Nine chapters in on the day, with the cramps awakening in my legs halfway through my first pretense at writing to be successful over the past week, I took my constitutional walk around the old ballfield, like Dracula taking to the cemetery to avoid the cattle being upset over his pallid complexion.

As I walked past third base a scene of family unusual in most of America came walking by on the path to the children’s playground. The woman was a motherly figure of fertility in a long yellow skirt hiding her short brown legs and a tight lime green tube top confining her busy breasts. Her hair was long and braided in a turban-style scarf, and she, like her children, had a pleasingly unmixed complexion. Her four children, from one to four years, a succession of Irish twins. Paraded around her, keeping close.

About ten paces ahead and ten to the side I raised my hand and waved and she smiled and said, “Good morning.”

Then, each of her children except for the bemused toddler stumbling along on ten-month old legs, in their turn, turned facing me and waved, and said, “Good morning!” “Hi!” and “Good morning from me too!”

I went about my way with a smile and wended through the towering, hundred year oaks, oaks that will hopefully outlive this shiv called civilization.