4th of July Covid Style
Layla can easily stand on three legs using the fourth to thump her ear. I stand carefully on one just to put on shorts. A lesson in balance of sorts.
Reading the New York Times Magazine articles, one, two three, each one was about coping mechanisms for being imprisoned in a shutdown Big Apple. I couldn’t help contrast all the reasons I’ve never wanted to live in New York City. The first being it has entirely too many people. The second, they all live there. And the third, fourth, fifth reasons… Just don’t see how an introvert would want to live in the place. I’d be resentful as hell living like a dog begging scraps from the tables of the one percenters. I don’t like those people either.
I’m perfecting my curmudgeon credentials.
We’re presently down south on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, specifically Duck, approaching July 4th and the heart of beachwear and sunburn season. The traffic? Well, not quite as heavy as in years past, but lots of it anyway. Out of towners like to tailgate passing through our little 25 mph village impatiently making their way further north to Corolla and Whalehead. When you only get a week’s vacation, every minute counts.
North Carolina, a more red than blue state, with a Democratic governor and an angry Republican legislature, nevertheless requires social distancing. So the restaurants are working outdoor tables, spaced apart, waitstaff with masks, etc. With few of their patrons following the rules.
And on the beach? Youthful bodies up and down the strand, packed in close, with sweet thong bikinis and studly men seeking their annual radiation treatments. Seems these southerners (and a few wandering New Jersey folk) have something to prove.
Stubborn Americans are one thing, but no one’s lying to us about this Covid, and I don’t get it.
Back in Norther Virginia, earlier in the week Layla and I stopped to talk to a neighbor working on his lawn. Six feet apart at the least. When Layla realized we wouldn’t be moving on right away, she lay down on the road, already warm in the sun. For a husky, she likes sun. Alfredo and I were sharing stories about the tree work we both were have done, when he made a comment that despite the quarantine, it was hard to complain about a hard life living in Lake Barcroft. Not like New York City. Other than dwelling by a mountain lake in the Rockies–or a cliffside shack in Mendocino, I couldn’t think of a better place to be quarantined. Alfredo laughed and nodded.
Our finger lake is the beating heart of the Barcroft community, followed closely by the forest surrounding it. We live under trees, lots of trees, trees that on occasion go boom, and like clockwork each fall drop a gazillion leaves.. That’s when the leaf blowers go into action, similar to bears hauling salmon out preparing for winter, except way noisier. I’d rather watch the bears.
By July the neighborhood is 5-10 degrees cooler from the shade than outside on Columbia Pike, and your pupils don’t fry from the sun glare. Even better, you get to enjoy the beauty when the snow piles on all those bare branches in the winter–and the huskies go nuts. So when friends say they’d love to live in NY City, I just shake my head. You can take the boy out of the country, I suppose…
Party in Duck
Around midnight, Layla and I taking our last tour of the neighborhood–a last sniff and pee session–there was partying like nobody’s business up and down Wood Duck Road. Back when the pandemic began, NC officials closed the Outer Banks at the bridges, highway patrolmen in attendance. Now, desperate to recover a portion of the lost tourist season, the OBX area is wide open and the kids are partying like there’s no tomorrow–sadly true for some.
Down the street, a one-story fisherman’s cottage–most times the quietest on the street–was full up, eight or more cars wedged in the drive, and the deck jammed with twenty-year-olds rocking to the beat, drinking, singing. Not sure any more could have fit on that deck. Some serious energy was being worked out. It was going on midnight, and I wondered if the girls hadn’t already gone wild, because the boys were yelling like they were. Oh, those hormones were flowing.
Continuing toward the Sound, toward the Route 12 end of the street, another crowd of shadows were coming at us, spread out across the pavement. Heading for a night’s stroll on the beach–a great thing to do. No lights, no masks, but lots of youthful enthusiasm. Lots of alcohol, judging from the boisterous talk.
The news is reporting the bars have been ordered to close again in Florida and Texas, as the Covid is hitting them hard. “I told ya,” just doesn’t feel like a decent thing to say, particularly because the news is also reporting the median age of cases in Florida has dropped from 65 to 35. Similar news from Oklahoma and California. It’s true that experience is an exceptional teacher, but with Covid the full price extends way beyond a single partygoer’s health–it includes a lot of other people who have no say in the daring.
This disease is taunting the country now, and it’s not done with us. Please stay safe.