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Published Oct 16, 2020
Food For Thought, presented by The Iron Horse Grill: Bittersweet Saturday
Neal McCready  •  RebelGrove
Publisher

I haven't been to Fayetteville since driving there on Friday, March 13.

On that day, my daughter, Caroline, turned 17, but I didn't get to celebrate with her.

The day before, my other daughter, Campbell, had driven from Fayetteville, where she was a freshman at the University of Arkansas, to Oxford. She had planned a surprise party for Caroline on Friday night at a restaurant in Oxford.

On the way home, however, Campbell learned that the university was switching to online-only classes for the remainder of the school year due to concerns over the emerging COVID-19 pandemic.

After a somber Thursday night, she got back in her car early Friday and returned to Fayetteville to pack her things and share one last Friday night with her roommate, Parker Shearon, and with the wonderful group of friends she had made in her first year as a Razorback.

I drove up later that day, spent the night at a hotel, packed her things into my truck and drove home, my heart heavy. I'm not sure I'll ever get that day in Reid Hall completely out of my mind. Those 18- and 19-year-old girls were confused. Some were scared. Many either were in tears or their eyes were red-rimmed. A college year isn't supposed to end in the middle of March on a cold, wet day. It's supposed to end in mid-May, in the warmth of late spring/early summer, ready for a break but eager to return in August.

One thing that lent me peace -- and I wrote about it on that Friday morning before leaving for Fayetteville -- was the hope that we'd all be back to normal in time for the Ole Miss-Arkansas football game scheduled for Nov. 14 in Fayetteville. I kept thinking about that day, picturing a gorgeous, crisp afternoon in northwest Arkansas. I never tailgate but I planned to do something along those lines that day. Maybe I'd get my parents to come. Maybe we'd rent an AirBNB and throw a party of sorts that night after the game. The thought was comforting during an otherwise heavy time.

Things didn't exactly work out. Ole Miss will play at Arkansas Saturday. The Southeastern Conference, as you likely know by now, is playing a 10-game, conference-only season this year and the Rebels' date with the Hogs was moved up a month or so. Both teams are 1-2. Both teams are much improved. Both new coaches, Ole Miss' Lane Kiffin and Arkansas' Sam Pittman, seem to be perfect fits at their new homes. I'm happy for both fan bases. As someone who now has ties to both schools, I enjoy seeing them doing well.

The weather forecast -- sunny, high of 69 -- is perfect. And nice. Go ahead and make the joke; we all need a laugh these days. Several of Campbell's Ole Miss friends are making the trip up. Some even took a spin class Thursday night at the studio where Campbell teaches in Fayetteville. That makes me happy.

The normalcy stops there, though. Stadiums are socially distanced, making tickets difficult to come by and the experience less than what we've come to expect. Masks are required and officials (and the omnipresent Karens) are patrolling, looking for offenders. Our country feels so much more divided today than it did on March 14 in Reid Hall. A presidential election -- and all sorts of potential accompanying controversy -- looms in the coming weeks.

Some people -- hand raised -- are over the pandemic. I've had the virus and my experience was fairly pleasant. My worst symptom was a lingering metallic taste in my mouth that led me to switch from coffee to tea for a while and ended my fairly brief romance with pinot noirs. I'm now wearing a mask to protect others' feelings. I don't have the virus and can't get it -- at least for a few months, but if I stop at the grocery store or the package store, I fish a nasty cloth face covering out of my truck's console and put it on.

I don't go anywhere else. I haven't eaten at an Oxford establishment since late February and likely won't until we've returned to something resembling normalcy. For me, it's two-fold. I don't think it's worth the trouble and I've lost trust in local and state officials, if I'm honest. I personally don't think the science supports their decisions, so I stay home even more now than I did before. It's not protest; it's surrender.

The pandemic has cost me friends and altered associations -- likely for good. I doubt my experience is unique, and the Internet supports that suspicion.

And I'll admit there's a part of me that occasionally wonders if I'm wrong, even if just a little bit. Maybe the pandemic is worse than I'm giving it credit for. Maybe I should be more afraid. Maybe I should be more empathetic to those who are. Maybe leaders are truly worried about the citizenry and not just liability.

I don't know. I'm a natural cynic, and I'm a small-government guy, so it's been tough sledding for me as spring turned to summer and summer turned to fall and officials talk about these measures continuing well into 2021 and beyond. At this point, I'm just hoping for a return to normal by next August, but I have no doubt we're all permanently scarred.

I'll be in Oxford Saturday, "covering" the Rebels and the Razorbacks remotely via the SEC Network and later, Zoom. I'll have my son, Carson, with me. The rest of my family will be in Fayetteville.

Campbell is there, of course, even though all her classes are virtual. She needed to be there this fall for her mental health. She's living in the Chi Omega house and she's with her friends, even though her sophomore year is devoid of functions and far less fulfilling than the first seven. months of her freshman year.

My wife, Laura, is taking Caroline there today to meet some of her new friends. As of now, she's planning to enroll at Arkansas in August, meaning I get another chance to climb the steps inside Reid -- hopefully without a mask.

Like I said in March, I'll cheer Saturday for a good game devoid of injuries. I'll cheer for health for both teams. May the best team win. I'll cheer for all of those traveling to Fayetteville to have a fun weekend and a safe trip home.

Mostly, though, I'll be cheering for normalcy. Surely, when Ole Miss returns to Fayetteville in 2022, when Campbell is a senior and Caroline a sophomore, all of this COVID chaos will be a distant memory.

I can't imagine that it won't be, and that brings me comfort.

Then again, I didn't think in March that this weekend would look like this, and that thought, frankly, is more sobering than I'd like to admit.

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