So, this is Boston?

A trip to the park 1987.
We walked down to Brookline Village and caught the ‘T’ with the intent of traveling towards downtown Boston. The MTA train that travels above and below street level through Beantown. The same subway that “Charlie” was stuck on and his fate will never be learned, as sung by the Kingston Trio.
But anyway, we were headed for Tremont Street stop with the intent of walking to the Boston Commons. America’s first city park. Certainly, a heavily visited place by out-of-town visitors like ourselves. So, wife, youngest daughter, and myself then ventured into the famed park. There was the ‘Swan Boats” with a dozen passengers circling on a waterway around the Commons. Down the way a father/daughter were playing, If my memory serve me, a violin and accordion and regaling the few listeners standing nearby. So, we walked around the fifty-acre park. Trees, bushes, and all manner of shrub adorned the park. It was early summer and a public place couldn’t be more beautiful.
Then we found the place our three-year-old daughter came for. A splash pad. A fountain shooting twenty or thirty feet into the air. A fine spray covered the entire pad and kids of all ages were screaming and yelling in the showery mist.
Wife and I found park benches to sit and watch our daughter scream and frolic in the fountain’s cooling mist.
Wife and I were talking about her classes she was taking at Simmons College. A well-regarded college amongst dozens of colleges and universities in Boston. Boston’s greatest export is its institutions of higher learning. Harvard, Boston College, MIT, Boston University, etc.
Then I noticed out from the corner of my eye a man fully clothed walking out from the splash pad soaking wet. He was a man of a smallish stature looking straight at me with his narrow eyes and broad forehead. Looking very much like someone from the Kennedy family. He then sat down on the bench next to me and sat there for a moment while still dripping puddles.
Then as passersby walked in front of the ‘splashpad man’ he would point his finger directly at them and say something like, “Did you know John F Kennedy was our 35th president?” Or, as others passed by a still pointing at them, “Did you know John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas Texas on November 22, 1963?” And it continued on with him pointing at random people as they passed in front of the very wet man.
Finally, and not too soon, our daughter walked away from the splash pad and indicated she had enough. So, we dried her off and walked back to the subway entrance and got on the train and made our way back to wife’s temporary home in Brookline. Yes, just another ordinary day in Boston.