(Originally visited 2 July 2004.)

I only had ninety minutes. Ninety minutes to travel through Boston on I-93 at the end of the morning rush to Quincy, get pictures of the Adams’ sarcophagi and then return to pick up my buddy who was having his corneas ripped open and burned by lasers just to restore unaided vision.

One of my worst nightmares is to have something touch my eyeball that isn’t my eyelid. I like wearing glasses.

So I was quite happy to ditch him and drive my hybrid as fast and as far away as possible. Quincy seemed far enough and there were a couple of dead presidents I hadn’t visited in more than twenty years.

It took a little more than half an hour to get to the church. I left the highway one exit too soon so I had an unexpected driving tour of the town before finding “The Church of the Presidents”. Knowing I didn’t have much time, I practically ran inside as one older gentleman was putting out a sign welcoming visitors. I told him that I only wanted to see the tomb so he commended me to an even older gentleman who took me downstairs.

He was pleasant and knowledgeable and insisted on running through his material while I took the pictures. He tried to stump me on a couple of presidential trivia questions, but I didn’t start collecting dead presidents yesterday.

I had my shots and needed to hurry to pick up my temporarily blinded friend, but this little old man insisted I come upstairs to sit in the Adams’ pew and I could not resist his enthusiasm.

Returning to the optical chop shop a few minutes late, I found my friend sitting in the waiting room, eyes temporarily numbed and burnt red.

To provide some closure on this anecdote, he now has 20/10 vision and I got 67 miles per gallon on the trip.

The first part of this story was posted last week in John Adams grave.