Goodbye Family…

Being an old fashioned kind of guy, Hershell Ostrepeller set aside Sunday mornings to read newspapers. It was not considered very cool because everything was online, but he enjoyed the feel of the pages. He would sip a cup of green tea and read articles that were about all kinds of different situations taking place.

One of the articles in his hometown paper was about a laundromat that was working on creating a special sanitizer that could be applied to clothes after they were dried. It would offer a layer of protection against bacteria or germs, or at least that’s what the laundromat’s owner Mike Millar was hoping. He said in the article that he was no scientist but being in the dirty clothes business for twenty years made him feel like an expert in “washables.’’ He said if anybody could clean things up regarding Covid-19 it would be him. He then mentioned he was looking for investors.

Herschell was reading an international business publication about the impact of Covid-19 on small businesses and the questions about the long term effects on the economy. A spokesperson for a Dairy in Wisconsin owned by a Hedge Fund was quoted as saying that it was true small farmers were going out of business on a daily basis but there was no reason to panic. There was no loss in milk production because factory farms would continue to grow exponentially and increase production. Wayne Rutherford was also quoted as saying that his company would soon start controlling the planting and harvesting of crops.

The theory that people shouldn’t worry about small farms disappearing from the agricultural landscape made Herschell want to throw up. The family farm would soon be a thing of the past. Another not so great change in the fabric of American life. Plus food growth and supply was heading into the hands of corporations and if history proved one thing, that never worked out well.

As Herschell was reading the World Business View, he saw an image that made him do a double take. The guy looked very familiar. It took a minute but then he realized it was his second cousin Jacob and he was being written up because he had married the heir to the Wadsworth Jones conglomerate, Elizabeth Wadsworth Jones.

Staring at the picture and reading the article made Herschell feel both sad and distant. In the past family Weddings would…