“Hey, yous gonna stand ‘ere all day or yous gonna move some time?!” came a surly, gravely voice behind me. The voice was grumbling along about stupid, young somethings when I turned. One look at my face, and he stopped.

The man, greasy and mangy, stood behind a hot dog cart he was trying to manhandle across the street with one good arm. His left arm was the worst, shriveled example of laser burn I’d seen since the war. Pudgy around the middle, and all jowls about his neck, I wondered if he sold as many dogs as he ate.

I’d put him mid-50’s, a few years older than me perhaps, old enough to have been in the thick of it. In turn, I could see him appraising me, guessing the age that my slight frame still defied but my face could not hide. His countenance softened, his eyes casting toward the to sea of oblivious young faces swirling about us.

With an upwards nod he said almost reverently, “Long live freedom, huh.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, stepping out of his way wit a tip of my hat, “long live freedom.”