return, they tried to resume normal conversation, not wanting to spoil their wager by letting him in on it.
         The congregation was inter-related via a network of associations, unions, alliances, and affiliations evolved over fifty years. It began perhaps on Gault Street in Van Nuys, a suburb of Los Angeles, one Saturday morning in the late fifties. Jon’l, still in grade school, came upon a colorful little scene: Tim and Tony Clime who lived across the street were on their driveway teaching a chubby youngster, Brad, the correct way to hit a soccer ball with your fist when playing sock-ball at school. Brad was in first grade, a classmate of Chaz, who lived down the street. The three – Jon’l, Brad and Chaz – would become dedicated comrades, graduate from Birmingham High, then move to Isla Vista and attend UC Santa Barbara. There they aligned with Carl Azid, Max McInerny, Billy Feccia, and Pat Musto, all émigrés from Vista in San Diego County. Then Brad and Carl Azid decided to relocate to Flagstaff and became grade schoolteachers. Over the years, their snarl of friends, colleagues and acquaintances continued to snowball so that now there was a vast and far-reaching network stretching from Van Nuys, Vista, Flagstaff, Kansas City, New York, Tennessee, the network forever growing like a snowball rolling downhill.
         Brad’s knowledge of Jon’l’s proclivity to smell things was permanently established by an episode in Isla Vista during the seventies. One afternoon, Jon’l and his girlfriend Ann were perched on chairs on the second-floor landing outside their apartment on Sabado Tarde Street a block from the ocean. They shared a two-bedroom apartment there with Brad, Chaz, Mike Spensko, and Bob Leland while Carl Azid, Billy Feccia and Max McInerney lived across the landing.
         It was a typical Isla Vista afternoon, memorable only for being a ordinary, the morning fog gradually giving way to afternoon haze. From their vantage point on the landing, Jon’l and Ann had an unobstructed view of the intersection of Sabado Tarde and Camino Pescadero Streets. Jon’l was moody, having committed the cardinal sin of inserting a woman into the sanctity of his personal life, into the very apartment he shared with his pals. Though he craved the company of a beautiful woman – Ann had big soft brown eyes, white skin, a clear face, and lovely long brunette hair – he also cherished the freedom of his peers. And no doubt he had once again consumed too much coffee and by afternoon fallen into a cantankerous mood.
         At one point, the familiar form of Brad Gaston appeared from around the corner riding a small bicycle, making wide, lazy loops. Whose bike was anyone’s guess. It was not his. All his bikes had already been stolen or broken one way or another. This bike, an old, small, repainted wreck, was probably available as he left