Chapter 13: Plexiglass (5/26)
And U-Hauls Everywhere
Things are starting to re-open, but the madness has driven people to pretend of be convinced think sheets of plexiglass will somehow repel a monumentally microscopic virus.
So especially the stores and restaurants and such are starting to come in and buy up our plexiglass. The Health Authorities have dictated that if you hang a sheet of plexiglass between you and the customer (as they hand you a dollar bill, say) you are protected. So they come in and buy all our plexiglass.
At the store itself we have installed a sheet of plexiglass between ourselves and the customer, so it is as if we are working in a penalty box.
We never really sold plexiglass before, and it is not cheap. So—like everything that has thus far happened—our bottom line is increasing significantly.
In fact, the public psychosis led to a banner year for hardware stores, especially a little one like ours.
We hardly ever sold plexiglass to begin with, and now, plexiglass has become a matter of life and death.
So it’s sold out now. (That’s how this account works, you see).
If it hasn’t been made clear yet, we have been open throughout the madness, and we were one of only three places open in the community. You could still go to the liquor store (now filled with drunks), the lottery (aka “convenience”) store … and us.
It was extra-ordinary.
What is smashing-ly obvious was that the government kept you open if you were one of the main places they extracted money from.
So, weed stores had to remain open, of course.
And already people are leaving the city.
This being the end of the month, U-Hauls are everywhere. “I’ve seen six in the last hour” a customer says, and he is right. They are swarming the neighborhood.
So I post about this phenomenon on the internet … and The Covidians refute me.
“You’re a liar!” they say. “No one is leaving town,” as if my own eyes deceive me. Most people are moving to the suburbs, but, as we will see in the next few chapters, many are leaving for The Open Lands—far, far away.
As I mentioned in the very beginning, they have an “Evacuation Day” in Boston. “Evacuation Day” is historically when we took on the British crown. Colloquially, it represents when the locals escape town because the St. Patrick’s Day parade is the next day (when Southie becomes overrun by thousands of drunk people throwing up in the streets).
But I’d call May 31st, 2020 a new evacuation day … When hundreds (if not thousands) of people escaped the Mad, Mad, City.
Addendum: As a former Editor-In-Chief—who made a regular habit of criticizing the press—I’ve noticed that the press by and large are implicit in the horror and fear-mongering. It might have been this week or the last but the Boston Globe (along with the New York Times and many other (?) local papers) ran obituaries this week. The whole paper was stacked with obituaries.
In our next installment, we’ll meet the people who have remained in town and their one and only friend:
