Serendipity, and the
Return of the Roman Empire
The house that Kate and I bought in April is a small, 1950s-style ranch. It's in a quiet working-class neighborhood: our left-hand neighbor, Jerry, has a long, grizzled beard, cool merchant-marine tattoos, and an elderly springer spaniel (our catsitter, I think, has a crush on him.) Our right-hand neighbor, Todd, is an event producer, and has been sprucing up his small house with bright white and blue paint, low-voltage lighting, concrete benches, flags, and a hot tub. He also owns every two-stroke gas-powered yard tool that Home Depot has to offer.
Our street, College Avenue, adjoins the campus of West Chester University, and the summer has been filled with tennis camps, houses full of shirtless house painters, and the occasional sounds of band camp caught on the breeze. On the whole, though, it's been pretty quiet.
A brigade of station wagons filled to the roof with pillows and oscillating fans delivered this year's load of students about two weeks ago, and the campus (and the town) has been showing a lot more life since then. The activity extends to every cranny of the university. As I jogged past the University's small stadium Sunday night, I saw that the parking lot filled with yellow school busses. The first football game of the season? Nope, a campus security guard told me as I huffed by, it was a band competition.
On my way back, the buses had disgorged numerous clumps of teenagers in brightly-colored polyester and cockaded plumes. Hot damn! I love stumbling upon random spectacles, especially spectacles involving hundreds of people costumed as tightly-jacketed neon hussars.
After dinner, Kate and I came back to check out the show.
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