Athens, GA

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After being a little disappointed that Hubert wasn't typing away in his office on a Saturday, I was a little at a loss for what to do. I'd dragged the entire family to Athens from suburban Atlanta so that I could give my semi-annual(sometimes more)-token-of-appreciation-for-giving-me-southern-literature-especially-Peter-Taylor-present to my favorite professor, and being surprised by his absence, I quickly developed a coarseness in my demeanor that equaled unhappy times for that husband-o'-mine. "But he's always there," I said. It's true that during the last few years, it was an extreme rarity, even on the weekends, to find him gone from his little first-floor office. I worry about him like a child would a parent. He just seems so immortal, I think, and if anything ever happened to him...

"What do you want to do now?" my husband asked.

So, after the perfunctory cuban sandwiches and tostones at Cali-n-Tito's, an ice- cream cone at Hodgson's Drug Store, and a trip to the Memorial Park Zoo, I suggested the locally-famous disenfranchised horse. That poor horse has been through so much, but I wonder if Abbot-the-Artist would have been pleased to see my excited four-year old run toward it with such unbridled glee, such spring in each step.