Caps, Gowns and College Towns

Between ceremonies, the grads wander this incredible campus like street gangs of kittens. They also sense that all this is too good to be true.

Yeats wrote for the collective soul of Ireland.

I write for the collective soul of suburban America, that tired old thing, that shredded has-been.

Honestly, I love the suburbs when the residents are out among themselves, laughing and showing off their dogs and their kids, cheering Little League or buying berries at the farmers market.

I loathe suburbs when they’re all buttoned up — doors locked, lips sealed, secrets kept, wall clocks ticking like car bombs.

Cushy quiet unnerves me. Ask anyone. It’s like a funeral where nobody shows up.

Conversely, I remember my first week in a college dorm. Everybody was everywhere. Kids you barely knew walked in and out of rooms, borrowing beer and record albums, the wandering minstrels of higher education.

Female classmates visited and wouldn’t leave, some of them. They’d just camp out on some dude’s bed and spend the semester. Once in a while, you’d find them in the men’s room shaving their pits.

That’s what college was like in the ‘70s. Feral. Utopian. Unsustainable.