It’s quiet down my street.
A car drove by, the first one today and it’s nearly 3 p.m. It’s not the virus that has curtailed traffic. That’s the way it always is in my town and down my street. It’s just life in a town of only 350 people.
I realize few people in this country understand what it’s like to live in a very small town. We’ve lived here for over 30 years, so I’m pretty used to it, and considering the current circumstances, I’m very glad to be here.
Some may differ with that perspective. Just this morning during a phone conversation with a distant friend, she thought small, rural communities may be at a distinct disadvantage of being overlooked during this pandemic. Perhaps, but if self-sufficiency and grit count for anything, small towns have a leg up and are actually managing quite well.
We’re fortunate in our little town to still have a grocery store. Most of the stores shelves are adequately stocked except maybe the aisle for toilet paper. But if you’re a regular customer, the owner might just go in the backroom to get you a package.
The doors of our community bank remain locked and customers do their business through the drive-up window. My husband works there as does our son-in-law. The six staff people work on a rotating basis — three on for three days, three off. So business continues. Mobile banking helps a great deal.
Tomorrow is Palm Sunday but there will be no services at our beautiful Catholic Church or at either of the other two churches in town. I’ll go online to see what service we can watch. Last week, I viewed Mass at the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. This is a rare opportunity to “visit” some beautiful churches in our country. In the absence of a collective worship service, our parish has started a calling tree so we are reaching out to each other with support and prayers.
The town calendar has been wiped clean of community activities. The annual town melodrama was put off until next year. All town meetings have either been cancelled or are being held virtually. The school is closed but paper packets are being sent home and chrome books are available to all the students. My book club had a zoom session yesterday so we could continue our literary discussions and sip wine in our respective homes.
Of the 93 counties in Nebraska, ours is one of 37 that has yet to have a diagnosis of the virus. But it is creeping around us, I know. So in spite of our rural sparsity, we do our best to keep social distance. Only one trip a week to the grocery store and little else. The two bar/restaurants remain open but are offering take-outs and delivery.
We have a medical clinic in our town staffed four days a week by two nurses and a rotation of a medical doctor and nurse practitioner. The county-owned, critical access hospital is in the county seat town 20 miles away. While well staffed and stocked, it is asking for help from other businesses, schools and individuals to help lay in extra supplies of masks, hand sanitizers and gloves.
People in small towns usually jump at an opportunity to help out. Our town is no exception. Members of the local quilt guild are busy making masks. In a neighboring small town, a young mother of five (with 11 month old twins) has sewn over 1,500 masks, sending them all over the country. She’s doing it in honor of her own mother who is a nurse and suffering from Lou Gehrig’s disease.
The streets here in our small towns may be empty but our hearts and minds are not. We are few in number but large in giving. As we brace ourselves for what I’m sure will be at least some cases of the virus showing up, we reach out, we support, we help where we can because that’s what people in small towns do.