the station wagons arrived at noon, a long shining line that coursed through the west campus. in single file theyeased around the orange i-beam sculpture and moved toward the dormitories. the roofs of the station wagons wereloaded down with carefully secured suitcases full of light and heavy clothing; with boxes of blankets, boots andshoes, stationery and books, sheets, pillows, quilts; with rolled-up rugs and sleeping bags; with bicycles, skis,rucksacks, english and western saddles, inflated rafts. as cars slowed to a crawl and stopped, students sprang outand raced to the rear doors to begin removing the objects inside; the stereo sets, radios, personal computers; smallrefrigerators and table ranges; the cartons of phonograph records and cassettes; the hairdryers and styling irons; thetennis rackets, soccer balls, hockey and lacrosse sticks, bows and arrows; the controlled substances, the birth controlpills and devices; the jurik food still in shopping bags—onion-and-garlic chips, nacho thins, peanut creme patties,waffelos and kabooms, fruit chews and toffee popcorn; the dum-dum pops, the mystic mints.
i've witnessed this spectacle every september for twenty-one years. it is a brilliant event, invariably. the studentsgreet each other with comic cries and gestures of sodden collapse. their summer has been bloated with criminalpleasures, as always. the parents stand sun-dazed near their automobiles, seeing images of themselves in everydirection. the conscientious suntans. the well-made faces and wry looks. they feel a sense of renewal, ofcommunal recognition. the women crisp and alert, in diet trim, knowing people's names. their husbands content tomeasure out the time, distant but ungrudging, accomplished in parenthood, something about them suggestingmassive insurance coverage. this assembly of station wagons, as much as anything they might do in the course of theyear, more than formal liturgies or laws, tells the parents they are a collection of the like-minded and the spirituallyakin, a people, a nation.
i left my office and walked down the hill and into town. there are houses in town with turrets and two-story porcheswhere people sit in the shade of ancient maples. there are greek revival and gothic churches. there is an insaneasylum with an elongated portico, ornamented dormers and a steeply pitched roof topped by a pineapple finial.
babette and i and our children by previous marriages live at the end of a quiet street in what was once a wooded areawith deep ravines. there is an expressway beyond the backyard now, well below us, and at night as we settle into ourbrass bed the sparse traffic washes past, a remote and steady murmur around our sleep, as of dead souls babbling atthe edge of a dream.
i am chairman of the department of hitler studies at the college-on-the-hill. i invented hitler studies in northamerica in march of 1968. it was a cold bright day with intermittent winds out of the east. when i suggested to thechancellor that we might build a whole department around hitler's life and work, he was quick to see the possibilities.
it was an immediate and electrifying success. the chancellor went on to serve as adviser to nixon, ford and carterbefore his death on a ski lift in austria.
at fourth and elm, cars turn left for the supermarket. a policewoman crouched inside a boxlike vehicle patrols thearea looking for cars parked illegally, for meter violations, lapsed inspection stickers. on telephone poles all overtown there are homemade signs concerning lost dogs and cats, sometimes in the handwriting of a child.
