I’ve made it my habit recently to read more definitions. In the above headline, I used “slew” which in my head is a synonym for a lot, but (clearly) I wouldn’t have brought it up if that was the case.
“Slew” in both the verb and noun forms, suggests violent and uncontrollable movement. This is my comedy gift to you the next time someone tells you they had (say) a slew of vegetables. It’s still appropriate in this headline because, even though I keep promising to write more often, I continue to wait until I have too many thoughts to organize, and then I hit you with all of them together.
So be it.
I see more of you have joined Substack (which is so awesome), so feel free to follow me. I don’t post a ton here, yet, because I have an absurd number (but not a slew) of irons on the fire. Still, if the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t a train, I’m looking forward to a really productive few months.
As I’ve hinted (or outright said?) I’ve kickstarted the Destination Delmarva project I’ve been toying with on and off for a decade. If you’re a regular visitor, please consider subscribing. Right now, it’s mostly populated by Ocean Pines stories, but in the coming weeks, there will be a podcast and a return to my inimitable take on the region. That is, there will be no saccharine nostalgia unless I’m taking a cheap shot at it.
Travel Notes
Earlier this week, I cracked open a story topic I forgot I’d been toying with, the difference between travel and vacation.
Americans generally are great at vacation and horrible at travel. Having wasted my 20s in the hospitality business, I developed a burning hatred for vacationers. It’s important to separate vacationers (or tourists) from travelers. Now that I think about it, vacationers is a euphamism for tourists, because the latter has so much negative baggage.
I think the best way to put it is that travelers are affected by the experience and vacationers are not. Tourists live the same life on Maui as they do in Altoona. “The Accidental Tourist” by Anne Tyler brings this out in such a beautiful way. A man who travels for a living and hates traveling writes a series of guidebooks for people stuck in cities their companies have sent them to – the best McDonald’s in London or the best Pizza Hut in Shanghai.
Tourists are tiny colonialists, forcing their culture into every situation because they’re paying for it.
The transactional nature of the vacation experience – “I’m paying for a good time” – is where the Ugly American stereotype originates, and Americans are never as ugly as when they’re traveling domestically.
When we pay for a good time and don’t have one, we expect recompense, even if we went into the experience expecting fun as if it were a side of fries. There’s a vague, open-ended want festering in the vacationer’s soul, a desire for newness without change, an experience free of both decisions and disappointments. A good time is something on a menu with a description that never quite gets at the experience’s reality.
For a Good Time Call
I’m gearing up for another couple cross country drives. Between now and the Fourth of July, I’ll drive to eastern Washington State twice. I mostly will eat at grocery stories, popping in for a package of sandwich rolls, some pre-sliced cheese and a tube of mustard.
I’ve made the trip several times before and learned the American highway system wasn’t built for people who prefer not to eat meat. Worse, truck stops are dying. Not dying dying, tractor-trailers will always need to gas up in my lifetime, but the places where once you could get an omelette 24-hours a day are all but gone, replaced by McDonalds and Subway and other shitty chain food.
It’s symptomatic. We’re a culture living in abject terror of inconvenience and mild disappointment because we confuse the thing with the experience of getting the thing. An insane diner waitress bringing a mediocre meal is objectively better than drive-thru, experientially if not nutritionally or economically.
There’s a rumor that the rising generations prefer to buy experiences rather than things, and I suppose it’s true on some level. I worry, though, that they’re buying the curated experience, which always comes with someone to blame, or at least to complain to.
Put another way: no good story lacks conflict. For many people, a perfect vacation sounds a lot like heaven – nothing to do and an eternity to get it done. Travel has risks that vacation never will because one is a perspective and the other is a retail purchase.
I know a guy who went to Hawaii and came home, not with a story about blue seas and white beaches, but of a car chase following a botched attempt to find a graveyard. That is traveling.
Keep the Faith,
Tony
PostScript
I meant to send this Sunday, but I hit a roadblock. Mostly, I wanted to warn/invite you to check out the first in a three-episode series of my new podcast, Object History. We hope to do three of four series each year about things people have forgotten or stopped caring about.
I’ve already published most of the story via the Object History newsletter, but the audio narrative isn’t me reading; it’s a different approach altogether.
The ending may come out a full five months later than it was supposed to (I had hoped to have this out in January), but I think it’s good. At least, I hope it is because I took the time instead of pushing it.
I mentioned Destination Delmarva, and if you’ve read this far, you probably have a sense of what it’s going to read like. For now, a lot of the stories are from my work hosting the PinesCast, but I have plans for a monthly travel column that will be useless to tourists. Wish me luck.
I blew up my Bagel Manifesto project because I learned an ugly truth about myself: I’m a food racist. I know that’s kind of an incendiary statement, but I’ll clarify (I hope!) in next Sunday’s email.
TR