A cure for what ails

My friend had a fever and a nasty, nagging cough. "I've had enough of Dorchester!" she hacked, "I'm moving to JP!" If you are going to stay in Boston, why trade the Dot for Jamaica Plain?

Dorchester, at six square miles and almost 100,000 citizens offers more opportunities than the vaguely demarcated JP with quantified inhabitants unknown. Dorchester is an expanse of one neighborhood sub-divided into sub-neighborhoods and parishes, where one street needn't necessarily be like the next. It is a nest of mansions and warehouses, of factories and cottages, of machine shops and tea parlors, of saloons with spittoons next to chic martini bars, of machine shops next to salons, of green grocers alongside bloody-aproned meat cutters. Anyone can find what they want in Dorchester. Who would trade a spacious third-floor Dorchester apartment, convenient to a Red Line T station for a cold water walk-up a block from a bus stop on Centre Street in JP? Someone was suffering from the vapors.

My friend said, "I feel hot. I need to eat something to cool down. The best ice cream I've ever tasted was at J.P. Licks. The best coffee too. I like the Peruvian blend." I agreed that's a nice cup of coffee but getting to J.P. Licks wasn't an easy proposition.

"What's better," I asked, "Sitting in a crowded bus stuck in traffic or rocking along in a car on the Mattapan High-Speed Trolley?" She answered without hesitation: "The High-Speed." I said to her, "Let's see if we can find a cure for your fever along the Red Line extension."

We did. We went to the Ice Cream Smith in Lower Mills and we each had a pistachio cone which we savored walking up to Dorchester Park, strolling around, and then walking back to the Milton Station. My friend said, "You're right. I don't feel so heated now. There were real pistachios in that cone and I feel much better now. After the ice cream and the walk, my stomach, my fever and my spirits are more settled. I think I'll stay in Dorchester a while longer. Who needs JP?"