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T H I S+W E E K > American byways
Ode to the road
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TO UNDERSTAND WHAT MAKES THE U.S. SPECIAL, YOU HAVE TO GO ABROAD.
I L L U S T R A T I O N B Y T R I S H A K R A U S E BY DON GEORGE | about this time every year I begin to grow nostalgic for the Connecticut of my childhood. This is triggered particularly by the annual announcement of the Strawberry Festival, held at the end of every June on the Middlebury town green, between the Congregational Church, the Catholic Church and the girls' prep school. The Strawberry Festival was -- and still is, my parents assure me -- one of the highlights of the Middlebury year. There was an art exhibit on the green -- lots of New England watercolors, misty fishing boats and leaf-strewn stone walls and black-shuttered white colonial houses just like the homes that frame the green -- plus local artisans' pottery, woodcarvings and jewelry, haywagon and fire engine rides, games of skill and chance, barbecued hamburgers and hot dogs and homemade potato salad. And, of course, the Proustian pièce de résistance: the best strawberry shortcake on the planet -- fresh crumpets smothered with Middlebury's most succulent, picked-that-afternoon strawberries and crowned with clouds of fresh-from-the-mixing-bowl whipped cream. Each summer the whole town turned out. It was one last chance for the adults to get together before summer trips scattered them, and a grand reunion for kids who hadn't seen each other since the last day of school a few weeks before. The day was invariably sunny, and the afternoon stretched out hot and slow to a languorous dusk. So each year as the end of June approaches, I remember the Strawberry Festival, and then I think of so many other pleasures from those Connecticut summers: Little League games and catching fireflies in glass jars, swimming in Lake Quassapaug and riding the roller coaster at the amusement park next door, buying just-picked corn from D'Amato's corn stand and picking raspberries in our back yard, returning to the house all purple hands and prickers. Even mowing our suburban sprawling lawn seems nostalgic to me now -- the smell of the new-mown grass, the meditative whirr of the mower. When I think of what I love about America, I think of all these humble riches, and especially of that Strawberry Festival, of the goodheartedness -- most of the money raised went to charity -- and the pure enjoyment and the bounty of friends and talents and sharings it embodied. And I think too of the small Bay Area suburb where I live now -- about as close to Middlebury as you can get in Northern California -- where the main event of the year is the Fourth of July parade. The whole town turns out for this -- if not marching in the parade itself, then lining the main street to watch it pass. There are the usual marching bands and fire trucks and scout troops and dignitaries in convertibles. But what really sets this parade apart is the extras: a gleaming stream of antique cars owned and driven by locals gussied up in their finest 50-year-old gowns and topcoats, daintily waving parasols as they sputter and putter past, and the neighborhood associations that get together spontaneously to create themed marching groups. Last year one neighborhood featured a phalanx of parents pushing babies in big strollers and children pushing dolls in tiny strollers. Another offered an extended family of Uncle Sams in all ages and sizes. The best of all was the precision folding chair marching squad, which had perfected with Balanchine-like grace a variety of numbers that involved marching down the street in formation carrying folding chairs, then unshouldering and presenting those chairs, twirling around them, unfolding them, sitting on them, refolding them, and reshouldering them. Believe me, Michael Flatley has nothing on this troop. Middlebury's Strawberry Festival, Piedmont's Fourth of July fest -- they may sound extraordinary, but the truth is that virtually every village, town and city in America, from coast to heartland, mountain to desert, has some such celebration. And they all share certain qualities -- an innocence and exuberance, an optimism and absolute lack of pretension -- that seem quintessentially American to me, and that represent the America I love. When you travel in the United States, you can find these wherever you go; when you stumble on one, stop and count yourself blessed. I had to live abroad to appreciate my country. In college I wanted to be European, full of history and philosophy, so effortlessly cultivated. Europeans, I thought, were born with more sophistication in their genes than I could gain in a lifetime of study. Then I lived in France and Greece for a year and a half, and when I began to hungrily gobble up every issue of the International Herald Tribune and Newsweek for nuggets of Americana, I began to appreciate the place I had left. It wasn't the news I was getting that made me miss America. It was the news I wasn't getting -- the day-to-day stuff, the rituals and rhythms of American life, the continuities that matter precisely because they aren't newsworthy. What you appreciate about America when you live abroad is the openness of the people -- echoed, of course, in the openness of the land itself; and their essential goodheartedness, and the fundamental, democratic freedom of the place -- hackneyed and undercut as it may be, it is still far easier to move up the socio-economic ladder here than in just about any other society on earth. America still cultivates dreams. Then you return, and you are paralyzed by the waste and the abundance -- I used to freeze, literally dumbfounded, in supermarkets -- and you realize after a few months just how fraught with frustration those idealized notions that seemed so clear in Europe really are. But still, they fundamentally apply -- and endure. I had to live abroad to appreciate America. And when I returned, I discovered that America is a grand and humble place. Within two years of my return from Greece, I drove across the country three times. And each time I was as impressed by the small-scale graciousness and friendliness of the people -- the Eisenhower-era waitresses that greeted you with, "What'll it be, honey?" and "Coffee?" as they were filling your cup, the gregarious gas station pumpers who compressed all the local news into a $15 fill-up, the just plain folks who gave you directions with a smile and a nod and sometimes drove miles out of their way to make sure you took the right road, or invited you in for talk and tea -- I was as moved by these as I was by the grand scale of the country itself. When I started this column, I was planning to write about some of my favorite places, old discoveries and new: the heavenly Tanglewood music complex in western Massachusetts, where I used to go every summer to listen to Beethoven under the stars; the Lost Coast of California, a spectacular half-day drive north of San Francisco, as wild and romantic and pristine as it sounds; Miami's South Beach, the strutting, preening peacock pen in the American aviary; the green hills of central Connecticut, where I chased those long-ago fireflies; the beatific Bay Area, where I set the fireflies free. But this column detoured, as journeys so often do, onto ruminative byways meandering toward the Fourth of July. This year my family's going camping for the holiday, a first for us all together. It will be car camping, so we're not risking too much. But still, we'll be way out in the woods, at the end of a thin, rutted road, far away from refrigerators and electric lights and convenience stores. It will be a chance for us to hike and swim and canoe and read and just plain talk, to hang out together among trees and bird calls and sweet-scented air, a rare gift in our over-busy lives. I'll let you know how it goes. And in the meantime I hope you enjoy this week's Wanderlust, our own modest fireworks display, with an inspiring homage to some of America's greatest road books, a lively letter from a paradisiacal piece of the Pacific Northwest and a wise and whimsical account of one man's attempt to find the soul of that adopted American pastime -- golf -- by locating an all-black golf club. Now we've come to the end of the road. Wander around, take your time, try a little of that shortcake -- and have a festive Fourth, wherever you may be.
Discuss your favorite July Fourth memories in the Hometown area of Table Talk. Travel the country via your browser. Discover Albuquerque's post-Fourth Mariachi Spectacular or Baltimore, Maryland's annual Chicken Clucking Contest in Wanderlust Marketplace's U.S.A. coverage. - - - - - - - - - - - - Salon Wanderlust is published every Monday evening at 6 p.m. PDT in Salon. Send all reader mail to wanderlust@salonmagazine.com. To receive a colorful weekly update on what's happening in Wanderlust, sign up here. Published articles are housed in the Wanderlust archives. |
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