But Afterwards There Was Ice Cream
Oh, those unknown unknowns.
This morning was registration for graduate assistants, the first real event of my academic year. Since receiving my old-fashioned photocopy of the notice, I hadn’t reviewed it until last night after business hours—imprudently, as it turned out, because somehow I’d ended up with only the second of an unknown number of pages. So this morning I arrived knowing the time, location and purpose of the meeting, and that it was mandatory, but not who’d organized it, or what materials we were expected to arrive with.
Needless to say, there were omissions. It was embarrassing.
And I don’t think there is any graceful way to explain that one is only partly to blame. It’s just an unattractive sentiment—buck passing—however you happen into it. Which is too bad because, quite naturally, knowing of no other culprit, people place all the blame on the culprit at hand, and if you are that culprit your only choice is what to be stuck with.
* * *
After the meeting—because nothing restores good cheer more than stimulating the economy—I did a few errands.
It was one of those clear, dry mornings that come as a surprise in the Northeast after weeks of sauna-like humidity, in the last days of August or first days of September. The air is just cool enough to be noticeable on one’s skin, not so cold to send one back inside for long sleeves.
Route 9, Amherst, Massachusetts’ shopping mall corridor, is at first glance indistinguishable from similar strips outside virtually every American town and city. But like a contemporary version of Old West Main Streets with false-fronts for gravitas, the Route 9 strip extends back no further than the loading docks of that first row of big-box stores. Turn off onto an unnumbered road and there are tilled fields to either side, at this time of year tall rows of corn and sweet stacks of cut grass, and farm stores at four-corners. Some of the stores are simply wagons, with corn and tomatoes under awnings, and locked cash boxes put out by proprietors trusting those who stop to pay for what they take.
One of the stores is Cook Farm. The store and restaurant are in a small, pleasant building next to the barn. Outside are picnic tables where you can look across the fields to the knobby, wooded Holyoke Range, and over it all is the sweet, soft scent of cows.
It was early for ice cream when I stopped, barely lunchtime, but the parking lot was full: moms out by the picnic tables with kids, kids standing up on the picnic tables, one of them singing “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” of all things. Inside, an older couple was finishing coffee and the women who work behind the counter were busy prepping—something, I didn’t see what, over the counter. I had many ice cream flavors to consider, and I wasn’t going to be unprepared twice in one day.
