Friday was beautiful, and most everybody you encountered on the street was feeling pretty good about things.
A city worker in blue coveralls stood on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette. He was staring at Heidi, our Miniature Dachshund. “ I tell ya,” he began, “ for the life of me I can’t understand how somebody could be cruel to an animal. Just look at her.” And he shook his head, smiling. As he walked away he bent down to pick something up off the street. He held it up for me. “A lucky penny. 1971.”
A car with two young men in baseball hats drove by. The windows were all unrolled, allowing Frank Sinatra singing Bad, Bad Leroy Brown to blare improbably into the street. It was an unexpected moment, and as I watched the car drive away I spotted a bumper sticker that read “Tell Your Boobs To Stop Staring At My Eyes” on the back of their Honda.
At the Leslieville Cheese Market they were giving out tasting samples of cheese, and it didn’t feel like they were hoping to sell you anything, but like they just wanted to share.
In front of the K & S restaurant an old man in a wheelchair sat contemplating the day. He took a deep drag off his cigarette, and then after looking from side to side, he let out a mighty hork that traveled three quarters of the way across Queen Street—his virile affirmation of life. Yes, he could still do it.
Two gay men maneuvered a massive stroller that contained two obviously adopted babies through the doorway of a restaurant. Happy and talkative, they started to chat with me. “Oh, getting this thing around is like driving a tractor!” on said. The other man began to laugh, and then, as if in confidence, he leaned in toward me, “ we had to call all our friends in Europe to make sure we could get this thing through their doorways!”
A man sat lonely on a bench in Jimmy Simpson Park. He had a massive suitcase in front of him, like maybe his life had just changed. A woman with red hair– a firecracker– came and joined him, and shortly they were walking down the street. Speaking with her hands, she was telling a variety of stories. “It’s not like Gino to give any compliments, but he says to me that I didn’t need to do nothing, that I looked great, and I tell ya, I just started bawling my face off!” And then both the red head and the man with the suitcase smiled at one another.
Boisterous on a Friday, men stood on ladders, working happily to open new businesses along the strip. They painted and smoked, lifting things off the backs of trucks and into places like macFab Fabrics and Lynn Crawford’s new restaurant, Ruby Watch Company, overjoyed to be creating something new, beautiful and optimistic in the spring.