Francis Masat: Everyone’s Going West

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“Go West, young man!”

—John B. Soule, Horace Greeley, Thomas Fuller and possibly others, ca. 1851.

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The Midwest: My high school sweet-heart moves to California; other friends move to Colorado and Oregon. My high school drops band, the football team now is eight-man, and the track team is co-ed. The movie theater, two schools, and the variety and drug stores close. The library—my Mecca—struggles to stay open. A local rumor is that we are experiencing progress.

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empty street—

the rolling cadence

of a beer can

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So now, where do I go to see theater and opera, to visit history, to live art, or to use gateways to old world cultures? I realize that I must leave too. With everyone going West, I head East.

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Dad’s workshop—

cobwebs fill the arches

of a child’s castle

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by Francis Masat

Key West, Florida