Ain’t that a sketch? I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the temperature dropped twenty degrees where they passed each other by.

It’s like my mother used to say-people have more fun than anybody,

–except for horses, and they can’t.

Now lookit over there. See that Sheriff’s cruiser parked by the curb near the video shop? That’s John LaPointe inside. He’s supposed to be keepin an eye out for speeders-downtown’s a go-slow zone, you know, especially when school lets out-but if you shade your eyes and look close, you’ll see that what he’s really doin is starin at a picture he took out of his wallet. I can’t see it from here, but I know what it is just as well as I know my mother’s maiden name. That’s the snapshot Andy Clutterbuck took of John and Sally Ratcliffe at the Fryeburg State Fair, just about a year ago. John’s got his arm around her in that picture, and she’s holdin the stuffed bear he won her in the shootin gallery, and they both look so happy they could just about split. But that was then and this is now, as they say; these days Sally is engaged to Lester Pratt, the high school Phys Ed coach. He’s a true-blue Baptist, Just like herself. John hasn’t got over the shock of losing her yet. See him fetch that sigh? He’s worked himself into a pretty good case of the blues. Only a man who’s still in love (or thinks he is) can fetch a sigh that deep.

Trouble and aggravation’s mostly made up of ordinary things, did you ever notice that? Undramatic things. Let me give you a forinstance. Do you see the fellow just going up the courthouse steps?