Residents were putting their faith in local officials, not the state.
“Tex would never say it’s OK to be out in public if he didn’t truly feel it in his heart,” said Amber McCandles, 41, referring to Sheriff Tex Dowdy. He “has done a great job keeping us healthy. He shut the town down and kept us isolated, in quarantine and kept us COVID-free.”
Local officials stressed the reopening followed Newsom’s phased plan to reopen the whole state, albeit earlier than he has approved.
“Our residents were moving forward with or without us,” Heather Hardwick, deputy director of emergency services, said in an email, adding that residents needed guidelines to do it safely.
At Country Hearth Restaurant and Bakery in the small town of Cedarville, manager Janet Irene served up breakfast orders of biscuits and gravy, sausage, hash browns, omelettes and chicken fried steak.
Irene said she’s been following “the guiding light” of county officials in keeping the small eatery she’s run for 35 years closed except for takeout during the lockdown and was relieved to welcome folks back inside.
“People were constantly asking to be able to sit in the restaurant, and it was really, really difficult during this time to deny that,” she said. “It’s like the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, because part of that time we had inclement weather, rain and — no snow — but cold outside.”
Irene agreed that it was difficult for a law-respecting person to figure out what should be done when different levels of government are giving out different instructions.
Newsom has declined to address Modoc County’s move directly and has not responded to a demand from six other rural Northern California counties to also be allowed to reopen.
He said Friday during his daily coronavirus briefing that he is paying attention to their pleas.
“I’m looking forward to answering your call, addressing your anxiety,” he said, adding: “We’re not turning our back to those concerns.”
California is hardly the only state where restrictions designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus have been met with recalcitrance.
On Thursday, the New Mexico Supreme Court ordered the mayor of the small city of Grants to comply with a statewide public health order and stop nonessential businesses from reopening. Martin “Modey” Hicks moved to let his city’s businesses open despite rising New Mexico COVID-19 cases. One local business, a pawn shop, was notified of a possible $60,000 fine for remaining open.
In Arizona, warnings from police and health officials didn’t stop Debbie Thompson from serving food Friday inside her small-town Horseshoe Café in Wickenburg, a town of 6,300 people west of Phoenix.
Thompson, 65, said her restaurant can’t survive on only carry-out orders until the restrictions expire in two weeks.
“They have just told me that I have to shut down. I am not. They will have to arrest me,” Thompson declared to the cheers and applause from several seated customers.
