Our family’s final grad, Smartacus, is leaving his leafy Oregon campus. (photo by Chris Erskine)

Yeats wrote for the collective soul of Ireland.

I write for the collective soul of suburban America, that tired old thing, that shredded has-been.

Honestly, I love the suburbs when the residents are out among themselves, laughing and showing off their dogs and their kids, cheering Little League or buying berries at the farmers market.

I loathe suburbs when they’re all buttoned up – doors locked, lips sealed, secrets kept, wall clocks ticking like car bombs.

Cushy quiet unnerves me. Ask anyone. It’s like a funeral where nobody shows up.

Conversely, I remember my first week in a college dorm. Everybody was everywhere. Kids you barely knew walked in and out of rooms, borrowing beer and record albums, the wandering minstrels of higher education.

Female classmates visited and wouldn’t leave, some of them. They’d just camp out on some dude’s bed and spend the semester. Once in a while, you’d find them in the men’s room shaving their pits.

That’s what college was like in the ‘70s. Feral. Utopian. Unsustainable.

I remember thinking – me, this typical suburban boy: “This is what life is supposed to be: social, engaging, loud, alive.”

Then, little by little, those very same people got on my nerves.

I suppose that’s why we have suburbs. A few boundaries aren’t so bad.

College is not nearly as whacky now as when we went. Back then, Frampton flowed and dorm room doors were wide open, kegs everywhere.

College, like the suburbs, seems more buttoned up now.

Still, I love them. I love them a lot. Colleges and suburbs still take enormous pride in their lawns and shrubs. They seem stewards of extraordinary pollen counts.

Like the suburbs, today’s colleges can feel like overpriced anachronisms, as though their best days have passed. But we’ll always have colleges. And dear gawd, let there always be cul-de-sacs.

Know why? Kids.

Freshman year, they come in like a herd of trembling deer. They leave college – five or six years later – as semi-confused adults.

Just what the world needs, right? More befuddlement.

Smartacus wrapped up his college experience the other day, in a grand ceremony in a vast stadium in the Pacific Northwest, where high temps nipped at 100.

College graduations always lure a lethal warmth, don’t they?

The subtle message? “Be free, young gods. Fly close to the sun. Don’t let your wings melt.”

For this milestone celebration, our family goes up to Oregon: Smartacus, his sisters, his bros-in-law, his Aunt Eleanor.

Warning: In a college town, it’s as if the drinking water is laced. And never take treats from strangers.

At one point, I look around our lunch table and everyone is talking all at once, no one listening, all of us just yapping happily, full of pride in our family’s last grad, Smartacus.

Like Yeats, it makes me misty.

Born a thousand years ago, colleges have always been too good to be true. They tolerate tardiness, and don’t give a flip about good hygiene. There are cops, but just barely.

The creeks flow with wine.

By and large, good students go to good schools, great students go to great ones. The end game in both cases: great humans.

The University of Oregon isn’t Harvard, but I have never seen a more ebullient student body. They wear flip-flops or stilettos under their grad gowns. They dance wildly in the aisles during the school anthem (“Shout,” from “Animal House”).

“You know you make me wanna …”

Between the various ceremonies, the grads wander this incredible campus like street gangs of kittens. They, too, sense that all this is too good to be true.

Because in no time, they’ll be wearing too-high crew socks and mowing the lawn of some 1,200-foot starter home.

You gotta begin somewhere, right? Remember, even the Beatles played strip clubs in the early days.

So, cheerio, all you glorious grads of 2026. What do you want out of life, money or magic? Perhaps a bit of both?

Hey, try the suburbs!

Meanwhile, 10 things to know as you head off into the real world:

1. Your iCloud storage will always be full;
2. Social Security will always be on the verge of collapse;
3. The media will exaggerate the doom in every issue;
4. The body will usually heal itself;
5. Upgrades are actually downgrades;
6. Memories of Mom are soup, they’ll warm your belly;
7. When you’re late, CalTrans will close your exit;
8. Hope and optimism are the dominant American religion;
9. The past always looks better than the future.

And most profoundly…

10. Endings are hard, in love and in relationships … in songwriting and in movies … in college and in life.

Yet, aren’t new horizons your happy place?

Go ahead. Dance.