searching for hills

I'm wandering around my neighborhood in search of hills. Instead of hills, I find the other side of the tracks at the end of my block. My neighborhood is very working class, and as it turns out, very international.

Across the street is a small bar with, hardly needs to be said, bud on tap. I can follow the tracks to Somerville, which, it turns out, is less than five minutes by foot from my place.


And there I discover even more international flair, lawyers consorting with Portuguese,


and fraternity among the Chinese, Portuguese and Brazilian.

You'll have to imagine the best find on Somerville Avenue, because my request to take a picture was refused. Picture a storefront, with big picture windows and linoleum floors, entirely filled, as if it were a barn for hay, of sacks of rice. Big sacks of rice--as large as the biggest bag of dogfood. And three young Latinos, like farmhands, lazing about on them.