It is one thing to hear a dog barking behind a fence, and quite another to see the dog’s head over the top of a fence within inches of us on the sidewalk. Which got the walk off to a startling beginning. Then we peered through the chain fencing at the junior high, trying to see what the dark masses were, that turned out to be portables.

We slowed down in front of the house where the residents were obviously having beef stew. A house or two down, we stopped, and tried to determine what was being cooked there, but it was elusive. Meaty, steamy, potatoey. From another house came the smell of bread, but not the homemade kind. More like a purchased bread being warmed up.

We never stop talking unless we smell something wonderful. There were no cockroaches under the beam of my flashlight, hopefully the neighbors stomped them all.

There was discussion of Easter dinners, rhubarb desserts, pies, sex offenders, priests, gardeners, roses, daffodils, and egg dyeing.