Westward, Ha!

Have you ever noticed that when you move from a different state the part of town you end in is comparable to the geographical location of your home state? I've found it true with an inordinate number of friends and associates during the past twenty-odd years.

I've lived in college towns most of my life so very few of my acquaintances have ever been hometown people. That's why my sampling over these two decades seems valid. Take, for instance, John and Suzanne, presently living on West Burwash Ave. John's from Portland, Suzanne hails from Seattle, and isn't it true that W. Burwash is on the northwest corner of town?

Look at the Petersons. Harold comes from several generations of White Mountain boys while Frances beckons from Maine. Is it any surprise, now that you know the formula, that they live on Easterbrook Blvd. which sits squarely on the northeast edge of town? I could site more examples but there's no sense; it's enough to say that to me the Principle of Geographic Origination, as I call it, is inviolable.

The reason I mention PGO is because of what my dear friends Freida and Gustav Sandemann told me last night at the Ox Bow, favorite

hangout of the faculty suffering from paper-grading blues. Between sips Freida spilled the Boston beans; the Sandemanns were moving west, probably to Stanford.

"Moving WEST?" I asked incredulously. "What for? You've already come west from Berlin and look what it's done for you!" At the time I was the only one who knew of the dangers of moving to a region dissimilar to their PGO --- the geography of their roots.

Bubbly Freida, efferescent from her celebratory champagne, told me I was a fool, all college people are internationalists, so don't give me any theory that suggests provinciality. To which I replied by proving beyond all reasonable doubt, sober or sloshed, my highly scientific principle. To which Gustav, a hard-nosed and pragmatic scientist said, then we must put your theory to the test so it won't be a well-documented idea but a true principle, in time maybe even a law. To which I responded that no matter how many glasses or shoes or slippers full of the bubbly we drowned, going to Stanford just to validate my thesis was not a good enough reason for them to take such a chance. To which I was put in my place by being informed that they'd decided to move before they'd heard of PGO, that's why were slugging down the champagne at the Ox Bow, silly, not just because they were burned out from grading papers.

Freida and Gustav did, in spite of my warnings, head for San Francisco, far west from Cambridge and not at all in the geographical similitude of their hometown Berlin, the dead center of Europe.

"I tell you, my friends, if you want all good to befall you, move to Iowa State. Or Kansas U. They're what you're used to -- mid-continent. But San Francisco -- to the WEST -- ah, my friends, I refuse to take responsibility for what might happen if you insist on going there."

The Sandemanns called me from West Virginia to tell me their car had

broken down. I wasn't in the least surprised. Nor was I taken back when I learned that Gustav had somehow slid the Toyota down a muddy bank into the Mississippi River later on. And I would have been shocked if their radiator hadn't overheated as they climbed the continental divide in Colorado. Of course I didn't gloat over their mishaps. I commiserated. They were friends even if they hadn't taken PGO to heart.

But underneath everything, I sensed they suspected the hypothesis to be true. Otherwise they wouldn't have contacted me every time something bad happened. No, Freida and Gustav were becoming believers, albeit the hard way. I just don't know why they didn't listen to me over bubbly at the Ox Bow and thereby eliminated any problem before it arose.

The night of the fire I got a desperate call from Dr. Sandemann.

"Mein Freund," the Berliner wailed atypically. "I believe, I believe. Too many coincidences have occurred since you disclosed your theory of Geographical Origination. I admit that I would have listened and accepted the position at Purdue or at least Iowa State. But the West Coast --- never. You are to be commended for your insight and I hereby assign my allegiance to your principle and promise forever to uphold and disseminate its credo. We move back to Boston tomorrow."

I admit that I was happy, but in one way sad. You see, the EAST coast was no more conducive to the Sandemanns good health and welfare than the west coast. I figured that was the reason the Berliners felt obliged to leave the Cambridge area in the first place --- intuitively to search for the place geographically right for them.

"He must swallow his German pride," I told Freida whom I hoped would warn Gustav. "It's not too late to forget Cambridge and go to Iowa. Or if you must, Purdue isn't far off mid-continent like your hometown Berlin. Don't make returning to Boston a third mistake.

Please, Freida, for the sake of the Principle, move to the midwest where you belong. Germany is the midwest of Europe where you originated and if you're to live in the U.S. at all, it should be in the heartland."

During the next few weeks I learned two things about my friends. To make generalizations from my observations, Germans are paradoxically both blind and visionary. Or highly insightful and can't see their noses at the front of their faces. However you want to say it, Freida and Gustav, when shown empirical, personal proof that the Principle of Geographical Origination was valid, both accepted and ignored it simultaneously.

"No wonder you lost the way," I proclaimed when they didn't take my advice again. But my jibes didn't do a bit of good. They'd accepted PGO intellectually but personally they were following pre-Principle habits that could only lead to self-destruction. There's nothing more to be said about Freida and Gustav Sandemann except that leaving Cambridge, then Stanford, and God-only-knows where else, they've become collegiate vagabonds, gypsy-ing their way from one campus to another and never settling anywhere, and miserable at every step.

In the past few years since I've documented and published PGO, and especially since its acceptance in all psycho-sociological texts, I've reviewed the Case of the Lost Berliners many times. I felt I was lucky that when the Principle was in its embryonic state, still only an idea, the Sandemanns happened by so neatly. It was as if Nature sent me the classic case just when I needed it. It was as if Freida and Gustav were the unwilling agents that helped bring to the world the very principle they couldn't follow. Paradoxical Germans, indeed.

As if the period of closure had punctuated itself neatly, the other night, after receiving an overabundance of student research papers, I stopped by the Ox Bow. On instinct I sat down to a bottle of the very bubbly that the

Sandemanns had used to toast good-bye to the East years before. And, over-coincidence as it may appear, who should present themselves but Freida and Gustav themselves though I barely recognized them. The great scholar of Biology, author of many papers and the definitive monologue on Mongolian Algae, wore a beret and knickers. The once-charming Frau now looked more like a mannequin in her orange hair and tattooed body. I greeted them with an offer to celebrate their return though it was obvious they were so far gone they could never come back. They politely refused saying they'd given up bubbly years ago and now drank 'only organic' with no pesticides or preservatives and at specific times of the day and night according to ancient Hindu Jyotish charting.

I grimaced and monologued into my glass something like, "If only you'd ascribe to my Principle of Geographic Origination years ago, today you wouldn't be so ..." I sensed the gypsies might hear, so I added in silence, "paradoxical." But I could have said it out loud. Because they wouldn't have heard it anyway.