This is not a story about Andy Griffith.
Saturday morning, October 17, almost six months into 2020’s ongoing pandemic, Crystal and I made a dump run. The day before, we’d cleaned out our storage shed, sorted through our disarray of Christmas decorations, and separated everything into three piles: keep, giveaway, throwaway. The third pile ended up filling three giant trash bags and the bed of our Nissan. So, loaded down like latter day Clampetts, we set out through town.
With the election upon us, it’s sign season, right? They grow along the roadside like weird mushrooms, touting everything from county commissioner races between small-town candidates to U.S. Senate candidates to the Main Event itself. There is, of course, no dearth of Trump/Pence signs here in rural Middle Georgia—no big surprise—but, thanks to the efforts of the Bleckley County Democrats (of whom my wife is a member), there’s also a fresh crop of Biden/Harris signs—many of which, inevitably, are being stolen from yards. Anyway, signs, signs, everywhere are signs. I notice them, read them, marvel at them—the motivations behind putting them in the ground, the furor they engender, the complex messaging they entail.
On Saturday, though, I saw one that literally stopped our Nissan in the street. Or, rather, it was the police officer directing traffic who stopped us, gave us time to really take it all in. “Harvest Festival,” this sign read, over a smiling Jack-O-Lantern. “October 15, 16, 17.”
“You’re kidding,” Crystal and I said, almost in unison.
The return view of the festival. Note the hill in the upper left. Lots of public toilets.
Sure enough, there was the crowded parking lot, the families unloading their SUVs, the crowds up on the hill behind the Bleckley County elementary school. Tents, vendors. A massive, unmasked crowd, all using the same phalanx of port-a-johns.
This, of course, would have been day three of the festivities.
We drove on quietly. Went to the dump. It was busy. We were the only people wearing masks. We drove home, passing the festival again, still in full swing.
Adjacent to the school grounds, I noticed the empty parking lot of a local pediatrician’s office, a man much loved by the community, whose father is currently hospitalized with covid-19; he’s fighting for his life. A giant sign stood in front of the pediatrician’s office: “Biden/Harris 2020.”
Two cars—a van, a pickup—had ignored the little orange “No Parking” cones set out. They’d parked on the doc’s grass.
***
I have these anxiety dreams, dreams in which I either forget to take my mask into a public place, or I’m the only person wearing one. Part of life in the Age of Covid, I guess, but there is that segment of the population who don’t seem to suffer the same anxieties—or bear the same civil responsibilities to others, isn’t there?
God, it’s maddening.
Crystal and I often talk about feeling gaslit by the world. I try to remind myself that it’s just Middle Georgia, the South, the Red Sea in which we swim. Or tread water. Or, some days, seem to drown. You wear your mask; you do your part. Not out of some half-assed political ideology, no, but because the CDC says you should. This is our outlook on the world: follow the rules when the rules make sense. We’ve done it since March. We’ve grocery shopped in masks. We’ve mailed packages in masks. We’ve marched in the streets in masks. We’ve taught our classes in masks. And we’ve managed to stay healthy, as all around us friends and family have gotten sick. Some have died. And yet: the world casts back such a weird, opposite point of view, and on some days, well, we can’t help wondering if we’ve lost our own damn minds. Some people—some friends, some family—would say we have. They’d say we’ve bought into some liberal conspiracy, believed the lies of the liberal media, etc.
But, you know what? That’s tired bullshit.
People on the left, the right, the middle (if such a place exists anymore)—we’ve all suffered in some very real way from this pandemic, be it economical, physical, or psychological hardship. And here’s a truth: that suffering has only been magnified by the long, slow vampirism of Donald Trump’s presidency, which holds no regard for truth or honesty. He’s drained our democracy of its vibrancy, left it a pale, anemic shadow of what it was. Witness the horror show of his racist, ludicrous Macon rally, just a couple days ago, right up the road from here: a massive public gathering endorsed in such a cavalier, careless fashion, only to gin up voters who already believe in his platform, who spill into Georgia from places as far flung as Ohio, just to get a thirtieth glimpse of him in person, and in so doing participate in the active gaslighting of a nation suffering from catastrophic grief and death.
Like that Harvest Festival.
It struck me hard yesterday: here is the place I live, a community united in defiance of good ideas, of sound principles, of care for one another. They’d all protest otherwise, if asked, of course. Cochran loves to fancy itself some kind of idyllic Mayberry, and if you’re affluent and white, I suppose it may seem that way, on the good days. If you’re Hispanic, or Black, or just poor white folks, well, not so much. Scratch the surface of that good cheer, that community love, you find the stuff of horror: bigotry, violence, denial, anger, and ignorance. Especially that—militant, willful ignorance.
Just one more kind of sign, I suppose. Right there on the side of the road.
No wonder people want to tear them out of the earth.