Cities on a Hill

By Josh Urban

Cities on a Hill: 21 isolated months with the elderly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two weeks is a long time when you're ninety. While America spent two weeks to flatten the curve of

COVID-19, then two more, and then two more, indefinitely, the elderly in nursing homes  missed holidays,

• Language: English
• Publisher: 1 A Press
• Release date: Aug 17, 2023
• ISBN: 9798986419725

Book preview

Chapter 2 - The Hula Dancer

Late March, 2020: If there had been a tiny hula dancer on the dashboard, she would have stood frozen. The faded asphalt, eerie, empty, without a car, reflects a sinister gray back to the vacant sky.

My little red Kia fits the plastic of the town. But today, something is wrong. I never had a front row seat at the light before. Where are the shoppers, choking the road with their financed-shiny cars? The idle youths mingling with seagulls in the mall parking lot, stealing pretzels and shoes?

An unnatural hush snarls over this Jerusalem of the middle class. Even Jesus of Suburbia stays home, stays safe.

The laminated card in the glove box validates me. Josh Urban is an essential employee of Statler Place, permitted to travel. I’d always hoped for a special pass, an all-access tour card. But not like this.

The accolades cost eight thousand points on the DOW and a national shattering. Some say Fear smells like iron. I think it’s more like the alcohol bite of hand sanitizer.

If there had been a tiny hula dancer on the dashboard, she might have worn a miniature mask, and tried to smile with her eyes. She would have failed.

Once upon a time when fist-bumps were still a sign of strength and friends could disagree, I had been an electric guitarist. That slid into DJing—primarily for the old folks. Hey all you OG’s! Here’s a club banger from ‘56!

I had worked the nursing home circuit in the metropolitan area, dancing with ladies who remembered James Brown on the radio, and befriending men who had worked for a living.

The new Kia—not quite a Ferrari—is the fruit of my creative entrepreneurship. My modest house shelters a floor-to-ceiling record collection.

There are 13 guitars, a wood shop, no pets, blinds, but no frilly curtains and no TV (by choice). While a good life for a twenty-something, at 34, it’s not the only thing starting to gray.

My situation crept onto a beloved graphic tee with a silhouette of Peter Pan. Words on the chest loudly proclaim I’M SO FLY I NEVERLAND.

Any potential Mrs. Urban begged to differ. And all I got was a lousy T shirt. An ex-girlfriend had chided me about my choice of hats. I just laughed, but an awful lot of life does seem to roll off the flat neon brim. Am I hiding from something? Maybe the lid is sheltering me from an instructing rain. And why do I delight in getting away with things, from colorful styles to loud guitars?

After a day of stickin’ it to the Man, I sit and listen to jazz records in my hipster-approved creative professional living room. But they always end, leaving silence, the antique clock tick-tick-ticking away in the empty darkness. How loud the echoes are.

Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules For Life finds its way to the stack of books under my vintage lamp. It will prove transformative. Is a happy life as a perennial youth a possible, or even worthy, aim?

Is happiness itself something to be pursued?

(What about Meaning?)

Maturity lurks around the corner— with a sledgehammer.

An Honorary Grandson in Happier Times

Back when smiles were legal, I’d host a monthly party for the residents at Statler Place. It turned into programming a few times a week.

We formed The Thinkers Club, discussing plants, fossils, arrowheads, trains, and history — the world’s, and theirs.

January 1st, 2020 dawned a gentle Wednesday—club day, uneventful.

"Welcome to the roaring twenties! What resolutions should we make? Whatcha say, Sam? How ‘bout an