The Way Things Once Were...

 We traveled to the county seat of Box Elder County this morning to visit our new grandson. We had some time to kill before they were home so we stopped in at the local thrift store. It's a small one, but clean and organized (for the most part...). Inside there were some of things we could have used, a lot of things we didn't need, and even things no one needs.

Such is the way of things and thrift stores.

But, it wasn't until I stopped at one particular tub that made me stop and snap a picture. 

At first, I thought they were socks--new, still in the package. Socks are good. We need socks. I checked it out. Were they socks?

Nope.

They were masks.

In the storage tub were dozens--maybe hundreds--of masks. There were ordered by the local Box Elder High School...Home of the Bees. For some reason I'll always remember Box Elder being the Home of the Bees, because as a freshman attending Davis High School (Home of the Darts...), Davis played Box Elder in the first high school homecoming football game of my high school career. And, I believe Davis beat the Bees back in the fall of 1980.

Getting back to my story, I looked those unused cloth masks from 2021. I'm thinking they were ordered for graduation, two years ago this summer. For me, timelines, as far as when things were required at not required during the pandemic are fuzzy. I don't know if by June 2021 we had ditched the masks or not. I do know that in Northern Utah, we ditched things before other parts of the country. I guess that's how it was living in sticks.

I'm no doctor or scientist, nor do I have specific facts about the usefulness of the masks, but I'm guessing simple cloth masks would not be helpful at this time, so that tub of masks will most likely get thrown out at some point, tossed in the local landfill.

It's funny how just seeing something as simple as a mask can bring us back to a previous time...to the way things once were.