How a 60-mile, sixth-grade field trip became a life-changing date with destiny

Essay by Forrest Brown, CNN

(CNN) — Six little words – mundane to anyone else – electrified me: Boxed Lunch on the Capitol Steps.

It was one line from an itinerary of an upcoming field trip to Columbia, the capital of South Carolina. I couldn’t have been any more excited if I had been told we were headed to New York City or London.

The trip arranged by our teachers was a week or so away, and I pored over the schedule multiple times a day. Every line and every stop set my hyperactive sixth-grade mind afire, but none more than the boxed lunch entry.

Questions and thoughts raced through my head: What’s a “boxed” lunch? What would be in it? Will it be enough food? Why are we eating on the Capitol steps? How weird! How exciting! Who does stuff like that? Well, my class would!

This was around 1974, and I had made the hour-long drive with my parents from my small hometown of about 5,000 souls to big-city Columbia a handful of times by then. My father had taken me to a few University of South Carolina football and basketball games, and my mother had taken me shopping for clothes at the likes of Belk and Kmart. The latter was a mix of drudgery and delight; the former much more solid fun. Both, however, were under firm parental control.

But this trip was different. We’d be seeing adult things. Important things. Things with times and agendas. I’d be in the center of the action. Grown-up action.

It turned out that each stop – from a historic home tour to a planetarium – would influence and inform the rest of my life. And no place proved more prescient than those Capitol steps.

Off to Columbia – and the past!

Some parts of that short trip have eluded my memory. For instance, I can’t recall for sure if we took a school bus or went caravan-style in a makeshift fleet of station wagons. I think the cars, but I can’t take that to the bank.

I also don’t recall any incidents with my classmates. That’s actually significant because I was that kid. You know, the oddball who was more comfortable around teachers and other adults than his classmates.

But other parts of the trip – what we did and where we did it and how it affected me – remain crystal clear.

Our first stop of the day was the Robert Mills House and Gardens. I already had an interest in history, but I had thought nothing about architecture. That was about to change. The rounded arches of the first floor and the columns on the second floor of the brick mansion fascinated me. And when they told us Mills also designed the Washington Monument, I was 100% sold.

The visit boosted my interest in history, especially in touring historic sites, and sparked a lifelong,  albeit amateurish, interest in architecture that’s even made its way into my work for CNN Travel.

A life-changing boxed lunch

South Carolina’s Capitol, popularly called the State House, was just blocks away and was our next stop.

Today, the building sports a brownish-gold copper dome, but back in the mid-1970s, the exterior dome was green-tinged before a massive renovation.

We took a tour of the amazing State House interior and from a perch in the balcony, we got to see legislators in action. (Again, memory fails if we were watching the House or the Senate). I had no idea what the lawmakers were doing that day, but I was certain it was vitally important. Probably the biggest day in legislative history!

Up in the balcony, someone spotted one of my classmate’s older brothers on the floor. He was serving as a page, and I felt a jolt. If he could be a page, maybe I could as well one day. Then it was time to embark on my recent obsession – it was time for the boxed lunch!

The boxes were passed out, and there we were. Eating on the Capitol steps, as outlined and promised on paper.

I have no memory what was inside those white cardboard boxes. Probably a sandwich, chips and a cookie, the usual items in one. I have no memory who I sat by. Probably on the outer edges of the group, where I was a less likely target of teasing.

But to my dying day, I’ll remember what I thought and how I felt.

I had a profound feeling of inner calm. For in that moment, sitting on those steps, looking out over the grounds and the buildings lining downtown Columbia, I realized my future.

I had seen only an old house and the inside of a legislature so far, but it was already enough. In just half a day, I knew in a confident, quiet way that this was my place.

What I felt didn’t feel like a hopeful prediction or even a longing. Deep in my heart, I was certain that one day I’d be living in Columbia as a college student. As a Gamecock. Studying journalism. I’d again be at this spot, in this city, in the center of the action. And that I’d be ready for it. I had no doubt or hesitation – this would surely come to pass.

As a kid riddled by doubts and disharmony, I don’t think I had ever been more sure or more happy.

The cosmos and crime

The afternoon stops solidified the revelation I felt on the State House steps.

Our next place to visit was the now-closed Gibbes Planetarium, just a short walk away from the State House and the USC campus. If the Mills House represented an interesting past, Gibbes represented an intriguing future.

I already enjoyed space-related matters both real (the recent Apollo missions) and imaginary (“Star Trek” reruns). But the Gibbes experience took my otherworldly fascinations to the next level. The night sky program and all the exhibits were yet another escape hatch. While I was already dead-set at this age at being a newspaper reporter, I was getting back-up ideas and interests in mind – historian or astronomer.

In one day, life was quickly becoming endless possibilities.

Our next stop appealed to the crime show fan in me – a tour of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. Popularly known in the state by its acronym SLED, you might have seen the agency mentioned in coverage of the Alex Murdaugh case.

While I didn’t leave the tour of their facilities with back-up plans of being a detective, it was interesting to get a behind-the-scenes look. My main memories of the place are of microscopes in a crime lab, chemical smells – and a ridiculous rumor that a classmate had “stolen some drugs” while we were there.

But I was on such a natural high that our last stop didn’t bother me a bit as we pulled into a chain steakhouse (I think, but cannot swear, it was Western Sizzlin’) for supper.

Normally, situations like that back then would set me on edge. I was terrible at negotiating the intricacies of lunchroom politics. But I recall no such nerves this time. I had just been exposed to the exit ramp from small-town life. Plus, I already had gotten the taste for steak by that age. Win-win.

From there, the memories of the day fade into nothingness. That’s because nothing else mattered. I had already learned and experienced everything I needed to know.

Back to the future

Everything came to pass as I knew it would on that field trip.

I applied to the University of South Carolina and was accepted. I signed up as a journalism major – over the objections of my parents – before my freshman year even started in 1980. I was even assigned a dorm on Main Street, which runs to the Capital complex on its north and south sides. Everything was coming together.

I moved into my fifth-floor dorm room the first day they opened the building to students. Douglas was its name. It was an early ‘60s-style monstrosity and was one of six buildings accurately dubbed The Honeycombs because of their exteriors. The dorm was in rough shape – and perfect.

Hardly anyone was there yet. I guess eager, nerdy freshmen came to campus on the first day. I didn’t care. I had already waited six years for this moment. I wasn’t going to wait another day. And I knew what I had to do.

Within days of my arrival, I went across the street to an eatery called Stuffy’s, bought a sub (a new kind of exotic sandwich to me) and proceeded to make the very short trek to the Capitol grounds. It was late afternoon. In August. In Columbia. You don’t know a real summer until you experience that. But I liked hot, humid weather, particularly back then.

Again, I can’t remember exactly what I ordered beyond a sub. And it was in a bag, not a box. But I indulged in an oh-so-sweet victory lap and lunch on those Capitol steps to launch my new life. The life I knew all along I could make happen. And did.

The steps would continue to play a role in my life. I’d take a lunch there every so often to eat and think. I once saw a clogging performance there my freshman year. It was put on by members of the Presbyterian Student Center, and many of the students at that center would turn out soon enough to become lifelong friends. I’d even stopped at the steps several times after I graduated to sit and remember my sixth-grade self.

At CNN Travel, we often write about people traveling to other nations and continents and having epiphanies and experiences that start them on exotic new lives. I didn’t have to go nearly that far. I didn’t even spend the night.

For me, it was a mere 60-mile, in-state field trip – culminating with a Boxed Lunch on the Capitol Steps – that proved to be my date with destiny.

Forrest Brown graduated from the University of South Carolina with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in December 1983 and has worked for CNN Digital since 2008.

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