Bob Bell's Letter From a Quarantined America
Bob’s been working on a Jeep
The streets are deserted, save for the occasional walker or runner. They pass and wave, and we wave back, uttering some plague referenced pleasantry, and the road is empty again. The road we live on is narrow, and the people that live here park their cars half on the sidewalk to avoid getting sideswiped by speeding lunatics. These days speeding lunatics are few and far between, but nearly everyone is home, all day, and so the sidewalks are clogged with vehicles. It is easier to walk in the road, especially in view of the fact that there is scarcely any traffic. And so that is what we do.
With all this unaccustomed spare time, one would expect to see folks out in their gardens, catching up on all the little tasks that spring engenders, trying to keep abreast of the fecundities of the season, but no, the front yards are oddly vacant. Shadows might be seen behind gauzy curtains or the otherworldly flicker of a television screen, but in the main, all is silent and still.
A car passes, shattering the silence with the rattling rumble of bass speakers in the trunk, and the staccato voice of a rap artist, declaiming a story of injustice, replete with a string of n-words and f-words, and Ella Fitzgerald’s memorable line comes to mind - ‘That’s not music, it is recitation’ - and I remind myself of how times and cultures change and morph as the years go by, and get to thinking about our old music teacher at Peter Symonds School in Winchester, back in the ’50s. Mr. Perkins, and how he absolutely hated, hated, hated rock and roll. Once or twice a term, he would encourage us to bring records to class, and he’d play them in a sort of Juke Box Jury manner, commenting and critiquing them. He was tolerant of what my friends and I derisively termed ‘pop fodder’ such as Craig Douglas or Cliff Richard, but upon hearing Little Richard or Fats Domino, he’d go into a red-faced frenzy of apoplectic rage, decrying the ‘animalistic and anarchic’ qualities of the recording. Guess he was probably a bit of a racist because it seems obvious, both back then and from the perspective of today, that the skill and finesse of the New Orleans musicians involved in making those records were really way up there. Certainly, anyone with a taste and appreciation for jazz would see that, most especially if they were, like he was, a musician. But then what to make of that rumbling and rattling rap car that had just passed? Have I become Mr. Perkins?
Sure hope not, but that is what the signs are indicating.
As we walk north, the houses to the right of us loom high on the side of the eastward hill, and a smattering of people wave from the safety of their gardens. Too far away to talk, all we can do is wave back and smile. There is this to it, a certain new friendliness is in the air, a desire to communicate, even if it is at a distance. A cyclist rides by, be-masked, which is perhaps for the greater good, as she can inadvertently get close to pedestrians at intersections where she has to slow, and put a foot down. My wife and I walk on. We have masks with us but are not wearing them. If we see people ahead coming our way, either we or they cross the street, self-consciously waving to one another as we pass, many yards apart. When I worked construction I often had to wear a mask, construction being a dirty and hazardous trade, and I hated it, both construction and the mask bit. The mask made it hard to breathe, and every time I exhaled my glasses steamed up. Inversely, every time I inhaled, the fog cleared. And after an hour or so of wearing the wretched thing, my breath made the inside of it stink. A gorilla's armpit is the phrase that springs to mind. Thus I am not much a mask fan, although of course, I understand the mechanics of the thing, particularly right now. So we carry them with us and put them on if we get close to folks, or visit the grocery store or Post Office.
After fifteen minutes of walking, we turn and retrace our steps, returning home. A delivery truck passes by, and we wave to the driver. He’s the UPS guy who delivers to our house. Well, not just us of course, His job is to deliver to one and all, but I know him from days spent earlier in the year, back in those halcyon pre-plague years, when I was working on my wife’s 1951 Willys jeep in the garage, and he’d pull up with a package of parts. He'd disembark from his big brown truck, and approach me with the parcel, saying ‘Parts from the Jeep Factory’ and we'd both laugh, and he’d inspect the latest development I had made in restoring this ageing old jeep. Those days seem far-off now, and on the odd times I would be in the garage when he turned up, we’d both maintain the required distance. For me, it would be a once in day meeting with him, but for him, he had those encounters every few minutes. Talk about being on the front lines.
On the return, traffic is just a sparse as it was on the outward bound leg. As is the foot traffic. A couple of neighbours go by, on the other side of the road. We’ve seen them for years, but don’t know their names, nor which house they live in. We do the obligatory wave and leave each other behind.
A pile of broken glass lies at the curb, witness and evidence of some jerk breaking into a car. We’ve heard that crime is down around Oakland, but if it is down, it is evidently not out. The sight of it casts a pall on our walk, and all the nice things we have been trying to concentrate on during this little urban sojourn dissipate, and I inwardly long for the solitude of the Brendon Hills, and Britt no doubt for some sylvan corner of Sweden.
Our mood is lightened by the sound of our kitten, Rosa, who greets us as we approach home. She doesn’t ‘me-ow’ so much as simply ‘ows’ - no sense of the id with her. She adopted us a few months ago, a stray, who looks like she escaped fully developed from a kitten poster. She’s a little sweetie, even though she does from time to time take a pee in one of the houseplants.
We unlock the gate and ascend the steps, Rosa darting between our legs, as she races for the front door. Going into the house means food, and she never tires of going through that door.
Britt and I pause before entering, standing there on our deck, looking out over the San Francisco Bay. The usual roar of traffic is subdued, the far side of the bay unusually clear.
It smells like a spring day.
