Was there anything more glorious than sitting on the porch with a bowl of cold Caesar chicken salad and a whole lot of pickled red onions? She didn’t think so. From deep in the house came the faint strains of the Bach double violin concerto; the talented hands of Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh driving their bows over the strings, pulling life’s essence and exquisite beauty out of cat gut and wood. Marvelous. Was anything better?
She leaned back in the Adirondack chair and closed her eyes. ‘I wonder if Bach ate Caesar chicken salad and pickled red onions?’ She tried envisioning this. She couldn’t quite pull it together in her mind as she was drifting off in the heat; the porch was so cool, the neighborhood absolutely silent.
A slight breeze moved the wind chimes at the edge of the porch and the music inside the house wound down, both artists bringing Bach to a brilliant close with a flourish and a nod; all three musicians long gone now, yet the music was still there, still giving life, still stirring thoughts and emotions, evocative images from the memory of sound.
The whole nation should be seated on the front porch, eating cold Caesar chicken salad with heaps of red pickled onions. Heaps. There isn’t anything more glorious.
690 Saint Paul 