Edit: 10:25 p.m.
I was scanning some old pictures last night and this one tickled me no end, for an odd reason. The picture is about fifty years old, and the kiddie in the sandbox is yours truly. The two men are my dad and my grandpa cornelius, who went by the nickname Shirley. Yep, I was named for my Grandpa. But that's not what tickles me about the picture. It's about the big tree in the background, with the lopsided bench built around it. That's how grandpa built things: fast and sometimes without the aid of a level. But the memories of that tree jump out at me unbidden at different times, memories of the boy cousins hanging a Tarzan rope from one of the branches one summer, flashes of the Baltimore Orioles that built their hanging basket nest in it another summer, and glimpses of gaggles of kids sitting on the bench. And wasn't it just . . . yesterday?