A mundane May 4th
was transformed yesterday with a trip north into the wilds of New Hampshire to
spend some time with the Keene Friend. Yard
chores were dismissed due to the possibility of afternoon showers and that
opened an opportunity to head north since the Keene Friend had one of his rare
days off.
We started out
with a great lunch at the Stage Restaurant at the head of the square. In something that has become sort of a
tradition for returns to my hometown we ran into a high school classmate that I
hadn’t seen in forty years. He was none
other than the nemesis of the Cantankerous One himself. They’ve been sharing some pretty pointed jabs
at each other on Facebook over the past few months.
I welcomed him
to the club of people the Cantankerous One loves to argue with and provided him
with my well-worn description of arguing with His Cantankerousness: “It’s like arguing with a pig, everybody gets
dirty and the pig loves it.” The nemesis
stated they had recently declared a truce which seems to be holding.
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| Keene Friend in Scores |
My wife abandoned
us rather quickly (tax free shopping was beckoning) and left us to our own
devices in central Keene. Somehow we
ended up in the central sports bar – Scores (call it kismet!). We attempted to call the Cantankerous Friend
but he was not accepting invitations yesterday.
We were in for a very entertaining afternoon as several “teams” of
college students rotated through the bar.
Next week is graduation day and the seniors organized themselves into
color coded teams for a pub crawl. They
each wore tee shirts with the slogan: “Before
We Walk, We Must Crawl”. Anyone who
knows my opinions on the whole pub crawl question knows I felt a certain amount
of pride in the local college for their delivery of an obviously first class education. The kids were all very well behaved and a
credit to their age group which was depressingly distant from our own.
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| The Red Team Lined up at the Bar |
My friend and I
had just about figured out that the red team had the best skill players while
the white team had a devastating offensive line capability when we received the
shock of our life. My wife called to report
she was finished shopping and was waiting for us across the street in Margarita’s. This was truly a momentous occasion for
someone who normally has to be dragged kicking and screaming from her shopping
efforts.
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| Just a Great Sentiment! |
We walked a
semi-straight line across the street for dinner with my favorite Panamanian designated
driver. My Keene Friend was called upon
for his role as my public comments filter and was approximately 75% successful
mainly due to the extremely short shorts waiting on us. My wife took our (my) enthusiasm in good
stride as we watched the different Pub Crawl teams wending their way through the
streets outside.
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| Huge Surprise - Wife beating us to Margarita's |
The ride home
was fairly quick – at least for me - as I had entered a loquacious stage. I received a call from my Pittsburgh Friend
who was targeted with several incriminating texts during the afternoon. It was fun catching up with him and I even volunteered
to help link him up with my daughter and son in law during an upcoming trip to
New York City to cover the Penguins playoff series. I followed his call up with a conversation
with that same daughter who was incredibly patient listening to her father
holding forth and promised to provide the needed guidance to my Pittsburgh
Friend. Mundanacity was certainly
squelched yesterday in no uncertain terms.
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| Keene Friend and Wife at Dinner |
My wife was
avidly watching the presidential election yesterday back in Panama. She was so pleased that the “puppet” of the
current president was defeated by someone she thinks will be a much better president,
Juan Carlos Varela. She wanted to
congratulate the Panamanians on their victory.
It’s demonstrative about how far Panama has come that a sitting
president’s chosen successor was actually defeated at the ballot box. Congratulations Panama!
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| President Elect Varela |
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