In winter, the island returns to Main Street. During the warmer months, we avoid Main Street: too much traffic, too much chaos, and too few reasons to be downtown. The Hub no longer saves the Sunday papers in their cubby holes, there’s no wing night at the long gone AC, and Hardy’s has disappeared and taken Bingo the parrot with it. Almost everything we could want, from glazed donuts to step ladders to Mom’s prescriptions could be found near empty parking places, away from the confusion, chaos, and cobblestones.

The first thing you need to know is that the Legos are staying. They are in plastic buckets and bins, assembled, half assembled, or dissipated into an accretion cloud of colorful plastic bricks and smiling mini-figure heads. But they are going to stay.

The rest could go.

So, we were stuck. Behind me, a jeep settled, with a driver and a beach chair. In front of me, a cable truck sighed and shuddered.

I had fallen into this place through inattention and habit. Normally, at this point in the summer, I would have taken a short cut that would have sped me to my end. I might have headed up an alley, snuck wrong way down a one-way street, and rolled across a yard on my business. But as the sun had just come out, Kiki Dee had returned to the radio after fifty years, and my attention had drifted from what was necessary and important, the afternoon slipped me onto Quaker Lane.

In the sweat of August, my Boon Companion and I retreat to the quiet places. For most of the year, he can run about unleashed in some of the most dog-friendly parks and play areas, but when the summer comes the existing rules are reposted, underlined, and enforced by the sad, angry, and afraid.

There is nothing quite so heartening and thrilling than for the world to turn around and demonstrate that you were right all along. Your faith and your intellect enjoys a well-deserved trip around the Olympic stadium, shaking hands and waving flags. Most enjoyable, you run past your critics with their heads down and eyes averted. Life does not always validate your parking, but when it does, you take your trot with a spring in your step and a glint in your eye.