wow, great incident

A soon as I finished that last post, a remarkable thing happened…

A very old man with a cane limped into the cybercafe with a 50’ish woman who turned out to be his daughter. The old man then addressed the nice young Chinese woman who owns this cybercafe:

“This was my childhood home 60 years ago. Do you mind if I have a look around?”

Having overheard that fragment, I made sure to strike up a conversation with them. The old man lives in Canada now, having emigrated from Ireland in 1949 or 1950, and apparently having not returned since.

He told me the back room of the cybercafe was a kitchen in those days, and led out onto a garden (no chance of any gardens in this highly developed part of the city now).

He then rang the doorbell of the upstairs apartment, which was also part of his childhood home, and asked to have a look up there too. They seemed to have admitted him.

I’ve only seen one other thing like this happen before. When I was at St. John’s, two elderly men showed up on our dormitory floor one day, and asked my neighbor if they could see his room. Apparently that was the room they had shared during freshman year in around 1927-28. (Well before H.P. Lovecraft’s visit to campus.)