A little Buckland birdie gave me a call Sunday. He was responding to an unintentional call placed by my wife from our caller-ID directory. She hit the speed-dial, noticed it was the wrong number and hung up before anyone answered. It went through and left our number on the recipient’s caller-ID, so he called right back and I answered; Red Sox-Blue Jays game on the tube; refreshing pre-autumn breeze wafting through the parlor.

“Hi Hezzie,” I said. “Did the fellas ride you about your comments in my last column? I didn’t name you but I knew it would be no mystery to the boys at Fox Towne (Coffee Shop).”

He chuckled, comfortable in his skin.

“Don’t ever change, Bags, please,” he said. “I got a kick out of it. It’s no secret around here where I stand.”

The subject changed quickly, right to the previous day’s Kennedy funeral; what a powerful event it had been, the legions along the road, average people waving goodbye. I told him I had thrice seen young Teddy tell his tale of losing a leg and Sen. Kennedy telling him they were going to climb the hill together if it took them all day; that I could not control my emotions the first time or last, far too overpowering. He understood.

“The tears seem to come easier the older you get,” he confessed. “I don’t know why. They just do.”

Then it dawned on me: Hezzie had been a state man, an active Democrat; he must have met Teddy somewhere along the way.

“Funny you’d ask,” he said. “I spent yesterday afternoon searching for a signature of his that I saved from Mohawk Park. We kept the receipts around the office in a ledger for a couple of years. Then we’d throw them out. Well, that year I went through the ones we were discarding, pulled Kennedy’s out and took it home with me. I know it’s here somewhere. When I find it, I’m gonna frame it and hang it up.”

He couldn’t remember all the details of the weekend Kennedy visit but figured it was probably soon after Bobby had been assassinated. Teddy came into Mohawk Park in a camper, “like a Winnebago,” stayed for a couple days, “probably Friday and Saturday,” and had a tribe of kids with him, Bobby’s and his own.

“Maybe, even, Bobby and Ethel were there, too,” he said. “But I don’t believe so. I know their kids were. Bobby was probably gone and Ted had them.”

Teddy rented a cabin and spent a couple of days entertaining the kids around the confluence of the Cold and Deerfield rivers, swimming, picnicking; happy-go-lucky, pleasant to deal with.

“I wanted to give him a freebie but he wouldn’t hear of it,” Hezzie said, “insisted on paying, cash.”

At one point during the stay, the kids got a little frisky, throwing stones into the Deerfield River like kids do, and one of them hit the bath house.

“They were good kids, didn’t mean any harm,” Hezzie said. “But you know kids.”

Me? Yeah, I know. Used to be one.

Anyway, the startling sound of that stone hitting the building attracted everyone’s attention. Teddy didn’t overreact, order a timeout, get out the whipping stick, or even raise his voice. “No,” Hezzie recalled, “he just calmly said something like, ‘Boys, we must be more careful. What would we ever have done if that stone had broken a window?’”

End of story, indelible, Franklin folklore circa ’68.

Kennedy mystique.