Photo by Bill Stokes
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, reports that the keeper and Phyllis, and Phyllis’s granddaughter Taylor were among those who spent part of a perfect summer Saturday afternoon on the four-block stretch of “Atwood Fest.”
It will be scored as time well spent: strolling past the weekend merchants of frivolity and fashion and passion-for-causes, having a cold refreshing drink under a sound-cloud of local music, letting our big bellies and butts display like proud badges of excess, and seeing an old friend or two to hug and compare survival notes with.
The keeper once—about a hundred years ago, had a UW student job at Charlie Ping’s Standard Station on Atwood. Charlies is gone, the station is gone, and on this day in its former location, a band of young musicians bangs out entertainment to an appreciative crowd.
It is the keeper’s advice that if you have an opportunity to attend a summer “fest,” you do it: It will be a wonderful experience of renewal and reality and remembering—washing windshields at Charlie Pings and drinking more beer than a student should down at the tavern on the end of the block.
