William Marvel [06/11/2007]

By William Marvel

One week from today our house will have assumed an eerie quiet. On Saturday our senior graduates from high school, and on Sunday he is scheduled to depart the home he has occupied longer than any other. He is by far the most talkative member of the household, and that is quite an accomplishment for anyone living with someone as voluble as me, but he is also the one who is the most productive of noise in others, as he would probably attest. Seldom now will these walls echo with the bellowing announcement of chores found undone, half-done, or done precisely contrary to instructions. We will inevitably see an abrupt drop in the daily quota of doors and drawers left open, lights and stoves left burning, and litter left everywhere. The constant crises arising from neglected responsibilities, lost necessities, and congenital disorganization will quickly subside.Next Saturday one of the less pampered members of the most indulged generation in history will stride across a stage and demonstrate that it is now possible to obtain a high school diploma without doing much of anything in the way of work. That may seem a cruel observation, but during his four years I have not been reminded of my own kitchen-table struggles with quadratic equations, sentence diagrams, and French verb conjugations. With few exceptions, homework has emerged from the bag of tricks only as an alternative to hauling firewood, shoveling snow, or mowing the lawn, whereupon it always assumed the form of a crucial project due first thing in the morning. Somehow, though, enough credits and good grades accumulated to attract a sizable offer from a reputable college.I always thought he would end up singing for his supper. If his only enduring interest in life persists, he may do so yet.As it happens, Saturdays ceremony falls on the fortieth anniversary of my own graduation from the same high school. At maternal request I had returned home from several months on my own so I could graduate as a member of the family (and probably so my folks could be sure that I actually attended). June 16 was one of those hazy days that might turn to rain, so we sweat through the ordeal inside a gymnasium that perennial school renovations have since consumed. By the time my parents sat down to dinner that evening I was hitchhiking through southern New England with a loaded knapsack and a few bucks in my pocket, headed for Civil War battlefields I had never seen.It would be impossible to say whether I was well prepared to walk into the world of 1967. In science I was surely more deficient than those who take their diplomas next weekend, and perhaps a little so in math, but it seems safe to say that I far exceeded them in history, language, and literature. No college plans loomed on my horizon. With a whole country to see and about a year and a half before I could expect to be drafted, I didnt feel I even had the time for higher education. Besides, I already knew everything there was to knowjust like the kid who leaves here next Sunday.Despite waging another counterproductive war, the society of forty years ago faced few of the problems that ours does today. Money was not as abundant as it is now, but jobs were plentiful. People were more scarce, but perhaps because of that they were more friendly. It was possible to hitch rides with truckers who paid well for help unloading their cargo, and to sleep alongside the highway in perfect safety. Taking advantage of such opportunities introduced the adventurer to a country of infinite variety and beauty; the traveler of that day learned a great deal more of life and culture than the homogenized strips and suburbs of 21st-century America can ever teach.The giants of our past flourished with little or no help from formal education. Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, and Mark Twain spent less than a decade in school collectively: ambition and the ability to read granted them, and us, passports to the world. Well into the last century, the greatest tales of personal accomplishment seldom included more than a taste of college. Ulysses, Lemuel Gulliver, and the Ancient Mariner piloted earlier generations through turbulent waters, just as Ishmael, Huck Finn, and Wolf Larsen did for ours. I will be surprised if Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket, and Charlotte Doyle can steer as sound a course. William Marvel lives in South Conway.