It's a Free Country

All lives matter, we hear.

I’m not talking about race, but it comes from the same source.

Because we don’t really believe it, do we?

If we did, we’d be wearing a mask in public places.

That’s the truth. If you’re not wearing a mask when you interact with other people, you don’t believe all lives matter.

You don’t believe your wife and children matter. Or your parents. You don’t believe the people you work with matter.

The only life that matters to you is yours.

We are watching new cases of the virus surge in Texas, as businesses open. You’ll have proof of the connection, eventually, when it’s too late.

Crowds thronged our area on the weekend of June 6^th, unmasked, ignoring social distancing. These were mostly people from somewhere else. Our beleaguered businesses were thrilled, I expect. They’ve been suffering. The owners and employees have been suffering. No one can deny that.

I visualize those crowds bursting out of solitary hunkering like so many grade school kids let loose to run and play after a hard morning at their desks. With about as much mature thought.

And men were the most likely to go maskless. I see them, everywhere I go in Fayette and Washington Counties.

Their naked faces declare they’re not afraid. It’s a free country. A man’s personal freedom is the only thing that matters.

But he’s not free to spit on the floor of a restaurant or urinate in its parking lot. He’s not free to smoke in a non-smoking place. He can’t walk into the nearest movie theater and holler “fire!”

So many ways we’re not free to harm our neighbors.

Maskless, though, he can walk around exhaling virus on other people. He can sing at the top of his lungs in church all over the person in front of him. He feels fine.

Or, maybe he’s got a little headache and scratchy throat.

Or, sure, he may be a little sub-par—hay fever, you know. He’ll power through.

No one can make him think of anyone else. His mother used to try. She’d drill it into him. But now, he’s a big boy. Nobody can tell him what to do.

Or her, his wife. She hates the masks. (I do, too.) They’re hot and they itch and one’s breath is not a minty delight.

But she chooses to wear it, just in case. She wears it in the grocery store. She wears it bringing groceries and supplies to her car or someone else’s. She wears it, cooking in a restaurant, despite the inconvenience.

She wears it in case the 30% increase in county Covid cases that we’ve had over the past month has touched her. She doesn’t want to bring the virus home to her children, her mother or grandmother who’s diabetic. Or grandfather who’s on oxygen. Or to her macho husband who refuses to wear his mask.

Why do you think we’ve been “lucky” so far? Round Top is a tourist destination. Why don’t we show the rate of Covid infection Houston does, for example? A throng is a throng, after all.

One reason, I think, is our leadership. County officials had the courage and good sense to cancel the Spring Antique Shows. That made sure outsiders did not flood our community with virus from far flung hot spots.

But the July 4^th celebration is coming. 

And it might not be a disaster if everyone who attends it, man, woman or child, wears an adequate mask and observes strict social distancing. Wouldn’t that be a great example of community spirit?

Come on, folks. Make Mommy and Daddy proud.