November 29, 1979
It certainly does appear that cold, flu and sniffle weather has sneaked through the door and is at war with us again.
Scientists have a theory which seems to be based on an old war tactic—something about getting to know the enemy.
If we know all about the little alien critter who attacks our tonsils, we can outsmart him!
Poppa had a much more practical outlook.
You left the foreign beings alone until they made the first move.
Then a nice hot toddy would serve the same purpose as a hand grenade.
The critter died and the tonsils got well.
The sniffles went away and sleep was once again peaceful.
After all, what decent, self-respecting germ would even try to survive a bath in THAT mixture! !
My brother and I decided one summer to get a head start on the winter outbreak. There wasn’t one iota of sense in having to buy the makin’s for toddies when we could just take a bit of this and that and stir up a fine batch of home brew.
We named it Uncle Sam’s Famous Brew since he supplied of the ingredients. It was getting to be just about about right—we sampled it every day to be sure—to fix up toddies with… at least, we thought so… when it disappeared one day.
And we never did even get around to boiling it down and distilling it. If we had we’d probably blown the whole town of Tishomingo right off the map! Nobody told us what actually did become of our pharmaceutical startings.
Maybe that’s why the PIGS acted so funny those few days. Got to admit one thing though—they were healthy PIGS! Not a single one of them had a case of the flu or a cold all winter long. Maybe we missed our calling—maybe we should have been VETS!!