Prescott, Ariz. – Despite widespread cancellation and suspension of crowd activities, life at the big box stores in this northern mountain area of Arizona goes on as usual.

At Costco and Walmart, the parking lots are jammed and the hand sanitizer is sold out and, as during any panic shopping spree, toilet paper is scarce.

The Prescott/Prescott Valley area is just a little bigger than “metro” Grand Island (which, the last time I looked, was about 85,000 souls). Schools were closed last week for spring break and some districts reopened Monday as scheduled.

Some sports tournaments have been postponed, following the lead of the NBA and pro baseball. The Phoenix-area Cactus League shut down, which is a major hit to tourism in the Valley of the Sun.

Up here, Little League ball has been postponed and spring events at the Prescott Valley Event Center have pretty much shutdown. The Chicago concert last Saturday was the last big show (it filled the house with 5,000-plus fans), but the NBA farm team has halted and the big Cirque de Soleil show is off.

The local Congressman, Paul Gosar, (a two time – undergrad and dentistry – Creighton grad) is somewhere in the county in one of those “secure and undisclosed” locations. He had gone to the CPAC convention in Maryland and shook hands many times with a guy that I call “Typhoid Harry” and self- quarantined.

Just down the road in Sedona, they canceled the St. Paddy’s Day parade and the annual Irish concert.

It seems that there is no universal pattern to cancellations. Those of you who may be familiar with Prescott know that it is famous for its “Whiskey Row,” a downtown street with a lot of pubs. It’s a huge tourist attraction. So naturally, the annual Pub Crawl – to honor the patron saint of the Emerald Isle – was still on, bigger than ever.

The participating taverns all pledged ample supplies of hand sanitizer at both front and back doors for all the revelers. Nothing was said of the floors, where some of the patrons ended up by the end of the night.