Beneath an excessively groomed pediment of stone white hair his face was tanned a particularly cancerous shade of brown, and his pruned neck terminated in a repulsively starched and canary yellow nylon golf shirt buttoned all the way up to the thorax. He drove the sort of enormous automobile that guzzles gas like a hungry infant guzzles milk from a bottle, his wife seated beside him, a purse-lipped package of wrinkles and taut sinew slathered in make-up. She might have dead, or impersonating a salami for all I knew.
"Where can I park around here?" He demanded of me as I strolled home with my bag of groceries, as if I were his personal parking attendant.
"This is Beacon Hill," I told him. "It's all resident parking only around here. You can try Cambridge Street or there's a lot under the Commons."
He rolled his eyes and flashed me a bleachy smile, cynical and condescending. "Well how's anyone meant to see the place if you can't park here?"
There were many replies to that. Here was a typical tourist, one among many millions, who could not conceive that the world had not been designed for his own convenience. But then, why would he? Raised in a human battery farm of gated community, shopping mall, and office complex, why would he not believe that everywhere else was equally as uniform and structured. I am sure he felt surprised that he did not have to pay to get in, obviously considering Beacon Hill to be some sort of Plimoth Plantation living museum. I often observe such daytrippers, taking photographs of fire hydrants that they think date back to the time of Paul Revere.
"Hey, Frank, over here: this must be the Starbucks the Pilgrim Fathers went to."