COVID Is Everywhere, Even in "the Last COVID-Free County"

[TexasTowelie]

Mentone, the only semblance of a town in Loving County, is mostly quiet in mid-afternoon. The silence is broken only by the intermittent screech of brakes from big rigs trying to will their heavy loads to a stop before making the 90-degree turn north onto County Road 300. They’re headed into the heart of nowhere. Soon they’ll turn off the asphalt onto an oil patch road, kicking up clouds of caliche dust toward a sky that’s as high as it is empty.

With 169 souls calling this parched West Texas frontier home, Loving County is the least populated county in the lower 48. You can take in all of Mentone from the porch of the post office; it takes longer to go through the checkout at H-E-B than it does to drive through the place. (Not that Mentone has an H-E-B, or any grocery store, for that matter. The nearest H-E-B is 75 miles away in Odessa.) If you happen to visit during a pandemic, when the town’s only men’s room is closed—and if you happen to need to attend to business that can’t be accomplished in a urinal—well, buddy, hope you can hold it till Orla. Loving is also the last county in the United States to have zero reported cases of COVID-19.

I visit Loving a few days before Halloween. It’s a little past noon on a Thursday, and county judge Skeet Lee Jones is holding court in the chow hall of the Target Logistics man camp just outside of Mentone, among its rows and rows of trailer homes rented by oil field companies to house their workers. When I ask Judge Jones about the pandemic, he lowers an onion ring and leans in across the table.

“Personally, I’m not scared,” Jones says. “But wearing the judge’s hat, I am extremely concerned, especially for the elderly and the ones that have preexisting conditions.” Despite his concern, the 69-year-old judge has avoided wielding the power of his office to enforce safety measures, opting instead to let the few local businesses and county department heads decide for themselves how to run their offices. “Me, in my office, I’m a little bit lax, which I probably shouldn’t be,” he admits. “But now over at the appraisal office, they take extreme precautions. Whenever somebody comes into the building, the staff wipes it down and they wear masks all the time.”

Read more: https://www.texasmonthly.com/being-texan/covid-loving-county/

[underpants]

1. What a wonderfully written article. Jones and Loving County seem to be taking this very seriously

which was reassuring to read. Very well written. Really painted the picture and read in a pace that seems to suit the environment itself.