he went, holding his brown cowboy hat with the curled-up brimâa gift from his gently departing first-year girlfriend. Lindsay was doing an exchange semester abroad, in Hong Kong. Sensible girl!
I shouldnât have been surprised by this turn of events. After all, Brian and I had both spent most of our twenties kicking around the world, ignoring the future. But when we left, our parents didnât drive us to the airport, and in those days the generation gap worked like email in reverse: the point was not to stay in touch. The technology of the day reinforced the gap, since long-distance phone calls were expensive and the connections were poor; on a call from Burlington to Greece my fatherâs voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the ocean (which it was). Airmail letters took forever. They sat scattered around Europe in American Express offices, waiting weeks for us to show up and claim them, if we didnât change our itinerary. And back home, nobody opened the front door to check the mailbox 20 times a day.
Once we left, we were gone. And what our parents didnât know (a great deal,which I will get to) couldnât hurt them.
When we got back home, Brian settled back in at the computer, his mind already on other things. I drifted around, picking up odds and ends Casey had left behind in his old room. The McGill calendar, with tick marks beside strange coursesââSoil Scienceâ or âThe Physics of Musicââthat he was hoping would be more ârealâ than history. I shoved the wooden case of crumpled tubes of acrylic paint back under his bed. He had the artist gene, all right (from his grandfather), but he probably wasnât going to take that route. Music was more his thing, playing and writing it. Still, it wasnât at all clear what path he was going to choose.
Which is normal, I thought, at 20.
I stowed the emergency-orange rain jacket I had bought him because he was always riding his bike home at 2 a.m. and kept his old address book, slightly curved from being carried in his back jeans pocket. Downstairs, his guitar amp (built decades earlier by my brother) was still set up in the dining room. I wound the power cable around the handle and lugged the TV-sized amp down into the basement. No more home recordings for now.
A few days later,we got our first message, a group email to family and friends:
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2003 12:46:32 -0500
Subject: New Mexico
Hi there,
I am in Santa Fe and alive and well. Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico are beautiful! I spent my first night sleeping behind the âWelcome to Las Vegasâ sign beside the airport. Planes are loud. Vegas is bright all the time. Then I spent the whole next day trying to get out of town. Hitchhiking to Zion National Park was not successful. Word to the wise, do not try to hitch out of Vegas and into Utahâbad combination . . .
âSounds like heâs doing all right,âBrian remarked.
âWhat are you saying?â I yelped, face in my hands. âOur son just spent the night sleeping on the ground, behind the âWelcome to Las Vegasâ sign!â
âHeâll survive. Caseyâs resourceful.â
The details came later. He had gotten off the plane thinking he could find a hostel or perhaps a grassy ditch to camp in. But Vegas is not a town of grassy ditches. He took buses all over, looking for the university (âstudents, they live cheaplyâ), then a hostel, then a cheap motel. But even the Super 8 on the outskirts of town cost an exorbitant $90. So, still wearing his overstuffed pack and cowboy hat, carrying his guitar, he made his way back to the airport, where he found a semi-secluded patch of grass behind the âWelcomeâ sign. He brushed his teeth and unrolled his sleeping bag. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he decided not to put up his tent.
Desert nights, he discovered, can be surprisingly cold. In the morning, he made his
I shouldnât have been surprised by this turn of events. After all, Brian and I had both spent most of our twenties kicking around the world, ignoring the future. But when we left, our parents didnât drive us to the airport, and in those days the generation gap worked like email in reverse: the point was not to stay in touch. The technology of the day reinforced the gap, since long-distance phone calls were expensive and the connections were poor; on a call from Burlington to Greece my fatherâs voice sounded like it was coming from the bottom of the ocean (which it was). Airmail letters took forever. They sat scattered around Europe in American Express offices, waiting weeks for us to show up and claim them, if we didnât change our itinerary. And back home, nobody opened the front door to check the mailbox 20 times a day.
Once we left, we were gone. And what our parents didnât know (a great deal,which I will get to) couldnât hurt them.
When we got back home, Brian settled back in at the computer, his mind already on other things. I drifted around, picking up odds and ends Casey had left behind in his old room. The McGill calendar, with tick marks beside strange coursesââSoil Scienceâ or âThe Physics of Musicââthat he was hoping would be more ârealâ than history. I shoved the wooden case of crumpled tubes of acrylic paint back under his bed. He had the artist gene, all right (from his grandfather), but he probably wasnât going to take that route. Music was more his thing, playing and writing it. Still, it wasnât at all clear what path he was going to choose.
Which is normal, I thought, at 20.
I stowed the emergency-orange rain jacket I had bought him because he was always riding his bike home at 2 a.m. and kept his old address book, slightly curved from being carried in his back jeans pocket. Downstairs, his guitar amp (built decades earlier by my brother) was still set up in the dining room. I wound the power cable around the handle and lugged the TV-sized amp down into the basement. No more home recordings for now.
A few days later,we got our first message, a group email to family and friends:
Date: Tue, 17 Feb 2003 12:46:32 -0500
Subject: New Mexico
Hi there,
I am in Santa Fe and alive and well. Nevada, Arizona, and New Mexico are beautiful! I spent my first night sleeping behind the âWelcome to Las Vegasâ sign beside the airport. Planes are loud. Vegas is bright all the time. Then I spent the whole next day trying to get out of town. Hitchhiking to Zion National Park was not successful. Word to the wise, do not try to hitch out of Vegas and into Utahâbad combination . . .
âSounds like heâs doing all right,âBrian remarked.
âWhat are you saying?â I yelped, face in my hands. âOur son just spent the night sleeping on the ground, behind the âWelcome to Las Vegasâ sign!â
âHeâll survive. Caseyâs resourceful.â
The details came later. He had gotten off the plane thinking he could find a hostel or perhaps a grassy ditch to camp in. But Vegas is not a town of grassy ditches. He took buses all over, looking for the university (âstudents, they live cheaplyâ), then a hostel, then a cheap motel. But even the Super 8 on the outskirts of town cost an exorbitant $90. So, still wearing his overstuffed pack and cowboy hat, carrying his guitar, he made his way back to the airport, where he found a semi-secluded patch of grass behind the âWelcomeâ sign. He brushed his teeth and unrolled his sleeping bag. Not wanting to draw attention to himself, he decided not to put up his tent.
Desert nights, he discovered, can be surprisingly cold. In the morning, he made his
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