[Written September 2, 2012] Hello, finally,
from Oxford, where it truly is a dark and stormy night. Outside it is a
cacophony of rain fall, thunderclaps, wind and rustling branches. Inside, I’ve
had several cups of tea to calm myself down as the dog roams around barking
(the kitten is completely unafraid and smug). I have five (!) books still to
finish in time for this week’s classes. I have an essay about a truck contest
to write. But I have been in America almost a month and, apart from a few
scribbled notes, have not had a chance to write about it yet. I figure I will
never be any less busy, so now is as good a time as any.
Of course I want to write about Oxford.
I’ve been dreaming of the Faulknerland since I was nineteen; it’s amazing that
I’m actually living here. It is a wonderful place for so many reasons, but best
of all it already feels like home. The thing is, I have the next two years to
bore you all with Oxford-related gushing. And it just so happens that I have
other stories to bore you with first. I flew to San Francisco on August 8, and
drove* for five days to get to Mississippi. So first of all I want to take you
through some musings related to that. Please, no hatred from any Brits about
putting the month before the date, I need to get in the habit!
*And when I say “drove”, I mean sitting in
the passenger seat eating Rainbow cookies, worrying aloud about Ole Miss and
taking pictures of billboards and cornfields whilst my boyfriend sat behind the
wheel the whole time.
08/08:
London, UK to San Francisco, CA
During my ten hour flight, I came to a
conclusion: airplanes bring out the worst in people. Cramped, tired and always
enduring the screams of children, airline passengers must be the worst
customers ever. Everyone is so demanding and unfriendly in a way that I feel
sure they would not be in any other setting. Fellow passengers were especially
demanding and unfriendly due to a malfunction with the entertainment sets,
which meant no TV or music for the first two hours of the flight. I, of course,
came prepared. I sat reading Bill Bryson and tried not to laugh out loud. I’m
sure I must have been quite a sight, grinning widely in a crowd of frowns and
pursed lips. If I am ever even a fraction as good as Bill Bryson I will die
happy. Also, I’m not entirely convinced he and my dad are separate people.
I was more cheerful on this flight than
usual – as it happens I’m afraid of flying. A lot of my positivity has to do
with Virgin Atlantic. They truly are the best airline I’ve ever experienced;
the staff is helpful, the entertainment selection is usually great (when
working!) and I actually really like the food. And they were very nice to me
that time I fainted in the middle of the aisle back in January [2012]. Now, if
they would pay me for endorsing them publicly I would like them even better.
Graduate school is expensive!
My cheeriness was waning by the end of the
flight, however. Someone had rapped on the bathroom door in a most demanding
and unfriendly manner as I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I am as
courteous as possible on a plane, and this, I felt, gave me the right to take
the tiniest bit longer in the bathroom. But apparently not. I harrumphed back
to my seat and was then slumped on by the people next to me for the remainder
of the flight. It is very odd to constantly have a child’s feet or head in your
lap when you do not know them. I vowed to never let my own future children loll
about like that on a plane, and squirmed Britishly for the last hour.
After queuing for another hour and a half,
I somehow still had the adrenaline to ignore my coccyx injury and haul my own
at-the-weight-limit suitcases off the conveyor belt. I was thankfully still
awake enough to recognize my boyfriend at the gate rather than absentmindedly
trying to board a plane to Canada or something (“Must. Be. In. Commonwealth.”).
We got in the car, drove through San Francisco, and for some reason covered the
topics of drugs, drunk driving and guns within the first hour. I shifted in my
seat and fought the urge to run, on foot, back to the airport to go home. I
stayed awake through the evening, which I spent with Chip, his roommate Marie,
and Tar Heel friends Katie, David and Amanda. We ordered Chinese, which was a
huge amount of food for a small amount of money. Ah yes, I’m back in the USA.
08/09:
San Francisco, CA to Elko, NV
Chip and I set out in the car the next
morning, circling back five minutes later to collect the coolbox. (But not, as
it turns out, my Topshop sandals, which still reside on his bedroom floor.)
Then, since we had delayed ourselves already, we decided to go grocery
shopping. I was very pleased about this, as my greatest hang up about doing a
road trip (or being in America generally!) is not having adequate access to
fruit. Since we were running late already I didn’t get a chance to dance around
the grocery store exclaiming over every item. Don’t worry, that blog entry will
come.
I was sad to leave San Francisco so soon.
It’s one of my favorite cities where I have made such great memories, and I
still dream of living there one day. However, we drove over the Bay Bridge,
northeast to Sacramento, Lake Tahoe and Reno. We listened to only a little bit
of Rush Limbaugh. And what can I tell you about Nevada? We left the greenery
and rivers of California for dusty, open space. We drove for hours without
seeing much of anything. We had no radio or cell phone coverage. We passed gas
stations, each one looking the same, except sometimes with the addition of a
casino. I was surprised by how many bits of tyres (or tires!) there were on the
road. Then, just as I was starting to get bored, actual tumbleweeds rolled in
front of us on the highway.
We reached Elko in the evening, passing a
small roadside community on the way in. The little part of Elko we saw had
chain restaurants, an RV park and some surprisingly high-priced hotels. Interestingly,
Elko has a “boom and bust” economy based on the price of gold; a large amount
of Nevada’s gold is mined there and the town has many abandoned mining camps.
As Hunter S. Thompson wrote in his short story, Fear and Loathing in Elko, “The federal government owns 90% of this
land, and most of it is useless for anything except weapons testing and
poison-gas experiments.” But clearly there is more to it than this. Elko hosts
the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering every January, and has done for almost 30
years. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a good time to me.
The hotel we stayed in was much the same as
many I’ve experienced in the US. I always wonder how they came to decide on the
exact same breakfast: a waffle iron with
batter next to it, cold hard-boiled eggs, cheap muffins/donuts, white bread
with peanut butter or jam in plastic pots, yoghurt, questionable-looking fruit,
cereal in dispensers and some juice, tea and coffee. I’ve seen the same selection
as far-flung as Georgia, Texas and Colorado. You could see the same America in
any given hotel. I don’t know whether that’s comforting or creepy.
08/10:
Elko, NV to Laramie, WY
Back on the road, Nevada continued to be
flat, dry and empty. We were cheered up, however, by a lady waving at us from a
neighboring car; we understood as they passed us and we saw their South
Carolina license plate. Southerners unite! We eventually crossed into the
mountains of Utah, and I became engrossed in the selection of billboards at the
side of the road. The billboards gave me a number to call if I was in debt,
informed me that evolution was an evil myth, praised the immigrant population
and encouraged me to “hail to the beef” at a local restaurant.
But what you really want to know about is
Salt Lake City. We drove around it for a bit out of curiosity. It is a big
place: spacious, beautiful, and more than a little bit freaky. It’s impossible
to be in Salt Lake City without constantly thinking, “Is that person over there
a Mormon? Do they know that I’m not a Mormon?! Oh, there’s the North Carolina
license plate. They probably do know I’m not a Mormon. Maybe they don’t mind.
Are they looking at me?” I’m not really speaking to Mormonism or Mormon people.
It is not something I’m particularly educated about, unless you count Angels in
America and Mitt Romney. But sometimes the reputation of something gets under
your skin all the same, and that’s how I felt there. Not a mature or informed
approach of course, but a truthful one if nothing else.
We exchanged the close-range mountains of
Utah for the endlessly wide feel of Wyoming. The spaciousness and high altitude
made me nervous. You absolutely cannot get that same feeling in the UK, that
you are in the middle of nowhere. It was like being on another planet. I was
relieved when we finally arrived at our hotel in Laramie, with lots of
buildings and people surrounding us. I know that plenty of people were shocked
that I chose to move voluntarily to a place as different as Mississippi, but I
will take humidity and DFE (Deep Fried Everything) over high altitude,
headaches and nosebleeds any day. No offense, Wyoming – you’re just out of my
league and I know it.
Laramie is home to the University of
Wyoming, the only university in the state. It is also home to Kirsty Callaghan,
fellow UEA American Studies graduate and the recipient of the BAAS award in
2011. Since we knew we would be passing through Wyoming anyway, Kirsty and I
arranged to meet at a microbrewery called, fittingly, Altitude. We talked
cowboys, attitudes to land and the upcoming election. Kirsty had been
volunteering for the local Democrats (apparently a caller once complained about
her English accent and the fact that they were clearly outsourcing) despite the
fact that Wyoming is typically a Republican state. I’ll get into this another
time, but the Republicanism in Wyoming seems to be based more on living far
from Washington DC and wanting freedom to do what they wish in their huuuuuge
open spaces, compared to those in the South who think much more about social
hierarchy and staying true to tradition. It is interesting to think of how in a
country of this size, political parties have to appeal to people of so many
different cultures.
08/11:
Laramie, WY to Kansas City, MO
We left Laramie in the morning, looking out
for the golden Abraham Lincoln head that Kirsty had told us about. Despite its
size, I wasn't able to get a picture of it in time, so here is a link if you're
curious (and I know that you are).
[Continued Jan 17, 2013] After this, there
really didn’t seem like anything better to do so I fell asleep and when I woke
up we were in Nebraska. Go back to sleep, right? Absolutely not! You see, one
of my favorite books is Willa Cather’s My Antonia. I even have an audio book in
which the narrator sounds suspiciously like Reverend Lovejoy.
[Continued Aug 5, 2013] Okay, so admittedly
I don’t have much more to say than that. We drove through Lincoln, which is the
capital city of Nebraska and the second most populous after Omaha. I know that
not everyone understands these whims, but I absolutely want to return to
Nebraska and learn more. I am intrigued by its small population amongst the
plains and prairies, and its historical and current race relations between
Native Americans, African American migrants and European immigrants. It is also
the home of both Warren Buffett and Kool-Aid, so there you go.
I have always been curious about these
places that people turn away from, or tell me, “There’s no point in going there
– there’s nothing to see.” It is said about many, many US states. If I feel
strongly enough about a place, I will ignore the warnings and go anyway. Often
I have been rewarded with some amazing discoveries of landscapes, buildings and
people. I think you can tell how much I took Michael Palin’s work to heart,
especially his view that there is more that brings us together than divides us.
I still believe in looking for stories in unlikely places.
We went through Lincoln without pulling
over at all. As we waited for a light to change on the outskirts of the city, I
rolled down my window, closed my eyes, and listened to the hum of locusts in
the grass.
08/12: Kansas City, MO to West Memphis, AK
One. I damaged my camera in a town called
St Joseph. I was busy puzzling over a billboard (yes, again) about a blood
drive boasting about its “FREE AIR CONDITIONING.” I’ll let that one sit with
you.
Two. Half of Kansas City is actually in
Missouri, half is in Kansas.
Okay, so I know that second one wasn’t
really a surprise to most people but I totally didn’t know. I also didn’t know
much about Kansas City other than a refrain from a Stray Cats song, but I am
always curious and Chip is a barbecue fanatic so we took some time to explore.
I’m going to take a moment to teach some
BBQ 101. Settle down, settle down, I know there are disagreements about this. In
England, “barbecue” has several definitions. It is first of all an event,
reserved for any day that there is the slightest hint of sunshine (“Darling,
the Manfredjinsinjins at
number 43 are
having a barbecue, do we have any Pimm’s?”), a piece of outdoor
cooking equipment that you swear at when it refuses to light properly, and an
action describing how you cook your beef burgers, sausages, chicken, salmon,
corn-on-the-cob or bananas.
In America, barbecue is the food itself,
and the culture that surrounds it. Americans do not have a neighborhood barbecue,
they have a cook out. They also do not barbecue their food – they grill it.
What we call grilling is called broiling here. Stay with me! Anyway, more
interesting is the discrepancies between different regions of the US. (I
apologize if I butcher several of the details in this explanation.) In North
Carolina, barbecue is pork, and the sauce changes by location: vinegar in the
east, tomato in the west, a blend in the middle. The pork is shredded (or
pulled as we might say) and often served in a bun topped with coleslaw. In
Texas, barbecue is beef, and there are many regional differences of technique
and sauce within the state. In Kansas City, barbecue can be pork, beef or
chicken. That’s about as much as I can condense the topic of southern barbecue
without doing a full essay, so please try it if you visit the South or its
fringe states. I have sometimes considered becoming a vegetarian, but the
thought of barbecue prevents me.
Despite
these differences, there is one thing that Americans and Britons have in common
when it comes to barbecue: both insist that their definition is the correct
one.
A question I get asked a lot at home is,
“Why is it pronounced Arkansaw?” You
lazy people, don’t you know how to use Google? It’s okay, I did it for you. The
root of the name is Native American, a Quapaw/Sioux word akakaze meaning “land of downriver people” or “people of the south
wind” respectively. The pronunciation is French. Apparently, the pronunciation
was a matter of such debate that it was made official in state legislation in
1881. But unfortunately that did not solve all of the problems in Arkansas. It
took until 2007 for the state to pass a resolution that the possessive form of
the name should be Arkansas’s. Scandal! Scandal!
I didn’t have a chance to see much of Arkansas,
but as a neighboring state to Mississippi I hope to do so in the future. When I
think of Arkansas, my mind goes to Bill Clinton, the violent desegregation of
Little Rock Central High School in 1957, an amazing MFA program at the
University of Arkansas, the arming of teachers at Clarksville High School and
the headquarters of Walmart. On our drive through Arkansas, we stopped at the
most antiquated gas station we had encountered so far. We also drove behind two
horse-drawn buggies. I had never connected Amish culture to Arkansas, but later
research revealed that there is in fact one community in Sturkie, which we must
have been near.
But back to the journey. We left Arkansas,
and West Memphis, for Memphis Proper in Tennessee. I always think that southern
cities are somewhat of an oxymoron, which was made apparent as we waited
f-o-r-e-v-e-r for pedestrians to cross the street. No one is in a hurry (unless
they’re on a highway). Chip, a native of North Carolina who had been in
California for a year, sighed and said, “I have missed the South so much.” Our
last meal of the roadtrip was in IHOP (International House of Pancakes, which I
always want to stylize as iHOP) where we were served over and over again with
more coffee and more Dr Pepper. IHOP is one of those restaurants that is
pleasantly unprofessional, with consistent food and harried-looking waiting
staff. I still have ambitions to visit IHOP on Cox in North Carolina, where, I
am told, they receive more prank phone calls than legitimate ones.
I was extremely anxious on the drive from
Memphis to Oxford, feeling my stomach flip as we passed the Welcome to
Mississippi sign. Now, I have passed that sign and done the 85-mile drive
several times. I have many stories of my first year of Oxford, but for now, as
pretentious as it is to quote myself, I will leave you with a Tweet from the
first day that I arrived:
My hair is huge, my skin is bitten, my
belly is full of fried catfish and hushpuppies. It feels so good to be back in
the South. #olemiss
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| And this is a whole 'nother story. |
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