Man of the House: Parents’ weekend on campus

They’re bound to bury me in a Boeing S80, the ubiquitous airliner that I have spent more time in than my very own bed.

Of course, it’ll be a rather large casket, but it’ll leave plenty of room for my collection of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” memorabilia. On the side of the coffin/airliner, my so-called friends will spray-paint, “Never very restful in life, maybe he’ll shut up now.” Then everyone will trickle off to catch up on their phone messages and dry cleaning.

Till that moment, I plan to enjoy every remaining minute, and am off doing that in one of those Boeing S80s I love so much.

This time, I’m in the far rear of the plane — corner pocket — back where all you see out the window is the big bosomy Pratt & Whitney engine. I’m not sure why they put a window here, but if this engine drops off, I’ll be the first to hit the call button.

We’re headed back to campus for the annual parents weekend — lots of moms and dads are these days — through self-help kiosks and TSA wreckpoints, rental car counters and hotel desks, where they hand out those annoying plastic room keys that sometimes work, sometimes don’t.

I’m a big fan of adventure travel, fortunately, and the more challenges they put in my way, the better.

That said, there are a few things about modern life that annoy me, and one of them is plastic hotel keys. Another is those motion-activated towel dispensers you find in public restrooms. Worse yet, motion-activated toilets.

In one airport, the toilet discharged while the little guy was still sitting on it, propelling him — like Class V rapids — two feet into the air. The little guy yelped, then somersaulted, before returning to his perch, somehow maintaining a not-so-quiet dignity.

But still. There are simple things in life that should just be left alone, they work well enough. Toilets are one of them.

Now, no one is a connoisseur of the heartland like I am, and I know these pilgrimages must get predictable — all this stuff about frosted fields and candy-apple kids — but then you run across something like a well-made pork tenderloin sandwich and here I go again. Love’s like that: It finds you, not the other way around.

What they do with a pork tenderloin is to pound it into oblivion, bam-bam-bam-bam-bam, then deep fry it from the inside out, according to some shoe cobbler’s manual.

By the time they are done, it’s as if they’ve killed the poor pig three times and the tenderloin is four times its original size. Seriously, you could wear this tenderloin like a shawl.

One day, I think I swallowed a cicada too, and that was almost as good. I believe it had been feeding on a mixture of corn and other tourists. Midwest cuisine is like that. Basically, the whole region is edible.

“I ate an ant once,” the little guy says, just to make me feel less alone.

The locals here in Indiana have an inherent sweetness to them as well, but don’t take that as a character flaw. This is Kurt Vonnegut country, remember. John Wooden too. Beneath the sugar, keen minds and prairie resolve.

Outsiders complain about a lack of diversity, but that’s exaggerated. I’ve been in public places — bars, mostly — when you had a German over here, and a Norwegian over there, and maybe a Swede or two in the middle breaking things up. So, yeah, it’s not like you don’t have a lot of multicultural activities.

The college kids? Well, like children in a sitcom, they seem to be growing up far too fast. And I’m not fond of the skin-tight britches they’re wearing now. Like denim skin.

Two years ago, we first dropped the little girl off, and now I’m proud to report that she knows her way to almost all the better sororities and fraternities.

“What’s that big building?” I ask her one day.

“The library?” she says.

“That’s a frat house,” I say.

“It is?”

In two years, the little girl has even grown a little jaded to all the delicacies of college life — such as the way the marching band plows through campus every afternoon on its way to rehearse.

To her, marching bands seem more annoyance than fairy tale moment. As if anywhere else, 300 Seussian characters march through the town square followed by a gigantic Dumpster-sized bass drum.

Maybe she’ll appreciate it more in a couple of years, when it is no longer around. When pitchers of beer don’t automatically come with a pizza and a plate of wings. When Cat Stevens songs aren’t still playing in every bar. When entire autumn afternoons, pretty as Renoir, aren’t free for the taking.

Me, I find college campuses to be the best places on Earth. They are heavenly in ways the Bible never mentions, brimming with raw potential and pie-eyed idealism — all the stuff that’ll get you nowhere in life.

But let’s not tell them that quite yet.

chris.erskine@latimes.com

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