Barbara Hoffbeck Scoblic, author of “Lost Without the River,” continues to share stories about this region in her ongoing series, “Tales of the Whetstone River.”
My siblings live in Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, and North Dakota. I live in New York. None of us live in our home state of South Dakota. I’ve often bemoaned the many miles that separate the six of us.
Born at a time when large families were the norm, my siblings and I were part of a large exodus of young people who left the area where we were raised and moved to other parts of the country to seek employment, scattering family members across the United States.
Since the first week of March, my brothers, sister, and I've been calling each other regularly inquiring about the other's health, and whether we all have enough food and essentials.
Sanitizing wipes, toilet paper, and paper towels have been unavailable here in upstate New York in stores or online for many weeks. My son, daughter-in-law, and I are following the state’s guidelines, including wiping down surfaces often and each item that's delivered to the door. Three weeks after I arrived, we had only a few paper towels left. By that, I don’t mean “rolls,” I mean “pieces.” The same was true for sanitary wipes. We did have a bottle of a household cleaning product, but with no way to apply it, what were we going to do? We were stuck.
When I talked to my brother, Bob, in North Dakota, I voiced my frustration.
“We have plenty of food,” I said, “but we can’t find any paper or sanitizing products. It’s impossible for us to follow the cleaning guidelines when we don’t have the necessary supplies.”
“The situation isn’t so bad as all that out here,” Bob said. "I’ll look around. Check both big and little stores. I'll get an early start tomorrow morning so I'm there as soon as they open up."
Within the week a large bulging box was dropped at the door. Several strips of tape kept it from popping open. When I cut the tape and lifted the flaps, I was greeted by individual rolls of toilet paper lined up in perfect game board fashion, packed in so tightly that I had to struggle to pull one out. The next layer was made of paper towels, again squished from one side to the other. The final layer was more paper towels with yellow cans of sanitizing wipes in the corner, again packed so tightly I had a hard time removing them.
In the past I’ve certainly received more elegantly wrapped boxes, with more expensive contents, but none so appreciated as this, purchased with so much care and packed with so much love.