My grandparents were children during the Spanish Flu pandemic. They never really talked about it. My grandmother talked about being taken out of school after her 4th grade year. That would have been about the time the second wave of the pandemic would have hit. She made it sound as if she'd been taken out to work in the boarding house her parents ran. She said that she was kept home to help cook and do the laundry. She was taught how to play the piano, garden and sew. I thought that she meant that was the end of her formal education until I found a high school picture of her on Ancestry. I suppose that what she was really talking about was the year or so she may have spent home while the flu was in the community. She was an only child. It would make sense that her mother wouldn't have been too keen to send her out to get sick. I wonder if my ten year old grandmother hadn't understood the reason that she wasn't allowed to go to school that year. The kicker on this is that while my grandmother was a very intelligent and curious woman, the skills she used her whole life, she probably learned in the time she didn't go to school. The only paying jobs she ever held were teaching and playing the piano and organ and sewing clothes for other people. I wonder if my grandson, like her, is developing the skills that will help take him through life during this time that he is being home schooled.
cool story about your grandmother. my maternal grandparents were teenagers in 1918; grandmom went as far as 5th grade (she had to help her mom with 6 other siblings) and grandpop went as far as 8th grade. and yet my grandparents were intelligent, ran an ordered household, had 3 kids born during the depression of the 30s.
ReplyDeleteIt sounds as if the skills she earned during that 'lockdown' served her well. I do hope that your grandson's do as well.
ReplyDeleteInteresting! I never heard my grandmother talk about the Spanish Flu pandemic. She would have been a young farm wife then (around 30) with several little children.
ReplyDeleteI don't know much about my maternal grandmother. She did die at a young age, around in her thirties. It was a plague of some kind, maybe the Spanish Flu.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see how the kids of the pandemic era turn out as adults. My Granddaughter is only 3 so I think she will be too young to remember anything, but for older children this period will have a big impact on their lives I think.
ReplyDeleteMy Grandmother talked a bit only to reference how important gardening and being able to repair clothes were...as she went through the 1918 flu pandemic, along with WWI, prohibition, the Great Depression, and then WWII. All affected those in the country to stay self reliant.
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor's kids enjoyed their homeschooling so much, they are continuing on line education this summer for fun and will be homeschooling come this fall.
That's such an interesting story that is so relevant to the present! While I totally neglected my blog during most of the quarantine, I did open up a Word document to record some of my feelings during that time. I knew that I would later forget so many details- like how little traffic was on the street and how we were worried we couldn't find bread, toothpaste, or frozen pizza. I'm glad to see you've still kept up with your blog. I vote you try the Chinese takeout!
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