Road to Elsewhere, Excerpt #31*: Channeling Claude Monet, Ghosts, and Cheap Red Wine, at the Gare Saint Lazare in Paris

My early experiment in vagrancy.

AS I WOULD ONE DAY TELL MY SONS: There are as many examples to follow—good and bad—as there are ways to follow them. My response to my alcohol-free upbringing by teetotaling Yankees was to behave irresponsibly myself. In high school I took advantage of back-to-back study halls to gather my henchmen and drink 7-oz. Miller ponies in the woods. In Paris, w…