Today is hot and humid, an ugly combination. I am sitting in the cool house with my feet up and a cup of coffee in hand. The dogs are napping. They’re just enjoying life. I do wish it was cooler so I could sit on the deck to take in the day. The only event on my dance card is uke practice tonight.

One summer in the mid 1970’s, my friend and I traveled through South America. Back then, there were few tourists. We seldom found English speakers. We landed in Caracas, traveled the continent then took off from Rio. I planned the trip. I knew enough Spanish, but my friend knew none. She said the only word she wanted was for beer. I helped her with that. We stayed in Caracas only a couple of days. It was a huge city which held little interest for us. I remember going to this huge building filled with kiosks all selling tickets to various parts of Venezuela. We bought tickets to Merida. We were the only foreigners on the bus. I remember the trip took close to twelve hours on a winding road. We stopped in a small mountain town for lunch. Our fellow passengers told us to order the trout. We did. It was amazing. Merida is in the Venezuelan Andes. Many of the buildings are Spanish architecture and are stunningly beautiful. We went to Merida to ride the cable car. I remember being in line when they announced no cars that day because of the wind. Instead, we walked around the city and went to the market biding our time, but the next day was the same so we decided to move on to Columbia.

Our next destination was Bogota, but it was a bus ride of fifteen or sixteen hours so we planned a stop. I remember a cheap hotel where we didn’t dare take off our shoes and thought we’d leave dirtier than we had arrived. That was the first of our how can we sleep here hotels. Bogota back then was safe. We walked all over the city with no problems. The most unbelievable place was the Gold Museum. What I remember is walking pass a thick metal safe like door into a dark room. When they turned the lights on, every person ooed as we were surrounded by cases filled with gold artifacts. It was brilliant. We went to the salt cathedral next, not so far from Bogota. The cathedral is underground in a salt mine. What was surprising was the salt was in chunks and not very white. I asked a guard at the mine how the salt was processed from the chunks. He actually took us in a car to the factory down the road. One of the workers led us on a tour of the factory. We even had to wear hard hats. I remember salt was everywhere in the air. We breathed it and tasted it. We watched the whole process. Before we left, I was given a small chunk of salt with some black on the edges. I still have it. I keep it in the fridge so it won’t melt.

Ecuador was next. I’ll save that for another day.

Lat night was cooler, down to the 70’s, so I turned off the AC. This morning the house is still cool, but that won’t last. It will be in the 80’s today and most of the week. I will hibernate.

My inner sloth is still reeling. Yesterday I cross off the chores on my to-do list. I scrubbed all the deck chairs and swept the deck, well most of it. I’ll finish the rest today. I need a new broom.

When I was a kid, I loved walking around uptown checking out the stores. I remember there were three drug stores close to each other. I never wondered about that. Middlesex Drug was the fanciest. It had the best soda fountain with a marble top. That is where I’d drink my vanilla cokes made the old way with fizzy water and flavoring. They had counters along the sides and in the middle, and at Christmas I’d wander hoping to find presents for my parents within my meager budget. Pullo’s Rexall Drug was right by the movie theater. It was small. Mr. Pullo, also the pharmacist, used to wear white jackets, the sort Ben Casey always wore. He was one of my father’s friends. Stoneham Pharmacy, Bracciotti’s, was almost next door to Pullo’s. I don’t remember ever shopping there.

One of my favorite stores was the cobbler’s. It was long and narrow and tucked between two other stores. The window was filled with shoes in pairs with Manila tags. The counter too was covered in shoes. The cobbler sat behind the counter working on a shoe held on a metal holder the shape of a shoe. He wore an apron. He always looked old to me.

On the street in the middle of the square used to be a police box. A policeman sat inside and controlled the three sets of attached traffic lights. Signs were on the front. Straight ahead to Route 128 and straight ahead to Route 28. A traffic accident destroyed it.

The square was called up-town while Boston was in-town. I don’t know if everyone called it that, but my mother always did.