The Middens
Before the house I live in was built, another house stood here. And in the days of that house, trash was not brought to a dump and then shipped out of the county. Appalachia was more remote in that time, and every family burned what trash they could, and buried what they could not.
And in the days of the quarantine, the middens of this earlier house was found by my children, who diligently dug with rakes and shovels in the mud, standing in the rain for hours to uncover the riches of this earlier time. Steel beer cans. Glass bottles of unfamiliar shapes. The soles of old shoes. A spring. A toy train, rusted almost beyond recognition.
Day after day they toiled in the middens, in fierce competition for treasure and esteem. Every day the most prominent finds were brought to the paterfamilias, who judged their worth, and made brief remarks on their prospective provinences, and bade the children keep the trash outside of the house.
And many worms, slugs, and other insects were sacrificed to the multitude of glass bottles and jars, which were deemed by the children to be the bottles of "potions". What powers these potions would confer through the careful selection of dead invertebrates was never made clear. It did not matter. It was an arms race of sacrifice and muddy water, with few questioning the necessity of the task. An unsubstantiated rumor suggests that urine may have been used, though none among the younger generation have come forward to fully confess to the crime.
What is more scary to the adults, although also marvelous in its own way, is the sheer application of will which presents itself in the absence of regular structure. Seldom are the offspring idle. They go forth onto the land to pursue their own purposes, and as they are more and more left to their own devices, so grows the defiance and resentment at being diverted from the peculiar aims which consume them. They are like madmen. A father can only sit, with his comforts and his drink, and wonder at how many short years he has left before the tide of disorder and rebellion will fully engulf and erase his brief hold upon the family. And he will think at how the forces of schooling and regular culture have heretofore blunted that tide, and how the onset of the pandemic may have prematurely unleashed the vigor of this brood.