Workingmen in Bibs

Boston looks wonderful today, driving out rom Logan, up 95.  The deciduous trees all look remarkable, glowing with their pubescent green leaves still extending out.  One gets the sense that although its mid may, it wasn’t very long ago that Boston was still very cold.  Some of these trees are so tall.  Their branches generally extend out in a full lung’s reach.  I think of all the poor willows in my neighborhood, which have their tops cut every year to make them assume a different shape.

Boston has so many brick buildings.  They look like museum pieces to my eyes.  I think of Tokyo where earthquakes and war have destroyed all the brick buildings that once defined modern Meiji Edo.  And I’m sure many of these atmospheric legacy factories and dwellings are a lot of trouble to maintain.

I’m late, as usual.  I’m debating between a quick shower and a change of clothes that a hotel check in would afford or telling this Ethiopian gentleman to speed off straight to “The Bancroft.”  Fortuitously, a calendar invite draws my attention to the fact that my dinner tonight will also be hosted at “The Bancroft.”  I imagine myself doing a quick change of shoes in the parking lot and tell my driver to skip the hotel and head straight or the Bancroft.

The Bancroft page on the website features two nineteenth century workingmen in bibs.  I’m not entirely sure I’m presentable in my comfortable traveling clothes, as I lumber into The Bancroft.  But at this hour no one besides my friends are patronizing the place.  I put my enormous suitcase over by the fireplace and order a scotch on the rocks.  They pour generously at the Bancroft.  

Monday, 5/15/17