Walking Down the Street
This morning while I was working at the front lawn, I dragged the garden hose out from the tangle by the trumpet vine and was getting ready to wind it up to take to the cellar when I looked up and there was Bob Loveland walking down the street, almost at my elbow. I was startled at first because I heard him coming but then I realized that I had the tangle of hose out into the sidewalk.
"Oh, no," I said, "Don't trip on this hose." "No," he answered, "I've walked down this street for many years and I won't trip."
Then he told me that he delivered papers to the people who lived in this house when he was a boy. "The McKenzies," he said. I've heard about the McKenzies before. We've lived in this house since 1974, but people like Bob think of it as the McKenzie place.
His strongest memory of Don McKenzie, he said, was that when he was about 12, Don invited him to go to a meeting with him and get a present. It was Christmas time and he said that he thinks that it was probably a Rotary meeting he went to. It's his fondest memory of Mr. McKenzie.
Then he asked me about our family. For many years our boys delivered his paper to him. Then we talked about the critter log and how it attracts wild animals and keeps the squirrels away from the bird feeder. He said he'd noticed it and wondered what its purpose was. He seemed pleased to discover its function. Then he walked down the street and I went back to work on the yard, pleased with the brief interlude of conversation.
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