Ramstad: Pandemic forced tough choices between health and money

The COVID-19 pandemic was a turning point in life shared by everyone on the planet.

It was unique and wild. And yet, five years on, there haven’t been any bestselling, can’t-miss books about it. No hit movies, nor must-watch TV shows.

No one likes remembering the first months of 2020.

“Frankly, my mind doesn’t necessarily really want to go back there,” Rick Haase said as he and his wife, Christine Ward, the owners of Minneapolis-based Patina Stores, recounted their experience to me recently. Ward and I laughed.

“There’s a certain part of it that I feel like I’ve done a really good job of just blocking out of my mind,” Haase said.

“Me too,” I said.

“I think more about feelings of strength and resilience and getting past hurdles that felt insurmountable at the time,” Haase said.

That time five years ago forced so many of us to make a choice we never thought we’d face — between our health and our money.

And there was another difficult trade-off: between individual desires and our duty to neighbors, communities and the larger world.

Most of us take health for granted and spend our time making ourselves better off. And most of us can go about our individual pursuits without worrying about how they will affect neighbors.

Both were impossible when we feared catching or spreading a deadly virus.

Tensions arose as government officials and health experts imposed their ideas on those trade-offs. They ordered businesses to close, chose some as “essential,” and forced a sorting out of workers.

Some people who wanted to work couldn’t. The number of unemployed Minnesotans, typically around 30,000, rose to ten times that number at the peak of the business shutdowns in spring 2020.

Meanwhile, others who didn’t want to work, or were scared of the virus, had to work.

Since there were no good choices in the spring of 2020, no optimal outcomes, why think about that time?

Because amid all the confusion and tension, there was also a lot of good work. Excellent work, actually. Invention and resourcefulness carried people and businesses through that time.

When Patina and stores like it were ordered closed in mid-March 2020, Ward and Haase quickly made plans to keep working by starting online sales, carryout orders and deliveries. They hit home improvement stores for Plexiglass.

“The wheels were off the bus really fast,” Ward said. “We had to react with what we knew.”

The couple had just stocked their eight stores with Easter candy, and a shipment of Christmas ornaments had arrived in the warehouse well ahead of the holiday. In all, the stores were closed from mid-March until just after Mother’s Day in May.

“We had just received some little ceramic pots and had bought some plants from Gertens to put in them,” Ward said. “That ended up being a positive twist because stores with living things were granted the ability to open a little sooner.”

With help from the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, the couple kept many of their employees working by photographing items for the website. When things got back to normal, Patina gave up e-commerce.

“We worked post-COVID on getting [smaller] stores to be a little bigger size so our format was similar from store to store,” Ward said. “That’s how we wanted to spend our resources, time and staffing. We felt there was more opportunity there than on a website.”

In Red Wing, a town of about 17,000 about an hour southeast of the Twin Cities, businesses that were ordered closed in March 2020 turned to an entity many didn’t know about for help — the Red Wing Port Authority.

The agency is one of five port authorities in the state that runs an active waterway; cruising riverboats pull up to its docks during warmer months. That means it has its own money for local economic development. It also distributes funds from other government agencies.

Within days of the lockdowns, dozens of Red Wing business owners applied for $1.2 million grants and five-year, no-interest loans the authority made available.

“We had 30, 40 people in our office closing loans every day,” Shari Chorney, manager of the port authority, told me over lunch recently at the Smokin' Oak Rotisserie and Grill. “That sounds like a lot of money, but boy it went quick.”

Among the applicants were Kyle and Jolene Knutson, owners of the Smokin' Oak and an adjacent Country Inn & Suites. They received a $15,000 loan and, later, a $2,500 grant to open a sidewalk cafe. The couple used some of the funds to add outdoor seating to the restaurant.

“You gave us peace of mind,” Jolene Knutson said to Chorney.

“I never heard of anybody being left behind, either,” Kyle told her. “Seems like you took care of pretty much everybody.”

As soon as they heard restaurants like theirs would have to close dining rooms, Kyle drove to the Twin Cities and shopped at big-box stores for to-go food containers. They launched a carryout business with a narrower menu focused on family-sized meals.

“That was during the time when people were losing their jobs and kids weren’t going to school,” Jolene said. “We changed right away to have more of an affordable menu for families.”

Kyle added, “We actually lowered prices when some were gouging.”

In that first month, revenue fell more than 40% at the Smokin' Oak. Today, long after the dining room reopened, they continue to offer a carryout menu.

The Knutsons' restaurant experienced another lasting change. One of the effects of the pandemic — a shortage of labor — forced them to abandon their original signature product.

“We had wood-fired pizza,” Jolene said. “You had to give it a lot of love. It took a lot of time.”

“During COVID, it was 100 percent a staffing issue,” Kyle said.

In recent weeks, business owners have been making a special trip to the Red Wing Port Authority office. “Those loans are maturing,” Chorney said. “I’ve seen a lot of people coming in and paying it all off.”