Saved by a Cricket

 a true story by Laura Botsford

   Quiet, simple is what I knew about it then. I could give you a past; I could give you today or recall the history of everyday people who meant something into my next encounter. It was my vocation just to be and see what happened.  I was traveling the streets of San Francisco, checking out stores and restaurants, writing and observing. I was revived on Market Street, cut as fresh as the yellow and white daffodils that bloomed in their gypsy garden carts.
How sweet is the bustle of 18 years of age? How new and fascinating the faces were to me, however weathered or broken. Their working days gone, old men, well beyond their present age, now sit in Union Square waiting for a hand out to buy another bottle of wine.    Above the lonely din hovered one…