Elmer the maniacal husky and I were returning from a madcap visit to the dog park. It was nine in the morning on a January weekday in the Rose City.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I beamed with a jolly mood. Elmer’s antics at the dog park always inspire that feeling. As does listening to tracks from James Brown’s Christmas album, which I was.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were almost home. I was driving a sleepy two-lane avenue through my tony and leafy neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I noticed a bicyclist pedaling toward me, about 50 yards away. Right at me, a hunched-over man zigzagging on a kid’s bike.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His hands were not on the handlebars. They were carrying a small box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was the unmistakable look of a homeless man recklessly riding a bicycle in defiance of basic traffic laws and common safety sense. I’d seen it a thousand times and nearly crashed into several of these wanton riders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But I never had a man riding a bicycle without using his hands while carrying a box and coming right at me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I slowed down. I checked the mirror behind me\u2014two cars. No one was approaching me from the avenue’s other lane. I began formulating a plan to drive around the bicyclist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The rider came into view. I recognized him as one of the local fentanyl miscreants. How he was still alive was impossible to imagine but I’m glad he was\u2014he’s a member of a family somewhere in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the last second before I began my swerve around the rider, swerved himself, off to a side street at breakneck speed at such an astonishing angle that I issued a profanity-laced hosanna of praise.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mind you, he was not using his hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before losing him, I saw: his left hand holding a box of Franz’s powdered donuts. His right hand held a donut and he was gobbling it down with gusto. The powder fell around him like so much so snow. He was wearing a white face with a semi smile attached to it. Donuts can do that to a man.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I laughed. How could I not? I said something to Elmer about the utter preposterous of what had just occurred. I knew for certainty the scene would work its way into a work of fiction one day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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