Monday was a beautiful day.
Across the street, a construction worker with long and robust gray hair stood in front of a piece of heavy equipment. Wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses, he had his shirt off and his arms crossed over his chest. Pink Floyd was blasting from the cab of his truck, and he looked happy, exactly like he probably did 30 years ago in high school, standing outside at lunch, posing for all the girls in the parking lot.
A little further down, a slightly strange man in his 30’s, who lives with his parents in a big, beautiful house, played acoustic guitar on the front porch. He sang loudly and very well, a talent that his parents probably encouraged from a young age. I could imagine his mother, now near 70, listening happily from the kitchen as she watered a plant.
Walking up the street in a very tight suit that didn’t look like it got out very often, a man felt pretty good about things. Singing to himself, he did a little shuffle as he crossed the street. Snapping his fingers, he turned into the drug and alcohol treatment center for men on the corner, ready to face the first day in the rest of his life.
And behind the Madison Pub, in a shaded spot by the parking lot, sat three homeless men. One of them had a guitar, which he strummed quickly while singing a bunch of indistinct words. The two other men bobbed their heads, keeping time with the music, until one of them spotted me and began to wave, “Hey, mister, hey! Can your dog sing!?” And then he started to howl– and then the three of them, all leaning back and howling into the day.