To say there is a dichotomy in the world’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic would not be the understatement of the year.
I saw this very difference in an about 30-minute stretch on a recent trip to Alabama for the opening of youth turkey season.
Being the wonderfully prepared hunter I am, I waited until the last minute to seek purchase of specialized turkey shot shells. This stuff isn’t cheap and by the time I went shopping, our two local gun stores were out of the 20-gauge version. Not an indictment of the stores, but a testament to the popularity of turkey hunting.
What lay before me was a six-hour drive to South Alabama and stops at every gun store on the way until I found what I needed.
As I passed through Yazoo City, I had another head slapping moment as I realized I did not pack the charger for my laptop.
I’d come too far to turn around, but I knew there was an Apple store in Jackson and thus I set my sights there.
As luck would have it, there was a gun store on the route to the Apple store.
As I approached the store, I noticed the only sign on the front door was one excoriating those with drooping pants to pull them up before entering the building.
Inside the scene was as you might expect. Guns were on the wall. Ammo stacked sparingly in shelves on the floor.
There also wasn’t a mask among either the patrons or shopkeepers. Perhaps that’s why I got a few looks while wearing my mask from First Presbyterian Church inside the building.
I asked the first employee I saw, “You guys got any TSS in 20 gauge?”
He pointed me to a stacked shelf. After moving $68.47 from my bank account to theirs for the five shells, I was back on the road.
My next destination, the Apple store, would show a marked difference from the previous.
When I parked in front of the store in the Colony Park shopping center, there were two tents outside and two policemen.
Everyone wore a mask.
The police officers took the temperature of each customer before allowing them to speak with an Apple employee.
There were no more than three customers in the store at a time.
Once you passed the temperature test, you and an Apple employee walked through the store to find the needed items.
With my new charging cord and shotgun shells purchased, the rest of the trip lay ahead of me through what is arguably the most rural regions of Alabama and Mississippi. They are also some of the most pretty.
While the dichotomy in mask wearing exists in close proximity, another dichotomy in road maintenance exists in equally close proximity.
Highway 84 in South Mississippi goes from four-lane in our state to two-lane in Alabama. It also goes from an aging, but not tattered, highway in Mississippi to a recently paved two-lane road in Alabama.
In fact, I drove on more new blacktop in the last week in Alabama than I have in the last year in Mississippi.
These are two states with not vastly different economies. In fact, Alabama should be hampered in the road work department because almost all of the state-wide elected officials in the last 20 years have been either indicted for some form of financial malfeasance or actually served time like former Gov. Don Siegelman.
But here they sit side-by-side: one state with a mask mandate still in place and the other without. One state with good roads, and the other without. (I know It’s a false equivalency, but there are so many in the world today, I might as well add another.)
It’s a sample of the greater world we live in today. I have friends who are avowed anti-maskers who have been infected and treated for COVID. I have friends who were as careful as possible and also got the virus.
There are folks like me who work in an environment where I don’t have to have tons of face-to-face contact with people and came through without the virus.
There are folks like my wife who has no doubt come in contact with the virus and never tested positive.
What does this say about the thing that has gripped us for more than a year now?
It only amplifies who each person or place is. Those who trend toward safety at all costs will do the same. Those who leave some things to chance will do the same.
But now, there’s an outwardly visible sign of those choices.
Jon Alverson is proud to be publisher and editor of the Delta Democrat-Times. Write to him at jalverson@ddtonline.comor call him at 335-1155.
