Citing the Sources

I have my sources.

They do me good. I’m prone to float off into abstraction. Why, I spent an hour of the drive to Richmond yesterday trying to figure out what nostalgia is.

(And what would you put in your spice cupboard of things you hold dear? Summer clouds? Train whistles? That feeling of what has been, what could have been, and what probably was, long long before you got there, wrapped up in the smell of rain on a parking lot?)

I will write about old ladies baking lemon pies and the shade under July grape arbors, but:

I popped into the grocery store, and saw one of my sources, and got grounded.

“How old are you, brother?”

“17.”

“Perfect! Got the column deadline tomorrow. Writing about the challenges young folks face. What are yours?” (Expecting stuff about the weird effects of social media, or the existential problems of forced uselessness, or the insanity infecting the Paris Olympics.)

“The economy, really. The price of houses are practically unreachable.”

Oh. That. What have we done to ‘em?

He gave me another crushing handshake, and I paid my twenty bucks for some coffee and creamer and cheap cheddar cheese, and I left.