Dear M—
You know that I’m not much of a businessman, so you can imagine how awkward it was this morning at Maria’s Café over on Franklin and 11th, when I sat down to breakfast with a half-dozen members of the Hi-Lake Business Association. I’m just not very good at this sort of thing.

But business people are pretty talkative as a whole (your dad would’ve been right at home), so eventually we settled in a bit and chatted about the ups and downs of doing business on that grand old thoroughfare. Joyce Wisdom (as fine a name as I can recall for a person) was there to grease the wheels a bit. She’s the interim director of the Lake Street Council and she’s a pretty animated woman (wise, too, I suspect). So, it was no time before yours truly was yakking away with the best of them, getting the latest on Urban Ventures, the Midtown Y, the Roof Depot (it’s right behind that place on Longfellow where I lived for awhile back in the seventies, remember?), and the Green Institute. With the eggs and American fries and decaf, well, it turned out to be a pretty okay morning--especially when somebody else picked up the tab!

We even got a little gift--for a minute, at least. We had just had our dishes cleared and were finishing up our coffee when a waitress came around and gave us each this lovely boxed piece of chocolate. This is pretty nice, I thought, until a few moments later, when she returned and apologetically took them back, explaining that they were for another table.

“I hope my Christmas isn’t like this,” said the fellow from the Roof Depot.

Me too.
—Jack