Dilemma: Is it possible to write about a trip I haven’t taken yet?
In the 28 years I’ve been working as a columnist for this newspaper, I don’t believe I’ve ever attempted such a thing. Why now? Because I’m departing by bus from McMinnville on June 16, heading for Boston. You read that right. I’m going all the way to Massachusetts on a tour bus. It will take two days to get there and two days to get home. My fellow travelers and I won’t return to Tennessee until late Wednesday, June 24.
Every Wednesday morning, I email my Saturday column to the Herald-Citizen editors. They lay it out amongst the rest of the stories and photos and ads and send it electronically to Sevierville, where the paper is printed. Those stacks of newspaper are then trucked back to the Cookeville post office to be mailed out to subscribers. That’s a lot of back-and-forth and is the reason for the three-day gap between sending off my column and seeing it in print.
There’s no doubt in my mind it will be difficult—maybe even impossible–to pen and send columns while I’m on the road. That’s why I’m writing this one (and last week’s column about old-timey telephones) before I depart.
I haven’t travelled on a bus, not counting a school bus or a short-hop shuttle bus, in decades. Soon after I graduated from high school, I rode all the way from Nashville to California on a Greyhound bus with members of the Hillsboro High School Junior Classical League (sometimes called “The Latin Club”) for our national convention. It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done.
Now, 54 years later, I’m getting ready to board a bus filled not with high school students but senior citizens–all but one of them complete strangers to me–for departure to New England.
I don’t know if our bus will have drop-down tables on the seat backs like airplanes do. Even if it does, I don’t know if those tables will be roomy enough for my computer and mouse pad and ink pens and scribbled notes. I don’t know how bumpy or curvy the roads we’ll travel might be. I don’t know if the atmosphere inside the bus will be too raucous for me to concentrate. (You know how rowdy senior citizens can get.) I don’t know if I’ll have reliable internet access.
That’s why I decided to write my June 20 and 27 columns ahead of time.
By the time you read this, if all goes as planned, I’ll be home. But I can write today only about what I think might happen on the trip. Tricky, right?
I said yes to this adventure because I understand that time is passing at warp speed. While I’m still young enough and mobile enough and brave enough, I figure I might as well get on a bus (or boat or train or airplane) and go. I chose Boston because I’ve never been there and because–in what seems almost like another life–I taught U.S. History to eleventh graders. The American Revolution was one of my favorite topics.
This coming July 4, as everyone reading this column no doubt knows, we’ll celebrate the 250th Birthday of the United States. I’m hoping this trip will rekindle my patriotism, which has waned mightily over the past ten years.
The tour takes us to Lexington and Concord, where “the shot heard round the world” was fired. We’ll visit Trinity Church and Boston Common. I’m packing some British tea, with plans to toss a handful into Boston Harbor. I’ll wear a t-shirt adorned with the American flag while I do these things. And on part of the 2,000-mile bus ride, I hope to read “1776,” historian David McCullough’s story of the year of our nation’s birth, in its entirety.
Stay tuned to find out which of these things (and more!) happened the way I anticipate. And thanks, as always, for reading.
(June 27, 2026)