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The Wrong Squid: More on the Duke
(this got cut off or something. Rich is going down.)
By far, my favorite encounter was the time I saw the Duke while I was riding my bike to work. I was riding through a park over a little bridge, and I saw someone on the other side look around, dart into the bushes, and come out with a piece of trash. I thought, "Great, loon on the loose." As I got closer, I saw some other passerby approach the darting bush garbage dude, look at him, get a surprised look on his face, and say hello. At this point I was pretty close, and I looked down and the garbage dude was of course, Mike Dukakis. He said hello and went about his way. I spent the rest of the day thinking about what I good citizen he was for personally cleaning our city's parks.
Anyway, the other night I saw him again. I was stopped at a stoplight, and this man shuffled past in front of the car carrying a shopping bag and what appeared to be a bunch of broken down boxes. I sort of recognized him, but he's grayer than I remembered him. When it finally hit me who he was, I blurted out, "Is that the Duke?" My friend Collin confirmed that it was. She rolled down the window and yelled "Duke!" but he was already too far away, and preoccupied with the boxes he kept dropping. Were those just his boxes, or had he been picking up trash again? We'll never know.
