Sitting next to us is a woman with dyed-blond hair, wearing a too-tight T-shirt and short shorts. She and her two blond kids are staring. The boy who asked the question looks like he’s nine or ten.

The woman starts to rise. “Come on, kids, we’re moving away from this hippie trash.” The kids obediently pick up their trays and follow.

“Girl,” I call out after them.

The boy looks back and frowns.

“It’s the ponytail.” Arno runs a hand over his own hair, which partly covers his ears and in the back ends thickly at his shirt collar. “Mine’s more acceptably long. But you’ve crossed the line.”

I wave him off. “Frequently wrong. Never in doubt.”

Milton laughs so abruptly that he coughs out a half-chewed French fry. The radio earpiece falls into his soda. He fishes it out and sticks it back in his ear.

Arno can’t let go. “Cut it a little shorter. It can still be long. Just not so long that it attracts attention everywhere you go.”

“What about when everyone else’s hair is as long as mine?” I ask.

“Never.”

“The oracle hath spoken yet again.” Milton sniggers.

Nothing eggs Arno on more than when we don’t take him seriously. “When are you gonna figure out that this long-haired hippie-dippie shit is just a fad? Remember when it was spit curls and duck’s asses? Tapered pants and engineer boots? Now we laugh at those guys.”

“This is different.”

Arno rolls his eyes. “Oh, really? All these barefoot flower people eating brown rice and alfalfa sprouts? You don’t think they’re gonna get tired of being dirty and hungry? And free love? Enjoy the crabs and clap, man. This whole back-to-the-land thing? Isn’t that why we had the industrial revolution? So we don’t all have to be farmers anymore?”

He is so good at getting under my skin. “You don’t get it, Arno,” I tell him. “You’re never gonna get it.”

Arno sits back and smugly crosses his arms. “We’ll see who doesn’t get it.”

Dessert at Carvel. Robin would always get vanilla swirl with sprinkles in a cup, never a cone. She didn’t like it dripping down her hand on warm nights.

I’m bummed about Milton not going to the festival, but it should still be an outrageous weekend of music and fun, plus an opportunity to catch up with Cousin Barry. (I can always hang out with him and Zach while Arno’s off peddling his wares.)

We’re paying for our cones when from the parking lot in the back comes the loud revving of a car engine followed by the squeal of tires.