by Deb Crandell, 04/14/2020, Traverse City, MI

Adult Category

My grandfather was a survivor of the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918.
He was also a survivor of WW1. He was drafted and boarding the train when the telegram came into the depot declaring Armistice on November 11th. August was his name. The youngest of 12 children he didn’t have a middle name because by then they just ran out. Each holiday after a big family dinner he would call all the grandchildren over to sit on the floor while he took out a tiny harmonica he could play in his mouth without touching from his old Railroad days, and then rub his knees from an old snake bite he got from homesteading in the Dakotas. Finally, he began the tale from the depths of the darkest tunnel where the miners worked once and you stood lost and alone late at night when suddenly out of nowhere you hear a thundering of hooves.
Echoing and pounding louder til slowly your eyes adjust to see a great white horse, bigger than any you could imagine running faster and faster straight at you. There is no place to hide. No where to run. It is so close you feel the hot breath from the nostrils and see your reflection in its eyes….but …..he never would finish the story no matter how long we begged him telling it time and again…Finally, decades later I think I have found the ending. I have found the great horse along with millions of others, over 10,000 in Michigan alone today. Either you face the horse straight on and overcome all fear and live through whatever you must face and live to tell the story. …Or life simply ends. #coronavirus2020rememberingchildhoodlessons