese factory that could get me 70 yards of it inside of a month for a very good price. I took the deal, but I'm still waiting. In the meantime I use a whole assortment of substitutes, including rubber bands, old cords from discarded window shades, and the rubber bands inside of bungee cords.

I had so many plans when I realized we'd be under lockdown for an indeterminate time. The projects I never seemed to be able to finish could finally be completed. I have a lot of hobbies. I enjoy cooking and baking. I knew I'd have to do more of that than usual from now on. I had stocked up on baking supplies, but yeast was difficult to come by. The shelves were stripped of it and the gougers were charging ten times the normal price for it online. One last attempt at the local market found me overjoyed with my good luck, as they had just re-stocked yeast! This would ensure us months of fresh bread, home made pizza, and cinnamon buns for breakfast. But beyond that, my other projects lay untouched. As each day goes by, I haven't much desire to do anything---but to try and stay alive. I never realized how draining that is---just trying to survive---shacked up and hiding from an invisible enemy that could come for you any day, at anytime. I stocked up, I got my affairs in order (just in case) and I called and checked on friends and family. After that, the Depression set in.

The country is not only entering into its first Depression in 90 years, but the mental state of many of its citizens (myself included) is following suit. "Open Up The Country!" is the new slogan created for the great unwashed---the cult followers of our Very Stable Genius. Unfortunately, Trump's plan to open up the country without adaquate testing procedures in place will not ease that pain. I fear it is going to accelerate it. When the inevitable second wave of the pandemic erases an even larger number of helpless humans from our land, the panic, fear and sorrow will grow into The Greatest Depression. Maybe Trump The Brand King can sell new matching red death masks and hats that say "Making America a Great Depression Again (or just MAGDA)." MAGDA sounds so lovely, the name of a great Hungarian beauty---something Trump could really appreciate. It's not just any old Depression---it's The Greatest Depression on Earth! A hyuge tremendous big beautiful Depression!

I am beginning to truly understand with deeper clarity why people called it The Great Depression in the 1930's. I remember quizzing my parents, who grew up in that era, why it was called that, and they often regaled me and my three sisters with stories of the Depression. We sat around the dinner table mesmerized by their colorful tales of bread lines, the apple sellers, the guys jumping out of windows on Wall Street, and stealing coal. Wait...what? Stealing coal?Yeh, that would be one of my illustrious father's stories.

My father Jerry grew up in a little row home in South Jersey, hard by a coal yard that ran behind the end of his street. There was a fence that separated the street from the railroad yard and when times were tough he scaled it and shoveled "contraband coal" into his side yard, from where it was easily dumped through a cellar window to feed the boiler that heated their house. 

Every once in a while, when I was a child, my father would hum a cute little ditty and sometimes sing the words to it, which had just one line of lyrics. The melody  would actually make a nice jingle if the words weren't so...frankly, offensive. He usually sang it while in the midst of some mindless task such as washing the car. He'd be swishing the sponge around in the soapy water and it would just bubble out of him from some unknowable place. "No pissin' in the coal bin..." I laughed the first time I heard it. "Dad! What?" "Oh, that's just some old song I used to sing back during the Depression. I made it up." "But why everthat, Dad??" He explained that one day a terrible smell wafted all through the house on Wynnewood Avenue and his mother called him into the kitchen and gave him a good spanking. She had accused him of pissing in the basement coal bin. "Well did you do it?," I asked (already pretty sure I knew the answer). "Of course not! It was the cat." He gave me a good soaking from the garden hose while he laughed demonically. Oh, yeh. He did it. 

One day last week, while I was washing the dishes, the tune sprang out of me, for no apparent reason. "No pissin' in the coal bin..." I smiled and closed my eyes, remembering the big crazy grin on that big crazy guy who survived the Depression. 

Yep, he did it. And, yep, we're in a Depression.