Downtown

This spring C took both T-ball and tennis on Saturday mornings. With just over an hour between the end of T-ball and the beginning of tennis I didn't know what to do with the kids in the interim. The first few weeks I took them over to the coffee shop but that got messy and was costing me a lot of money. Finally I had the idea of crossing the street at Guv Fuller Field and walking them around Morse Pond.
I haven't been back there since I was a student at the school, and I didn't really remember anything about it except that there was a path from the school around the pond and we used to take it to get to Guv Fuller Field for field day festivities. Once our class was the country of Kenya.
The path is a wild, overgrown place in the middle of downtown Falmouth. I described it to Ken as the forest primeval and made him accompany us on one of our trips. When you look out over the water, the pond is all you see, no buildings are visible. Only the voices of parents encouraging their young T-ball players remind you that civilization is just through the trees.
There's a large field to the right of the path before you get to the school. Walking out into it the first week, I felt like I was discovering a secret place. It was even more of a surprise than the seclusion of the pond. The grass was a foot high and there was a horseshoe pit in one corner and some rusting sports equipment in the other. What a great field for butterflies, I thought. But the next time we came, someone had mowed.
Even the back of the school looks overgrown and abandoned. With the front of the school remodeled, I expected the back to look different as well, but it's just the same as it was in the late 70s when I was a student there. The exact backdrop of my 5th grade class picture was, from what I remember, unchanged. And coming upon the school from the leaves and hanging vines of the path reminded me of the scene in Logan's Run when the runners come above ground and see the Capitol, all overgrown with vines. Can you believe I'm referencing that movie again? My metaphors could surely use some work.

song: Downtown • artist: Petula Clark