The return drive to Illinois was uneventful, as has been the case in normal times.  These are not normal times.  The covid-19 virus is spreading.  The symptoms have not yet become apparent as the virus spreads exponentially, and quietly begins to live within our bodies, before we become really, really sick.  Many of us stand to become rapidly, critically ill, more of us than the hospitals are equipped to treat with ventilators in the ICU rooms.  That has been the story in China, now in Italy.  It is magical thinking to believe that we Americans will be exempt.

The economy will collapse when we cannot move around lest we contract the deadly sickness.  We have a service economy.  Most of us earn income by doing something for someone else: washing windows, manicuring nails, taking a room reservation, assisting travelers to board an airplane, filling and serving a cup of Starbucks coffee, helping to open a new checking account, or preparing a breakfast of eggs, toast, sausage and hash browns at Leif’s.  These “services” easily come to mind because I have personally engaged all of these occupations recently.  There are thousands more similar in nature, in a web of mutual sustaining synergy, the means by which we keep one another in good health.  All of this depends upon our ability to be in touch, to keep in contact with one another.

This is all going to go away very quickly.  Your imagination is sufficient to give you an idea of just how interdependent we are upon one another.  No man/woman is an island indeed.  We live and we die together.  “Ask not for whom the bell tolls….” said JOHN DONNE.  We are about to hear the bell toll, over and over.

We had a pre-departure breakfast at Leif’s Cafe in Eagle River.  The restaurant, which in times past has been something of a social center for the town, was quiet.  We had time for a chat with our waitress.  She told of receiving a phone call from a administrator at her child’s school.  The voice of the caller was tinged with panic.  Her child had the sniffles from a cold, common with kids at this time of year.  Rising fear on account of the virus made for a tense conversation between this waitress/mom and the school staff member.  We listened, and it seemed that she handled the situation quite well under the circumstances.  We will miss patronizing places like Leif’s.  Bars and Restaurants have already been ordered to close here in Illinois.  Such small businesses are the ties which bind us all together in normal times.  They are what we mean by “Main Street.”

I wanted to feature this song by Bob Seeger anyway as it is one of his very best and most loved creations.  As I thought about it, I realized that the mournful, dirge-like guitar chord that is backdrop to the refrain “down on Main Street” makes this song apt to accompany these circumstances.  Yes, there is something beyond words, beautiful, sensual and alive about the movement of human interaction in normal times on Main Street.  There is even a poetry in the movement of the “hustlers and losers” that are observed at a distance.  Are they not also a part of us?

Listen, enjoy, and appreciate the life that you have.

Mainstreet

By Bob Seeger

I remember standing on the corner at midnight
Trying to get my courage up
There was this long lovely dancer in a little club downtown
I loved to watch her do her stuff
Through the long lonely nights she filled my sleep
Her body softly swaying to that smoky beat
Down on Mainstreet

In the pool halls, the hustlers and the losers
I used to watch ’em through the glass
Well I’d stand outside at closing time
Just to watch her walk on past
Unlike all the other ladies, she looked so young and sweet
As she made her way alone down that empty street
Down on Mainstreet

And sometimes even now, when I’m feeling lonely and beat
I drift back in time and I find my feet
Down on Mainstreet
Down on Mainstreet