Chapter 96: Talking About the Future

Tuesday, March 15, 1983

We were up around eight and wound up taking advantage of the room after all. Just once, and it necessitated another shower, but we were still dressed and ready for breakfast by nine.

Paige giggled as soon as she saw us. “Told you it wasn’t just us,” she said, elbowing Angie playfully.

Angie blushed, but grinned, too. “The old wet-hair giveaway.”

“Who says I didn’t just want to get clean?” Jasmine said.

“Both of you? Yeah ... no. Besides, Steve usually showers at night.”

“That’s because we usually...” Jas grinned and winked. “ ... at night.”

“I meant when ... that ... isn’t part of things.”

“Oh! Well ... I suppose that, too,” Jas said, still grinning.

“Enough! We all enjoyed ourselves, and now I want to enjoy some breakfast!” Paige said. “Hungry! For food!”

We decided to just check out and head on our way. Bags loaded, I set out in search of breakfast. We wound up at a Denny’s, which lacked local character but did get us fed and happy.

We buzzed the campus again, taking one more look. As we drove, I realized there was still more to the campus than we’d seen. It turned out we’d missed much of the agricultural school, the vet school, and the baseball stadium, amongst other things. They looked to be building more buildings out there, too.

There were also some giant parking lots that, in a way, told the story as much as anything else. U.T. had gone with some huge parking garages because they didn’t have space. A&M had giant surface lots because they did. In the future, they could just demolish a parking lot or two, put up a garage, and have plenty of additional space if they needed it.

Sightseeing done, I hit the road towards San Antonio. The route I chose took us past Brenham. All of us lamented not planning a tour of the Blue Bell Ice Cream plant, but it was too late to do that now. Perhaps we’d go back another time. For those not from Texas, Blue Bell is one of those beloved regional brands people miss when they move away.

We had lunch at a diner in Columbus, making it to San Antonio around two and heading right for Trinity’s campus.

None of us had Trinity all that high on our lists, so this was more just something to do to say we’d done it. Their campus was nice enough, but I don’t think any of us saw anything all that compelling. We didn’t have a lot of time if we wanted to see any of Austin in daylight, so we wrapped up around three and took off towards Austin.

A bit before four we hit San Marcos and got off the freeway to drive through Southwest Texas State. In the future, they would change their name to just ‘Texas State University,’ but that was years away.

Nice enough campus, but not a place any of us would’ve wanted to go. Perhaps ironically, perhaps not, had this been the 2020s we might have felt differently. They offered a fairly solid education at a relative bargain and, had we not been well-off (and with the prospect of being far more well-off) they were hard to resist. Many of my friends’ kids had gone to Texas State or similar schools with a plan to go somewhere better for graduate school.

For now, long before the true run-up in the cost of higher education, U.T. and A&M were far more than bargain enough. Heck, even 1980s Harvard was on par with a middle-tier school in 2020, adjusted for inflation, if my (admittedly shaky) math was correct.

It took us nearly another hour to get near U.T.’s campus. Even now, long before Austin’s rather meteoric growth really got going in earnest, and even with the students out of town, there was a considerable amount of traffic on I-35 as we came into rush hour.

In the rear-view mirror I saw Angie giving me a few slightly worried looks. I smiled to her and shook my head just a little. Austin wasn’t nearly as bad for me this time. Some of it might have simply been the route. I was reasonably familiar with the area we were going through, but I’d last lived in this part of town in the 1980s. It wasn’t like last time, when we were on roads I’d traveled frequently in the 2000s.

That, and another year, plus time to prepare, all helped. It was just a place. Maybe a weird place, and not in the ‘Keep Austin Weird’ sense (a slogan that I thought had yet to be coined) but simply weird for me. I could handle being here, and probably even handle living here.

We all agreed to skip the campus itself (at least beyond what we could see from the freeway) until tomorrow. It was getting dark and we had other things to do, starting with dinner at The Night Hawk. Here, too, there was less déjà vu and more just enjoying the Chop’t Steak.

We drove around downtown a bit after dinner. This was more odd, if not bad. So many buildings that I’d known had yet to be built, and there were places here, now, that were long gone in my memory. The Paramount Theater had already been restored, though. I’d thought that might have been later, but perhaps I was confused. The State, next to it, was hanging on by a thread. Hopefully, it would be restored, too. Of course, I could help with that, but in so doing might interfere with what was ‘supposed’ to happen.

There was a never-ending series of such decisions in my future, and Angie’s. We’d done fine, so far, just doing what seemed best, but the stakes would only get higher. And, perhaps, we’d already screwed something up in a colossal manner that wouldn’t be evident for years.

What if some close friend, a good person now, went off the rails later in a way they wouldn’t have if we hadn’t intervened. After all, I suspected Ted Kaczynski had probably had some buddies along the way who thought he was a great guy, long before he became the Unabomber. Most people who went spectacularly off the rails probably did, and some of them might have been sent off the rails by a friend innocently saying the wrong word at the wrong time.

After a bit of sightseeing by car, we parked near Sixth Street, the biggest bar/nightclub/tourist area in town, now and in the future. Now, it was noticeably ... sleazy ... with more dive bars and cheap restaurants than it would be in the future, but even then, there were pricey places and cheap ones adjacent to each other.

The bars all had ‘must be 18 to enter’ signs, so ... we didn’t. I could’ve gotten away with it, but the girls would most likely have been carded. Instead, we browsed a few modest souvenir shops and looked in the windows of other places.

I could easily envision going here and having a good time. I knew plenty of people who did that often my first go-round. The thing was, that wasn’t me then, and it still wasn’t me now. Oh, I’d want to take Jas out dancing, perhaps often, but she didn’t seem like the nightclub type any more than I did.

Maybe? I guess we’d see. If she wanted to dance, there are far worse ways to spend an evening than crammed in a nightclub.

We piled back into the car and headed up to the Howard Johnson, which would one day be razed to make room for a freeway overpass, and checked in. I’d stayed at this motel at least once a decade from the 1970s to the 2010s, and now it would be in two different universes. It wasn’t the first place I’d stayed in both lives, of course — the North Shore Hilton in Skokie had that honor, and other hotels and motels had followed — but it was significant. Gene had once climbed between second-floor balconies here, and had slept in a bathtub one night.

For all that, it was a fairly typical Howard Johnson and, at least now, clean and well-managed. One of the nice things about it was the large pool Paige had mentioned. It was set in a large grassy area enclosed by the square made by the hotel building. We’d decided not to swim, though, so that was lost on us this time.

We had adjacent rooms and, this time, we had a connecting door. We unanimously decided to pretend that we didn’t.

After hugs and kisses, we decided to meet for breakfast at nine again. My favorite breakfast restaurant in Austin wouldn’t even open for another fifteen years, but I had a backup plan in mind.

This time, there was no hesitation, even with us having enjoyed the morning. Within a minute of closing the door we were mostly naked, kissing, and trying to get rid of our remaining clothes and fall into bed.

A while later, we’d moved to snuggling and kissing, pretty well satiated.

Jasmine said, “That was ... very good.”

“I agree, but then saying anything else would be perilous.”

She giggled. “True enough! This has been a good trip, and I’m glad we have so much more time left.”

“Me, too,” I said. “Next year...”

She shifted a little, looking up, grinning. “See, that’s the best part! Still!”

“I agree.”

“So ... next year?”

“Maybe we’ll do something bigger. I have no idea what. Maybe New Orleans, or ... I don’t know. Something. College should be settled, and ... well, I don’t want a major case of senioritis, but...”

“A little won’t hurt us. Yeah. I want to keep my straight A’s. And now it’s not because I’m terrified of what a B would mean, just ... I have them, and it’s an achievement. If I miss it, so what? Big deal! But I want to keep them.”

“Me, too, and so does everyone else, I’m sure. We won’t just slack off, but it’ll be different.”

“I’ll be eighteen already,” she said.

“And I’ll be close, but not there. Next summer we can do more traveling, I think. Besides maybe Nationals, there’s a lot less that summer. No summer program, neither of us will want to do summer school...”

“No. Very much no! Once we start ... sure, maybe, if it helps clear the way for other classes or whatever. But not next year.”

“Yeah. I agree. It’s time to say goodbye to friends, get ready for college, and enjoy being eighteen.”

“We...” she said, then stopped.

“Honey?”

“I was going to say ... we ... which means you ... should get a passport. I have one, of course, though I need to renew it.”