I remember that sometime in 1957 a "flu bug" made its rounds in our area. It was called the "Asian Flu" and the connotations were that it came from China and might be a biological attack on our country. I remember it like this: Tommy Cothran and I were building a rabbit box. Think of a wooden box 3 feet long, 12 inches high and 9 inches wide. The door to the box slid up and was attached to a trigger device. You simply had to find a place to put the box - preferably near a rabbit trail and bait it with fruit. Then you went home and waited for the rabbit to go in, trip the trigger and be caught. You usually made rounds of your rabbit boxes early in the morning and brought the rabbits back to Mamma before breakfast.

Anyway, we were making a rabbit box and around 4 o'clock that afternoon I started feeling bad. Kind of droopy and achy. I kept building the box and when it was complete I walked in and told Mamma that I had to go to bed. Just like that it was on. Everybody in the family caught the flu and everybody was the sickest that any of us remember. We couldn't even go to the doctor and he couldn't come to our house because there were so many cases. He just told Mamma that everyone should take Bufferin every two hours until the fever broke. I had never heard of Bufferin until that day and we all thought is was a wonder drug. It sure helped the fever and the aches.

At one point we were all so sick we just stayed in bed and helped Mamma remember when it was time for Bufferin. Eventually, we all made it through and recovered.
Now we know that the "Asian Flu" was an Avian strain called H2N2 and it eventually mutated into H3N2 which caused the 1969 outbreak, or "mini-pandemic." I'll chat about H3N2 when I'm talking about the Air Force later on.

What did we do with the rabbits? We ate them!!