I haven't been to town in a month. Last time I went was the beginning of April. That's not because I'm afraid of the Plague.
It's because I'm thoroughly disgusted with all the inconvenient, unnecessary hoopla connected with the Plague.
Why should I drive a zillion (very slight exaggeration) miles on dangerous, winding mountain roads - only to arrive in town and discover that businesses are closed, food and supplies are rationed, and toilet paper is non-existent?
So I patiently waited until May 1st, under the naive delusion that bans would be lifted and things would be back to normal.
Or as "normal" as they get in rural Tennessee.
I was COMPLETELY out of toilet paper, Kleenex, paper towels, milk, bread, eggs, and cat food.
All I had left in the house was some old typing paper.
Let your imaginations run rampant.
Despite my bad back and absolutely No sleep, I forced myself to make the dreaded excursion.
To my astonishment Friday was a clear, beautiful day - after two months of non-stop rain and storms.
My astonishment became acute when I got to town and discovered that the Plague Ban was never lifted and the town was still under government siege!
I couldn't believe it.
My first stop (as always) was the Town Trash Dump, where I unloaded four mega bags of garbage. I have four more festering at home, because they won't fit in my car.
Next stop was the bank, where only the drive-through window is open.
I nearly went into cataclysmic spasms of undiluted panic when I saw SIXTEEN cars lined up at the window (I counted them)!
What the hell was going on?
Were all the people who recently lost their jobs robbing the bank??
The raw agony of sitting in a hot car with a ravaged back for an hour and a half (no lie) was beyond human endurance.
I had to keep the engine running, because if I turned it off there was a Big Risk that the car wouldn't start again (trust me on this).
So I sat sweating.
Enduring the agonizing spasms in my back and leg.
Watching the gas gauge rapidly diminish.
Wondering why the line only moved four inches in forty minutes.
Adding insult to agony, there's a sign on the side of the bank brimming with saccharine Bible scriptures.
Jesus is love.
Jesus would be cursing like a drunken sailor if he had to wait in this frickin' line.
Love thy neighbor.
I was chewing my fingernails to keep from stepping on the gas and ramming the car in front of me.
By the time I got to Walmart I was thirty years older and nearly out of gas.
The nightmare at the bank couldn't compare with the surrealistic Theater of the Absurd that awaited me at Walmart.
Social Distancing warnings
six feet apart
sanitized shopping carts
limits on items you can buy
Frantic people scurrying about, desperately avoiding one another, arrayed in a fantastic assortment of grotesque makeshift masks.
Many more woman are wearing masks than men. They've readily accepted the new style and enthusiastically embraced it.
Tennessee hillbillies go Middle East.
Men are mask-wary and much more reluctant.
Why make a complete jackass out of yourself in a public?
As for me - the last mask I ever wore was on Halloween when I was eight years old, and I'll be damned if I'm going wear one now.
The world has gone to hell in a proverbial hand basket and I refuse to be a part of it. I've never been a game player or a fad follower - - it ain't my style.
Social distancing, masks, gloves, isolation, house arrest, restrictions, rations, bans.....
And I'm thinking:
I'm no longer in America
I'm in a Nazi Utopia
a Fascist Fraternity
a Bolshevik wet dream
My worst fear is that this rampant insanity has been readily adopted as a comfortable lifestyle by a compliant mass of mindless people and will never end.
Never.........never......
end......
