Wilbur's Suburbo

                                                           Chapter Two:
                                                                          Driving/”On the Road”
 
             As one gets older there is a natural inclination, I think, to reminisce; to think about the past --- usually in some nostalgic reverie that doesn’t have any genuine connection to reality!  It’s natural, of course, since looking back at your known (and “glorified”) past is a lot more certain than staring ahead into that great black void of the future.  These days we are also bombarded with all kinds of “futuristic” dystopian media tales like WestWorld, Fahrenheit 451, Electric Dreams, etc.  Looking ahead has always been a sticky wicket.  I remember the frightening “future” tales in the movies of my youth: Forbidden Planet, The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and, later, Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green.  So, given the bleak concerns for the future (which often don’t play out, although our current Administration rightly makes us concerned about the U.S.A.’s), looking back is the ultimate “safe space.”

      And what, the reader may be wondering, does any of that have to do with the Suburbo’s Chapter Two: Driving/”On the Road?”   Well, recently I was on the Boston Post Road (Route One) and happened to drive behind a Volkswagen Beetle.  It was an “updated” model but it was a Beetle, nonetheless.  When I left for college in 1967 my family was so concerned about the potential financial hit they might suffer (Yale cost a whopping $3000 tuition/room/board that year), they traded in their car for an economical VW “Bug.” (A year later, when scholarship & an on-campus job with a student loan clearly covered all my expenses, they got a 1968 Dodge Dart --- bye-bye Beetle!) My senior year, 1970-71, I lived off campus in North Guilford, CT, with the brilliant Karl Pavlovic and we both bought used VW “Bugs” (early 1960’s models) and commuted to New Haven.  So, seeing a VW “Bug” on Route One/the Post Road in 2018 sent me reeling back to those salad days of yore and, as you’ll see in today’s Suburbo, I was not disappointed.
​
             Thanks for reading and enjoy!