You never know what you will find in an old desk

It’s amazing what you can find when you clean out a desk drawer, and/or a whole desk and several filing cabinets for that matter.

Mark White is Editor of The News Journal.

As most of the you know, due to COVID-19 about five months ago the News Journal shutdown our Williamsburg office and consolidated operations in Corbin.

After working in that office for 25 years, suffice it to say it took a while to clean out pretty much every drawer and filing cabinet and so forth, not that I would ever accumulate any junk in my office mind you…LOL.

At any rate, by going through 25 years worth of memories –  (OK and some junk) – I did run across one pretty interesting item.

Being a journalist, I periodically get asked to go cover health fairs, readifests and other assorted events, where one has a tendency to pick-up free items, like ink pens, coffee mugs, key rings, miniature candy bars and the like.

Often times at these kind of events, people will have little goodie bags you can pick-up with stuff already inside. These bags are also good to hold additional ink pens, key rings and other stuff that you pick up at these kind of events.

As I was cleaning out a desk drawer back in March, I ran across one such goodie bag, which was particularly appropriate to find during a global pandemic.

Inside this goodie bag, there were pamphlets from the Whitley County Health Department in addition to several small bottles of hand sanitizer, which I have been putting to work recently.

However, the most interesting item in this goodie bag was the Whitley County Health Department “Pandemic” Flu Awareness Kit with labels encouraging you to “Stop the spread of germs that make you and others sick!” and the words “Germ Stop Kit” printed across a stop sign.

More interestingly though, were the germicidal hard surface wipes (two packets), antimicrobial hand wipes (five packets), nitrile gloves (one pack), and back in March what was a very sought after item, an “N95 Respirator Mask, individually packed.”

Of all things to find during the midst of a pandemic…LOL.

FYI-I still have never opened the kit.

I guess a N95 mask would still be good if it were sealed after all this time. I really have no idea.

Oh, the irony of life.

Based upon the pamphlets and some other stuff in the bag, I would guess that I picked this up about 12 years go.

Suffice it to say that Whitley County Health Department Public Health Director Marcy Rein got a pretty good laugh when I e-mailed her about this a few months ago.

My best guess is that Kathy Lay, who works over at the health department also got a good laugh about this, and probably put this goodie bag together for a health fair. Kathy pointed out that being this old though, it could have instead been Debra Brown, who put the goodie bag and pandemic kit together.

If the makers of N95 masks read this column, I would love to hear from you on whether the mask is still good.

At any rate, I now have this kit in the top drawer of my desk in Corbin, and will probably hold onto it as a keepsake or for a “break glass” kind of emergency where one needs a “really good” mask.