Song of America

Skyring — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 02:31:38 +0000

The hook

January. Midsummer in Canberra. Hot, dry. T-shirt, short pants and sandals. Relief comes in the long daylight saving evenings when the sun slides down behind the Brindabellas and the shadows of the gum trees lengthen out across the valley.

My wife’s sister arrived at the door with a bottle of champagne. I looked at it and at her. Blank.

“Ah, happy birthday?”

“Don’t be silly. It’s for Kerri.”

Oh yes. My wife. She was off to America in a couple of days. Some government conference. Every three months she was abroad. Stockholm, Berlin, Paris…

I fetched flutes, poured the chilled wine, and we sat outside on the deck, talking in the warm mellowing evening.

“I’d love to be going with her,” I said. Washington DC. Kerri had two conferences to attend, and would be spending a week there, all expenses paid, courtesy of the Australian taxpayer and the UN. I thought about Washington – the Smithsonians, the galleries, the grand buildings, the White House. Arlington and JFK. The heart of America.

But I’d never travelled far. We’d gone to New Zealand on our honeymoon twenty years earlier, and then again for a second holiday, two teenagers in the back seat. That was it. I’d travel further one day. One day…

“Well, why don’t you?”

I thought about this. We were doing okay financially, I’d be able to share the hotel room, the internet bookselling business could go hang for a week, the kids were old enough to look after themselves. But international travel! That was a big step.

I excused myself, went inside, a little bubbly as I checked the computer. Canberra to Washington and back was expensive, but not out of the question. Only trouble was that it was too late to book online.

So next morning I was there at Flight Centre, telling a travel agent, “I’d like to fly to Washington. Tomorrow.”

And it was so. That “one day” was on me.

The song

America! The nation dominated the news and the world of my childhood. Still does. The British Empire had crumbled, the Communists didn’t have the media coverage, the Europeans spoke a bunch of incomprehensible, but the Americans were pumping out cool stuff faster and cooler as they launched satellites and boosted communications and finally invented the internet and my life will never be the same.

Americans had the best music, the brightest films, the fastest cars, the sharpest planes…

And the space program. During the Sixties the Soviets lost their early lead as America pushed up rocket after rocket until that memorable black and white day they landed on the moon. The Russians couldn’t compete after that.

As it turned out, neither could the Americans, and space exploration fizzled off into seeing how bored astronauts could get as they went umpty-zillion times around the world in cobbled-together space stations.

Still, it was America that seized my growing imagination, and when in Sunnybank State High School we studied Simon and Garfunkel, I was struck by the poignancy and accuracy of this song.

…I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
I don’t have a friend who feels at ease
I don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
or driven to its knees
But it’s all right, it’s all right
For we’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road
we’re traveling on
I wonder what went wrong
I can’t help it, I wonder what went wrong

And I dreamed I was dying
And I dreamed that my soul rose unexpectedly
And looking back down at me
Smiled reassuringly
And I dreamed I was flying
And high up above my eyes could clearly see
The Statue of Liberty
Sailing away to sea

For we come on the ship they call the Mayflower
We come on the ship that sailed the moon
We come in the age’s most uncertain hours
and sing an American tune…

Isn’t that America all over? Written just shy of the bicentennial of the Declaration of Independence, post Vietnam, Paul Simon – Rhymin’ Simon – had summed up his nation in a few lines. Two hundred years old, creaky at the joints, forgetting stuff, making odd decisions, but still pumping out the hits. A nation founded on some solid notions. Liberty, the pursuit of happiness, equality. It might not always have turned out as it should, but America had a heart of gold, and you could be sure that Uncle Sam would get there in the end.

The place

I’ve been in some magical places in my time. A New Zealand cave with a galaxy of glow-worms lighting our upturned faces drifting in a boat down an underground river. Kissing my wife on top of the Eiffel Tower. Seeing sperm whales off Kaikoura. Standing before Sagrada Familia in awe. The laser light show over Hong Kong Harbour.

Cold in the capital

But there I was, one wondrous week in Washington DC, the fresh snow deep and white down the Mall. I all but had the city to myself, just a few hardy tourists and the odd yellow schoolbus full of interstate kids braving the snow.

Quite frankly, I’d never been so cold in my life. I walked across from Arlington, and the Potomac was frozen over. I’d never seen a frozen river. I’d never seen much in the way of snow, neither. But here were great drifts of it, with homeless people shivering in corners.

Coming from midsummer Australia to frozen America in January, it was a shock in so many ways. But I pulled on my gloves, bought a beanie from a souvenir stand selling off leftovers from the second Bush inauguration, and high-stepped through the snow, enjoying the atmosphere, enjoying the grand buildings, enjoying the emptiness.

I could see that the National Archives were set up for thousands of visitors. But there was just me and a dozen others in the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom. I could gaze on the Declaration of Liberty and the US Constitution for as long as I wished.

And I did. In many ways, the United States of America is Australia’s big brother. Americans fought the battles of a firstborn, hardwon freedoms that younger siblings gained with ease. Australia’s independence came with ink, not blood. It is only proper to pay some measure of homage to those who went first.

And what a prize they won! The world’s first great modern democracy. The model for the modern age. The shining example, exemplified by the Statue of Liberty holding the torch of freedom high.

Inspiring stuff, and I glowed as I walked out into the snow again. Lofty thoughts were in my head, and it seemed only right that I turn towards the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, where dreams were high as the sky itself.

Another place where the lines stretched around the block in summer. Another place that was just me and a few tourists. I touched a piece of the sky on the way in. A slice of moon rock. For a moment I was magic.

Such amazing aircraft. Here were the highlights of a century of flight, hanging from the ceiling, resting on simulated runways, just a thin wire separating me from the Wright Brothers canvas and string Flyer of 1903.

The Spirit of Saint Louis is there, one of the first planes to fly the Atlantic. One man, one engine, New York to Paris non-stop. The feat fired imaginations around the world.

Its streamlined shape is echoed and refined by that of the Bell X-1 Glamorous Glennis, which the legendary Chuck Yeager piloted to become the first human to exceed the speed of sound. Built like a bullet, this rocket powered craft broke the sound barrier in 1947 and hangs in a corner of the main hall, its needle nose spearing the air.

There are planes and rockets and spacecraft galore. A Boeing 747. John Glenn’s Mercury capsule. A simulated USN aircraft carrier holding naval aircraft on a portion of flight deck. Craft from all eras, from the biplanes of WW1 to the world’s first private spaceship.

A place for kids of all ages. The awe on the face of a five-year old is matched by the sparkle in his grandfather’s eye.

For me, the most magical place of all was there in a corner of the great hall, standing before the very ship that sailed the moon. This was science fiction made true in metal and perspex. This was mankind’s greatest feat. This was a marvel of technology. This wasn’t two guys in a garage, this was a mighty national effort – a triumph of organisation, teamwork, science and sweat.

I never tire of the story of Apollo. It might have seemed routine in the terse phrases of the mission controllers, the endless acronyms of LEM and CSM and MOCR, the flag-waving and the speeches. But it was new and dangerous in the Sixties. The three men who had lived in this tiny gumdrop of a craft for ten days had truly gone where no man had gone before. In space, in time, in history.

They and their comrades were the heroes of my youth. And they still are.

The meal

I ate lunch in the Smithsonian Air and Space. In many ways, it was as quintessentially American as a plate of ribs. Or hog jowls and cornpone. It was fitting.

America on a plate - without the plate

It was a Big Mac and fries and a medium Coke.

It wasn’t a meal to write home about, unless it was to say in wonder, “Hey, they have McDonalds here in America too!”

It wasn’t a unique experience. Small details of packaging aside, it was exactly the same meal I could have had in the Canberra Centre. Or Kowloon. Or on the Boulevard St Michel. Or off Trafalgar Square.

But it was perfect for the setting. Remember how I mentioned that the grand museums were set up for thousands of visitors? They were, with chains and poles set up to guide lines of tourists zig zag from the street to the entrance, from the door to the counter, past the notable exhibits in an orderly fashion. In the land of the free, this was the home of the queue.

In the basements, in the cafeterias, fast food chains took care of the crowds. Subway, Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried and McDonalds. Thousands could be fed fast, rather than fed up slowly.

I felt odd indeed, walking straight up to the counter, getting my Big Mac meal in a matter of seconds, and then taking my pick from the hundreds of tables in the vast refectory area. I chose one by the window, where the new Museum of the American Indian challenged the classic columns and porticos lining the Mall.

Perhaps it is fitting that I cannot remember any details of the food. Just the setting. But my readers have had the same meal. The same exact taste and texture. I don’t need to describe the crisp salt taste of the chips, the thrill of the cola going down as the ice cubes clinkle, the tart pickle and sauce on the grilled patties, and the sesame seeds of the buns finding the crevices in our teeth. We know it all too well.

It is not good food. It is fat and carbohydrates, sugar and salt. But it is precisely what I needed on this freezing day before I ventured back outside. A calorie hit of junk food.

And, for the millions of visitors to the various Smithsonians, it is homely food. Familiar in price and taste. There’s no flight into the unknown, no agonising over a decision between (say) the Apollo Sandwich and the Lindbergh Lunch. Instant decision, instant service, instant satisfaction, next please!

The key

Champagne and a Big Mac. I’ve kept the label from the bottle, page one of the scrapbook I made for the trip. It was a HUGE step for me to go to Washington, but once I’d made it, I never stopped. Every year since then I’ve been around the world once or twice.

Sometimes I smile at the young man in his late forties who looked with awe down at the frozen river, the crisp snow, the flame burning over a fallen president. So many stars in his eyes! Every airport was new and exciting. LAX was an adventure where people walked on the wrong side and black men in uniform called you “Sir” as they patted you down for a random security check.

My life has changed beyond imagining. That trip with my wife to Washington DC set me travelling. Usually alone, sometimes with a merry companion or two. On average, I take a flight every ten days, often long-haul. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve flown in and out of Kingsford-Smith. Or Heathrow. Or DFW.

But I can’t lose the excitement of a new city, a new place, a new set of memories. A new meal. I’ve barely tasted America in my five years of travel. I shall return.

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