There’s a local guide with Walking/Historic Tours marked out on it available most everywhere in Bristol Rhode Island. My wife grabbed the local guide in a restaurant, and I’m referring to it now, so I can tell you that’s a picture of the Rockwell House Inn on Hope Street. We didn’t look at the guide while we were in Bristol, because we’re strange.

If I wanted planning, I would have stayed home and made a gantt chart. I wanna wander around and see stuff. I don’t want to be harangued, or shepherded, or queued, or itineraried, or reserved; and I don’t want to be told anything. I want to find things out. Am I strange? I don’t know. You decide.

My poor children. When the oldest was four or so, he used to play a computer game called Roller Coaster Tycoon. It’s a funny and smart little building game where you open an amusement park and assemble rides and kiosks for refreshment and gather all the other appurtenances of a theme park on the screen, and try to populate it with little customers. It’s smart, and funny, and has an interesting and captivating visual and musical style. After playing this game for six months or so, my son asked me: “Dad, is there a place, you know, in the world, the real world, a place with rides and candy clowns and funny buildings and things like Rollercoaster Tycoon?

“No. “

I know, I know. But waiting in line is a not an amusement, and I can’t bring myself to do it very often, even to allow my kids the same anthropomorphic-mouse-in-the-swamp thrill considered mandatory in polite society these days. Hey Walt: If the phone don’t ring, it’s me.

But you can just walk around in Bristol, and amuse yourself, if you’re an adult with certain pedestrian interests, or a three year old:

I’ve said it before: A three year old is the perfect companion. He will go anywhere, and look at anything.

He’ll look at flowers, or dirt in the gutter, it doesn’t matter. Just keep going, and keep looking at things, and you’ll be fine. And until hunger or sleep beckons, he’s relentless. Why would we need a map? He won’t hold anything but his mother’s hand, and he won’t read anything because he can’t, or he won’t. He has no pockets. He’s ready to be friends with each and every man, woman, and child he sees; and come to think of it, most other creatures, and some inanimate objects.

“I go I do,” he says occasionally. It’s all one word — one syllable really — when he says it: “IgoIdo.”

Yes, son; can we come too?