The author, John Marek, is executive director of the Anson Economic Development Partnership.
As noted in an earlier column, my knowledge of infectious disease comes mostly from questionable high school health classes and the occasional post-apocalyptic horror novel, so I am hardly the go-to guy when it comes to navigating the medical aspects of the current crisis.
What I do know a little bit about is hunkering down. I grew up in a tiny cluster of houses five miles from the nearest town, which was itself 20 miles from the nearest town of any consequence. What we are now describing as ”social distancing” sounds a lot like my childhood summer breaks. While the family did take the occasional day trip to attractions like the Toledo Zoo, Cedar Point and Enchanted Lake Park, the vast majority of my days were spent alone in my yard or wandering the woods and bay shore near my home. It wasn’t a bad life, but it was a relatively isolated one. My father worked long hours at the factory down the road and my mother, while she had a driver’s license, did not like to drive and would only get behind the wheel under the most desperate of circumstances. I also did a lot of reading and watching TV, and in those days the viewing options were limited to just a couple of over-the-air channels. There are episodes of “Gilligan’s Island” I have probably seen upwards of 50 times.
If summers back then were lonely and isolated, winters posed their own challenges. While school offered the opportunity for social interaction, the brutal Ohio winters and early nightfall put the kibosh on much in the way of outdoor activity. The weird popularity of “Tiger King” somewhat reminds me of the awful network miniseries I forced myself to watch in an effort to escape the cold and gloom: “Captains and Kings,” “The Moneychangers” and “Centennial.”
Our big family night out back then was, ironically, grocery shopping. My father was paid on Friday of every other week, and flush with cash we headed off to Kroger. There were originally two grocery stores in town, a tiny – maybe 10,000 square feet – Kroger and a somewhat larger A&P. For whatever reason, my dad didn’t like A&P. Around 1975, Kroger built a new store. It was nothing special by today’s standards, but back then it was virtually a tourist attraction. Our short food-gathering forays turned into leisurely two-hour strolls up and down the well-stocked aisles. People came to see and be seen. There was an ENTIRE AISLE dedicated to breakfast cereal!
As COVID-19 forces us to adapt to a less social and more isolated lifestyle, the thing that becomes readily apparent to me is the way ”getting out” is ingrained into our lives. Before the virus, it was nothing for me to run two or three different sets of errands on a Saturday, visiting half a dozen stores. Even a mundane workday usually involved a trip to the gym, gas station, drugstore and/or a restaurant. These days, I limit myself to one outing a week, and it’s get-in-and-get-out with as little dawdling as possible.
On the other side of this, I wonder whether we will simply return to our old habits and patterns or whether we’ll be more intentional about venturing out.