Four Dollars and Change

typical Harvard student on a typical day will probably have 14 reasons not to brave the wilds beyond the wooly urban jungle between the Science Center, Brattle Square and the Charles. (Quadlings are by definition atypical. There are not enough of them at Harvard.)

Notwithstanding the general levels of euphoria fostered by the Undergraduate Council, the Office of the Dean and donuts (and the possibility of more donuts to come), this little college community is chock-full of centripetal force. And inertia. And unfortunately, there's hardly any movement round here overcome such problems--except, of course, for every 11th day, when Dining Services drops a Jamaican Jerk Chicken bomb on an unsuspecting student body.

"This is all to say that such behavior is intolerable," noted John L. Lester '99, concluding a recent speech at the Bow and Arrow Pub. "My new job, as an overpaid yet under-worked capitalist, allows me to transport my ass to far-away destinations at my whim."

Harvard students protest--not everyone has a sweet financial consulting job waiting on the corner of 43rd and Broadway next year. Christian R. Lorentzen '99 concurs. Proselytizing last Thursday by the T elevator bearing Richard Feynman, he stated, "Being a typical Harvard student, I can think of 14 reasons why, on a typical day, it would never occur to me to walk any farther than from my abode to Sever Hall."

As a group of tourists stood slack-jawed and pawing their pockets for change, Lorentzen elaborated these 14 points:

1) general euphoria;

2) donuts, and the possibility of more donuts to come;

3) hangovers;

4) wallet only contains $5;

5) The Crimson wasn't delivered this morning

--outside world forgotten;

6) intellectual history lecture on Nietzsche;

7) Spanish Bab has mandatory attendance requirements;

8) crush on girl in section;

9) job;

10) there are plenty of good bars in Harvard Square;

11) La Familia;

12) Serbs closed the borders of Cambridge;

13) unlucky;

14) crew practice.

Jonathan S. Paul '00, who is also a Crimson executive, was passing in an atypical fashion on his way from Currier House to The Wrap and Smoothie Joint when he became enraged at Lorentzen's comments. Stopping to argue, he interrupted the sage's street-side ramblings on the metaphysics of sedentariness with a thunderous outburst. "I'm sick of this stuff! 'Oooh, I'm too tired,'" he mocked. "'Oooh, my feet hurt!' We need some more gonzo shit!" the perturbed magazine man complained.

He proceeded to offer 14 counterpoints to Lorentzen:

1) malaise;

2) the possibility of more donuts to come is a cruel

illusion;

3) suck it up;

4) wallet only contains $5 (see below);

5) look beyond your nose;

6) happened two months ago;

7) skip first and beg forgiveness later;

8) no chance;

9) point being?;

10) hah!;

11) the other five families won't stand for this;

12) Kosovo, not Cambridge;

13) superstitious lout;

14) already quit.

The only point with merit, Paul claimed, was the "$5 damper on fun," as he eloquently phrased it. Like a crusty manager giving the nod to a rookie in the fourth inning of a split-squad spring-training game, he turned to me with a $5 bill and a wink of the eye, he growled, "Get out there, T.J., and show 'em how they're wrong!"

Bounding into the Harvard bus station with a spring in my step like the one that made Ty Cobb famous and grown men cry, I dashed for the number 96 bus, servicing Medford Square and Harvard Station via George Street and the Davis Square subway station.

I was out 60 cents, leaving me with just $4.40, but it didn't seem to matter. This was excitement. The sun was just getting overhead, and I was on the road.

Sitting next to me were an amiable old lady and a little boy, busily discussing what coloring books they were going to use when they got home. She was holding a shopping bag from the Gap, and he was looking especially dapper in clothes that could have only come from Structure--clearly someone had made a successful trip to Harvard Square. I was charged with a different mission, and I embraced it. I was getting out.

As the MBTA's fiery chariot cruised down Mass. Ave., leaving clouds of dusty diesel exhaust in it's nearly Olympian wake, a panic seized me. There was no end to Harvard. Johnston Gate turned into the Littauer Building, which blurred phantasmigorically and diabolically into the law school. I couldn't get out! The Center for Ukrainian Studies weighed like a 1,000-pound brick on my mind as the bus idled waiting for a traffic light to become green. North Hall, home to future jurists mocked my efforts at the next red, but, as the bus pulled off from the curb, leaving the Dudley Co-op as my final Harvardian obstacle, I ran down the length of the bus and was free! I sat down behind the driver, who thought me fairly strange. I didn't care. A man with a mission rarely does.

Porter Square was now looming, and Harvard drifted farther from my mind. The nearly Art-Deco opulence of the old Sears & Roebuck, building tempted me with the siren song of the Gap, but I resisted, the voice of my editor still echoing in my ears. "Further on, further in," I mused, "to Somerville!" And not just any Somerville--not the one of Inman Square and summertime living--but something a little seedier and a hell of a lot closer to Tufts.

The bus made a right turn off of Mass. Ave. onto Beech Street, past a funeral home's two Cadillac hearses and a Jehovah's Witness temple to the intersection with Elm Street. Hitting the yellow rubber strip, I requested my stop. But the signal didn't work.

"Driver," I shouted in the sweaty, rotund man's ear, "This is my stop." He pulled to the curb and I skipped down the steps. The elderly lady and her palette-minded youngster climbed down the stairs behind me. We went our separate ways, they searching for a Teletubbies activity book and me, well, I was waiting for new adventures.

I wandered off of Elm onto Willow, and found myself in familiar stomping grounds--I used to live here. Walking down Willow brought me to a magical world of residential living, far from the ridiculous parodies I had seen in Harvard Square earlier that morning. At the intersection with Highland Avenue and Willow, in a little corner grocery so quintessentially itself that the owner could well have disposed of the formality of a name, I bought a Coke and a donut. As usual, the baked goods display held the promise of what was to come: good times. I was down to $2.25 and realized that my trip was more than halfway over. That was okay.

I finally reached Broadway. It wasn't the quotidian Broadway of Dollar-a-Pound and the Sackler Museum; no, this one reaches like some avenue of heroes from Charlestown to Arlington, linking those thriving metropolices as the Appian Way once linked Rome and some other city. It was at this point I was running out of steam; maybe it was Lorentzen's 14 points weighing me down, dragging me back. I didn't know, but I fought on. There was Medford to the left of me; Medford to the right--I smiled at the choice made for me. I knew where I was going next.

Heading left down Broadway took me past a park, a Revolutionary powder house, and to a gigantic traffic rotary, where I stood trembling in front of drivers who must have been imported from Cambridge just for the sake of making Medford dangerous. I finished my donut. I darted across.

I lost track of the street I was on, but it didn't matter. In this neck of the woods, all roads lead to Tufts. I passed a Catholic school where some kids were playing an early afternoon game of pick-up four square, honing their skills for Monday's recess. There was a ramshackle factory, promising animal-friendly oak furniture to the vegan community of New England. Some Tufts policemen waited vigilantly in their cars, eating something white, round, and powdery that I could only wonder about.

Out of nowhere, on the suddenly reappearing Medford-Somerville line, soared Medford's answer to Somerville's fabled mounts. I took a long, steep flight of stairs up onto the campus of Tufts, a sort of would-be Harvard on a hill. There was a large brass elephant in the middle of the university's Yard-ette. Traipsing down to the library, I walked out on to the roof--it was built into the side of the hill and from the perch on the park there I was able to look out over all I had left behind. A satisfying moment.

But the jingle of the change in my pocket reminded me of my experiment. I felt it was complete. I stood at the intersection of Willow and Broadway, near a sign that proudly read "Ball Square" and I considered heading over a bridge that waited in front of me. The bridge headed back into Medford, toward Malden. Then I spotted Ball Square's local bar. I knew what I had to do. Twenty minutes later, with the last of my money and a bottle of Rolling Rock spent, I headed for home.

I decided to take the bus again--that meant heading for Davis Square, where I could pick up the trusty ol' 96er again. Unfortunately for me, I was out of money. At this point in the day, as the afternoon wore to dusk, I wasn't nervous but felt that I could use a donut. I knew they were waiting for me back in Leverett, and I suppose it was the promise of these that perked me up a little. "I need to find 60 cents, however, if I'm ever going to get back to that promised land," I thought, shocking myself with just how quickly I had tired of adventure.

I checked pay phones and managed to come up with two dimes and four nickels. Dejected, I headed off down Elm Street out of Davis heading for Porter. I did not feel like walking, so when my bus came rolling down the street, I did the unthinkable.

Mounting the stairs, I looked the driver straight in the eyes, dropped my 40 cents in the slot, and moved on to a seat. He didn't say a thing, and we rolled off down the street.