The End Of The Beginning Part Two

About a month after the Thesis Presentation, in May, 2004, was graduation. Not only was my girl graduating, she was selected to be student speaker at the Adult Education session. We were headed to Boston again, this time with Sandra and Olen, made famous in the entry entitled Adventures in Hauling Luggage. And this time we weren't torturing anybody with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. We were torturing them with The Boston Pops, with John Williams as guest conductor.

I was Secret Keeper for our friends from Jacksonville, Pat and Linda, who wanted to surprise Carmen by coming to the graduation. I fed them the pertinent information about when and where the graduation was going to take place. I almost made it to the very edge of the event without letting anything slip.

We arrived on Friday, three days before graduation. We had plans for dinner out with Les and Susan, our friends from Orlando who now lived in Lowell, Mass. We rode the Doubletree Bayside shuttle van to the hotel, which was on the same chunk of land as the Bayside Expo Center in Dorchester, where the graduation extravaganza was being held. We called Les and Susan to let them know we had arrived, checked into our room and got ready to go out to dinner. After a while they came, and they drove us into downtown Boston. It was actually on this occasion that I decided that if I ever moved to Boston, I wasn't going to have a car. The traffic was ridiculous, the roads were in terrible shape, there were no street signs, and downtown was still torn up in the aftermath of the Big Dig. There was some seafood restaurant they had in mind to take us to, but they couldn't find it. We ended up going to Legal Seafood across from the New England Aquarium, right where we had caught our trolley tour and harbor tour a month before. They parked in a garage by the Aquarium, and after we had a very yummy seafood dinner, paid forty bucks to get the car out.

The next morning was time for Carmen to write her speech before Sandra and Olen got in. We had a room with two queen beds so we could all room together for the three nights. Carmen sat in the lounge off of the lobby all morning working on it. I went for a walk. I found the Red Line station and a grocery store. I bought a few snack items - fruit and such - and walked back.

The speech writing took most of the day.


Sandra and Olen arrived and checked in, and then we had to figure out where to eat. We consulted the phone book and my map of Greater Boston, and finally decided to go find a restaurant in Boston's North End, where there are hundreds of Italian restaurants. We took a cab the five or so miles and got out on Hanover Street. On a beautiful Saturday evening in May, there were people lined up out the doors, waiting for tables in the hundreds of restaurants. We walked down the street until we found one with a much shorter line. That was where we ate. We found out why the line was shorter - the food was not very good, but at least the service was lousy. We cabbed back to Dorchester where we watched TV until time to go to sleep.


Early Sunday morning we trooped across the highway and under Interstate 93 to the JFK /U Mass Red Line Station. We went inbound to Park Street Station, then took the Green Line to Government Center. We walked through Quiincy Market and Faniuel Hall to the waterfront and took the same trolley tour that we'd taken a month before. This time, our driver was black, and his spiel included a plethora of information about the contributions and treatment of people of color throughout the history of Boston. We got off the trolley near Beacon Hill to explore a couple of old historic cemetaries. We found out that these grassy plots were used for cattle grazing hundreds of years ago, so the headstones had been moved closer together to facilitate cattle browsing among the graves. The headstones bore no relationship to the location of the actual graves.


We went to Harvard Square by Red Line. While Carmen and Sandra shopped, Olen and I staked out a table at The Border restaurant. We had a lot of chips, salsa and beer before the womenfolk finally came along for our early dinner. We had to get back to the hotel by about 6:00 to get changed and head downtown for the Boston Pops. I was excited to be going to a Pops concert, which completely mystified Sandra and Olen.


The Pops was a great time. John Williams did a program of movie music, featuring Bernard Herrmann, who, among many other credits, scored many of Alfred Hitchcock's movies; and Henry Mancini. Henry's daughter Monica was part of the program, singing "Moon River" and a couple of other Mancini classics. Finally, at the end of the evening, they did John's music from ET, and for the encore a Star Wars medley. Yes, even Sandra and Olen said they enjoyed the Evening At Pops.

It was pouring rain, a big fat hairy thunderstorm when we came out of Symphony Hall. Cabs were hard-fought commodities, but we finally got one. Back at the hotel, we flung the drapes wide open and watched the storm lighting up Greater Boston until it blew itself out. "Cold Mountain" was on Pay Per View, and we watched it.

First Breakfast was easy to find at this hotel. There was an Au Bon Pain in the building. It was good that I got there early, because soon after there were graduates and their families, faculty, speakers and Event Workers arriving hungry. When I went back up to the room, Carmen and Sandra were deep in discussion of a plan to bolt for Salem, Mass. directly after graduation. I had to steer them away from this plan without spilling too many beans about who we might want to have lunch with afterward.

We all got dressed up in our fancy duds and mosied on across the parking lot. Carmen was desperate to find out who her surprise guests might be. She had guessed Pat and Linda, but I had given no indication that she was correct. Soon she felt she had to go to the graduates procession area, and we staked out five seats on the aisle as near the front as we could get.

Eventually, Pat and Linda arrived, and took two seats on the aisle. As it turned out, Carmen's part of the procession came directly down that aisle. When Carmen saw the five of us she burst into tears. Luckily, she had a long time to compose herself before her speech. In fact, this gathering was only the prelude to Graduation. The big name speakers spoke here. Then the show broke up and divided into actual graduation chunks. We plowed our way through the multi-directionally milling crowds over to the Adult Ed section and found the best seats we could get. Sandra made her way up to the stage-right side of the stage brandishing her video camera, determined to get Carmen's speech.

Before things got under way, I saw a tall, thin black man in a nice suit moving toward the stage with a bouquet of flowers. "That looks a lot like Carmen's boss," I said to Olen. The man handed the flowers to a flustered-looking Carmen and went back to his seat.

Of course there were speeches before Carmen's speech. The person who spoke before Carmen was about a foot taller, and the microphone was aimed way up. Not being comfortable with audio equipment, Carmen's method of compensating for this was to stand on her tiptoes. She needed to be louder anyway, the microphone was still aimed away from her, and there were other speeches going on in other sub-graduations inside the Expo Center. I understood her, but only because she had practiced it on me a couple of times. I'm proud to say that six years later, she has learned to project her voice.

As soon as Carmen crossed the stage and was handed her diploma, Je'an Wilson jumped up and headed for the exit. He was a busy Orlando lawyer, after all, and he had a flight back in an hour. I intercepted him, introduced him to Olen and thanked him for coming, and he was out the door and gone.

When it was all over, we six piled into two cabs and hauled ass to Legal Seafood across from the New England Aquarium. A splendid time was had by all. And, Olen and I didn't have to go to Salem. After lunch Pat and Linda went back to their hotel to get ready to fly home, leaving us four to wander.

Olen wanted to get a picture of the Old North Church. We consulted the map and looked up the hill, but couldn't see it from the waterfront. We climbed the hill, still looking. Finally we asked a local, who told us how to get there. We found ourselves on Hanover Street, across from the restaurant from Saturday night. There was Paul Revere on his horse. We had to go around the block to see the famous spire. Olen got his pictures, Sandra got video, and we were done with Boston. Back to Dorchester we went, packed up our stuff and were ready to fly home to begin the next phase of the adventure, applying to Seminaries.