"Octogenarians on a College Tour"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Octogenarians on a College Tour”

November 3, 2023

 

“To move, to breathe, to fly, to float, to gain all while you give,

to roam the roads of lands remote, to travel is to live.”

                                                                                                         Hans Christian Anderson (1805-1875)

                                                                                                        The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography, 1847

 

On October 19, Caroline and I embarked on a ten-day 1,694-mile trip to visit four grandchildren in four colleges in two states – North Carolina and Pennsylvania. When we arrived back in Essex on the 29^th, my wife said she would like to do it all over again. Exhausted from thirty-plus hours of driving (and once being hacked), I mumbled incoherently. Even so, it was a delightful trip.

 

The trip began inauspiciously in Darien, where we had spent the first night with our son and his family. Next morning, in the rain, I inadvertently turned north on the Merritt Parkway instead of south. After five miles it dawned on me that, like a horse anxious to return to the barn, our car had decided to go home. Cussing, we turned around and headed south – across the GW bridge and through New Jersey. One hundred and forty miles later we bunked at the Embassy Suites in Newark, Delaware. 

 

Saturday was beautiful, as it would be for the balance of the trip, at least until we got back to Darien. We headed for Richmond and the elegance of the Jefferson Hotel, 212 miles to our south. After a delicious dinner and comfortable night in a room that had a bathroom the size of our library, we headed for the Inn at Elon in Elon, North Carolina. The Inn is on the campus of Elon University, where granddaughter Anna, a senior, adds grace and beauty to a graceful and beautiful campus. Dinner with Anna was at the Inn. On Monday, we drove the 46 miles to Winston-Salem where grandson Jack is a senior at Wake Forest University – a beautiful college on a hill-top. We stayed at the Graylyn Estate, a 20,000 square-foot stone house, adjacent to the campus. (Ads for Camel cigarettes decorated the men’s room.) Jack welcomed us with a pleasant tour of the campus and the apartment he shares with three friends, two of whom joined us for dinner at the Village Tavern. I wonder if he will find accommodations as nice in New York City when he starts work next August.

 

Tuesday was our longest day – 286 miles to Fredericksburg and dinner with Caroline’s nephew. Wednesday, we drove 226 miles to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania where granddaughter Margaret is a sophomore at Bucknell University. We are familiar with the college, as our youngest son and oldest granddaughter are graduates; it was nice to be back, especially with the adorable Margaret as guide.  We had dinner with her at Elizabeth’s on Market Street. On Thursday morning, after a tour of the area with Margaret, we headed for Lancaster, home of Franklin & Marshall College, which this year admitted grandson George as a freshman. George is running cross-country, and we met his coach who had nice things to say. George took us to dinner at Iron Hill Brewery, where he had a soft drink. I had a beer.

 

We came home on Sunday via the Oyster Point Hotel in Red Bank, New Jersey and our son’s home in Darien. What pleasure to see four grandchildren happy and doing well. We arrived back confident that, despite headlines, if these four students are representative of what the nation is producing, our future looks secure. And, best of all, nobody pointed us toward the archaeology department.