PROLEGOMENA TO THE USA
“So tell me, how’s America been treating you guys?” barked the guy hanging at the bar next to me. I turned and saw a man in his sixties, his face full of wrinkles, a flashy 80s t-shirt and a large cowboy hat that didn’t initially let me see his eyes. He was looking at me now smiling, waiting for my response. Good question, I thought. How was America treating us? “Well. Very well!” I promptly replied. “Everyone is very friendly and helpful here” added Vania, my girlfriend. “Where are you guys from? You’re not from here, are you?” I turned around for a moment to look at that the whole scene, perhaps to count the differences between us and the rest of the customers of this bar lost in Arizona’s desert.
Everyone else in the bar was clearly a cowboy. The boots, the hats, the faces left no doubt about who was local and who was not. Somehow we ended up at a true rodeo in a tiny little town of the deep South West USA. Certainly this was the most genuine place we’d visited so far in our American road trip. The whole scene must have looked pretty funny from the outside: here we are, a young European couple, surfers, travellers, millennials – as some would say – totally out of context in the middle of a rodeo night held in front of a family-run restaurant somewhere in Arizona. We grew up listening to some old tunes from The Beach Boys, thinking about the “surfin’ USA”, when we realized that no such thing as surfing has ever entered the door of this bar. Ever. Obviously the difference between our look and their look was pretty remarkable. I felt a bit embarrassed by my surfer style in this cowboy place, I must admit. But let’s get back to our most urgent issue. The question that this guy was asking “How’s American been treating me?” I guess pretty well. I can’t complain, I said. But there is something more I didn’t say back then to the cowboy that I would like to mention right now. America is a pretty mysterious place. It does not resemble in any way the image we have inherited from the movies, the television, the internet, or any other source of pop culture. In fact, during this whole trip I’ve been wondering what America really is, and whether the image that’s spread all over the globe fits to its narrative. Many themes have popped into my mind while casually travelling around to paddle some nice lake or river.
