Memoirous

From the Corona Files During these days of lockdown my mind wanders to sunnier times—walking around without a mask, to bicycling along back roads. I remember a ride with two friends where we passed through nameless small villages. Try as I might, I cannot recall the name of the town. There were a lot of Little Norways and names dedicated to the old country, a country and time so far back in generations that the geography lent no DNA. Anyway, I passed a primitive, enclosed graveyard on a bluff, the stone wall eroding in sandy debris down the hillside.   A marker indicated the cemetery was dedicated to the victims of a cholera outbreak. Loose research on the Internet turns up reoccurring epidemics mostly during the hot prairie summers. Folks didn’t know what it was or how to stop it; they only knew it killed quickly, dehydrating victims who usually died of diarrhea until bodily systems shut down. “Some were feeling healthy and fine in the morning, but dead by the af...