Pandemic Support — And What It Still Teaches Us Today: How a Small Town’s Response Became a Blueprint for Everyday Resilience
When the pandemic hit, many communities struggled with shortages, confusion, and fear. But in San Juan Bautista, something different happened. Farmers dropped off boxes of produce at the schoolyard. Volunteers — just a couple of people, no formal organization, except through coordination with the City Council — helped stack boxes, load boxes, and answer questions. Homemade masks appeared inside the produce boxes, sewn by hands no one ever identified. Colorful, different, fun. People drove up, collected what they needed, and went home. I did not need a box, but my neighbor did. I picked one up for her each week; no questions asked.
No lines.
No paperwork.
No stigma.
No panic.
The local store never ran out of toilet paper. Or paper products of any kind. People bought what they needed at the moment. They left the rest for those who might need it.
The city code enforcer (closest thing to law enforcement in town) passed out big cards to every family. Put a yellow card in the window if all is okay, a red card if you need help (e.g., with shopping). A "green tree" of five people stood by to shop for others to keep the risk of contamination low -- and it worked. During the shut-down period, no cases of covid among anyone I know; after that, as time has gone on, as elsewhere, covid is now treated like the flu. But during the scary days, everyone took care of each other to prevent the kinds of disaster happening in other places.
What’s remarkable is how seamlessly that spirit carried forward. Even now, long after the crisis has passed, the habits remain and can be found in our town pantry, town book cabinets, and boxes of produce left on the bench outside of the post office. Supporting each other in the spirit of the last lemon.
The pandemic didn’t create this resilience. It revealed it.
And it left behind a lesson worth remembering: when a community trusts itself, it doesn’t need to wait for permission to take care of its own.
(San Juan Bautista is home to MSI Press)
In San Juan Bautista, generosity doesn’t announce itself. It sits quietly on a bench outside the post office, in a box of Meyer lemons or apples or persimmons or potatoes or corn or cabbage or carrots. It lives in the pantry cabinet tucked against the wall across from the post office in the small and shopping "center" in town and on two-shelf book cabinets nailed to posts around town, always stocked with a variety of books and pantry staples. It shows up in the way people take what they need and leave what they can, without fuss or fanfare.
And then there’s the last lemon.
Anyone who has ever left produce out for neighbors has seen it: a big box disappears quickly, but one lone lemon remains. It can sit there all day, untouched. Not because no one wants it, but because no one wants to take the last one.
That tiny hesitation reveals something profound about how a community sees itself. The last lemon becomes a symbol — of courtesy, of restraint, of the assumption that someone else might need it more. It’s a small-town version of the “door-holding effect,” a quiet social instinct that says: leave something for the next person.
In a world that often feels rushed and transactional, the last lemon is a reminder that generosity can be simple, unspoken, and woven into daily life. It’s not a program or a policy. It’s a culture.
(San Juan Bautista, CA is home to MSI Press.)
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