Don’t want to let another day go by without celebrating the instant and continued roaring success that is the Randolph Tot Lot, here discussed and cavilled at as hazardous to tots because it had an alley running through it.

Forget about that, even if the park district has not posted the yellow caution signs an aide told me weeks ago were on order.  Yes, the alleged speed bump is not enough to slow down a tricycle, but it doesn’t matter: there is almost no foot traffic from the tot side of the alley to the lovely sitting and reading-on-bench side, no little ones darting forth, there being nothing to attract them on the multiple-bench-equipped other side.

As for the tot side, from Grove east to the alley, it’s practically standing room only at some times of the day, and has been since the Aug. 10 grand opening.  Just tonight, strolling down our alley toward Randolph, I spied a veritable flotilla of strollers, each with a young one aboard and a young mother or nanny pushing.

And the tots in the lot have a glorious time, the parents and other overseeing adults having an only slightly less glorious one, it seems to the stroller going by on a daily basis.  Chortles aplenty, sometimes quiet intensity as a little guy navigates the hummock left over from the previous lot, moving up to the top with gravity befitting a high-wire walker.

The mockup of a railroad train is immensely popular, affording many nooks and crannies whence one can peek out from a sort of porthole or peek in from near or far.  The swings are sling jobs for infants and sit-alones for older ones.  Lovely to peak at the parent pushing the infant oh so gently on the sling job.

So codgers including those with grandchildren in another state can find much to enjoy.  However, their main place is across the alley in the bench-rich area, where they can sit and soak up old sol and read or chat.  This one read the other afternoon as the late afternoon September sun warmed his bones while Ezra Pound warmed his spirit with advice about poetry and discussion of 12th century troubadours in the south of France.

One could imagine himself there in that halcyon climate, or one could just enjoy it, with now and then a look across the alley at the play of the little children.