This column being the last in a series of 26 since early April. It’s time to reflect on some lasting impressions of these past six pandemic months and some guess-estimates about our future.

Mid-March, when Gov. Mills issued her executive order, Maine was essentially shut down. That first month, from the library to the Mousam bridge, Kennebunk’s Main Street, no cars at the curbs, looked like a ghost town. It mirrored scenes from the nuclear war aftermath films of the late ’60s, except there were no blowing tumbleweeds.

The owners of those dark and shuttered businesses, now with no business revenues, had their mortgage or rent payment due in two weeks and three days later, the town’s property tax had to be paid. They had to call their employees, telling many they’d be working from home now and some that their jobs were gone.

The national and state guidelines though exempted the Big Box stores. Crowds of shoppers lined up in the winter cold each day, waiting their turn to enter what would be for three long months unfettered retail monopolies, thanks to government decision makers.

Despite economic uncertainty and record high unemployment, Americans fired up their computers and Amazon and the other e-commerce giants reaped a pandemic bonanza. E-commerce had already become a boa constrictor slowly squeezing the Main Street little guys to death. The three-month forced closure of these small businesses has accelerated their demise and will dramatically reduce the number of small businesses still standing when this is over. Their Main Street and mall locations will be taken by service businesses and retail pot shops.

I’m not expecting many Americans going cold turkey with Amazon and e-commerce, so your Amazon-guaranteed delivery packages, aided by the U.S. Postal Service, will continue to arrive, unless the porch pirates get to them first. That same delivery guarantee though can’t be made for your 2020 mail-in ballot.

Maine’s restaurants were caught by the governor’s executive order with fully stocked kitchens and bars just days before St. Patrick’s Day, an event, that along with bank bridge loans, can carry a restaurant to the first early stirrings of a new season. Owners had to make a decision — walk away and give up the dream or to take a chance down an unknown road where your restaurant could slowly die by a thousand tiny cuts.

Our restaurants have slowly moved through three reopening stages. First was curbside takeout and the locals responded. Later, Phase 2 allowed outside dining. Parking lots, closed streets, and sidewalks became creative eating spaces. Two unexpected developments helped the owners pull off this desperate gamble. The wedding season’s non-season created a glut of unused event tents and since May, we’ve been in a severe drought with miniscule rainfall.

Late June, when indoor dining was legalized, many owners, reviewing the state’s guidelines of only 40 to 50 percent of previous occupancy, safety concerns for their staff, and the hesitancy of diners to come inside, decided to stick with the outdoor dining.

The chill in the air is now signaling the fall season and its crisis time again for the owners. Can they convince their outdoor diners that it’s now safe to return indoors? Your local restaurants, if they’re going to survive to next spring, need you to come inside next month.

Many Maine businesses are still hanging in today because of the Payroll Protection Plan. Maine’s banks and credit unions are real heroes. They know their local small business customers and burned the midnight oil to get their businesses these federal stimulus funds.

The big city banks in New York, Boston, and elsewhere took care of their customers, the Big Guys, including three of the wealthiest colleges — Harvard, Princeton and Stanford. Public outrage forced those colleges and many of the Big Guys to return the funds. Those big city banks, who gave us the 2008 recession, proved again that a leopard can’t change its spots.

The fear that’s traveling on the coat-tails of this deadly virus has now conditioned us to react to people out there as if we’re overly cautious turtles, unsure whether we should engage or quickly withdraw into our protective shells for safety.

We started sheltering in place at the end of February, three weeks before the shutdown order. It would be another 3½ months before we invited another person into our home. Since she had also been keeping to home, it was our first opportunity to speak with someone without two-thirds of their face being blocked out by a mask. We then could see again how facial expressions had been an important part of our pre-COVID conversations and how someone’s laughter and especially their smiles could brighten a day and lift the gloom.

Flipping the pages of our 2020 calendar, may wife proclaimed, because of the cross outs and cancellations, “This was the summer that wasn’t!” We didn’t realize how those events had become so much a part of the fabric of our lives here on the Maine coast, until we lost them. The cross outs continue this fall and the cancellations will continue into next spring.

Back in an early April column, I noted that residents in the other northeast states would be weighing the COVID death numbers when they’d make future decisions about where they’d want to safely live. Those COVID total deaths Numbers (New York Times, Sept. 16):

Massachusetts 9,245 deaths and New York State 32,622 deaths, 23,762 of them in New York City.

Contrast that with the COVID total deaths numbers for the three northern New England states: Vermont 58, Maine 138, and New Hampshire 438. Note: Many of us have been worrying since April about all the day-tripper Massachusetts and New York license plates flooding York County.

As reported last week, the most recent Maine home sales figures show that 30 percent of them were to out-of-state buyers. We don’t yet know if they’re going to be year-round, snow bird hybrids, or summer people, but many of you are going to have new neighbors. Welcome them, they’ve shown good judgment.

When this pandemic is finally over, many politicians will start patting themselves on the back. The Maine State Legislature should not be a part of that celebration. When COVID-19 made its first arrival in Maine, the legislature promptly declared itself “non-essential,” when they adjourned early, 400 bills still in the hopper, and ran for home.

Maine’s health-care workers, first-responders, grocery store workers, food processers, and truck drivers keeping the supply chain functioning, reported to work, all at great risk. At a time when Mainers were facing uncertainty, record unemployment, and in need of inspiring leadership, our state senators and representatives, because of their hasty flight and being six months and counting absent from duty, will be known as the “AWOL Legislature.”

Before fleeing Augusta, the Senate and House passed their legislative powers over to Gov. Mills, a former legislative colleague. Left alone in Augusta to do the heavy lifting, Gov. Mills has used her executive orders to both legislate and run the state of Maine for the past six months. She has proven to be a strong leader, and, luckily for Maine, her political philosophy is more in line with her western Maine than ultra-liberal Portland.

This 2020 pandemic year, because of its ever climbing horrendous loss of life and harrowing economic dislocation, will become one of those lifetime reference milestones like the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, President Kennedy’s assassination, and 9/11. We will reach a “New Normal” someday, but it will not be the “Old Normal.” This virus will have changed everything — health, employment, relationships, life’s expectations, and our dreams — ours and for our children.

One of my goals has been to describe the courage, grit, resolve, creativity, and the perseverance of the Maine people and their willingness to sacrifice at great personal cost to protect their homes, friends, towns, and state. They are the real heroes of this pandemic. The greatest tragedy has been the numerous Mainers who have died alone without being able to share their love and last days with their families and friends. Too many broken hearts.

I’d like to thank the Kennebunk Post and especially Managing Editor Dan King for the opportunity to opine during the past six months. Being retired, I’ve appreciated having a weekly deadline again to submit my copy. I hope that the reader has been given some food for thought and discussion, and maybe, even here and there, a smile or two.

Take care out there.

Tom Murphy is a former history teacher and state representative. He is a Kennebunk Landing resident and can be reached at tsmurphy@myfairpoint.net.

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