The Bakersfield Californian

My lemonade pandemic

Phil Rudnick is an attorney, farmer, rancher, businessman and life-long Bakersfield resident. He can be reached at phil@upstartvillage.com.

March 13, 2020, is one of those dates in history that deserves remembering. Soon to celebrate my 88th birthday, I had never experienced a pandemic. A worldwide threat to the health of billions of people.

I was a child of the Great Depression with memories of the hardships suffered by American families. My mother raised 11 children and a few others who became extended family.

Fred Theis heard that my mother was a good cook and always served extra food to unknown drop-ins who today we call the homeless. Fred became a regular and always offered to clean up around our home at 315 Oleander Ave.

My mother and Fred eventually negotiated a win-win solution. Fred would live in our garage, which had a bathroom and shower, and come to the back door to pick up his meals. In exchange he kept up the yard, helped look after the children and became my source of funding for ice cream, candy and comic books that I purchased from Gus‘s store (Gus Ergo) around the corner of Buena Vista on B street, just south of Oleander Park and next door to the Rous Family.

We all made lemonade for each other! Fred got the security of a place to live with my mother’s legendary old country cooking skills; my mother got an all-around handyman who also helped to look after her expanding family and we children learned compassion and respect for the dignity of a stranger who needed shelter in difficult times.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a different kind of challenge with vastly different circumstances.

Our guidelines for success in avoiding infection require that we distance ourselves from others, that we cover our faces, which increases our anonymity, that we avoid sad funerals and happy social events while trying to carry on some semblance of family life along with the intrusions of increased child care and remote working commitments.

My first reaction was a series of questions.

Can an invisible intruder enter enough bodies to actually change the trajectory of the world?

How long will it last?

What will become the “new normal“?

In about five months we will have endured the reality of two years from “hell“for our planet and its human inhabitants with no letup in sight.

What should we do with this bumper crop of lemons? Each of us must deal with our adversity and find the way to our lemonade stand!

The way starts with reflecting on what must be done to live a more meaningful life for ourselves, our loved ones, strangers in need and our community.

Your journey, like mine, may change your focus from self-interest to kindness toward your human family and our living planet.

Now that’s what I call making lemonade out of lemons!!

If not now, when?

OPINION

en-us

2021-09-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-09-21T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://bakersfield.pressreader.com/article/282273848505123

Alberta Newspaper Group