At the end of yesterday's bike ride home from work I spotted Warren sipping a glass of beer, looking over his large garden. Warren is my neighbor who lives across the street. With his great white beard he looks alot like Edmund Gwen as Chris Cringle from the 1947 version of 'Miracle on 34th Street'. He's 80 years old, but is still as sharp and active as anyone I know. Warren is also a first-rate conversationalist, and after handing me a glass of beer he looks up inquisitively at my modern bike helmet and says, "That's quite a bonnet you got there." In his day a crash helmet was something you had to make yourself, usually out of an overturned wicker basket stuffed with rags and strapped to one's head with a belt. From there he launched into smooth, absorbing stream of storytelling. I heard about his impressions of moving to Martha's Vinyard in 1926; how our street was at one time a vast apple orchard; how he babysat for the family that lived in my house in the 1930s; the devastation of the hurricaine of '38; his days as an army photographer in the pacific theater during the Second World War; various topics re: astronomy, nature, geology, botany and woodworking. As we talked I wished I had a secret video camera rolling to record his stories as they are laden with the kind of humor and knowlege and insight that seem in short supply these days, where so many of my contemporaries are still worrying about whether they are cool enough and limit themselves to speaking in glib & supercilious cliches, myself included. Our shite-culture has done a number on us all. It is a sad thing that I rarely have the time to slow down and speak with him. After a while, Warren notices his wife behind the azaleas across the garden. "I think my wife wants me. She's a little too shy to come over."(He met her in the 30s while attending Amherst College and she was an Amherst High student. Now they live in her parent's house.) "Have a nice evening", he says flashing a smile with a missing front tooth.