By Austin Ruse, Crisis Magazine - I didn’t stay. On the day of my college graduation, I packed up my car and drove straight through from the University of Missouri to Washington, D.C. I probably stopped for gas... I left behind family and friends and roots. I bounced from D.C. to New York and back again. I returned to Virginia, where I was born, to set down roots with a wife but not until I was 47. At this remove, I ponder deeply the importance of staying put, of stability... When I was 14, my family moved to what I consider my hometown of St. Charles, Missouri; and I recall that all the boys I met had known each other since kindergarten.