SOUTH ROYALTON — Out for a walk with her family last week, Kerri Rogers had an experience that summarizes how her small but busy village has had to adapt on the fly to life under the coronavirus.
They came upon another family they know with a daughter who is a close friend of Rogers’ daughter, Mabel Bailey. An elementary school child is like a running brook, and Mabel is especially so. But she stayed by her mother rather than rush to see her friend.
“ ‘I just wanted to run up and hug her, but I know that I can’t,’ ” Rogers said in a phone interview of her daughter’s response.
“She’s 9,” Rogers added, both as explanation and lament.
Mabel’s friend later chalked a message on Rogers’ driveway, and the girls talked via Facebook Messenger, which has a video chat option.
During the first week of restrictions on gatherings, of restaurants reduced to takeout service, of “social distancing,” how does a close-knit town, one that banded together after Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, handle a crisis that calls on people to stay home, to go out only for necessities, to stay 6 feet away from people, even those who might need a helping hand?
No one seems entirely sure.
“It’s so unknown, who has it,” Rogers, who is a Royalton native and the town’s part-time recreation director, said of the novel coronavirus. “Anybody could be carrying it. That’s what’s so fearsome. You just don’t know.”
Rogers’ husband, Kevin Bailey, is a chef. His job at Kimball Union Academy in Meriden is on hold while the private school’s campus is closed to students, so he’s been helping in the kitchen at White River Valley School District’s Bethel campus. The district is offering meals to anyone age 18 and under, Monday through Friday.
Though the kitchen workers are following strict protocols, it makes Rogers uneasy.
“If one of us were to get it, how would I quarantine myself?” she said. They live in a small house. “We have one bathroom.”
Even so, she goes for walks around South Royalton and talks to friends, relatives and neighbors, from a greater distance than usual.
In ordinary times, there are many places to walk to in South Royalton. Food and farming have long been central to the former railroad stop, but the forms have changed. Years ago, there was a chicken processing plant in the village, and a livestock feed plant. The former is long gone, the latter is a husk, long empty.
Instead, small farms and restaurants have proliferated. Tell someone in Hanover that you live in South Royalton and they’re liable to say, “Ah, Worthy Burger,” in a knowing way. Yes, Worthy Burger, but also, Five Olde Tavern and Grille, and 108 Chelsea Station, the local diner. First Branch Coffee is the latest addition. Farther afield are Fox and Harrow, a fine-dining establishment on Route 14, and Village Pizza. All are now reduced to take-out service.
Even before that, the town’s food sector was diminished by the closing of Crossroads Bar and Grille, in August, and the destruction by fire of Eaton’s Sugarhouse last fall.
Still, it can be hard to find a parking spot in South Royalton, particularly on a Friday evening. Up until last week, that is.
“It’s really quiet,” said John Dumville, a Royalton native who was recently elected to the Selectboard.
Vermont Law School closed last week and has since announced that it will remain closed for the spring term with all students learning online.
Dumville rents rooms to two students: One is staying in town, but the other has gone home to Iowa.
“I feel particularly bad for the restaurants in the village,” said Dumville, who like Rogers is a regular walker in South Royalton.
The town offices are closed, with most official business being conducted by phone. The Selectboard will hold its second meeting via the online platform Zoom on Tuesday night. Residents can dial in, too. BALE, an acronym for Building a Local Economy, a South Royalton nonprofit, is maintaining a list of people willing to volunteer to help people in need.
“I think people want to help, but they want to help only if they can be safe and secure,” Dumville said.
He had a liver transplant a few years ago, and he was overwhelmed by how many people offered support.
The transplant makes him more vulnerable to the coronavirus.
“I’ve gone food shopping, but I avoid people when I go,” he said.
One place that seems to be doing more than well is the South Royalton Market, a food co-op that opened up shortly before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“We’ve been almost twice as busy as normal in the past week,” said Adam Smith, the market’s manager. People have been stocking up, including people who have come north to weather the coronavirus in their second homes.
“We’ve had people buying almost $1,000 worth of groceries at a time,” he said in a phone interview after five pallet-loads had been dropped off to restock the store Friday.
Store employees have had to make hand sanitizer and sanitizing wipes for their own use, Smith said. Staff members are trying to limit the number of people in the store at any one time.
“Hopefully, it won’t get to the point where we’ll have to lock the doors and do people’s shopping for them,” he said.
At Royal Auto Parts, it might come to that, although “they’re not coming in in droves,” said Eunice Gavin, who wasn’t certain of her job title. Counter help? Assistant manager?
Like Dumville, Gavin said she thinks people in town are looking out for each other, even if from a distance.
“I feel confident that there’s somebody on every road who knows what’s going on,” Gavin said in a phone interview.
She served on the Royalton School Board, before Royalton and Bethel formed the White River Valley School District.
As much as the pandemic has absorbed people’s attention, last week’s shooting in town — a Royalton man has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder — has been a primary subject of conversation.
“That’s all anybody’s been talking about,” Gavin said.
So far, the store hasn’t been told to close, and now is when farmers often start to come in for parts to make sure their tractors are ready for spring.
“If we are told to close, we would definitely close,” Gavin said. “We’re trying to help people who are trying to get things done.”
Gavin and Rogers both expressed concern about Royalton’s elderly residents, who would be more susceptible to the coronavirus, and yet need services that bring them into contact with other people.
As quiet and empty as South Royalton felt last week (“Eerie,” Gavin called it), its residents also were waiting, both for the virus to arrive and for the crisis to end. A couple in the White River Valley town of Braintree are quarantined at home after testing positive.
“I think it’s inevitable that it’s going to come to our community,” Rogers said.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.
