The Saloon

On my recent tour through western and northern Minnesota, I had a lot of "handlebar" time to think about things, most especially, COVID.

Much of outstate Minnesota is a frontier, where the old revolutionary concept of "don't tread on me" seems apparent.  And I kind of get it.  Jobs are challenging and hard here - logging, mining, farming - with many proud communities that appear to be just getting by, on their own, away from the loud melee that is the government mandates. For the most part, businesses in this area were doing their part to comply with the Governor's mask orders.  Indeed, the Hungry Duck Cafe, where the ham dinner ordered to go was exemplary after a long ride day as they were closing, even took our contact information down for their social tracing when we returned for breakfast in the morning.

But there were exceptions.  In one small frontier town, I went to the only local establishment - a tavern - to order a pizza for dinner, upon the recommendation of the unmasked convenience store clerk I visited upon arrival in town, asking directions to our motel.  I approached the entrance to the tavern, read the government mandated "masks required," slipped on my mask, and walked in.  

Now, imagine an old western film for a moment, where the "outlaw" wanders down an empty street, tumbleweeds tumbling, dust blowing.  Alone on this street, sensing eyes upon him peering from windows, he approaches the tavern.  Pausing, he holsters his mask around his  ears, and pushes the saloon doors open, all eyes of the patrons turned upon him as he gathers the sense of the place.

The patrons were all maskless, likely known to each other, and certainly took note of him (probably profiling him immediately, thinking "not from around here, are ya?").  He started to approach to order, when a woman dashed around the horseshoe shaped bar, and as she approached his vicinity, lifted her pullover to cover her mouth as she trotted past to her seat among friends in the opposite corner, all the while talking loudly to the other patrons.  The conversation around this small bar was why she was covering up, and she said she was a teacher and she had to do it in school.  

Hmmm, this outlaw thinks: "not here too?  Bringing it back to the kiddies, are we, who bring it back to . . .?"

Fully self-conscious, this outlaw defiantly kept his mask on, approached the humorless, unmasked bartender leaning close in to hear, ordered the pizzas, and mentioned he would wait outside.   Payment tendered, the cowboy turns and exits the scene, discomforted, but capturing in this exchange the essence of this frontier.  

Oh, the pizza was very good, distanced, in our small motel room.