You can't always listen to a piper playing in the park. Then again, I may hear John Meikle playing his bagpipe regularly. My daily walk to work is still in its infancy. A day that clouded over and grew blustery started clear, with the smells of cut grass and crackly leaves in West Park. I was headed south toward Downtown, with the lake on my right, when I heard the cranking strains and drone of a lone bagpipe.
Few things separate people swiftly into two camps like the bagpipe.
I don't happen to think it sounds like someone is twisting pieces of light aluminum while stepping on 15 cats' tails. I have plaid DNA and a single-malt soul. I stopped several yards short of the Civil War monument, where the piper stood. A little boy in a bicycle helmet sat propped against a short wall above the monument. I knew the tune by heart.