It has been five months since our family business was declared non-essential. I struggle to remember all that has happened, and at the same time know that we should never forget.
I think this all started with a viral outbreak from China. Then came a quarantine because our leaders told us we would kill each other if we didn’t stay home and wear masks.
Then there was Governor Inslee’s economic shut down, and infamous essential vs. non-essential dictate sending small businesses in Washington State into a death spiral.
Then there were protests. Or was it looting? Or was it a riot? I don’t remember if the protest, looting, and riots were about the virus. Seems like it had something to do with justice, but the results were lawlessness. Everyone forgot about death by COVID when they could see there were no limitations placed on individuals when burning, beating, and looting.
Despite the problems elsewhere, there is good news for my Port Townsend family of four. With everything closed and nowhere to go, our monthly expenses were less than anticipated. The lack of a paycheck for months on end hasn’t decimated our savings as we thought it might, but we aren’t through this yet.
Our business is still alive. Paychecks may become a regular thing again. Looks like we will be able to pay our mortgage when it comes out of forbearance next month. We are still sorting, counting, and packaging product as a family around the kitchen table. My wife is still doing all the shipping.
I imagine our daily lives are somewhat like everyone else’s. The group gatherings, the summer travel, the festivals, the concerts by which we celebrate and recognize the mileposts in life have been cancelled. It has been hard to tell one week from the next.
I have tried to stay in touch with other families and friends in our community with some success, but so many people seem to have gone underground, only doing what they have to do, keeping to themselves, keeping their distance.
The unemployment process has worked for our former employees. With the added federal dollars, the government check was better than we could provide. What my wife has done over the last few months is to tear apart and rebuild our business so it can survive in unfriendly economic times. It is smaller, more efficient, and eventually will be able to operate from anywhere.
The business climate that motivated the rebuild had been developing for years, created primarily by elected officials who have rarely had to meet a payroll or balance a budget. The Wuhan Virus economic shut down just accelerated the process. In simple terms, state-mandated high minimum wages and mandatory time off for entry-level employees eliminates jobs. Not what we wanted to, but we are moving in the direction we have to go in order to survive.
I don’t know what Governor Jay Inslee is up to at this point, and I don’t care. Over the last several months he has demonstrated complete disregard for the small business owners of his state. All I can conclude, if he wins a third term as governor, is that the people of Washington no longer expect much from their elected officials.
School is supposed to start on September 8th. Families were asked to commit through the end of November to either an on-line version, or a couple of days of the week in school and a couple of days online.
The schools have made a massive effort to be ready. I have confidence in the teachers. I want my kids in a classroom with their peers. Yet, I have seen the damage done to the mental state of my fellow citizens. I would rather not put my kids into the pressure cooker that I expect the next few months to be, so online school is our choice.
All of us have witnessed the clear dividing line in this town during this experience. Many if not all of the don’t-open-up crowd either didn’t need one or haven’t gone without a paycheck. I was shocked to hear good citizens of independent means tell me that the people of our town should go without work for months so that they could feel safe.
The hardest thing about living in Port Townsend over the last several months hasn’t been the pandemic or the economic crisis. It has been the politics.
If a person does not march in lockstep with the prevailing opinion, that person risks becoming an outcast. Everyone assumes you agree with the prevailing opinion because you are here. Why would you be here if you didn’t agree with the prevailing opinion?
A person has to watch what they say, what they do, where they are seen, and who they associate with. God help this person if they put the wrong campaign sign in their yard. God help this person if they are seen at the wrong protest, or not seen at the right protest. If an individual hazards to make it known that they might support a candidate or concept that stands for anything but the prevailing opinion, they risk a verbal assault of vulgarities screamed in their face. Those less “passionate”–those who won’t scream at you–will just no longer acknowledge your existence. They will look right through you as you pass them on the street.
We all have roles to play in the future of Port Townsend. If we follow the model fed us by the establishment media we will continue down the road to an insular community of close-minded individuals. I would like to think that Port Townsend would resist this prospect, but it may be too late.
Related: Part 1 of this series, “Life in Port Townsend for a Family with a ‘Non-Essential’ Business”
Brett Nunn has spent the last two decades in Port Townsend’s Uptown, raising a family, volunteering at local schools and wandering the outdoors. He writes about survival, community and culture. He is the author of the book, “Panic Rising: True-Life Survivor Tales from the Great Outdoors.”
I believe it is beyond too late to recapture the Port Townsend and Jefferson County I recall from decades past. The core of Marxist Gray Ponytails and their useful idiot followers have overwhelmed or driven out the middle class working families that dominated the culture and politics of JeffCo when I moved here from Poulsbo about 40 years ago. There is no use trying to reason with hardcore leftists or attempt to broker a truce with them. Just as in America’s cities it is their way or the highway. For the time being we have chosen to hunker down, avoid Port Townsend like the plague it has become, shop and conduct business in Sequim or Poulsbo (we went to Sequim today) and enjoy the natural beauty of rural Jefferson County. If at some point it becomes intolerable we will probably move to the Idaho panhandle to be near my daughter and her family who live in the Spokane area.