When the taxi driver welcomed me to Boston ("Welcome to Boston!"), I was surprised.
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Let me start over. I've just spilled half a cup of Cheerios all over my keyboard. The cereal was dry, so the piece hasn't shorted, but Cheerios dust can't be good for any keyboard, even mine. For my part, I am not too disappointed. Cheerios come and go and come back underfoot when I hear the crunching sound. Anyone who eats cereal as a snack understands the difficulties. Bowls and spoons both have their purposes, and ignoring them leads to great dysfunctions of purpose.
Like spilling Cheerios all over the keyboard.
The reason I was eating just now and with such discombobulation was Boston, back where we began, where that taxi driver had met me Tuesday morning with great and unexpected exclaimation. The encounter was the last time I would eat well for days. Not that I was eating at the time, but the taxi driver popped the trunk roughly three hours after my breakfast and anyone with minor knowledge of rumblings and grumblings, the agriculture and technology of the stomach, would have placed the blame also squarely on his shoulders.
It was a good thing then that I realized none of this at the time. The surprise came first. "Welcome to Boston" zzzip phftt. The last time I was in the city, college-hunting eight years ago, no one was welcoming. Not anyone at Faneuil Hall, not anyone along the appropriately neverending Freedom Trail, not anyone in traffic down on the maze of streets or above on the Central Artery. The worst were a floor below at the Daystop Inn, chewing away at heavy metal songs in the bar off the lobby. Complimentary doughnuts by the desk helped some, but the Daystop lost me at the bar's Guns 'n' Roses, or at least whom I assumed to be them. To prop up the few bar patrons to the discomfort of lobby families was no way to run a hotel, and the proprietors' failure at Hotel Management 101 was no way to start or end a day in the city.
But here was this taxi driver and zzzip phftt. We rode from Logan and through the tunnel to the bottom of Staniford Street, and my bags and I piled out at the FleetCenter's Jersey and cyclone fence barriers. I was there to replace a coworker with a family illness. Security was tight: airport level at the gates, near-constant helicopter presence overhead and occasion troop teams passing by. Inside the fences, on the close-in side of the green el tracks, police were at the traditional arena event level.
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The narrative was going to continue here, but I decided to be the troll under the bridge and demand payment. Not having a great enough payoff, the narrative was denied further passage into the land of Yarn.
Basically, the days ran from 9 in the morning until midnight or one, where the nights then took up the nominating process and went for another hour or two at the nearby Hill Tavern. After years of allegiance to the Tom Collins, I finally had several in Boston proper. The links went Irish dockworkers to J. Anthony Lukas' Common Ground to some college reading list to me, and whatever the weak links in that chain, I've passed them by. If you've been put off by the cherry or slice, you haven't been thinking enough about the dockworkers.
But as you could've counted, the days went long. I spent most of my time as the USA TODAY/Gannett part of the media tent, a two-level affair, lit unnaturally bright like one of those newer gas stations. (The power of halogen.) The tent functioned much like a camping tent — hot in the day, cool at night — but without the benefit of camping-quality food. Patties were big in the tent. Fish and chicken patties were there, but strangely beef ones weren't, at least not from Tuesday morning onward. With potato chips running $2 a bag at the tent's official food stand, meals involved many trips to the arena McDonald's and Dunkin' Donut stands.
I did make it into the hall for a while. I saw Cate and Elizabeth Edwards speak, then watched the running mate take the stage. The crowd roared. At no point did I see Ben Affleck, Michael Moore or Nomar and his suitcases.
My trip ended with a ride back to the airport Friday afternoon, but not before I had a great cheeseburger in the hotel restaurant. Unasked, the cook melted on Swiss, the same kind the Cheers-inspiring Bull and Finch put on my burger that last time I was in Boston. This time around, I was happy to eat the burger and not see it as a peace offering from the people of Boston.
