Flyover Country

Beginning Paragraph The two photos couldn't have been more different: I took one from the top of Lombard Street, a flowered lane leading down to the rankling buildings of Fisherman's Wharf, which ended at the blue Bay with its white sailboats, and the Golden Gate, and the gray-folded mountains beyond. That had been my home at 12. I took the other photo down an arrow-straight sidewalk in front of my grandpa's 1950's bungalow on a maple-lined street in Marion, Ohio—my new "home" at 13.

Punctuating Paragraph I'd gone from Silicon Valley to Flyover Country.

Middle Paragraphs I posted both photos to my Snapchat story with the caption, "I've arrived?" My friends sent back laughing faces and crying faces and hearts, but of course none of them stood with me on that sweltering July sidewalk in the Rust Belt. I knew nobody in Ohio except Grandpa.

Montage Paragraph It all began six months earlier in San Francisco when Dad got laid off from his tech startup. He'd ridden the wave from the early days to the eventual fold-up and collapse. "We're fine, buddy," he told me. Between a high former salary and severance, we had money enough to find something new. . . . We thought. Months passed, and still nothing in the Valley. Rent isn't cheap in San Francisco. Then a friend from the old firm landed a job in a "lifeboat" in Columbus—a family-owned business that needed a couple of Silicon Valley geniuses to take them to the future. Dad jumped on board, and I jumped with him.

Dialogue "Box it or toss it," Dad said, dragging the shrieking tape gun over yet another box. "We're going to have to ship everything to storage while I look for a place. You'll stay with Grandpa till then."

"Grandpa," I echoed. I didn't know much about him. He was on Facebook, but not Snapchat, so we were not in each others' worlds. He lived in Ohio, but not in Columbus—in a little city called Marion. "How long?"

"However long it takes," Dad replied, flashing an apologetic smile.

Voice-Over Paragraph You never know how much stuff you have until you have to box it all up. You also never know how much stuff you use every day until it's sealed away and stacked in a pile. I had a backpack with the essentials, and we camped in our own apartment. The next day, the movers came and hauled it all out. Dad and I cleaned, the landlord came through, and then Dad and I went down to the street, officially homeless.

I walked to the corner of Lombard to take my picture and send it to my friends. That was my last, official good-bye.

It felt weird to drive east. The sun went the other way. Everybody in U.S. history went west, but we went east. Regressing. The ocean fell away behind us, and the mountains rose, beautiful on their western face but bone dry in the east. Then there was the long, scorching desert, then more mountains, then the even longer plains. It was as if the world was saying, "You really want to keep going? There's pretty much nothing that direction." Finally, we left the brown lands and got where things were greening up. Flat gave way to hills, and they to the mighty Mississippi. Nice, but it was no ocean. More farmlands, more hills, more green, and finally Marion, Ohio.

"Well, Jake, you're not a kid anymore," Grandpa said as he gave me a hug in the driveway. He was a white-haired, stoop-shouldered fellow with liver spots, a blue-plaid shirt, and a ready laugh. "Not a tween. No, sir. We've got ourselves a bona fide teenager now!"

"Yep," I said, not sure what else to say. Dad was busy pulling suitcases out of the trunk, so I stepped over to the sidewalk and took my sweltering picture and sent my story.

Establishing-Shot Paragraph Grandpa had an old two-bedroom, one-bath house. He slept in the front bedroom and Dad in the back, which meant I got a foam mat and a sleeping bag on the dining room floor. That was fine. The window-unit air conditioner was there, so it was cooler than the bedrooms. It could barely keep up with the July heat in Marion. Dad was there only for the weekends and evenings, doing an hour commute each way to get to his new job. He also often stayed late to work on a big project, and to look at properties.

So it was mainly Grandpa and me all summer. And Marion. And the rattly old air conditioner.

What to do? Grandpa had no game platform, and he was reluctant to keep his computer connected to the Internet. He said a hacker from India always messed up his screen. He had an old antenna on the roof and got local stations and some fuzzy ones from Columbus. His main idea of entertainment was to sit in a rocking lawn chair on his front porch and watch the cars go by.

"How about the library?" he asked one day, rightly seeing that I was bored.

"Why not?"

On the drive there, Grandpa said, "You see that woman on the corner with the baby?"

I glanced out the window. "Yep."

"She's actually a spy. That baby is a walkie-talkie. She's sending in my coordinates. Better turn here to throw her off the track."

I laughed out loud.

We got to the library, and I discovered it had not just tons of books, but also real central air-conditioning. Ahhh. Dry, cool air. I could feel the beaded sweat evaporate from my skin.

"Why don't you find a book or two, and then we can run to the grocery store."

"How about I find a book or two and stay here in the air conditioning while you run to the grocery store?"

That suited us both. And I found not just a book or two. I found seven—Harry Potter and . . . (Fill in the Blank).

That became our routine. Grandpa would take me to the library, dodging the spies on his tail, and I'd sit and read Harry Potter. He'd take me to lunch, and for dinner we'd have macaroni and cheese and Pringles. Afterward, we'd sit out on the front porch while the world cooled off, watching the cars go by.

Grandpa had all kinds of amazing stories. He'd come to Marion because of the railroads, and he used to travel on them all through the Midwest. He told about how he and his friends saw a UFO one night on a late run—a long line of lights moving silently across the sky. He told about pranks he and his friends played when they were my age, and dumb things my Dad did at that age, too. We could talk about anything—pyramids in Egypt, dinosaurs, dark matter, San Francisco, growing up, loneliness, things that change us.

"You're getting too big for your britches," he said to me one night.

"What do you mean?"

"You're about two inches taller than when you got here. Your pants are way up off your shoes. We'll go to Goodwill tomorrow and see what we can find."

Voice-Over Paragraph It's a humbling thing to stand in stylish, new, West-Coast fashions that no longer fit while browsing rack on rack of used, old, Midwestern clothes. Just to humor Grandpa, I picked out three pairs of pants and some old concert T-shirts. I told myself I'd wear them just around his house, but of course, they looked better than my old clothes that no longer fit. So next week, we went back to Goodwill to buy three more pairs of pants and even more T-shirts. Not only did they fit, but they made me fit. I suddenly looked like everybody else.

In August, Dad said we were moving to a rented house just outside Columbus. It cost the same amount as our apartment in San Francisco, but it had five times the square feet. Hardwood floors, ten-foot ceilings, tall windows with wood casements, two bathrooms, four bedrooms, and central air! When our stuff arrived from storage, it was pitifully inadequate to fill the cavernous place, so we went out to get furniture and other stuff. I found lots of the furniture for my room at the Marion Goodwill. That's where the vintage stuff was.

By the time school came around, I had a new room, a new home, a new wardrobe, a new life. I wasn't the Silicon Valley tween anymore. I was a full-fledged teen with a serious reading habit, an eagerness for deep conversation, and a sense of humor from the greatest comedian I'd ever met.

All of these things served me well. The first day of school, trying to break the ice, I asked a kid in my class if they ever got bears in Columbus. He looked confused, and I pointed at a jogger outside. "That guy's running from something. Might be a bear." He laughed out loud. I'd made a new friend, whose name also happened to be Jake, and I'd started my career as a middle-school stand-up comedian.

Ending Paragraph As much as I dreaded my move from Silicon Valley to the Midwest, it gave me a chance to start over. I got to think of who I was and redefine myself into who I would be. I made a friend out of Grandpa and another out of Jake, and I got to even make friends with myself. Instead of taking a picture of Lombard Street in Frisco and the arrow-straight sidewalks in Marion, I should have taken before-and-after selfies. Those photos couldn't have been any more different, either.