The Gasoline Ass Chronicles

Alpha Alpha Alpha: The ‘Commute’ Fraternity for Busy Students

Plus — Dad’s Crash Course in Reproductive Education

One day in American Lit, back in 1988, professor Charles Donahue joked Delsea Drive in Southern New Jersey was the most hideous road in America. Was he contrasting the beauty and the horror of Emily Dickinson to Delsea?

That hurt.

I suggested Route 130 was the genuine “heart of darkness.”

The lit nerds laughed and agreed, but did that ease my pain? Because I spent more time commuting from home than downtime on campus, did I need to be reminded that life as a commuter was unattractive?

Yeah, I was one of that one-third who called a parking lot their college home.

This pain regurgitated again when my sister blurted out during Christmas one year that “you don’t have a true college experience unless you live there.”

Gee thanks, sis.

But was she right?

It wasn’t rough because of the gas money or the traffic. It was the unsettling feeling I was somehow missing a Rite of Passage. There was no Animal House, no shared stall showers, no sock tied on a dorm room doorknob, no pounding base from the floor above.

A discussion on intercourse in a minivan

Even when my girls were young, we lived close to my old college, and I would still drive to Glassboro. This time, it was commuting to dance class — my daughter’s dance class, thankfully, then, only three miles from campus. But the traffic gave my daughters enough time to test my shock absorbers.

My young daughters sat in the back of the Mazda MPV minivan, consumed in books. My eldest brought the “Human Body” book with her, and asked, “Dad, what’s a va-gina?”

“Just what are you reading?” I asked.

“The Human Reproductive System.”

She was in 2nd grade. Did she make it all the way through that book to that chapter? “It’s pronounced vagina.”

That’s when her sister, three years younger, starts shouting, “Vagina! Vagina! Vagina”

Looking at the pictures from various angles, she asked more about this mysterious vagina. Did she have one? Yes. I answered, holding nothing back. If they were old enough to ask, they were old enough for the truth. Then she asked about this interesting thing called a “pen-is.”

“It’s pronounced penis, babe!”

Her younger sister, sensing my discomfort, started repeating, “Penis! Penis! Penis!”

This continued with other words: semen, sperm, intercourse, ejaculation, conception, eggs, pubic hair, fertilization, and fallopian tubes.

“So that’s how babies are made?”

“Yes.”

“This is how we were made?”

“Yes,” I said, wishing the traffic on Route 322 would move along faster.

Who prepares parents for such an impromptu discussion?

Glassboro State is now Rowan University. Students rushed to class — or to their dorms or to their cars.

My blonde-haired daughter closed her body book. “What was college like, Dad?”

“The hike from parking lot C to Bose Hall was brutal, especially in wind and rain.”

“Did you eat in the Student Center?

“I always preferred Taco Bell.”

“What are those strange letters on those houses?”

“Those are Greek letters — for fraternities and sororities. It’s a house where students live. I liked a girl from Delta Zeta.”

Did I belong to one?

“Yeah, Alpha Alpha Alpha.”

“What?” my red-headed daughter asked.

“That’s Greek for AAA,” I replied. “They helped when I was broken down on Route 55.”

I envied those who pledged fraternities. I had picked up a few flyers and wrote down rush times, but the only rushing I did was to my job at the Holiday Inn, my surrogate fraternity.

Perhaps I could have formed a ‘commuting fraternity’ where we would hang out and drink Jolt Cola to stay awake for the drive home, but of course, I didn’t because what time did I have for that?

The outside world was my classroom

But despite everything, I’ve concluded my sister was wrong. You can have a real college experience even if you don’t live there.

Because I commuted, I wasn’t isolated in a cocoon of false reality and false expectations. I learned to enjoy every moment with a passion for lifelong learning. I experienced more by living more. Perhaps my classroom was too large to be contained to one campus.

With the money I saved by commuting, I traveled overseas with Professor Edward Wolfe and discovered my calling as a writer and as a teacher.

I financed a study abroad program in England and had money for graduate school. I’d take road trips to Boston, New Hampshire, Colorado, California, Oregon, and Canada.

On one trip to Colorado, I was sitting with friends Alec and Steve at a Denny’s in Colorado Springs. We were still in college. I looked at my watch for the date. Cell phones did not exist then. I said I needed to be back to work “soon.”

Soon, I know, is relative, but it was like in two days.

After a hearty Grand Slam Breakfast, late at night, I gunned the Nissan through the night, like a Cannonball Run, music blaring, and a stopover with truckers in Salinas, Kansas for a tornado warning, and then all the way to Hagerstown, Maryland for an overnight. Then back home for work. Steve took Missouri, while I slept in the back.

But what a blast.

With my wife, we would drive through England and Wales and Spain. We have taken our girls on camping trips to Quebec, South Carolina, New York, The Outer Banks, and so many places.

From the time I was little, my mom called me her little “gasoline ass.” I was always up for a drive.

Perhaps I liked the road a little too much, even if much of it was on Delsea Drive.

Thank you for reading. For more, follow me at Walter Bowne.