Eat your onions!
I know that this
statement seems to have nothing to do with what follows, but bear with me . . .
The 1918 flu pandemic (the Spanish Flu) was an
influenza pandemic that spread widely across the world. Most victims were
healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks which
predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or weakened patients. The pandemic
lasted from March 1918 to June 1920, spreading even to the Arctic and remote
Pacific islands. Between 50 and 100 million died, making it one of the
deadliest natural disasters in human history. An estimated 50 million people,
about 3% of the world's population (1.6 billion at the time), died of the
disease. 500 million, or 1/3 were infected.
- - World History Project
My Husby’s
grandparents, Artie J. and Ovedia Seely, weren’t affected by the disease.
One of few people that
managed to avoid it . . .
Even though every other
family in the sleepy town of Stirling, Alberta, like the rest of the world, had
one or more (or all) members sick with the deadly disease.
For months during the
worst of the outbreak in their small community, Artie and one other unaffected
man tended the farms and fed the animals for all of the other farmers.
Before daybreak every
day, the two men were feeding animals, milking cows, cleaning, tending . . .
performing all of the myriad tasks that constituted farming.
At every farm.
Every day.
It took the whole
day.
Artie would return to
his home and gulp down a hasty lunch, then head out once more.
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| Grandma Ovedia Fawns Seely Onion cooker extraordinaire! |
Returning only after
sunset to snatch a few hours of sleep before he headed out once more.
And still, with all
of the work and worry, he and his wife remained unaffected.
The reason?
Earlier that year,
the two of them, Artie and Ovedia, had harvested a bumper crop of onions.
Every meal featured
some incarnation of the remarkable vegetable.
Both of them believe
that that fact alone kept them from succumbing.
I will give them the
benefit of any doubt.
They . . . lived . . . through
it.
P.S. My Husby has
spoken with two other ‘old-timers’ who also lived through the great and
terrible influenza pandemic. They, too, maintain that their families survived due
largely to the fact that they ate onions with every meal.
You heard it here
first.
Oh, and see that onion on your plate? Eat it.
