I was walking home on the street where I live in Kenwood, California, a little hamlet in the middle of Sonoma County wine country about 50 miles North of the Golden Gate Bridge. Just about to my driveway, a white pickup truck pulled up and the window rolled down on the passenger side where I was walking.
The driver was Joe, the founder and granddad of our local auto repair shop on Highway 12 about 4–5 blocks from where I live. Our conversation started with Joe saying that he hadn’t seen me for a while and I responded with the fact that I had not been driving much during the Covid crisis but I assured him that I would be bringing our cars in for service soon. When I asked him how business was going he responded with, “We’re holding our own.” I was pleased that this long-time local mainstay business was surviving during the pandemic.
Our conversation turned to general topics and Joe related this story. He said he was down the street at the local gas station filling up when he was approached by a man who wanted to know where there was a good place to eat in Kenwood. The man explained that he was from San Francisco and all the restaurants were closed in The City and he was looking for a good meal.
Joe responded with “Why aren’t you wearing a mask? We have a very low incidence of virus infections here because we are very serious about following the guidelines of social distancing and masks. We don’t appreciate you coming up from San Francisco and bringing God knows what and potentially infecting us with Covid. For that reason, I’m not going to tell you where to eat.” As it turns out, the service attendant would not sell him gas either, until he masked up.
I initially thought Joe was a little harsh to the stranger. Upon reflection, however, these are awful times with basic health precautions being ignored or worse becoming political statements. Witness the gatherings of young people flaunting basic safety precautions under the guise of freedom of expression while hundreds of thousands are dying of Covid. It makes no sense to me.
In the 1930s millions of people were rounded up and sent to detention centers and eventually exterminated while other good citizens buried their heads in the sand denying that anything wrong was happening. Their silence was violence against an entire population of people.
So, yes, Joe was harsh. But he believes in protecting his town from the awful spread of Covid and he was willing to stand up and say so. I admire his unwillingness to remain silent.