Opinion

Time for life to get back to normal

Tuesday, May 19, 2020

Your old columnist thinks that the time has come. It is time to get life back to normal after the COVOD-19 shutdown. Admittedly we in Nebraska didn’t have it nearly as bad as the poor souls living crowded in highly populated areas like New York City. Their choice, but one size doesn’t fit all either.

Part of my mindset comes from having been a farmer. When it is time to plant, the farmer goes out to plant. He has prepared the ground, lined up the seed, applied the fertilizer and hits the best window on the calendar. He does not need guidance or dictates on high as to when it is best to plant or what kind of seed or what fertilizer or what machinery to use. It is the farmer that is making the investment and his judgement is what counts. So it goes with any business owner. It is his investment and his decision not for some socialist leaning other person in charge with no money stake in the game.

Grannie Annie and I attended church, in the building, the past two Sundays. It was so good to be back in person and see a few of our friends. The number attending was way down, miniscule, from what is normal. For the past couple of months Grannie and I have been sitting together on the sofa listening to our pastor, and others too, via our iPads tuned to social media. Supposedly the numbers of people tuned into church that way, tele-church(?), has been higher than the numbers that regularly physically attend. One can only hope. Still it isn’t the same because greeting friends is part of the whole church experience in this couple’s book.

Yes our pastors and staff are complying with a multi-page memo that came down from the faith’s bishop and his staff. Maintain social distancing, use only every other pew, everybody wear a face mask (might skip that one a little), don’t sit close beside others, don’t pass the collection plate, remove all the books from the pews, and the list goes on and on. Five pages worth. No mention to just use good sense. All just rules to follow dictated by someone who probably has never even set foot into our church building.

Okay that is the way with most things we deal with in day to day living. Someone has decreed that first restaurants can’t be open at all. Carry out is the way to go. Then supposedly from our Governor but probably one of his experts a restaurant can open if the patrons are seated six feet apart or is that ten feet? Then the wait-person has to wear a mask as they get closer bringing your food to you. Those are minimum requirements and probably there are more gotchas in the authorization to open. Nowhere is there any suggestion that we as customers step into a restaurant and see things we don’t like, for instance a sneezing waitperson, we can’t turn around and leave. Same thing if we the customer object to a too crowded place we can always turn around and be gone. For sure if the proprietor sees too many customers backing out after initially coming in to dine, things will change for the better.

I still think that President Trump was acting wisely to shut down visitors/immigrants from China when the new novel coronavirus was discovered to be highly contagious and carried a pretty high death rate. He, through his staff, put the word out that persons would be wise to stay at home, “shelter in place” they called it.

We the public paid attention and adopted a way of living, travel, community that we thought was the best way to avoid contacting the disease.

That all worked fine for a week or so then being as we are a democratic republic the powers that be in state and local government decided to create and enforce a whole new set of rules for us lesser beings to abide by.

As such things go the new sense of power created a lot of dictates that made living much more difficult. Close the restaurants, close the salons for personal care, close this close that. Cancel elective surgeries and make the hospital starve.

Whether or not those actions stopped the spread of the virus or was effective in reducing the rate of death from the virus has not been proven one way or the other. Now that the crisis is pretty well passed by, it is tough to give up the power of making people obey your dictates and let things get back to normal again. So it goes until the next election!

This past week your columnist had a chance to ride along in a pretty capable airplane on a trip to Denver then on to Omaha and return. Oh it was great to climb above the clouds and back to flying in the still smooth air of high altitude. It was sad to see so few business aircraft, corporate jets etc. sitting on the ramp in front of the two FBOs, the businesses at an airport that tend to visiting aircraft. The lobbies were nearly deserted. The wonderful restaurant upstairs overlooking the ramp, the runways, over the city of Denver with the Rockies for a background was of course closed. Almost strange feeling.

It was also a bit strange to find the radio chatter for takeoff and landing and especially at altitude to be strangely quiet. I was reminded a bit of getting airborne again flying from Kansas City back to McCook three days after the nationwide shutdown following 9/11/2001. Quiet.

Today, as I write this on Monday, was a red letter day for this old KC-135 Tanker pilot. Grannie and I parked north of the hospital and watched the bird from the Nebraska Air Guard appear, fly past and head for North Platte. Some 3000 hours of flight time I’ve logged in that airplane, the best I’ve ever flown.

Lots of hours teaching others to fly it and eventually a Squadron Commander with 20 of the airframes and crews assigned. Wonderful memories and such a thrill to watch it float by in honor or all our local Health Care Workers that are so lovingly looking after us day by day.

That is the way I saw it.

Dick Trail

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  • He states - " Now that the crisis is pretty well passed by,". It is not pretty well passed by. Best to be cautious. It's a nasty virus. It affects much more than just the lungs. It's very contagious as well.

    -- Posted by bob s on Wed, May 20, 2020, at 10:40 AM
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