1918
The United States was a very different place in 1918, the year my parents were born. The nation was in the middle of a World War, with US forces joining the incredible death in the human meat grinder of trench warfare in Europe. Four million Americans were mobilized and sent to the battlefields in just over a year. One of the major training bases was at Camp Sherman, built on the sacred land of the Hopewell, the ancient moundbuilders, just north of Chillicothe, Ohio (NPS).
110,000 Americans would die in World War I. Like deaths in the American Civil War only fifty-five years before, disease was as deadly as bullets. 45,000 World War I recruits died of the “Spanish” flu, the influenza epidemic of 1918. 30,000 of those never reached France, but died waiting in camps or on the way in ships.
1,717 of those died at Camp Sherman, so many that the Majestic Theater in downtown Chillicothe became a temporary morgue. The theater was shuttered anyway, quarantined by the virus that attacked civilians as well as soldiers. Bodies, “stacked like cordwood,” were embalmed there. The body fluids ran into the alley next door: it became known as “Bloody Alley”. Then the bodies were transported by wagon back to Camp Sherman, to be shipped home by train (NPS).
Flu, War and Booze
Out of a population of 103 million, 675,000 Americans died in the 1918 Flu Epidemic (for those fixated on death rates, that’s .6% of the population). The epidemic struck when Americans were already mobilized and sacrificing for the war effort. Nineteen states already banned recreational alcohol use, in order to save the liquid for the war effort or use the grains for food production. And many patriotic Americans “gave up” alcohol for the war. It made a statement: many of the best-known beer manufacturers were of “enemy” German descent (Anheuser-Busch, Coors, Miller, Yuengling).
During the war saloons, bars, and nightclubs were closed. In the epidemic, those same establishments served as what we would call today “hot spots”, places where disease was easily passed from one person to another. Alcohol “greased” the rails of transmission. Masks came off and social distancing became physical contact. Think of the “you’ve lost that loving feeling” scene in Top Gun, or my Alabama-born boss making everyone stand and sing Dixie at the end of the night. It’s part of our American tradition, and a perfect incubator for viral spread.
A Nexus in History
All of this fit in with a growing social movement in America to give up alcohol. The Anti-Saloon League, the leading group pressing for national prohibition, was headquartered in Westerville, Ohio, a suburb of Columbus. It became an historic nexus: the anti-alcohol forces, the sacrifices for the War, and the epidemic all lead to the adoption of the 18th Amendment, prohibiting recreational alcohol in the United States.
Today we aren’t at war with other nations. Instead, we are at war with each other, agitated by half-truths and outright lies. We aren’t tearing up ancient burial grounds to mobilize and train soldiers; instead we are tearing down statues erected to glorify the stain of historic racism. In our current era of polarization, we are struggling to deal with a global pandemic. Folks are physically protesting the restricting of our normal lives to control the virus. We desperately want to crowd together at the ballpark, or the rally, or at the bar. That, even though “That loving feeling” that we are looking for will further the spread of COVID-19.
And we are faced with a growing social movement recognizing the historic inequities of American racism. Americans are protesting for change, despite the dangers of viral infection and death.
In 1918 they were just beginning to understand how to treat the disease ravaging the nation. But they did have a good knowledge of how to prevent the spread of the virus: masks, social distancing, preventing large gatherings, closing the “hot spots”, the theaters, restaurants and saloons. It was all part of the war effort. But there were “anti-maskers” then too, especially after the War ended. The duty to protect the troops was more effective in controlling disease than their duty to protect each other.
Nexus Today
Today we are wrestling with ways to control COVID-19’s growth, waiting for a time when vaccination might return us to some form of normalcy. We are arguing about what to do with schools, public events, restaurants and bars. We are at a different kind of nexus: a meeting of politics, unbridled information overload both real and false, social upheaval and epidemic. Out of the 1918 nexus came a national desire to change behavior by Prohibition. While that experiment ultimately failed, it was a noble effort to make life better.
Who knows what will come of our current nexus. Just one favor: don’t close all of the saloons. Some of us need a drink.
