Williamstown, Massachusetts is one of our favorite places to go on weekends.

There is fine Mexican, Thai and Indian food, our favorite little museum at Williams College, a library books store that supplies wonderful books and large print books for the Mansion at very low cost, and our favorite movie theater Images.

If you join, movies are $10. We are streaming some of their choices on our iPhones. We miss them a lot.

We also sign up for four or five plays every summer at the Williamstown Theater Festival, which sent seven shows to Broadway last season.

The festival just canceled all of its summer productions, the movie theater was shut down by the state in the virus lockdown, the Mexican restaurant is closed.  So it is the library bookstore.

Thai and Indian food are both excellent. We called ahead, pay online or on the phone, our orders are labeled on different tables, one order to a table. It is just very strange. The staff was many yards away, we just picked up our bag – our name was penciled clearly – and left without a word.

We have begun driving to Williamstown once or twice a week, usually on Sundays, for Thai or Indian take-out, which we bring home to eat. This takeout drive helps us break the quiet monopoly of sheltering in place.

It was eerie walking through Williamstown, seeing our wonderful little theater closed. Williams College is also closed, probably until the Fall.

We sat on a deserted bench in the middle of a usually jampacked street, across from the theater. There wasn’t a soul on the street, we just sat on a bench. The scene reminded me of those after-the-nuclear war movies from Australia.

It was a Dystopian freeze, all life suspended. Ours was the only car on the street. Zinnia sat down in front of us and just looked bewildered. So was I.

We got the food home, it was great. Williamstown gave me the chills.