The Prairie Spy

Alan “Lindy” Linda

I was there, inside my mother, in the forties, when the government was extolling the virtues of smoking, and how good it was for you. Especially for pregnant women.

Then I was there in the late fifties, when they said it wasn’t. 

I was growing up, but I was there in the fifties, when government said our country was being taken over by Communists, and they were everywhere. Even your friends and neighbors.

I was almost but not quite grown up a bit later, when the government said that we were not in fact rotten to the core with Communists. And with that, we all seemed to forget about all the pain and suffering we caused.

I was there in the late forties and fifties when the government said farmers had to clear more ground, get rid of trees, etc., to increase production.

I was there in the late sixties and early seventies when the government said we had to “set aside” some acres, plant them into trees, etc., because we had to decrease production.

I was there in the early sixties when they said a Catholic President would never happen.

And if it did, the country would fall in ruin.

I first voted, so I was there when we elected a Catholic President. And the country did not fall into ruin. 

I was there in the early sixties, when a Catholic President led us to the moon.

I was there in the fifties and sixties, when automobile seat belts were going to cause more deaths, and shouldn’t be allowed. Better to be thrown free.

And I was there, when  actuarial mathematicians working for insurance companies proved that seat belts saved lives.

I was there in Vietnam, making sure that country wasn’t yet another stepping stone that would allow Chinese Communism to swallow us up.

And now I’m here, looking at something I just purchased that was, it turns out, made by Vietnamese industry. I purchased it because it was the best choice.

I was there, trying to get back across the country to home, when the Pandemic that the government said would never happen, happened.

I was there when our President said that there wasn’t any Pandemic, and that we should drink bleach to prevent getting sick.

I was there when we didn’t. (Drink bleach.)

Now I’m here when the government’s Department of  Health–led incidentally not by a doctor but by an unemployed lawyer–is saying that  vaccinations are bad.

But I was there in the early sixties when the Polio vaccine changed all our lives for the better. 

And I was there in the forties and fifties when measles and smallpox and polio dictated how and where we lived and behaved. And died.

And I was there when vaccinations made our lives so much easier to live that it is impossible to describe that feeling to anyone who wasn’t.

I am here now to tell you, as you have been told time and time again, that ignoring history is going to cost you–us–me–enormously.

Because I was there.