Staff Member Guestie

Not-all-that-grumpy old man Dave Fairbank has been made an official member of the G:TB staff, but he professes not to understand this newfangled blogging technology, though I guarandamntee that he had to deal with any number of content management systems during his professional career. Furthermore, I've tasked the Doofus Overlord with training our newest hire, but he's too busy strutting the runway in Milan:

In any event, here's a Corona Diary from OBX for your reading pleasure.

My wife’s phone pinged at 7:30 a.m. Her friend’s text message was brief: I heard Publix is re-stocked with TP and cleaning products. You might have a chance if you go now.

We weren’t to the point of using old magazine pages and bleach-soaked rags, but opportunity is opportunity. We hustled the half-mile to the grocery store. As we approached, we saw people lined up in front of the building, waiting to enter. Nearly everybody wore masks. My wife parked, put on her homemade mask, and jumped out to get in line. One store worker was at the door, letting in a few people at a time. A couple others retrieved shopping carts in the parking lot and wheeled them back into the store.

Some shoppers emerged with carts full of groceries. Most came out carrying small plastic bags and oversize packages of toilet paper and paper towels under their arms. My wife went straight to the paper and cleaning products aisles. They were stocked, but emptying rapidly. She grabbed a bundle of TP and the last two canisters of Lysol disinfectant wipes, one for us, the other for her friend. When she reached the checkout counter, a worker informed her that the wipes were just one to a customer. My wife asked a woman behind her in line if she needed wipes. The woman said she did. My wife told her, I picked up the last two and had to set one aside, so there you go.

Score!

My wife was in and out in less than 10 minutes and came back to the car a little frazzled. The tension and anxiety within the store were thick as August humidity. She wanted no part of an extended trip, not first thing in the morning, not among that scramble of shoppers. The mission was toilet paper and wipes. Everything else could wait.

Similar scenes are playing out all over the country, thanks to the pandemapalooza. Everybody’s off-balance, a little shaggier, a little crispier. Normal, always a moving target, might as well be a flock of swallows – African or European, laden or otherwise.

It feels peculiar here, on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. We’re a community of about 35,000 people spread over roughly 100 miles. But we have a disproportionate number of grocery stores large and small, particularly on the northern end of the island, owing to the tourist economy and numbers of visitors and rental properties. In the summer, when the island bulges with 150-175,000 people, it’s not uncommon to go into grocery stores and find depleted stocks of certain items – meat, paper products, beer. Frequent deliveries guarantee that shortages are generally no more than a day, or perhaps just hours. Tourism, y’all. Early-morning grocery rushes and empty shelves in March and April, however, are sure signs that something’s amiss – never mind masked shoppers.

Normally at this time of year, everyone would be gearing up for the season. Businesses and restaurants hiring, musicians lining up gigs, visitors trickling in when the weather’s decent. All that’s on hold. Some restaurants and bars have closed temporarily. Those that are open offer take-out and delivery only. Traffic and people flow feel more like January than springtime.

Our county, Dare, permits only residents and essential personnel – medical, delivery, construction and maintenance workers. Officials even prohibited non-resident property owners for the past month, which frosted many of them, as well as those who depend on their business. Non-resident owners will be permitted in starting next week. There’s no sign yet of allowing visitors. Gov. Roy Cooper issued a ‘stay home, stay healthy’ order weeks ago and has indicated that he’ll need to see at least a couple weeks of flattening the curve and significant diminution of new virus cases before he’ll consider opening beach communities to visitors.

I don’t have answers. I feel for folks who depend on tourism and the summer months for their livelihood, as well as anyone in the restaurant and service industries whose lives have been upended. Some local folks itching for the county to re-open point to the fact that we’ve had fewer than two dozen cases overall and no new cases in more than two weeks, and that most of those cases originated outside the county. That indicates we’re pretty clean and that measures we’ve taken are working, though it’s foolish to think we’re immune. Without comprehensive testing and tracking, it’s a little like bird-watching at night. Given that we’re about two steps up from a rural community six to eight months of the year, if some asymptomatic person or people came here and went all Johnny Appleseed with the virus, it would quickly overwhelm the local medical structure’s capabilities.

The summer here almost certainly will be different than any we’ve seen. My wife and I are more fortunate than many, and I don’t think we’ll have to make a lot of 7 a.m. grocery store runs. But I’m still going to hold off dumping old magazines in the recycle bin. Never know.