A LITTLE TENNIS TETE A TETE

Today I played for the first time with a nice man a few years my senior named Tom Kelly. He looked like a Tom Kelly.

When we were packing up I asked him if he was an old time San Franciscan. He said yeah he was born here.

“Me too,” I said, “Did you go to SI or SH?” [St. Ingatius or Sacred Heart high schools.]

He said SH, then “What year did you graduate?”

Some local activists were appalled, during the Yale Choir beating furor, to discover how important these questions are to natives. They thought they were coming to a cosmopolis.

Turns out he was six years ahead of me. He said he’s retired from the Fire Department, so I rattled off the names of firemen who were my friends’ dads, and a couple of my contemporaries, all of whom Tom knew.

It’s been beautiful in Golden Gate Park these last two mornings.

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