Who Was That Masked Man?

When I first started at the paper mill, there was a lot of paper dust floating around in the air.  It was so thick that it accumulated on anything horizontal and had to be blown off with an air hose periodically because it became a fire hazard.  We later got an HVAC system that pulled most of the dust out of the air, which was a big improvement, but we still had to blow off the ceiling beams occasionally.  We had to wear surgical type masks when we were blowing, but I didn't know about them the first time I was involved, so I made a mask out of my bandana handkerchief like the bad guys used to do when they were robbing the Wells Fargo stage coaches.  Actually, the good guys wore them too whenever they encountered dusty conditions on the trail, but not everybody knows that.  Meanwhile, back at the paper mill, when the foreman saw me wearing my homemade mask, he told me to wear one of those store bought masks instead.  I thought my homemade mask was more effective, but rules is rules.

When the corona hit the fan, any stores that sold masks quickly ran out of them.  They told us on the TV news that those surgical type masks won't stop the virus anyway, for that you need a special M-95 mask, and they asked people who had any of those to donate them to the hospital because they need it more than you do.  At some point people started making those cloth masks, but I didn't know where to get one so, when they made wearing masks in public places mandatory, I resorted to my old cowboy mask and showed my wife how to make one for herself.  I still think it works better than those surgical masks, but wearing one is more uncomfortable than I remember it to be.  Either they are making bandanas smaller than they used to or my head has gotten bigger than it used to be.  Be that as it may,  we have each worn our masks a couple of times and decided that we would only wear them when we had to.  Last I heard, only one store in town was enforcing it, but more of them might be by now.  We don't intend to argue with anybody about it, but we won't put one on unless somebody tells us to.  If I still had a job, or if I spent more time in town than I do, I suppose I would try to find one of those cloth masks but, for the little use it will get, it hardly seems worth the effort.

Cheboygan County has not reported a new corona case for as week or so, and our single death occurred more than a month ago.  Most of the counties in our region report similar numbers, except for Otsego, our neighbor to the south.  They have reported almost a hundred cases and five or six deaths.  I seem to remember that their first case was a missionary who had just come home from Africa.  Too bad he didn't stay there.