There are towns in this country where a man may walk down the main street without incident, purchase a little merchandise, enjoy an ice cream cone, and return to his automobile with his dignity intact. Ferndale, California, is apparently not one of them.

My wife, Mary, and I had just come out of the Golden Gait Mercantile, having conducted some perfectly respectable shopping, when we decided to wander farther down the street to an ice cream shop. We informed our daughter-in-law, Alex, of our intentions, and she replied that she would not be long in joining us.

Mary, being a woman of considerable generosity and a firm believer in allowing others to enjoy life’s simple pleasures, told her, “Take your time.”

This was an innocent remark, and at the time I saw no reason to suspect it would eventually become part of the historical record of a minor traffic catastrophe. We procured our ice cream, Alex arrived and procured hers, and the three of us settled ourselves at some outdoor tables.

The weather was pleasant, the town was charming, and the passing pedestrians supplied the sort of entertainment one gets from watching humanity go about its business without having to participate in it. We sat there enjoying our treats, feeling that civilization had finally achieved something worthwhile.

When we had finished, we gathered our belongings, cleared our table, and set out across the street. This was when civilization withdrew its support.

The bottom fell out of the large bag Alex was carrying.

Now, I do not mean that the bag developed a small tear or suffered some minor structural inconvenience. I mean the bottom departed from the premises altogether, leaving the contents to pursue independent careers in the middle of the street. Items went in every direction, each apparently having developed its own opinion about where it wished to spend the afternoon.

Traffic came to a halt.

And there we were, the three of us, suddenly transformed from respectable visitors enjoying a pleasant afternoon in Ferndale into an impromptu street-cleaning crew. We scattered about, stooping, scooping, retrieving, and attempting to recover Alex’s possessions before they could achieve permanent residency in the roadway.

I cannot speak for the women, but I was not particularly embarrassed. A man reaches a certain age when he discovers that dignity is a fragile commodity, and that trying to preserve it is often more exhausting than simply allowing it to wander off. Besides, I have lived long enough to understand that there are worse things than being seen picking up somebody else’s belongings in the middle of a street. Being seen doing it while wearing an ice cream mustache, for instance, would have been considerably more troublesome.

I did, however, experience a certain anxiety about the motorists whose afternoon activities we had interrupted. They had presumably not driven to Ferndale in the expectation of encountering three people conducting a roadside inventory. They had places to go, things to do, and perhaps ice cream of their own waiting somewhere. Yet there they sat, patiently watching us perform what might best be described as an agricultural harvest of miscellaneous household goods.

To their credit, nobody yelled. Nobody honked. Nobody threw up their hands in theatrical despair or climbed out of a vehicle to inquire whether we had mistaken the roadway for a department store. And, most importantly, nobody ran us over. This last consideration deserves special recognition, as it is generally considered a favorable outcome when one’s afternoon activities do not include becoming a permanent feature of the pavement.

Eventually, we recovered everything that had escaped, made our way safely out of traffic, and resumed our journey with all three members of the party still accounted for. The bag, however, was another matter. Its bottom had suffered a complete and apparently irreversible loss of confidence in its future.

We had come to Ferndale for a pleasant outing, a little shopping, and some ice cream. We left having provided traffic control, roadside entertainment, and an unexpected public demonstration of the importance of sound bag construction.

I suppose there is a lesson in all this, although I have not yet determined precisely what it is. Perhaps it is that one should never trust a bag with a questionable bottom. Perhaps it is that ice cream should always be consumed within a safe distance of one’s automobile. Or perhaps it is simply that when Mary tells someone to take their time, one should consider checking the structural integrity of all nearby shopping bags before proceeding.

As for Ferndale, I suspect the motorists have recovered from the delay, the pedestrians have found something else to watch, and Alex has acquired a new appreciation for the engineering standards of a properly constructed bag.

And we? We are doing fine.

After all, nobody was hurt, nothing was permanently lost, and we did not get run over. In the grand accounting of life’s little adventures, that is what I call a successful shopping trip.