× Thanks for reading! Log in to continue. Enjoy more articles by logging in or creating a free account. No credit card required. Log in Sign up {{featured_button_text}}

Her regular customers were helping with calving and a blizzard was blowing in, so business was already slow at the Longhorn Saloon in Harrison.

Becky Law didn’t need any nonsense from the coronavirus to make it worse.

And that’s what she — and her customers — believe this is.

Nonsense. No different than the flu.

“We think it’s crazy. It’s a political scare, I think, and so do they (her customers). It’s hyped up by everybody trying to close everything down.”

So it was still business as usual at the Longhorn. No limits. No distancing. And certainly no talk of closing.

Where else would her customers go?

“There would probably be a rebellion,” Law said. “They’d come and get me.”

The stakes are especially high in her corner of northwest Nebraska, just as they are more than 500 miles to the southeast in Rulo, and in the smallest towns across the state, where the bar and grill is often the only source of food and drink.