Wrong Turn
On March 9, 1922, the writer E.B. White, unemployed and with few prospects, packed a Model T Ford and drove across America, reaching Seattle in mid-September. He stuck mainly to roads, except in the prairie states where roads were not yet built; there he took to the open fields. He did this before any reliable system of support—gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and road signs—had been established. Twenty-nine years later, Holiday magazine asked White to make the drive again, writing essays about America along the way. He made it as far as Galeton, Pennsylvania, before turning back, disenchanted and missing his wife. Holiday went to Plan B, which was John Steinbeck, who took the trip in 1960 with his poodle and wrote Travels with Charley.
No End in Sight
This past spring, a radio evangelist named Harold Camping proclaimed that the world would end on May 21, 2011. No one got too worked up about it except for a handful of his followers who, as the date neared, quit their jobs, sold all of their earthly belongings, and waited for God to carry them to Heaven, which God didn’t do. There were many reasons to be skeptical of Harold Camping’s prognostication, chief among them the unlikelihood that God would use a radio evangelist to send the message. It didn’t help that Harold Camping had erroneously predicted the Rapture on two previous occasions.
Pride and Prejudice
Back in 1981, I wrote a cover story for this magazine entitled “Indy’s Inferiority Complex.” I believe the editor stole the idea from another Midwestern city, and by that I mean Columbus, Ohio, a place that allegedly suffered from the malady. My task was to conjure up reasons why we here in the Circle City thought we sucked.
In the Doghouse
Not long ago, I was speaking with a local sage, who in the course of our conversation said, “It takes a lifetime of work and wisdom to build a good life, but only one decision, hastily made, to undo it.” While I can’t recall every activity and decision that contributed to my good life, I do remember the precise moment and event that precipitated my fall—Sunday, Aug. 8, 1999, at 1 p.m., when I purchased a devious rat terrier of dubious origin.
The Old College Try
When I taught first grade—before the Earth cooled, in 1969—I instructed 90 6-year-olds to read and write, add and subtract. Along the way, they also learned to cut with scissors and refrain from bonking each other on the head with their science books. In return, I learned to buckle boots, make tissue-paper flowers, and achieve some sort of primordial order on the playground.
