Volume 5: Growing Up Chapter 316 I don’t often mention her, but I often think of her
It was already seven o'clock in the evening when Tommy arrived in Flagstaff, Arizona, but he was still warmly received by Eric and his wife. They took him to taste Flagstaff's unique secret meat burgers and Red Rock Volcano ice cream.
Eric's wife is from Texas and is now a professor at Northern Arizona University. Their children also live in Texas because Eric's wife's family owns a large farm in Texas. The children can ride horses, fly planes to spray pesticides, and they can also entrust their grandparents to take care of them, saving a lot of nanny fees.
As for Eric, he remains the same as when he was young, spending most of every year flying around the world dealing with various geological landforms. He finds this job very interesting because earthquakes are more unpredictable than human hearts.
The two chatted about a lot of interesting things that happened in college. Tommy told Eric that the way Stanford SSD recruits new students is really too weird. They will stuff coins into the rookie's anus, and then another rookie will hit the head with a pneumatic hammer to make the coins fall out.
Eric smiled and said that he would write to SSD to discuss what kind of coin should be stuffed in. The largest coin he had ever seen was larger in diameter than an egg, and it would be spectacular if it was stuffed in.
The conversation between the two shocked Mrs. Bell, who had always thought her husband was a gentle scholar after marriage.
After staying in Flagstaff for one night, Tommy crossed New Mexico and arrived in Amarillo, Texas in the evening the next day. This place is also nicknamed "the land of the living dead". It is the largest helium producer in the United States. At the same time, Pantex, the only nuclear weapons assembly plant in the United States, is also located here. More than 200,000 people living here may be turned into dead in an instant due to an explosion caused by improper disassembly of nuclear weapons.
Originally, Holly Keener was going to come from Austin, Texas to meet Tommy, but Tommy refused. Amarillo was not a good place to reminisce about the past, and it would be better to go to his next stop, Oklahoma City, instead of coming here from Austin. What's more, he and Holly didn't have much old feelings to reminisce, after all, they met often.
Of the original five people at Actor, Jason chose to return to his hometown in Mississippi, the small town of Greenville, to enjoy the rest of his life because of Susie's accidental death three years ago. Mark Warren succeeded Susan as president of her agency after she entered politics. After Susan followed her mentor Condoleezza Rice into politics, she served two terms as mayor of San Francisco, one term as Secretary of State of California, and is now a Republican senator from California in the U.S. Congress. She can be said to have barely inherited her mentor's political connections.
Only Holly has been active in the Internet and computer industry and often meets Tommy. The only difference is that she moved from Silicon Valley in California to Austin, Texas. Now she is the founder of Austin Bioinformatics and Life Sciences Center. Simply put, she studies various high-tech medical devices to help patients improve their living environment, such as intelligent implantable spines, intelligent knee joints, hip joints, artificial hearts, and some ear, nose and throat soft tissue repair technologies.
She no longer needed Tommy's guidance and knew how to trick wealthy people into investing their money in her, such as selling the concept of high-tech life sciences to not-so-rich people.
Those not-so-rich people are unlikely to spend money to build their own medical centers like Rockefeller did. The best option is for a group of people to pool their money to hire people like Holly to help them study how to live longer.
After staying one night in Amarillo, Tommy picked up two hitchhikers on the road before setting off again. They didn't care about their destination, as long as they could get closer to the north.
They are an old man and a young man, from California. The old man has lived in San Diego, California all his life, supporting his family with a fast food restaurant, with no holidays. From birth to this trip, he has never left San Diego and has never seen real snow. Now his children have started their own families and no longer need care, and his wife has passed away. He chose to close the restaurant and take his savings to hike to the north to see the snow. The young man is a relatively active short video blogger in San Diego. He wants to record the old man's images along the way and is willing to take care of him during this journey.
In Oklahoma City, Tommy dropped them off and watched them walk north with their backpacks on. If Tommy hadn't heard it from the old man himself, he would never have thought that there are still many people in this world who have never seen real snowflakes.
Arriving in Oklahoma also means saying goodbye to the American West and driving into the lush Midwest. After servicing my car, I rushed to Little Rock, Arkansas to rest for a night, then headed south along the Mississippi River to Jason's hometown, Greenville.
If you have no impression of Greenville, just watch Quentin's movie "Django". The scene in which Leonardo's slaves climbed up a tree and were persuaded by Leonardo to come down and be bitten to death by dogs was filmed in Greenville, Mississippi.
Half of the state is covered with trees, and the remaining half is plain farmland. It is a paradise for American slave owners. When slavery was popular, the male slaves in the state were responsible for logging, the female slaves were responsible for planting cotton, and the white people and dogs were responsible for supervision. It was a perfect work plan.
This may be the most traditional America so far, where residents are allowed to carry automatic pistols without a gun license or background check, minors who commit serious crimes such as murder are allowed to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, the death penalty is retained, and gambling is legalized.
When Tommy saw Jason, Jason looked very happy. Tommy could understand why this guy was so happy, because this guy had almost bought this small town with a population of more than 30,000. Now he lived in a manor that was more luxurious than Leonardo's house in "Django". Thousands of black people worked for him every day, harvesting crops or catching catfish for him. Looking on the outskirts of the city, almost all the land and ponds that could be seen were his property. In order to ensure enough social interaction, this guy also built a floating luxury private club on Lake Ferguson, just to receive friends who came from afar to visit him.
Almost all the beautiful girls in Greenville, both black and white, worked as waitresses in his private club. Most of the time, there were no guests in the club, which meant that they only had to serve Jason.
"AIDS or cancer?" Jason asked seriously after seeing Tommy.
Tommy looked puzzled: "What?"
"Is it testicular cancer? Does it need to be removed? Otherwise, why would you come to see me on purpose? I thought it was your final farewell trip." Jason said to Tommy.
Tommy sighed, "My balls are perfectly fine, Jason. I'm just heading back to Rhode Island for the wedding, and I'm inviting you to my pre-wedding party along the way."
"You're getting married again? To whom? The young lady you brought with you when we last met?" Jason poured Tommy a glass of wine and said in a shocked tone, "That girl is only twenty years old. I think your thirty-year-old hemorrhoid is older than her now."
"Otilia." Tommy took the glass: "I want to marry Otilia."
Jason's face was full of disbelief: "You slept with her three best friends and their mothers, and she can forgive you? Have you brainwashed her to the point that she would give up all her dignity for you?"
"It's not for me, maybe it's for the Hawke family, maybe just like you tortured yourself for Susie." Tommy looked at the decoration in the room: "It doesn't look like there is any trace of Susie's existence here. Those traces are hidden in your mind."
Jason leaned back on the sofa and said with emotion: "I don't often mention her, but I think of her often."
"You should call those illegitimate children back to enjoy family happiness with you. Don't miss her too much. Susie probably doesn't want you to see her too soon. Maybe she is busy in heaven wearing leather clothes, training God to kneel in front of her and lick her toes."
"I don't even know where they are. They have nothing to do with me. Their mothers took some money and disappeared with them. In fact, I did think that such a big house should have a big family around me so that I don't have to miss Susie all the time. We once said that if someone dies first, the living person should continue to enjoy life happily. So, I am here, enjoying every day."
"You should still be able to have children. There is no shortage of women here."
"I don't want to have a baby. I don't even have sex now. I haven't had any sex for three years. To be honest, I wasn't this faithful even when Susie was alive."
"It could be that Susie had already ruined you before she died. It has nothing to do with the word loyalty."
Jason's cell phone rang at this time. After he answered it, he said a few perfunctory words indifferently, then his face became a little angry, and finally turned into shock. After giving his address, he hung up the phone in a daze.
"You look like you heard Susie is still alive," Tommy said as he took a sip of his drink.
Jason looked at Suzy and said, "This phone call tells me that I now have a big family."
"Your illegitimate children are going to come and divide your money?"
"I... uh... the person on the phone just now was a man, he said he was my son, he's 42 years old."
"You and I are the same age. Does that mean you gave birth to this son when you were eighteen? That's impossible. We were freshmen at the time and were busy studying and starting a business. That was a lie. You didn't have the money to support women at the time. Remember, your three girlfriends were country women you found in Greenville after OSS went public. You were already nineteen years old at the time."
"No, the other party is right, and you are right too . I didn't have money to support a woman at that time, but there was a woman who paid... to take care of my business. She was a 40-year-old single rich woman who drove a Firebird. I had sex with her a few times, and I even treated you to pizza with the money that woman paid me for an overnight stay."
Tommy's eyes widened: "No! This is impossible! The man on the phone..."
"He said that his mother was the single wealthy woman who patronized my gigolo business back then. She got pregnant unexpectedly. She thought she had no chance of getting pregnant, but it happened. She felt that this was the best gift God had given her because she had a child before, but it died. So she wanted to give birth to the child, and she thought the child didn't need a father and she could handle it herself. So, the woman quietly left California and settled in Canada, where she raised the child to adulthood."
"This year, his mother passed away. Before she died, she told him that his father was named Jason White, and he was a college student at Stanford University. Now, he wants to meet me. It's just a simple visit. It won't involve any property issues. It's just because I am his biological father."
