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Op-Ed Contributor
Rides of Passage


By PAUL HENDRICKSON
(PAUL HENDRICKSON,六十一歲,為賓州大學英語系教授)

Published: May 13, 2006
Philadelphia

THE car was a newly purchased 1999 silver Mustang convertible — so right for the incautious 22-year-old son, with his need for speed; so absurd for the fretful 61-year-old father, with his cache of cholesterol and stomach pills and orthotic devices for his achy right foot.

On a rainy Monday midday in January, at the start of a new semester, this stallion of a car pulled out of Philadelphia, headed south by southwest. Seven middays later, it pulled up in front of the Los Angeles airport with hardly a pant or snort, the warming Southern California sun glinting off its metal. That's where the old man, who might have been 22 himself in that instant, got out. That's where a father embraced a son and squashed money into his paw and said embarrassing things. That's where a flight took off to deliver him back East, to his deskbound realities.

Matt, who was finishing college a semester early and wanted some kind of adventure for himself, had driven the whole way; I had joined him on the night of the third day, in Houston, having just finished my teaching duties at my university for the week.

"C'mon, Dad, you have to go, you got to live just for once, please, let's do it together," he'd importuned me for weeks. I, of course, had been on the fence, saying things like: "Nah, I don't really think so. I'd like to, Son, but you know I've got all this stuff to do, all these deadlines." Until one day I came awake and said, not to Matt, not to my spouse, who from the first had been urging me to go, but to myself: Are you out of your mind? Why wouldn't you take him up on this?

So we went, he ahead of me, but with me catching up soon enough. So we made it, all the way to the other ocean, the aging coot and his eternally optimistic boy-man, the two of us westward with the sun (the weather was almost miraculously fine the whole way), and not in a straight line, but rather with some planned detours. One of us wore a black cowboy hat and aviator shades, the other an old fishing cap and sunglasses purchased long ago at For Eyes.

We gorged our way across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California. It was the chicken-fried steak at Threadgill's in Austin, the pork ribs at the Quarters Lounge in Albuquerque, the green-chili enchiladas at the Guadalupe Cafe in Santa Fe. Actually, I was the one who ordered the green chili atop my enchilada, knowing that the green would be milder than the red. Matt went right for the "Christmas chili," once the server told him it was a firecracker-hot combo of both red and green.

One day we clocked 860 miles on the odometer. (We did it so that we could spend almost the entire next day at leisure.) When it was Matt's turn at the wheel during that marathon haul, he set the cruise-control at 89 miles per hour. I thought, well, if I'm going to go out, why not with the top down on Interstate 10 in West Texas with Mellencamp and Dire Straits and Dylan and Springsteen blasting out of the sound system?

We were two road-hounds shouting "Born in the U.S.A." at each other. It's indefensibly corny, but we banged through Winslow, Ariz., on a Sunday afternoon, playing the Eagles at woofer-busting levels. You know, the one that goes, "I was standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona ... ." It was all so late-midlife crisis. I knew it. I loved it.

One night we treated ourselves to a ridiculously expensive massage and an outdoor communal hot tub, clothing optional, under a million New Mexico stars. That was pretty fine. One night we went to a famous country-music joint named the Broken Spoke and watched some Texas cowboys two-stepping their ladies around the dance floor. That was even finer. We drank long-necked Lone Stars and Shiner Bock beer that night and then stumbled out into the Spoke's dirt parking lot and found our way back to our Marriott, imagining ourselves a pair of lower-case authentic American heroes.

The old frets would come back by daylight and I kept believing we were going to break down at Fort Stockton or Truth or Consequences, that the car would start shooting geysers of oil, no tow truck in sight.

"Dad, you just can't let yourself think like that," laughed someone who's 39 years younger than I. At the university where I am employed, I often say to those who are also about 39 years younger than I, and to whom I am allegedly trying to impart something about writing, "Let the students teach the teacher." Let the child instruct the parent.

Belted into the leather bucket seats of that car during those five days together on the road were two headstrong men who, if the truth be told, have always sought ways to tangle with each other. We got on each other's nerves and argued about some dumb things — but not nearly as many or as often as I would have guessed. Neither of us once said it in those five days, but I believe we both understood to our toenails the central truth of what we were doing: having our last real shot together. I am losing my son to the world. Which is exactly as it should be, as it must be.

As I say, all this was more than three months ago. But he officially enters the world on Monday. Before the sun has drilled itself to noon, he'll have his shiny new degree.

Paul Hendrickson, an English professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is the author of "Sons of Mississippi: A Story of Race and Its Legacy."

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