A friendly lunch

My college roommate Nancy is in town again, invited by her granddaughters to go trick-or-treating with them (she will be costumed as the family dog.)  So we met for lunch at The Bagel Oasis, a shop that was open when I first moved here some thirty years ago and which has changed very little except for personnel.  The big selling point of the Oasis, aside from its home in a wonderful neighborhood it's a delight to stroll, is that the bagels are made the right way.  That is, they are boiled before they are baked.  A lot of places just steam them, but there is a big difference when that extra step of boiling is taken.  When I was a child, my best friend's father was a bagel baker.  We went to Sunday School together, and afterward we walked around the corner to her house where there were fresh hot bagels just brought in when her father came back from his very early shift at the bakery.  They were wonderful.