The Steve Cameron Blog: Saturday, April 4, 2020: Corona Man

Still here.

You know, facing up to a pandemic every day is difficult.

It’s hard to live with it, sometimes it’s hard for me to write about it (even this little blog), and your emotional range while reading about the virus likely whips back and forth from terrifying to tedious.

Now, our plan ...

Each Sunday, I’m going to print some of the responses we’ve received via email or Facebook, and maybe get the occasional chuckle from your thoughts.

Or perhaps we’ll learn something meaningful.

On Saturdays like this, though, I want to be sure there’s a lighthearted tone to things.

So ...

I’m going to let others tell some stories.

Some of these people might be famous, some probably not.

And hey, if you’ve got a tale for us, please pass it along.

It could show up any Saturday.

We’re starting today with some thoughts from ageless storyteller Garrison Keillor – submitted by reader Ellen Lewis and edited for space.

Enjoy!

INTERESTING times we’re living in. and I wonder what name we’ll give it when it’s over.

Corona Spring is too pretty. Maybe we’ll call it Twenty-19.

It’s not like a hurricane or blizzard.

Nobody will have great stories to tell, just memories of claustrophobia and social aversion, and being thrilled because we didn’t have to go on a ventilator.

I grew up among taciturn loners, adherents of a separatist Christian cult that believed in silence.

Quarantine is nothing to me.

My uncle Lonnie toured the country in a freak show as the World’s Most Silent Man, appearing with the Fat Lady, the Penguin Boy, the Alligator Woman, the Human Pincushion, and a sword-swallower and fire-eater named Vince the Invincible.

Lonnie sat on a stool in his green plaid suit and the barker said, “And now I direct your attention to a man who holds the world record for silence.

“Lonnie has not spoken a word for 47 years.

“Feel free to talk to him, as you wish. I have in my hand a ten-dollar bill and I will give it to whoever can get Lonnie to respond.”

Lonnie came to the Minnesota State Fair Midway every year and I went to see him.

It was easy work for Lonnie, being the World’s Most Silent Man, sitting politely while people cursed and abused him.

He fell in love with Leila the Tattooed Girl, and they traveled the country in their own trailer, leading a secluded life like the one we have now with the virus.

The virus Lonnie feared was stability.

He spent his life on the road, died with his boots on while onstage, and they did six more shows with him, and he became the World’s First Posthumous Performer.

I went into the storytelling trade, working solo, but now the virus has brought an end to that, and I think about joining the World’s Most Silent Man’s old freak show.

The Penguin Boy and Fat Lady are gone, replaced by the Abusive Nanny, the Cat Strangler, the World’s Most Drunk Driver, and a genuine Klansman.

I would be the Corona Man.

The barker would yell, “I direct your attention now to the tall dog-faced man who is an asymptomatic bearer of the deadly COVID-19 virus, and who will now be passing through the crowd selling vials of souvenir sanitizer.”

Life is good and we are so lucky.

Dread and fear make a great story, and when the tall dog-faced Corona Man jumps out at you, and you survive…

Even your cheeseburger and fries will taste like a king’s ransom.

You’re welcome to join the blog. Any time, on any subject. Or with any opinion that doesn’t get us sued.

scameron@cdapress.com

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