Suffering succotash… here is what interfered with my beer-forking all afternoon & evening:
Urchins! Rascals! There were five or six of them, but they don’t stand still long enough to be counted. …Unless they are talking at me. All of them at once. In Spanglish.
One of them lives across the street, so I know him and his parents. (Wonderful neighbors.) The rest of them come from who knows how many blocks away. They can smell bicycles. At last count I had 72 such. I’m the freakin’ pied piper around here.
So I took back the bicycle I gave Hernando a few weeks ago and upgraded him to a nicer one. Seems the first one was a bit girlish. One of his friends was on foot, so he got the girlish bike – after I un-girled it.
Hernando really wants the super fancy trick bike with the spin-around front fork and the radial-spoked wheel and the foot pegs on the axles. I’m making him earn that one.
All their other bicycles needed work. Done.
One of them looks the spitting image of me at that age. Except for my Norwegian Arctic pale skin.
Around 8 PM Hernando’s parents left for the grocery store and Hernando informed me I was officially babysitting him while his parents were gone. Thanks a lot. They were wonderful neighbors until now.
These kids notice everything. The Highway Patrol cruiser hanging from the rafters of my barn took some explaining. Always does.
All these little BMX bicycles come from BRC. Strangely, some perfectly adult burners ride these little things. And sometimes they get gifted to Elliot’s Bicycle Service. Now you know how they wind up.
Dang, I’m tired. Why can’t these curb rats stay in their Dickens novels?
Zzzzzzzzzzzz
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
