Category Archives: Texana

After an OCS chum said his wife’s doctor advised consuming garlic as a non-prescription hedge against Covid, I remembered an article that said Israeli consumption of garlic is second only per capita to China. The claim is that people who consume a lot of this pre-antibiotic folk remedy for infection, get bitten by fewer mosquitoes and generally stay healthy.

Reminds me of my Texas mother when we lived in Libya, in North Africa, when I was six. My 5-year-old sister and I liked to run barefoot through the dirt, which bothered mother no end. Whenever she caught us at it, she would turn to the lore of her Texas upbringing and make us eat a clove of garlic each to stave off the ringworm fungus, among other things. It was awful. So we worked hard not to get caught.