91. Remember--and wait

I got my first shot yesterday. I had a phone call last week setting up a 2:15 appointment this Tuesday. I showed up at Cloverleaf Hall at the Wallowa County Fairgrounds a few minutes early, got my ticket—a vaccination card with the date on it, got my shot at 2:10, then a piece of masking tape with “2:25” inked on it, got scheduled for the second shot on March 9, and took a seat alongside old friends to wait for 2:25.  

Cloverleaf Hall was a large and new metal building, built to replace an old fair hall that had burned, when I came 50 years ago. I first worked for the Extension Service, and set up tables and chairs in that building scores of times. I cannot count the fairs, dances, public meetings, 4-H meetings, and annual Cattlemen’s Balls that I have attended in that hall. 

 

But I remember the first one clearly. It was a “Sons of the Pioneers” concert. Lloyd Doss, then proprietor of the Imnaha Store and Tavern, was a Pioneer who no longer toured, but went to California to record with the group, and in this instance brought them here to take pictures for an album cover—and to perform at Cloverleaf Hall. The cowboys and cowgirls from up and down the Imnaha joined a huge crowd in welcoming the Pioneers, and the ceiling shook when Lloyd “Tommie” Doss was introduced in his cowboy finery. They were all dressed in fringe and color, and the matching hats floated over guitars and harmony, with Lloyd’s rich baritone easy to pick out.

 

They packed their equipment at midnight, but local vet Fred Bornstedt took the stage with his own guitar and own battered cowboy hat and sang and played as we sipped beer and booze that we’d openly carried in as the night wore on.

 

Yesterday was 50 or 51 years away from the Pioneers. Lloyd and Naomi Doss and Fred Bornstedt have passed on, and my older self waited, with other seniors in that place I danced young—to be sent home, to wait for a second shot. And to wait for some clearing in this national fog of Covid-19 that seems to grow closer to us in Wallowa County by the day. We’ve been lulled by our remoteness from the big scenes of overcrowded urban ER rooms and our own small numbers, watching the out-of-state license plates for almost a year now, wondering when our turn would come. Yesterday there were 7 new cases—a record. 

 

We wait, remember, and wait some more.