An Immersive America
Thursday, Sept. 10 2009
…
When the plane started descending I was spellbound by the vista far below as we cruised over Ohio or Indiana or Illinois. As we approached the runway, I was transfixed by the roads. Tangled knots of freeways ran into other freeways which had yet more freeways running parallel to them. The roads led confusingly in all directions at once. All were insanely busy, with thousands of automobiles and juggernauts steaming towards who knew where.
…
I was reasonably well traveled. I’d been around much of Europe, visited southeast Asia a few times, popped across to north Africa twice, and South America once. Yet I’d never been to the United States. I had always claimed I’d no great interest in crossing the pond, partly because America is an English-speaking country and I preferred to go somewhere more linguistically exotic, but principally because America already felt familiar and therefore unexciting. I wondered how many American movies I’ve seen. How many American television shows? How many sitcoms and police dramas? How many news bulletins or sports events or award ceremonies or documentaries or cartoons or whatever? How many episodes of
The Simpsons? And how many American cities have I seen in those shows? New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Miami, Las Vegas, Boston, San Francisco, Dallas, Kansas City, Springfield. America ruled the airwaves because in a way America
was the movies, America
was television. I was sure I already knew America. I didn’t need to go there.
And yet I was mildly giddy disembarking the plane, hyper-alert to the all-American look and feel and sound of O’Hare Airport’s décor and signage and announcements. Everything was a delight, even the usually tedious processes in passing immigration. Walking through the airport to the passport check I saw uniformed officers with handguns in holsters on their belts and shiny sheriff badges on their navy blue, short-sleeved police shirts. Many of the male officers had bushy Ned Flanders moustaches like the male police officers in cop shows always did.
Flatscreen TVs over the immigration booths looped a snazzy 'Welcome to America' video scored with invigorating music.
‘Welcome to America’
Footage circled through dramatic swooping vistas of Manhattan and the George Washington monument and the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas and the Hollywood sign, and homey shots of smiling families having barbeques outside clapboard houses fronted by ample gardens, and action shots of a touchdown at a football game, and very many golden-tinged close-ups of shiny happy photogenic Americans enjoying richly hued lives. I’d seen it all before on television, but now here I was going to see it for really real. Excited? You betcha. Exotic? Darn right.
I answered a few routine questions, exchanged my face and fingerprints for an oval stamp in my passport saying ‘Department of Homeland Security’ and lo, was permitted to enter the United States of America.
I had a slight worry about importing sixty copies of
Me & U2, the slim memoir I’d recently self-published which I hoped I could sell to help fund my travels. I didn’t know if the books would be allowed or not. I had assumed I would most certainly not be allowed to sell them. A question on the customs declaration form asked, ‘Are you carrying … goods or samples for commercial purposes?’ I ticked ‘Yes’. I collected my large rucksack from the luggage carousel, approached the customs checkpoint, and passed the customs declaration form to the customs officer.
“Good afternoon, sir. Do you have commercial goods?”
“Yes.”
“Proceed this way please.”
I was directed to a second desk and approached it with trepidation. Would the books be confiscated? Would I have to pay import duty? Would I be warned against selling them?
“Good afternoon, sir,” the officer said with his hand, palm up, extended towards me. I passed him the form. “What commercial goods do you have?”
“Books.”
“Have a nice day, sir,” he said with a wave of his hand.
“Sorry?”
“Have a nice day,” he repeated, holding his hand up and behind him, gesturing for me to pass.
“Eh? Um. Okay. Thanks,” I said, confused, but moving on before he changed his mind.
It appeared that imported books were not illicit contraband in the United States of America after all. It hadn’t occurred to me that America’s fundamental commitment to freedom of speech meant that books would not be impounded on entry into the country nor carry import duty
…
I reveled in a litany of humdrum American firsts: first parking lot, first purchase, first metro ride, first struggle to find a seat. O’Hare Airport was the last stop on the Blue line on the ‘L’, Chicago’s part underground and part elevated metro network. The train at the platform was filling quickly. I walked past the first two carriages but couldn’t spot a vacant seat. I saw one available in the third carriage and ducked in to claim it. I was the peripatetic patty in a bulging rucksack bun, carrying my larger pack on my back and my smaller pack on my chest.
…
Beyond the airport, the train passed alongside a freeway. I recalled one of Bono’s lyrics from
Heartland:
“Freeway like a river cuts through this land”. Huge eighteen wheeler juggernauts roared along the road, surrounded and overtaken by nippier cars, like oxpeckers around rhinos, driving, as in mainland Europe, on the right hand side.
At Rosemont, the first stop, a woman pushing a pram and a man boarded the train. They were arguing, loudly.
“I ain’t gonna tell you nuthin.”
“You gotta tell me cos I gonna find out anyways.”
“I ain’t tellin you a goddam thing.”
I was struck by the ferocity of the accent more than the ferocity of the row. It was coarse, gritty, slangy, throaty,
American. I lowered my head guiltily because hearing their accent made me smile. I was definitively
in America, where people commuted, stared blankly at the floor, gripped an overhead rail, argued. There were no cuts to a different scene, no mood music. This scene wasn’t inside a box in the corner of my living room. This was an immersive America.
The train rattled and screeched over the rails. The carriages jiggled and leaned. I read the mostly ignored advertisements in the train and the billboards along the freeway for companies and products and people I didn’t know, intrigued at the maelstrom of mundane details. I was just another Irishman freshly landed in America and probably wider-eyed than most.
When the train entered the city precincts, the view out the window changed from freeways to clapboard houses, those American homes I’d associated with
Little House on the Prairie, where grandmas sat on rocking chairs in porches watching sunsets over rolling pastures in the countryside, not neighboring apartment blocks in cities.
…
One particularly welcoming and hospitable gentleman in Chicago had accepted my couchsurf request. I luckily fell on my couchsurfing feet, for David was the model host. As arranged, I had texted David when I was through immigration at O’Hare Airport. He suggested meeting at a bar close to his office in downtown Chicago as he would be finishing work soon after I hit town.
Re-shouldering my rucksacks, I disembarked the L at Clark / Lake and descended onto a blocky city street lined with immense, blocky, clean sandstone buildings radiating intense late afternoon, late summer heat, too much for jeans and rucksacks. Along a sidewalk in the shade of the overhead train track, half a block west of the station, was the cooled comfort of the Midtown Kitchen and Bar. I chose a table near the window to observe the start of an American rush hour. A waitress approached me, greeted me effusively and passed me a menu. I ordered a promotion of a pint of Sam Adams and a hamburger for $7, and made an offering out to the universe for my latest virginal moment: my first beer and first burger in America. It was almost 5:00 p.m. It would be approaching 11:00 p.m. in London where I would ordinarily have been in bed, but in Chicago I was still sizzling with excitement.
David arrived soon after.
”Hey! Welcome to America!” he said warmly.
Hearing this was the last unticked item on my arrival list. I lifted my burger as a toast.
“Cheers!”
