I continued north along Prospect Street to the St. John's Cemetery. This is a small cemetery and mausoleum, housing about a hundred people whose lives mostly spanned from about 1900 to 1985. The grave markers are flush with the ground, giving an impression of modest people who lived practical lives. The roster of names included many familiar ones, important families during the years after the big wave of European immigrants at the end of the 19th century, names like Coleman, Marino, Milardo, Kidney, Footit.
When I was bicycling around the North End, I passed a car on jacks with one man working on the brakes, and another man and a woman leaning against the car, smoking and chatting. When the woman saw me, she said in a very loud voice (it sounded like a shout to me), "Look at that guy on the bike, he bikes around everywhere. I mean it, no matter where I go, there he is." I laughed and turned around to reply, but she was turned away to chat with her friends. I don't know if she thought I couldn't understand the language, or if she thought I couldn't hear her shout, but I felt a little bit like a funny-looking lemur whom the tourists assume cannot understand things that are said about him.
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