In recent months there has been a considerable amount of news, in print and on television, about the amounts of sickness in the country, including the flu and Covid-19, and how it’s affecting schools, workplaces and life in general.

It’s serious business, but hardly something new. I have recollections of missing numerous days of school time during my youth in the 1940s and 50s. I stayed at home with the flu and a couple of kinds of measles (in a darkened room), plus chicken pox. We lived across the street from the school so I watched my friends play and have fun and that didn’t make me feel better, although I didn’t miss being in math classes. I escaped being sick with the mumps, so that was a plus.

A few days ago I found a story in a January, 1981 issue of The Progressive regarding school attendance at Riverdale. I am amazed at the number of youngsters who were missing from classes at that time.

On a Tuesday January morning, 238 Riverdale students were counted absent. That was not a firm figure because “youngsters would get sick in school and leave for home and others would return to the classroom after having been absent early in the same day.” In addition to the flu, chicken pox and colds were keeping kids home.

The junior high school at Blue River seemed to be the hardest hit with 65 students absent, or about one-third of the total enrollment. At the high school that day 91 students were absent. Several school systems in the state had closed their doors because of sicknesses.

Other Riverdale absentee figures were: Excelsior 8, Blue River Elementary 18, St. Johns 15, Muscoda Elementary 27, Avoca Elementary 11 and Eagle-Orion 4. At that time the total district enrollment was considerably larger than it is now.

Going back further in history my mother could remember the names of several of her young friends who did not survive the infamous flu epidemic of 1918. So perhaps we should consider the current years as “The Good New Years!”

An Avoca history book notes a village ordinance was passed in 1877. It proclaimed that all persons in the village be vaccinated for small pox within the next 10 days or risk a fine of $5 to $20. Those folks too poor to afford the vaccine would be vaccinated at village expense. Merchants were ordered to not allow persons on their premises who had been exposed to the disease.

Many years ago, probably about 1965, Vi and I, and a pair of friends, spent a day visiting old cemeteries in the area. One of them was on a hill in western Grant County. We were told that everyone buried there had died during a cholera epidemic that swept through the region during early settlement times, an indication of medical progress though the decades.