Last spring, many of the folks living in rural America watched in horror as the pandemic raced through major urban areas–but thought they would be safe. That has now changed. Kathryn Jones tells her story in Texas Monthly.
“The pandemic felt so far away out here. My husband and I live eight miles south of Glen Rose—the nearest town of any size—barely over the Somervell-Bosque county line. Our house sits a mile and a half off Texas Highway 144, past two ranch gates and cattle guards, and at the end of a winding, up-and-down gravel road that leads to a ridgetop. There are no other houses in sight, just a wide western view of layered blue mesas.”
Kathryn and her husband followed the rules–even though many in her sparsely populated county did not. Katheryn rarely went to town, but when she did, she wore a mask and vinyl gloves at the grocery store and for a trip to the courthouse to vote. After a week of rationalizing the telltale symptoms (low fever, dull headache, sudden loss of smell and taste) she went in to the local hospital to be tested. She was positive.