The tar pot at the gate

By the north door of the walk sits a cast-iron pot of tar, kept warm since before anyone now on the roll was born, and a board nailed above it. Every visitor to the walk signs the board. Every one. The foreman will stop a pass to make sure.

The reason is not tradition for its own sake. The tar pot is the last warm thing you pass before you walk, and the walk is a place where moving rope takes no prisoners. A person who has signed the board has, the foreman says, agreed to behave like rope: pay attention, hold the line, and do nothing clever.

The current board is the seventh. Boards one through four are in the museum, thick with names. Board five burned in the 1988 fire with the office. Board six filled in a single season after the yard was listed and the coaches started coming. Ruth keeps a photograph of it, because among the names, in careful capitals, is the family that once owned the tannery shed the walk was built from.