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The pandemic has also scoured the American landscape of its cherished institutions.
Don't get around much anymore
It's awfully different…
*A hodgepodge parody from “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” (Duke Ellington, 1940)
Ever since state mandates pertaining to the COVID-19 pandemic were in place, I don’t get around much anymore.
Not a total recluse, I do what is deemed necessary for my well-being: a weekly supermarket run; dental and doctor appointments; salon visit. That about sums up my excursions within a small geographic radius, where my eyes had adjusted to traveling over partially deserted roads and noting the blank stares from windows on vacated anchor stores in plazas.
This week, my mother’s place of residence began accepting calls to schedule appointments for visitation, so I scheduled mine. As I hadn’t traversed those roads leading me there since March, my journey in July was an eye-opener.
Mind you, Phase 3, put into effect in Rhode Island on June 30th, allows restaurants to expand indoor seating from 50 – 66 percent, which means limited indoor seating had already been in place during Phase 2 of last month. Keeping an eye out for the two restaurants my mother and I had frequented quite often in those pre-COVID, carefree days, led to a disturbing discovery:
A sign outside Uncle Tony’s Pasta & Pizza advertises their takeout operation. Indoor Dining is only available on Wednesdays and Fridays.
The Modern Diner, the first diner in the nation to be accepted on the National Register for Historic Places—the same Rhode Island eatery, I’d written about in “Homespun Goodness”—is closed. Temporarily, I hope. On any given day, their parking lot would be chock-full of vehicles.
These eyesores serve as painful reminders that a pandemic has also scoured our American landscape of its cherished institutions. Harking back to the song, why stir up memories of bygone days, not likely to be revisited any time soon—or ever again!
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Prayers and blessings—this too shall pass.
Perhaps we'll come up with even more creative ways of supporting each other.
Americans, at least the ones writing comments here, are generally spoiled by having money and leisure to engage in a lifestyle of their own choosing. By so doing, they make institutions out of restaurants and relegate their elders to private institutions rather than taking care of them at home. I stayed at and assisted living home one night, and found it unsuitable to hiring caregiving in my home.
I don't get amount much anymore. My lifestyle changed drastically when I was 20. And then, creeping paralysis, causing more and more physical disability over 57 years has left me, basically, unable to "get around" at all. Long ago, I learned to give up what I could no longer do, like driving the first time in 1995 and the second time in 2016 without regret. We all reach that point. But most don't, like your mother, until we reach advanced age.
I would never make a restaurant into an institution by my patronage. We could all live without restaurants, although I relied upon them when I didn't have a kitchen to cook for myself in college. Restaurants and restaurant mingling is a luxury, not a necessity. The same is true of salons, gyms and clubs. Being able to procure food is. Many reasons we go to the doctor for, like annual checkups, are not necessary.
Humans are very adaptable. We have survived, even thrived, under horrendous situations like the Warsaw ghetto, St. Petersburg under siege, the Chicago fire and 9/11. The list is endless. We are undergoing a short period of inconvenience and financial stress caused by a curable disease. It is only sensible to limit, as much as possible, any kind of mingling with others. Those that do need to mingle for their own selfish purposes, are causing some others great suffering and even, death. Why would we want to do that people just to go to our favorite restaurant, now that it has a percentage of occupancy?
Ron
I do agree the world looks and feels different now. I'm really waiting to see where we all go from here! I am glad to hear you got to visit your mom. If there was one thing that upset me about all of this it was not being able to visit my family. But, we talk all the time, so there's that.
I do hope your favorite restaurant is only shut down temporarily. I hate seeing how many businesses aren't surviving through this pandemic.
A few of our favorite restaurants have shut down...To reopen in the future, who knows. However a few of our favorite places are still open hanging on by their teeth with phone in curb-side orders.
Last month We had a window lasting about three weeks where we were able to have a "ear in" dinner but that has changed again and unless they also have an outside area where people could/can come to be seated their futures might still be in doubt.
One of our favorite places, a Mexican restaurant that does have a long balcony is having "happy Hour" pricing on an extended menu from 3:00 to 7:30 from Monday through Frieda and all day both Saturday and Sunday all in an effort to stay afloat.
We use masks when shopping, or when approaching a restaurant but outside of that, when walking the dogs we do social distancing.