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| Scene from a restaurant Mount Vernon, KY January 2020 This photo originally shared on Instagram |
And wherever we stopped, I took random pics. While there was no way to predict just how radically life was about to change, I'd like to think that some quiet voice was whispering in my ear, imploring me to just as quietly make a record of it all before the planet shuddered.
The universe can be sneaky like that, and we'd do well to listen.
We stopped at an otherwise unremarkable McDonald's in an otherwise unremarkable little place that the EXIF data on the photo tells me was - and presumably still is - Mount Vernon, Kentucky.
Time seemed to move more slowly here, and I wish we could have lingered longer. But you know how it is: The clock was ticking, and we had someplace faraway to go. Home.
Folks came in and greeted the staff by their first names. Customers idly chatted in the dining area, often meandering from table to table as more friends dropped by and settled in for a meal and a catch-up or three. The red-hatted gentleman at frame-left sat quietly, alone, by the window and stared wistfully toward the rolling hills across the parking lot as he nursed a coffee long enough to require another zap from the microwave. No one seemed to have anywhere else to go. Clocks and watches had no place here.
I thought about that McDonald's today, and wondered where everyone went when the pandemic forced it, and others like it, to close. I wondered when it reopened - if it reopened at all. And what folks in an isolated town of barely 2,400 would do if they lost their McD's for good.
Because to an outsider like me, it's just an unremarkable place to grab a bite before I've got to be somewhere else. But to the man in the red hat, it's something else entirely, and wherever he is today, I wish him - and the dining room bunch - well.
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You are intuitive to realize that such a common meeting place can be the heart of a small town. I remember our A&W was where all the teenagers hung out after school. Small towns may have small experiences but not small hearts.
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