The passengers settled down and the bus moved up to Mass Ave and the "hallowed" Yard, as Phil called it, The tour brochure has a few words about this, too: "Entering Harvard Square, we view the famous Harvard particularly what appear to be Harvard students, is their tendency to act out before the sightseers and often-times wave. Nowhere else on the tour were people so conscious of being watched. I guess it's because we always fancy ourselves under observation. We seem to have the notion that average Americans find us especially fascinating; after all, even we usually find ourselves fascinating. I guess you'd have to call it vanity. I think we all wonder what the people behind the windows are saying about us. You know I didn't take the tour out of a love for buses.

We caught a glimpse of John Harvard's statue through the Mass Hall gate and noticed that three students were sitting in his lap. Then we passed "Harvard Memorial Theater." and finally headed for our third and last 20-minute stop-the glass flower exhibit at the University Museum.

Phil told us about the exhibit before letting us out. A Southern couple across the aisle from me turned to their son, who was a big fellow about 24 years old seated behind me. "You going'?" the man asked his son.

"I don't care anything about any glass flowers," he responded. His name was Clyde. "You've got to climb six flights of stairs. I'm staying' right here."

The man sat restlessly for 30 seconds. and then jumped up impulsively, "I'm going to go," he said, and his wife hopped up to join him.

As they made their way to the front of the bus, Clyde called out with just the right touch of sarcasm, "Hope y'all enjoy it."

When we got there, I decided to reassert my role as a tourist and started snapping pictures of the museum. I was going to ask Phil to pose in front of it, but then I just didn't have the nerve. one living in the Greater Boston area can be buried there."

Clyde didn't like that idea. "Sounds unconstitutional to me," he mumbled.

"Are there any questions?" Phil asked as he swung the bus around. There weren't, and as we passed the cemetery again. Phil gave us the acreage statistics another time. "Still no questions?" he asked.

An inquisitive woman up front asked why no one living in the Greater Boston area could be buried there. "Because they're not dead yet," Phil responded. Laughter. You had to be there.

The most amazing part of the tour for me came five minutes later as we looked out on Soldiers' Field to our right and Phil described the Bubble (The Farrell Track Facility). "See that structure shaped sort of like a balloon? We call that a seven-year building because it comes down after seven years. It was originally built three or four years ago to hold commencement activities, and then they tried baseball and ind?? ????k in there. But they've stopped using it for baseball. It's made out of canvas and rubber compounds."

After that display of unintentional deception, it was anyone's guess what he'd say about the Stadium as the tour drew to a close. But Phil did pretty well. "That horseshoe is Harvard Stadium," he told us. "It's often referred to as the Harvard Colosseum because it does resemble the Colosseum in Rome a little. It seats 39,000 people."

Clyde was not impressed. "We can seat more than that," he drawled. "Dad? Dad, can't we seat more than that? Can't we seat 46,000?" Then Clyde paused a minute before throwing out a final thought. "And I'll bet we could beat the pants off of those boys from Harvard."