In times of pandemic, Tie Rod finds isolation, ignorance were the right approach all along.

Tie Rod and Slemp were lumbering right along, slouching toward what they both hoped would be a distant grave, both enjoying such of the benefits of Socialism as each was able to sign up on. They were a little concerned about the Cats against a zone if Quickley went cold, but not overly bothered about anything. In short, things were going along just as they had for a few hundred years. It never occurred to either that in a matter of just a few weeks that humans would be forbidden to be in groups or touch one another.

Jogging kills thousands and Congress does nothing, but you let a few thousand die from a virus, and nobody will tell Tie Rod and Slemp what one of them is, and the next thing you know Hillbilly Days is canceled and you know this is serious stuff.

Pandemia has its good sides. Nobody much has to work, except of course, store clerks, who not only have to work, or they wouldn’t be store clerks in the first place, who now are more important in society than even personal injury attorneys. Slemp thinks store clerks will be right up there with firemen when it comes to heroes.

Nobody has to go to church either.

Pandemia thins out the old. Something has to. We are all living so long now and spending so much to keep each other alive that not even Bernie Sanders can afford it. Where are we going to get all that money that is going to be mailed to each one of us? If the whole world is on unemployment where will the checks come from?

Tie Rod would be glad to buy toilet paper and there have been moments in his life during which he would have paid ten dollars for a couple of those little squares. But you can’t buy toilet paper now, so Tie Rod has been stealing it from business restrooms and collecting all those shopper inserts from the paper. Do they still print Sears and Roebuck catalogs? Did they ever find Roebuck?

Slemp says that all the big companies will now rush to manufacture toilet paper, and there will soon be too much of it and the toilet paper market will collapse and thousands of investors will be wiped clean. As far as stock in general, the kind of stock the boys trade in has hoofs and if nobody has any money and people have to use mules to live, their portfolio, consisting of Simon Slick and Ida Red will look pretty secure.

The real benefit of Pandemia to Tie Rod and Slemp is that it finally proves what they have been arguing–the safest way to live, now, and from now on, is in ignorance and isolation. You cannot terrorize people who don’t get enough information to be scared. You don’t catch disease that comes from eating bats if you stay in the holler, marry somebody not too close kin and don’t eat a bat. Tie Rod and Slemp are not ignorant enough, and not isolated enough to suit themselves and will try to improve that.

But they are safer than most and were raised pre-toilet paper.

Larry Webster is an attorney in Pikeville.