Delivery

Delivery trucks are up and down our street all day—USPS, Amazon, UPS, FedEx, etc. And we all know why, of course: COVID-19 is keeping many of us at home, and it’s just safer to have that toothpaste delivered from Amazon (as I did yesterday) than to venture out to a store where a no-masker, perhaps carrying a rifle, will sneeze in your face and call you a coward.

Not that I’ve ever seen such a thing in our local Acme Fresh Market—but I do see lots of unmasked people—men, women, parents-with-children, etc. Alarming.

And so I think of The Lone Ranger, that show on radio and TV that I loved as a kid. When we lived in Amarillo, Tex., in 1952–53, we had no TV reception—so it was Radio Time. And, later on, back in media-rich Oklahoma (!),  I’m sure I saw all the episodes (multiple times) of the TV series that ran from 1949–57.

I even loved that recent Gore Verbinski film about the Ranger (2013) with Armie Hammer and Johnny Depp. (Most critics did not like it.)  In fact, when that familiar music from William Tell began late in the film, I wept! (Shows what's happening to me in my, uh, Later Years.)  (Link to film trailer.)

Anyway, in lots of the TV shows, near the end, as the Lone Ranger rode away (having solved the problem of the episode), one of the characters would ask another, “Who was that masked man?” And when the reply came, the theme music returned again, and the credits rolled.

Now, there are masked men (and women and children) everywhere, and the question now has altered to become: “Who is that unmasked man?” And a funeral dirge commences.

I know not many of us really like being told what to do—I certainly didn’t as a kid (and later). I get that part.

What I don’t understand is why so many people now flagrantly disobey a requirement to protect their own health and the health of others. I know that there’s lots of activity on Facebook and other social media—posts and memes and the like—that roar about oppression and fake news and libtard conspiracies, conspiracies that have grown ever more bizarre as the lockdown period has progressed.

Some apparently  believe that this is all a deep-state/Democratic plan to take down President Trump—as if those of us who oppose him would engineer and circulate a deadly virus (killing some we know and love), that would wreck the economy (putting millions out of work), that would sink us into a 1930s kind of depression, that would destroy local business, that would …

But here's the simple truth: The virus does not care about our politics, our conspiracies. It just arrives, sickens, spreads, and, in tens of thousands of cases here in America, kills.

The opening of The Lone Ranger TV show has a bit about “the thrilling days of yesteryear.” I’m thinking I’d like to dial it back, return to 1952, where I'm about 8, lying by a radio, listening delightedly as the Lone Ranger solves another one. I had no fears then. I certainly do now.

And I could use the Ranger--right now.

Link to video of opening and closing of The Lone Ranger.


NOTE: Many complete episodes are on YouTube.