15-April-99 Nothing if not variety

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The phenomenon of running into people who know me continues. As I was walking away from the post office this morning someone walking the other way called to me, “Buddy! Where's the bike? I always see you with a bike!” He was satisfied with the explanation that I had a dentist's appointment in Lexington today.

I've been going to the dentist in Lexington since I started graduate school. We lived there from 1955 to 1959. When I came back to this area for grad school I asked some old family friends to recommend a dentist, and I've been going there ever since. It's two towns away, but not all that inconvenient. Today I just needed a routine cleaning, and don't have to go back until the next one. Phew.

Going to the dentist's office is a time warp. When I was in junior high I used to go to the orthodontist's office on the same street once or twice a week to get my braces or retainer checked, or get a new supply of tiny rubber bands. The lot next to the dentist's building is where the Old Belfry Club used to be, where Miss Merrill's ballroom dancing class met one evening a week, seventh graders first, eighth graders the next hour. I walked down that street on my way to high school. Lexington being Lexington, many of the buildings are the same.

Leaving the dentist, I walked up the street to the Patisserie Japonaise. Now, that wasn't there in the '50s! The building it's in is on the site of the Horseshoe Forge, a real blacksmith shop that specialized in dinner bells and other semi functional items made from horseshoes. You could go in and watch the trip hammer pounding red hot iron into shape and smell the coal smoke from the forge. Back in the present, I got a melon pan (that's pan as in Japanese for bread, not as in a baking utensil) to save for mid-afternoon snack, and drove to work.

I took the uni for a short ride on the Newton section of the river walk closest to work after lunch. I usually keep it in the trunk of the Tercel, and the trouble is that when the weather is good I'm likely to bike to work, and when I have the car it's probably not a good day for a uni ride. Today the pieces came together.

It often takes me three or four tries to get started on the unicycle (I'm outraged! My spell checker didn't know that word!) -- that's free mounting, getting on without holding on to anything or bracing the wheel against anything -- but more often than not the first time I take it out in the spring I get right on and start riding. I've never figured out why that should be. It was that way today. Drive down the street, turn around in the American Legion parking lot, park next to the end of the river walk, pull on the garden gloves (I hardly ever fall, but why worry? Unplanned dismounts are another story.), lift the thing out of the trunk and roll it to the trail, let a couple of kids on bicycles check it out, get on, and go. I probably only did a quarter of a mile each way today, behind some houses, behind the American Legion post, down a boardwalk that goes from fifteen feet above river level down to close to the water in a couple hundred yards. The boardwalk requires a lot of attention; it has a hand rail I don't want to bump into and, in other places, an edge not to fall off. Coming back up the boardwalk isn't really any harder. A uni is about as much effort to ride downhill as uphill, since you can't coast. On the way back I spoke to a young woman who had spotted the cardinals that were singing and to a man about my age who wanted to know how you learn to ride. I guess I'll write a page about that some other time.

Arlene and the other elementary school art teachers had a reception for a student art show this afternoon at the Ed Center, two blocks from where I work, so I went over around 4:30. It's always fun to see the work, and besides, they have juice and cookies. Arlene had projects from four classes in the show. Two were fourth grade ceramics, some slab bud vases, white with black patterns, inspired by southwest Anasazi ceramics, and animals that she explained started as bear skin rug shapes cut out of clay slabs. The kids then fold the legs down, perhaps support the middle on something, and add more parts. There were winged dragons and sea serpents, among others. Then there were some spectacular first grade marker and watercolor flowers drawn from observation. The last project was a bunch of styrofoam prints of sun faces, printed in black on colored backgrounds. I'm pretty impressed. I sure wouldn't know how to do her job.