The nice thing about living on the flat prairie with a splendid network of roads is: Any time I feel a surge of FOMO, off I go. Open road! I hope you too are getting out.
Being proud of this great country, I am pleased when I see a “Dairy Queen” or a “Main street.” Meanwhile, each town and city has its own chamber of commerce, or tourist board: With Folks sitting in chairs around a long elegant table, desperately asking each other, Could we have a town attraction that is unique or distinct? (What, they don’t like Dairy Queen?) We all like to kid ourselves: like those Canadians with their “distinct” beavers, which just happen to live in the lower 48, and up in Alaska too. And those Americans with their distinct “mom’s apple pie,” when said apples, and moms too, happen to grow all through Nova Scotia.
Towns would be better off focusing on merely offering nice attractions, without worrying about whether they are distinct. When I see a miniature golf course, or a nice shiny swimming pool, I never wonder whether it is one-of-a-kind. I mean, in Florida I found a string of pools attached to a string of long hotels, running parallel to the shore, one block inland from the ocean. Believe me, nobody was heard saying, “The pools all look alike.” The Atlantic waves, now, they all look alike: that’s why folks choose the pools. One feels a such a sense of wonder, bobbing in a pool on a rare and wondrous holiday.
Now suppose, high up on a rocky cliff, there was a distinct city called Cliffside. (Work with me here) Imagine I arrive and contemplate the unique Cliffside attractions. Shall I rappel on a life line down? Climb on the rock face brown? Or hang glide all around?
I come to Cliffside as an honest workman, “square and on the level.” With my fanny pack level, striding along a nice level main street. And then? You may find me resting my healthy posterior in my favourite sort of watering hole: a cafe. Yes, I admit I’m often too dull for a tavern. And always too dull for hang gliding. Because my goal on my holiday is to be relaxing with a soft smile, not shouting “Oh no!…no-no-no!”
Before you tell me a tourist in Cliffside “should” do something more wholesome —such as zipping furiously down a death slide— than hang out at a watering hole, I would refer you to a classic humour book from the 19th century, by Jerome K. Jerome, called Three Men in a Boat … To say nothing of the dog … Their wee river boat is for getting back to nature, after first observing that for people cities are natural: Jerome says we love to “flock to the gaslights.” In my day it was: “flock to the neon lights.” I guess these days the night signs are plastic, illuminated plastic. Not the same… So I still call them neon.
Anyways, one morning Jerome and his buddies are sleeping in a tent by the river. Jerome gets up early to go for a healthy morning dip, thinking he “should” be wholesome… He hears the other two, warm and comfortable in the tent, talking about how (blank) he is being… Splash! “Arg!” cries Jerome, as he freezes half to death! I have forgotten their (blank) 19th century slang word. What I haven’t forgotten is to keep my wholesome “should” in its proper place.
I am still discovering new-to-me old classics, like Jerome’s book, because on my speedy highway trips I like to decelerate and swing onto an exit ramp and go on into a new town, prowling up to a parking spot at the second hand bookstore… all the better to enjoy my coffee and apple pie.
To hear more “padded chair tourist” philosophy, un-new and un-improved since the 19th century, come find me: You’ll see me resting my handsome body by a bright cafe window or in a dim cool bar. My favourite places. Those, and used bookstores.
Sean Crawford
On a trip to Red Deer,
September 2020
