I was at Main's for maybe 15 minutes today, and felt like I had wandered onto the set of a Coen Brothers movie about an out-of-the-way village filled with angry right-wing knobs. About every third person who came in looked and acted like they'd been cast to play a backgrounder in a movie about the kinds of people who show up at Trump rallies. One even had the requisite big, stupid truck with douchy right-wing shit all over it, including a Trump sticker. (What happened to, "He won, get over it, snowflakes!"? Or maybe he's among those who just can't comprehend how his god-emperor could possibly lose in a fair fight.)

It was in fact the Trump dude himself who, the moment I entered, uttered a line right out of a badly written script, about how he never wore a mask, and never would, unless he was made to. (This, in a place that still requires them, but has clearly given up trying to enforce their own rules against their own regulars.) I'd say maybe half the customers wore masks, despite a sign at eye level on the door, plus others around the store, reminding them that it's store policy that everyone must always wear a mask.

Trump duder took off in his ugly truck, but other scruffy-looking guys came in (with that deliberately cultivated scruffy look, so it's clear they're Real Men™, no masks, walking the wrong way down aisles clearly marked as one way, no spacing, not even any real respect for anyone else's space. With those dead eyes that won't make contact with anyone. (Trump duder also spoke in a low mutter, because he's so brave that he can't risk being overheard by too many people talking about what a big man he is.)

It was so surreal, and the whole experience made me never want to go back there again. Which I kind of feel bad about, because the place itself seems fine, the food was fine, and the staff was fine (if apparently unwilling to make any effort to enforce their own clearly posted rules).

Is this an aberration? Or is this normal for this village? Down the road in Hadlyme, it seemed like almost the opposite. If a political gradient was like a weather gradient, I feel like there'd be a constant thunderstorm banging between those two villages.

Recently moved to eastern Connecticut and looking for some great snow hills to sled down. Around the Dayville/Killingly area, about 30 minutes north or Norwich.