In Hot Pursuit of Slow Living

[Not quite a true story. I combined separate events and embellished fact — a sprinkling of fiction to improve the tale.]

I am walking briskly to a workshop on Slow Living and Friendship, only to be waylaid when my neighbor, Bobby, calls from his porch: “Hey Steve, got a minute?” 

I stop myself from calling back over my shoulder, “No, Bobby, I don’t want to be late for the Slow Living Summit workshop… it’s on friendship, which is really important to me,” as I speed up in a hurry to make it on time. But instead, I say, “Sure, Bobby,” and he invites me in, apologizing for the mess as he leads me to a little table in the corner of his living room to show me the covered bridge he has made of popsicle sticks. 

“I just finished it, Steve.” There is excitement in his voice. “I’ve been working on it for nearly 7 years. It’s a replica of the covered bridge in Ashuelot. I had to stop last year when I ran out of popsicle sticks, but then I got more that Sally’s brother was collecting for me.” 

I admire Bobby’s bridge, sneaking a quick glance at my watch. 

If I leave within the next minute I can get to the Slow Living and Friendship workshop barely 10 minutes late. And maybe they did not start on time. Perhaps I have missed very little. I am about to take my leave when Bobby waylays me once again: “Hey Steve, I haven’t heard your banjo for quite awhile.”  Next thing I know, we are sitting on the bench at the side of my garden. I cannot help enjoying playing my banjo for Bobby, because he sincerely believes that I play really well and keeps saying so, not realizing that I just keep playing the same three chords over and over, not even knowing the right way to strum. 

In between strumming, Bobby reminisces about what Putney Road was like when it was all farmland, and how the kids used to ride their sleds safely down the hilly streets of Brattleboro, because not one car was on the road after a snow storm. Then I get my 1938 Gene Autry Supertone guitar, which is tuned to open D, so that almost anything I do sounds good, and Bobby thinks that I am a virtuoso. We schmooze like that for a couple of hours until it gets dark.

“Well, I better get home,” says Bobby, “Sally will wonder where I am.”

So, despite best intentions, I wasted that evening and will never know what life-changing information I might have obtained, had I made it to the Slow Living Summit Workshop on Friendship. 

copyright 2017  Steven K-Brooks