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AS THE HOLE DEEPENS
American Life in 2024 BY TIM SANDLIN // ILLUSTRATIONS BY BIRGITTA SIF
AS FATE WOULD have it, my PaPaw’s seventieth birthday and the end of our forty-eighth month in isolation fell on the same day. To celebrate, my son, Chub, who is stuck in an employee dorm at Old Faithful, set up a Zoom party for the family. Four years into this plague and I still haven’t figured out Zoom. I can join meetings but can’t organize one. So the three generations—PaPaw and MeMaw from their place in Moose; me (Peter Pym) and my wife, Delores, from our house in Jackson; our daughter, Ambrosia, in an apartment in Florence, Italy, where she is supposed to be studying art history but isn’t; and Chub—all got together on our various computer screens, looking like the opening credits from The Brady 138
JACKSON HOLE MAGAZINE WINTER 2021
Bunch, to sing “Happy Birthday” to PaPaw. I’m not certain he noticed. PaPaw has sort of faded in the last few years of sitting in his Barcalounger, eating cheddar popcorn and watching TV. The first year it was 1960s bowling, the so-called Golden Age of Bowling. He was sharp enough to tell you Bill Bunette’s average score on the pro circuit, but not sharp enough to distinguish Coke from Mountain Dew. Then he discovered Willow TV—all cricket all the time. With no clue as to rules or terminology, PaPaw sat through twentyfour hours a day of boys in white flannels with little canoe paddles running from stick to stick. Every four hours or so, they
