These spaces which our cars have taken over — “How do you keep yourself from just flooring it?” Dad laughed at my question. “I guess you just get used to it.” The one-way roadway begged me to go faster. SUVs on either side both faced the same direction. Overhanging branches created the impression of endless tunnel, with its unmarked…

The Amtrak overlooks a lot of cornfields in between Chicago and St. Louis. Of course, there are also creek beds, interstates, and cul-de-sacs; minor league baseball stadiums; and a graffitied concrete beam at Union station which reads, “Have a great day.” However, the train’s predominant view consists of corn: row…

Eight months out of the year, most people called it the multipurpose room. It had the proportions of a dance studio or a chemistry lab — although it was neither — and inhabited the same basement hallway as the weight room and the lockers, containing neither weights nor changing areas…

Professor Lyons possessed the sort of casual self-importance which only former consulting attorneys and underpaid professors are capable of. He had elbow patches on his jacket. His favorite movie was The Big Lebowski. …

Professor O’Leary wore circular spectacles and a wide brimmed wizard’s hat. Actually, it may have been a modest bucket hat, but the man so much resembled a wizard himself that the gray conical cap seems more likely in my mind. Peter, as he preferred to be called, spent Tuesdays on…

The lake is fifteen minutes from my parents’ house, which makes up for some of its other qualities. Dense thickets and collapsing mud walls encircle the water, interrupted by abandoned camping chairs and a mossy picnic table, which sinks into the Missouri mud. After a rainstorm, the Meramec surges into…