Mine spends his last night at our house tonight. I took him out to dinner last night and told him that from here on out he was on his own when it came to solving his problems, etc... In other words, I lied through my teeth. Just like I'm lying when I pretend that none of this gets to me. We raise them to be independent. We don't need to burden them with the knowledge of how hard that is.

Mine spends his last night at our house tonight. I took him out to dinner last night and told him that from here on out he was on his own when it came to solving his problems, etc... In other words, I lied through my teeth. Just like I'm lying when I pretend that none of this gets to me. We raise them to be independent. We don't need to burden them with the knowledge of how hard that is.

I met Eustace when we were both working at Broadstone. Did the ropes course and a camping trip with him. He was wiry and spry and unnervingly quiet back then, not the media-savvy raconteur that I understand he's become. Anyway, I liked the guy back then. In the years since I've spotted him in AP photographs from various cross-country adventures, in a big spread about Turtle Island in the WS-Journal, etc. But that's the best photo of him yet. Reminds me of when he was about 19 and living off the land in a teepee.

I turned 45 three weeks ago, and you know what? Life is just starting to get interesting.

Listen: I just got you queued up on my Google Reader this week. If you quit, I'm going to be mondo pissed. Got it? As we say to the kids: "DON'T MAKE ME COME UP THERE!" Your fan,

I walked out of East Dorm one snowy day in January 1982 and slogged my way to the top of the knob, then just sat there and froze my ass off. But it was this kind of day: blue skies and cold clouds and, if this makes any sense, just very clean. Sorry to here about the kids. Bureaucracy sucks. Fought a few of those battles my own self.

Our USC freshman moved into his dorm on Saturday, too (his Dad drove him up). By the time we trekked up there to bring him his new bike on Sunday, the boy looked completely in his element, as in: He was happy to see us, but we were invading his space. It's a big transition, but it happens fast. Good on 'em.

Makes me homesick.

I lived in Coffey Hall during the fall of 1982 and Ruth used to come over and visit me, sit up with me at odd hours while I wrote in the basement, etc. Ruth could make my day just by walking into a room, and she was very nice to me, very sweet. I don't remember that we ever had a fight or said an ugly word to each other, which in retrospect is really something. She probably doesn't remember me at all, but Ruth has a place in the pantheon.

There are probably a lot of Ruth B.'s out there, but her name wouldn't have been Buddenbaum, would it?

Tony Hagler, a Boone native I met in my first semester of freshman year, used to tell a great story about the windmill. He and some friends heard that the 1970s-80s TV show "PM Magazine" had a crew in town to shoot a story about the windmill. These townies/students moved quickly, donning bedsheets and beads, picking up drums and whatnot, and then racing up the mountain so that when the film crew arrived at the top of the Knob, they found a bunch of freaks sitting around chanting prayers. When the TV people asked them who they were and what they were doing, the locals gave them the straight-faced answer that they were "Whooshies," and that they worshipped the great windmill god "Nay-zuh" (the windmill had "NASA" written on its support strut) because it "brought energy from the heavens down to the peoples of Earth." With the TV cameras rolling, these Boonenites proceeded to act the perfect fool. According to this tale, the TV crew fell for the hoax and filed a piece on this strange religion they had discovered, rather than on the windmill itself. So when NASA pulled the thing down, I wrote a script for a faux-documentary called "Whither the Whooshies?" which was to star ASU professor Bud Gerber. In the opening scene, Gerber was to pose the question (whilst walking among the scrap remnants of the windmill in the laydown yard): What happens to a religion when it loses the divine subject of its adoration? And of course, the schtick was that the Whooshies morph into all the basic religious stereotypes we all know, including campus Whooshies who, when asked what they liked about their group, each answered: "Fun and fellowship." Sadly, in those pre-video days, the costs of this short proved beyond my fund-raising abilities. I managed to score the camera equipment I needed on a loan from the communications department, but the cost of 8mm film and processing was going to run me at least $500, which was significantly more than the value of my car. So outside of casting and some early "production meetings," this never came to be.

So, back in 1984 I was working on a friend's car parked along King Street and I met a guy who had just gotten out of the Army and we worked on the car together and drank beer and as he talked about the Army experience I started thinking "Well, there's something I could do with my sorry ASU-dropout ass." When my girlfriend picked me up and I told her that I was enlisting, her first question was "what about us?" To which I said "Well, we'll just get married and you'll come with me." A few minutes later we walked into the house pictured here (back in the day it was universally known as "The Stoned House"), where at least half-a-dozen of our friends were hanging out that summer afternoon. I beerily announced that "I'm joining the Army and we're gettin' married!" With those words, the course of my entire adult life was set in stone. I have to admit that I sobered up the next morning and questioned the wisdom of that announcement, particularly the marriage part. But I had spoken publicly, and to me, at that age, that's what mattered. I wasn't going back on my word. O how pride goeth, first before a fall, and then just generally... I did four years in the Army and that turned out pretty well for me. The marriage lasted 13 years, several of them quite good, and produced a son who is now 16 and doing just fine. So it is with a mixture of fondness and regret that I look at these kids in front of this personal landmark, so visually interchangeable with the kids we used to be, in a place that seems as untouched by time as the mountains themselves.