The Pandemic of 2020 has caused us to think about local businesses in ways that we probably hadn’t considered before — starting with the difference between “essential” and “non-essential.” 

At first thought, it seems like the distinction shouldn’t be too hard to make, right? We can, after all, survive without a perm or a haircut, a beer in the midst of other imbibers, or an evening out at a favorite restaurant and a feature film on the Big Screen. We can’t, however, live without grocery stores, hospitals and health providers, and all the utilities that sustain our lives, however constrained our lives may be at present.

Of course, in the greater scheme of things all businesses are essential to the extent that they help pay for our municipal infrastructure and services, not to mention providing livelihoods for ourselves and our neighbors. They are the bedrock of the local economy on which our quality of life depends. There’s nothing “non-essential” about that!

So how about an automobile body repair shop? Essential or no? This was, of course, the question that was foremost on our minds when we thought about our customers at NW Autobody of Mount Vernon, and its owners, the Stanek Family. We had recently given their building on 2nd Street a “facelift” with a new logo’d awning. As we wrote in a story at the time, the significance of this signage project was that the family had just purchased the building they had been leasing for many years. It was a proud moment, and we worried about how they might be doing in the wake of the “lockdown.”

As it turns out, we were probably more worried than we needed to be. If you think about it, even (and perhaps especially) during a time of social distancing and business closings, people still need their vehicles, even if they don’t need them as often. And when those vehicles are damaged, they need someone to repair them. Someone like NW Autobody.

As with all of our “Corona Moment” interviews, I started mine with owner Jeremy Stanek by asking how the family business was faring during the lockdown. I was relieved to hear his answer.

“Right now it’s a little bit stressful, but we’re doing well,” Jeremy noted. “I’m just trying to make sure our employees have a job. That’s my big concern. Things have slowed down a bit, but we’ve been fairly busy up until about the last week or so. We’re definitely seeing a slow down now.”

Which is not to say that it’s “business as usual” for Jeremy, his wife Michelle, and their crew. “Customers are leery as far as how we handle things. We meet them at curbside to start the estimate process, which we complete in the office and then go back outside to review with them. We make sure their vehicles are sanitized when we complete the work on them, and in some cases we even return cars directly to the customers’ homes.”

“In the shop itself we were already used to wearing masks when we work on a car, so now we’re also having our workers keep as much distance from one another as possible. We have one employee who lives with his grandparents, so they were concerned about him continuing to work — but with the small number of employees we have in the shop, he hasn’t been too worried.”

As far as what keeps Jeremy and Michelle up at night, it’s pretty much the same angst that so many other businesses are feeling in a situation where you can’t predict the future because you lack a relevant precedent to guide you.

“We’ve been able to keep everybody on the job, and we should be able to continue doing so for at least the next three weeks to a month,” said Jeremy. “After that, it’s hard to tell. You just don’t know what the next week or month may bring. We’re just trying to think of what we’ll need to do in the future to keep the doors open.”

While that may seem a bit of a grim, however realistic, assessment, Jeremy is quick to point out the “bright spots” he’s witnessed during the pandemic. “It’s been encouraging to see how people have been able to adapt to this (situation) through changes in their everyday lifestyles,” he said. “I’ve seen very positive things out of most people — seeing them help each other out whenever they possibly can. It seems like people try to be nicer and help each other during tough times, and that’s something you don’t always see.” 

I also asked Jeremy how his family was coping, and especially how he and Michelle were helping their son and daughter deal with the new reality imposed by the coronavirus and the response to it.

“We let them know that this is something that will pass,” Jeremy said. “Right now they feel that they aren’t allowed to visit their friends and they’re feeling isolated, so we try to get them out as much as we possibly can and enjoy life. School is a double-edged sword. They like being out of school, but they miss their friends. My daughter would prefer to go back to school, and our son is promoting from 8th grade to high school this year, so he’s going to miss out on his promotion ceremony. We’re still planning on getting together with his friends as soon as the stay at home order is lifted, however, and we’ll do a little outdoor celebration and barbecue then.” 

Looking past all this, I asked Jeremy what his fondest hope for the future is. “I hope this will make us stronger and show us how we can adapt and change our way of doing things to make things the best for everybody,” he said. “Everybody is in this together, and if we all work together we’ll come out better than when we came in…and things will be back to normal soon.”

To which we say, “amen, brother!”