Now, to catch up with the story. It was the autumn of 1996, the year my mother passed away back in Chicago -- but this is the short version of the story and I am leaving a lot of stuff out.
I have been leaving stuff out -- like the bus trip I took that summer. I took the Greyhound Bus from Boston to Seattle and back -- three days and three nights each way. I brought a paperback edition of the Brothers Karamazov, which was the perfect novel to bring on such a grinding journey --- some 800 pages of incredible psychological depth and unrelenting intensity .... If I had not taken the cross country bus ride, I would never have read the book......Otherwise the Greyhound is a depressing accumulation of desperate people -- a homeless shelter on wheels -- it's probably gotten worse in recent years.
Nevertheless --- I have written 7,000 words into this story without using such a fancy word as "nevertheless" -- but nevertheless, I needed to take that bus ride in order to see the land. If you drive, you have to watch the rode, which was not my purpose...................................... This may sound grandiose or sentimental, but America is my home and I claim it -- every single acre. I am the co-owner along with some 300 million other people. Being co-owner, I need to take a look around from time to time -- to see the farms and the trees, and the big cities and small towns................................ So while I was reading Dostoyevsky, I was looking out the window...... I am a wise traveler -- long bus rides across wheated plains blend perfectly with long Russian novels
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