Travels in my head: Going to America

The plan is to write a piece about each US state I have visited.

I have no idea how long I will stretch this out for, might do all the ones I have visited, or it might just peter out.

I am aware that my views and impressions of the US are based on the fact I am armed with the one thing American's don't have: a non-American accent. And I like to talk to people, and too polite to say no.

My memroy of America, especially the trip down the west coast in 2005 wass that I was never alone any evening. People would hear my accent, or I would strike up conversation and I would be talking to them all night, or in a bar, soon have all the other patrons talking to me.

I thought this was everyone's America.

Jools travelled alone in the US and remembers it as the lonliest time, as no one spoke to her, maybe as a single woman travelling.

I don't know.

THere was one night on Route 101 just before the California border, where I had been driving all day, and was tired, just wanted a quiet evening, eat my fauz Italian meal, drink a glass of red wine and go to bed.

There was only one other table taken in the place, a family of four. And I could see them keep looking at me, I was so tired and few upw ith people, I just said under my breath "don't speak, don't speak."

They spoke.

"Where ya from?"

And so the quiet evening disappeared and they moved the table nearer and I told them of my trip and time in the US, where I was going and so on. All in my un-accented UK accented English.

You see, I grew up in Suffolk, born in Norfolk, and I had a strong accent. But I tried very hard to lose it, and 15 years in the RAF made that easier. So, back home I have no accent, but in the US I have an accent.

In Arkansas, the secretary at the propane company my mate Jason used to work, once said to me.

"Talk to me"

"What about?" I asked.

"It don't matter" she said.

I guess there's not many English accents to be heard in the Arkansas Ozarks.

Like most growing up in Europe, America was seen through the lens of Hollywood and the big US TV companies. I grew up on a diet of US police dramas: Streets of San Francisco, Ironside, Kojack, Starsky and Hutch and so on, and then Hollywoood fed us the dream of Technicolour and Panavision widescreen and hyper-real colours, with simple black and white of good guys and baddies, who always wore black.

Nothing was ever going to match that American dream to the dirty dwn and out reality of what I would find.

My first time in a US city for more than a few hours (Vegas doesn't really count) was in Seatle, and in the four days I was there I saw more people living on the street than I had seen in my whole life living in England or during my posting to Germany. Here was the richest country in the world, happy with people living on the street. Or not just people, who families as we saw in Chicago in 2019.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I have seen cities, I have also been off the beaten track, including delivering propane with Jason to hillbillies living in tralers off grid in the woods, and being like a scene from a comedy film.

So, America, the land of the free.

And health insurance.

The rich and the dirt poor.