Return to Sanity

TWENTY-TWO years after I sailed away from the U.S. swearing I'd "never go back to that dump unless someone buys me a round trip ticket," I flew back for a year's leave, my first visit to my native land in over two decades. But it was even longer since I'd left my boyhood home in northern California, and it was there I returned, to the small city where I'd gone to high school.