Trip to Fantasy Land

Friday the 13^th I decided I had to get away from the cell phone, computer, people, and heat, so I headed up north.  Shortly after noon, I hit Payson and stopped to eat. I missed the first café so I went to the second (Bee Line) but as I went to pull in, it had a sandwich board out front saying:  Make fish fry great again.  I drove on.

I turned the corner and stopped at the 260 Café.  On the door was a sign saying we sanitize and clean for everyone’s safety so I thought – OK this looks good.  I donned my mask and headed in – to find that though the place was nearly full, I was the only one wearing a mask. No customer, waitstaff, or cook masked up. I sat at the empty counter and ordered.  While I waited, I picked up the Payson Roundup newspaper.  At one point, I turned to a full-page article about an African-American military retiree and former police officer, David Marshall, pastor, Calvary Chapel since 2005, who moved to Snowflake and is now running for the state legislative seat of Walter Blackman.  According to the story, he spoke for over an hour to the Snowflake Tea Party meeting.

The reporter made the point at the beginning and end of the article that the talk was completely fact free and that it would take much more space than he had to correct and explain all the misinformation. The story reported that Marshall said hundreds of thousands people will be killed by the COVID vaccine; the Board of Supervisors in Navajo county should be impeached because they passed a resolution to make Navajo county a second amendment sanctuary but that wasn’t enough to prevent the Democrats from coming for your guns; 8.1 million fraudulent votes were cast in the 2020 election; Joe Biden is a Grand Wizard of the KKK and his goal is to start a race war; only 6% of Black Lives Matter members are Black and the rest are racists, socialists, Marxist; Biden and others are not getting the vaccine but saline injections because they know the vaccine will kill them; Trump won AZ and four other states; sex education is to teach your children how to be pedophiles or victims of pedophiles; critical race theory is teaching 5-year-old white kids that they are racists and owe compensation to 5-year-old black kids; everything Democrats do is racist; Susan Rice is really running the White House and reporting to Obama; Biden has obliterated the border to bring in 18 million voters for the Democrats; all the Board of Supervisors in Maricopa county should be jailed for refusing to immediately turn over paper the Senate demanded for the (fr)audit; such (fr)audits should be done nationally; new elections should be held; COVID vaccines have killed 42,000 people and that’s not all of it. This lunacy is endorsed by Senator Sylvia Allen, Payson Mayor Tom Morrissey, former felon and disgraced sheriff Joe Arpaio, Star Valley Counselor Andy McKinney, and Charlie Kirk, head of Turning Point. The food was good as it has always been.

Then off I went to Snowflake itself and stopped for gas at the quite busy Circle K.  Though it had  a “mask recommended” sign on the door, only I and two Native women had on masks. The young male staff had no mask at all, the woman was using hers as a neck decoration.

After a wonderful evening and morning visiting a friend in Pinetop, I headed to Walker. Again I had to stop in Payson to eat. On the door of Bashas, it said that for the safety of everyone, please wear a mask. Inside, about 50% of the customers had on masks. Of the staff, the young man in the deli had his mask around his chin and the woman who checked me out had no mask at all.  Where was the store manager?

From there I had a beautiful drive through Pine and Strawberry to Walker. My neighbor is a security officer and had to go to work at noon on Sunday because they were expecting a 500-person protest at Yavapai Hospital because of their new policy requiring staff to be vaccinated and visitors to wear masks. It’s nearly impossible to figure out the thought process behind protesting a policy in a hospital where there are sick people to try and protect them from other sicknesses. The mind is boggled. My neighbor returned at 3:45 p.m. so the 500-person protest must have fizzled.

Sunday morning my friend and I went to the Lynx Lake Café to find out it was closed because they could not find waitstaff (need immigrants?).  So we went to the Wildflower restaurant. Again on the door it said masks recommended but the only people wearing masks were the staff and me and my friend. An unmasked group came and sat right next to us outside.  We moved; they got offended and made some huffing and puffing noises.

I despaired that those living in more rural areas of the state are refusing to listen to science and prolonging the pandemic with its harmful health and economic consequences. Then I returned to Phoenix only to find that on Monday our delusional governor signed an order to reinforce prohibitions of local control by cities, towns and schools to protect their people from a deadly disease and public health hazard. Have we fallen into the rabbit hole?  We are not in Kansas anymore.