Being Prepared.

I was born during the Second World War.

Yeah, I know I don't look like it.  More like that Korean Unpleasantness, I'd say.  Good genes, I guess.  Do you remember that famous song, "I dream of Harry with the light brown genes."  Oh well, never mind...

And although a toddler for most of the War, I still have indelible memories of that trying time.  I remember my Dad having to save his Federal ration stamps for several months in order to buy new tires.  He had the money for them, he said, but the rubber was needed for the War effort.  So citizens had to wait for tires for their cars.  And to often do without...

I remember Dad and Mom shopping with those same rationing stamps.  A 10 lb. bag of potatoes was 5 cents.  And a ration coupon.  And sugar.  And coffee and tea and beans.  All required stamps.  And some staples were not available at any price.  For that's what the War effort really meant to our society.  I recall Mom and her friends using carrot and lemon juice to stain their legs a sort of orangish-tan, as silk stockings weren't available.  They were needed for parachute canopies... 

More than 52% of our entire Gross Domestic Product was committed to the War.  Think of that; over half of everything we worked for and produced and bought and sold and earned and spent was dedicated and committed to the War.  All production.  Everything.  

So much so that the Ford Motor Plant in Dearborn, MI, as an example, had been converted to the manufacture of B-25's.  These were the middleweight, two-engine Mitchell bombers that served as the workhorses of the War.  You'll recall the vary famous story of General Jimmy Doolittle and his Raiders, and how they somehow managed to get a dozen B-25's airborne from the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier so they could blow the crap out of Tokyo. 

Oh yeah, and I might add that Ford and its tens of thousands of employees were producing a brand spanking-new B-25 every hour!

My Dad had suffered rheumatic fever as a kid.  As a result he had heart trouble.  So much so that he couldn't qualify to pick up a rifle and shoot the enemy.  So he volunteered, VOLUNTEERED, to help make the really heavy stuff in the Sunflower Ordnance Plant in Lawrence, Kansas.  As in bombs.  Lots of them.  The same stuff that was dropping from the bottom of those self-same B-25's, as well as B-29's and B-17's.     

There was no conversation that didn't start, and end, with the War.  It was all-consuming.  For 4 years it was all America cared about.  Winning.  At any cost.  At all costs...

So I arrived on this plane of existence right smack in the middle of that enormous, all-consuming conflict.  So it had a yuuuuge impact upon me and upon everyone else born at about that time.  So we all went through life burnished with the memory of that conflict, and steeled for any future crisis that might befall America.  

And such a crisis has now befallen us.  And all we're asked to do is stay home.  That's it.  Just stay home.  And if we are forced to leave the safety of our homes, cover our faces so we're protected from others and others, from us.  That seems to me a pretty reasonable "ask" to try and defeat this unseen, but potentially country-ending enemy. 

We cannot bomb this enemy.  We have to defeat it with smarts.  So I ask all Americans to just stay home.  Clean out the garage, polish your silverware, write a novel, wax the floor and read a book.  Anything to remain a part of the solution, versus a part of the problem.

And oh yeah, keep your weapons cleaned and polished and at the ready.  Anarchy may occur.  And we need to ready for that, too...