Reflections in a Pandemic Story by Willa Thorpe, photos by Kirksey Smith
Only now have I begun to realize how little of me my house contains. Watching the container of ketchup drain, I contemplate which among my things are homemade, which will last my lifetime, and which will be trash tomorrow. If I went to town but once a year, would the ketchup be the first thing to run out? Or would I savor it knowing it was finite? My husband and I measure wealth in skills acquired. Once ashamed of my generalist tendencies, the older I grow, the more comfort I feel with our skills. When we are homebound on the ranch, I take pleasure in the simplicity of choices. When we don’t have ketchup, we don’t make hot dogs for the kids. What we cannot make, or do not want to make, we do without. When we do go to town it feels celebratory, a chance to wear sandals. The closest town to us, Tucumcari, is about 45 miles due east on I-40. Its once bustling life along Route 66 is now remembered one weekend each May. “Route 66 Days” commemorates the town’s heritage as more than a gas station pit stop for cross-country travelers. If you drove the main drag, you could gather a diversity of ketchup packets from fast food chains. By far the most profitable businesses are the feed store and the one sit-down diner with a three-foot salad bar. If your curiosity pulled you further into town, you would find very few thriving businesses beyond what is essential. There are more available buildings and store fronts than operating stores, more homes than people that need them. The emptiness has been boarded up, leaving behind the skeleton of a more prosperous time. In March of this year, the U.S. realized the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic. The governor of New Mexico decided to close all “nonessential businesses.” And suddenly, the national cityscape shifted. After sending home countless workers and boarding up miles of strip malls, the average U.S. city began to look a lot like our town in the country. We all got a firsthand feel of rural America: of what it’s like to walk out your door every day and see life unoccupied, to wonder which one of our favorite places will make it. We sat by, watching our consumer culture vaporize. As if a sign appeared that read: “Welcome to rural America, where this has been happening for decades.” 12
