How to Meet Americans
Americans are dog people. You know the kind. Never met a stranger. Run around panting for friends, in fact. Often run in packs. Are always damn glad to meet you, even seconds after you appear before them. Specialize in eating, drinking, playing ball and make more noise than necessary.
So what if you, like me, are not that kind? Don’t like to barge in or bother. Assume people have more important business than chatting with strangers. And yet, you love hear what’s on people’s minds — especially those who’ll spill at the slightest provocation. Over time, you’ve compensated for your keep-to-yourself-ishness by becoming a top-notch eavesdropper. But eavesdropping has limits: you’re invariably interrupting a conversation in progress, whose context you must construct on your own.
But. If you’re not the crotch-sniffing type, how do you break through? Especially when, after weeks on the road with no one to amuse you but yourself, you’re dying to mind other people’s business? Here, at last, is my advice: Turn that unwieldy dog metaphor on its hind legs. Then drive it into the ground. Do we agree that a cute dog (on a leash) is irresistible? Better yet, a puppy? When traveling alone looking to mind other people’s business, imagine that your camera as an electronic puppy. There you are, wandering around town alone with no apparent purpose, looking around with interest and snapping photos of stuff the natives have seen all their lives. In America, apparently, you and you substitute pup are just begging to be met.
My point is this: All across America, all I have to do is wander around town, riverside, beach, or bar, look around with interest, snap photos with what I hope is a friendly air, smile when smiled at, and, if caught taking someone’s picture, ask if they mind. No one does, by the way, and to my surprise. Most will take your apparent interest in their neck of the woods as the excuse they need to find out who you are and what you’re up to. Most will assume, if you’re taking pics with anything other than your phone, that you’re some kind of professional: a journalist or artiste. This is how I’ve met essentially everyone on my trip across America. Americans are chatty as hell. Few, however, are the asking-questions kind, even though they’ll approach with an inquisitive air. Their eyes generally begin to glaze before I’ve finished saying “Cabeza de Vaca.” What they really want is to tell their own stories. And that’s just fine with me.
Every person I’ve met on this trip has had something quirky, specific, hilarious, and/or profound to say. Some people whose words I record here talked for hours; some for mere seconds. I’ve done my best to present our conversations without comment.
Do they, in total, create a portrait of American thought in the summer of 2021? Hell no (wildly general Americans-as-panting-dogs metaphor notwithstanding). The on-the-fly, topical comments presented throughout this blog may or may not represent the speaker’s general world view. But they did, once, make them. So take them, leave them, share them with your dog. Enjoy.
