Don't Talk To A Dummy

Geno Lawrenzi 05:05 Jun 26th, 2020 Land Based

I just drove across America, a distance of over 1,500 miles from Pittsburgh, PA. to Clovis, N.M., and I can assure you some changes are being made in the way our nation conducts business.

These days all Americans seem to be related to Jesse and Frank James or Billy the Kid. Meaning we all have to wear masks.

I pulled into a fast food restaurant in Amarillo, Tx. to order breakfast. A mask-wearing attendant was at a window to take my order and I began talking to her. She moved her lips but I couldn't hear a word she was saying. I thought she was a deaf mute.

I repeated my order and still no response. She gestured at me the way those folks on television gesture when they are trying to interpret a speech on television to people who cannot hear. That was when it occurred to me that the problem was not hers -- it was mine.

The reason I couldn't hear her was that my car window was down.

Red-faced with embarrassment, I lowered my window. She tilted her mask and smiled.

"I was beginning to wonder when you would see the light," she said. "Order, please?"

While the number of cars traveling across country was reduced because of Coronavirus, the flow of large semi-trucks transporting food and other produces to America's stores and supermarkets was sharply increased. The farther West I drove, the lower the price of gasoline was. Indeed, gas per gallon dropped from around $2.40 to $1.79 in the Midwest.

Restaurants like Red Lobster are opening with limited menus the farther West I get. Although employees wear masks, customers can be mask-free which is a blessing when it comes to dining. Such was not the case when I stopped at Starbucks. There I had to wear a mask.

Driving through Joplin, Mo., I decided to stop at Downstream Casino to play some poker. A masked worker met me at the door and held up a large thermometer to take my temperature. Before I allowed her to do that, I asked if the poker room was open. She politely informed me it was not.

"Sorry," I said. "If you aren't dealing poker, I'm not interested in entering your casino." I left and kept driving.

Casinos are in the process of opening in the various states, but it is going to take time to get them running smoothly. My late friend Dave Molina had a favorite saying that went, "This, too, shall pass," and it will. But it takes time.

I am temporarily living in Clovis, a cattle town in eastern New Mexico. Clovis was where I worked for the Clovis News-Journal in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was shot. It has grown to about 15,000 population. I liked the city then and I like it now. The people are still friendly and the town has some excellent Mexican restaurants as well as a restaurant called Chili's, where they serve the tastiest soups you can imagine. I will go back there any time.

I stopped at a Western clothing store and replenished part of my wardrobe, buying a suit, pair of leather boots and a shirt. While I was doing some window shopping around the store, I stopped to talk to an individual standing next to a counter. I talked to this person for a couple of minutes. I waited for a response, but none came. I started to repeat my words. I noticed two salesgirls smiling at me, one suppressing giggles. Then I found out why.

I had been talking to a mannequin.

"Now you know who the real dummy is," I said. 

They could not control their laughter. Yes, I was back in New Mexico.

I am eager to get on to Arizona and Las Vegas. But I am in no great hurry to leave New Mexico. Billy the Kid is buried in a cemetery in Ft. Sumner, about 150 miles from Clovis, and there is quarter horse racing in Ruidoso. They are also trying to re-establish the gambling casinos in Ruidoso, Albuquerque and Santa Fe. 

Hey, this is the Southwest and in this prairie country, the action never dies.