Why the Hell would you bring that car to Belgium?
(unreleased material from "GLORIFIED DISASTERS" by Ashley Strand)
(unreleased material from "GLORIFIED DISASTERS" by Ashley Strand)
Glorified Disasters
Feb 3, 5pm
Crocker Memorial Church
1260 12th St, Sarasota, Florida 34236
Buy tix here:
https://www.sarasolo.org
Feb 3, 5pm
Crocker Memorial Church
1260 12th St, Sarasota, Florida 34236
Buy tix here:
https://www.sarasolo.org
We weren’t your typical ugly Americans. No, no. We were unique, over-the-top, nightmare ugly Americans -- we had thoughts and opinions and curiosity and wanted to actually interact with foreign cultures! Most Americans living overseas just hide on or near the military base, with the occasional excursion to tourist areas, McDonald’s, and popular ex-pat hangouts, possibly catching the latest American blockbuster with subtitles at a local movie theater. And that’s just how most locals like it. It’s not that they don’t want us to engage their culture -- they just don’t want to engage us. But we ate in neighborhood restaurants, went to French films and Belgian festivals, took in concerts and cathedrals -- and everywhere we went we left the distinctive Strand stamp. It’s not going too far to say we terrorized Belgium, and while on vacation, much of France, too. The Strand calling card was our car, a 1969 Checker Marathon, just like the old Manhattan taxi-cabs. Only ours was silver. Through various arcane calculations my father had determined that the most cost-efficient solution to our transportation needs in Belgium was to ship our car over from the States, and then ship it back at the end of our stay. Maybe he used some sort of backward government math, or the tortured dad-logic that arises when a man decides that if he must assume sole and final responsibility for all the cares of his family, then it is his prerogative to make for that family plans whose meaning only his mind can penetrate. Maybe it was because Dad grew up in the Depression and some of his earliest memories were of hobos coming to the back porch to ask his mother for soup, and for people who grew up then, strict economy is a matter of principle. Everything was a matter of principle with Dad. So principle dictated that we should lumber the lanes of Lorraine in a vehicle that was a sleek 3763 lbs unloaded, 5 ft 2in tall, 6ft 4in wide, and 17 ft long, with a wheelbase that was wider than the standard freeway lane in Europe, and a 300 horsepower V8. The Checker dominated the road. We shared streets with Peugots, Volkswagens, Fiats, Renaults, Citroen Deux-Chevaux, and a variety of odd little three-wheeled city cars. We didn’t want to play chicken everyday with cars that were 10 times less massive and 30 times less powerful than ours, but what could we do? The Belgians simply hadn’t built their roads to fit our car. The neighbors immediately nicknamed the Checker, “La Tanque.” Given how sensitive Belgians are about surprise tank appearances, this felt like something more than good-natured ribbing. But we took La Tanque everywhere. Who needs to hide at the military base when you’re driving your own Tanque? Dad would find some buried treasure of a restaurant in his beloved Michelin guide, and off we’d go. But the peculiar mixture of modern planning and medieval happenstance that gave birth to the system of roads in Europe is incomprehensible to the American mind. It always took us three hours to get to any new town. Given Belgium’s size, driving three hours in any direction from our home should have put us deep in another country or the Atlantic Ocean. Once we actually got into the town, there was always some crucial turn we couldn’t make, down a narrow, twisting, cobblestone alley flanked by ancient, leaning, stone houses, between which we simply could not fit. And the next thing we knew, we’d be in the red light district. Every time. I’d seen more prostitutes by the time I was 10 than Toulouse-Lautrec. I can’t imagine what the locals thought at those moments. My parents in the front seat, Dad angry and confused, Mom chagrined, in the rear, my brother and I plastered against the windows, gaping. We must have looked like victims of the worst cab ride ever. “We’re just trying to get to the Port Authority, please ... somebody told us there would be a lot of transvestites, is this it?” We didn’t blend. One time we went to a concert in Brussels and Mom parked in front of the Ministry of the Interior. When we came out, a 5 block radius had been cordoned off and evacuated. We made it across the police line just before the bomb squad started to disassemble the car. If you ever get a chance to see a disappointed Belgian bomb squad, I highly recommend it. We passed them on the way to our car, flouncing dejectedly back towards their command van in their fireproof suits. The youngest one was very red in the face, glaring at us, and as I turned to watch him he threw his helmet into the van. “Merde Alors!” At least the neighbors stopped calling our car “La Tanque.” From then on it was, “La Bombe.” Now, the hands aren’t always talking to the feet within any given government, and certainly not always between governments. But there couldn’t have been too many degrees of separation between the Brussels bomb squad and the top brass at NATO. It just looks bad when diplomats are implicated in bomb scares. Dad’s job was easing tension along the Inner German Frontier. Not causing bomb scares in the Belgian capital. No matter how innocent the misunderstanding, never mind Mom drove the Checker that night and Dad met us there, judgments were made, all the way from the European Desk Chief at the State Department, to whom my father reported, to the Senior Political Committee at NATO, to the broader diplomatic community, to the Belgian Police Force, and thus to Interpol, to whom all bomb threats are reported, all the way down to our neighbors and my schoolmates. And along with those judgments, a question (if only tacit), a question which, originally, my father thought he needed to answer only to his own satisfaction: “why the Hell would you bring that car here anyway?” And when people are looking at you with that kind of question in their minds, it’s too late to explain the math. No one wants to hear it. No one wanted to hear the funny story about how Mom “accidentally” bought the family a Richard Pryor album as Christmas present, but the other diplomats did want to know why I was at the children’s table, explaining to their kids that “Chinese people fuck quick. Chugite!” No one wanted to know that because Mom performed with various madrigal groups, and hated the fact that her hair was graying, she decided to experiment with hair dye for the first time at the age of 44. But the diplomats’ wives did wonder, “why does Penny Strand have orange hair?” A diplomat’s wife can be either glamorous, or unremarkable and quiet, but never odd. House guests wanted to know why the house was always cluttered and smelled of cat piss. Teachers wanted to know why Stratton and Ashley missed so much school, were so disorganized, and rarely had their hair combed. Schoolmates wanted to know why our backpacks always smelled of old vitamins. Everyone wanted to know why the younger boy was always crying. These embarrassing questions all had answers, but it was always less painful to simply bear the implied judgments than to explain. |