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STM: Belgian Paddock Frites for World Peace
| | | I really like America and Americans. I feel so at home in the US that I am more of an immigrant than a visitor. No, all you lovely people at the Department of Homeland Security, this is not a confession of illegal activity, really it’s not, so please don’t stick a camera up my bottom the next time I arrive at the border.
I would like to give you some idea of just how much I like America. With my brand-new, freshly unwrapped wife we took a honeymoon trip from Dallas Forth Worth almost to the Canadian border and then on to Sturgis, across the Rockies and back down the western side of the Great Divide before returning home via Dallas. It was a fascinating trip and, having spent three weeks in each other’s company for 24 hours a day, we came back to England happy that we actually rather liked each other.
I love the size of the America; I delight in the kindness which Americans - at least away from the tourist areas - show to foreign visitors and I take great pleasure in the homogenous nature of what is truly a vast country. The fact that you are going to get reliably poisoned by the same brand of fake Mexican food just as effectively in Oregon as the Florida Keys is something which we, in the old world, just can’t quite manage yet.
Even so, there are cultural differences which can cause real discomfort. Take our visit to visit to MCUSA’s headquarters in Medford, Oregon, last year. We don’t have any deserts in Britain. In fact, we have very little empty space so one of my 16-year-old daughter’s top requests was to visit a truly empty part of America. MCUSA’s Managing Editor, Bart Madson,
We stop for a restroom break and a coffee in a tiny town called Denio which straddles the Nevada-Oregon border.was born, and brought up, in Utah and regularly travels back home across the high desert which splits Oregon from Nevada and then Utah. Bart kindly plo tted a route for us which was real pioneer travel, taking us through what is truthfully wild country - and with a capital “W”.
Heading northwest from Winnemucca all three of us are overwhelmed with the stark beauty of what looks like the film set from “High Plains Drifter”. We stop...
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