149. American Chain Restaurants

            There are certain things that everyone uses out of convenience but they might grumble a little bit about it. For me that’s chain restaurants. Sometimes I grumble about them not being healthy enough. But, of course, that’s not always true because there are plenty of choices. In reality, the consistency of American chain restaurants is great comfort. I love the fact that I can pick up a sub sandwich with some chips and an icy cold drink and picnic it on the spur of the moment. I don’t have to go into a chain restaurant and pore over a menu asking questions of the waiter because I already know what to order before I even open the door. Of course that’s not always what I want, but when I want easy comfort an American chain restaurant is there to fill that role.

            There’s no doubt that it’s a little disconcerting to drive the streets of a European city to find a KFC crammed into an old Tudor building, but after a few days of mushy peas, dried out roast dinners and cold “jacket potatoes” (we Yanks call them baked) or soggy schnitzel, a nice crispy chicken leg with a biscuit and honey and a coke with ice is a real treat. It just seems wrong that when you order a coke and specify that you would like ice, the waiter returns with a warm coke and a single, rapidly melting ice cube. So, yes, I think a KFC in Zurich seems wrong but I’m not going to complain about that coke at TGI Friday’s in Bristol when they set a proper icy coke in front of me with a slice of lemon. And, yes, of course, I appreciate the quaint pubs and the restaurants of Europe, but sometimes it’s just nice to have a moment on the Grand Canal to collect yourself and get over the fact that you would have saved five bucks at the pizza place had you ordered a bottle of wine instead of said coke that was warm without ice. No, I wouldn’t go to Pizza Hut in Rome and I really don’t think they should have them there, but it must not just be Americans looking that comfort in knowing what’s at an American chain restaurant. And I confess to having stopped by a Burger King in Oxford after maneuvering my way around a zillion international touring teenagers to get a nice icy coke that had no guarantee of a free refill, always bemoaning the fact that they didn’t offer root beer.

            I realize that American food is too packaged, too everywhere sometimes, but I also realize that there is great comfort in a nice biscuit with sausage gravy that you can’t really seem to find anywhere outside of North America, because who would eat gravy on their Oreos? (Biscuit in British English is that American hard dry cookie sort of thing.) And the comfort of knowing exactly what you are getting is what the American chain restaurant offers. I may be the first to grumble about the McDonald’s in Exeter’s city centre being a crowded mess, but I might also wait twenty minutes at lunch time to order my kids a Quarter Pounder with fries at that same crowded McDonald’s while wondering how such a place could ever be considered fast food.

            It’s no different here at home. When I don’t know what they serve at Mabel’s diner in Detroit and my other option is Burger King when I’ve been craving a grilled burger, the choice is obvious. I’ll try Mabel’s when I’m not tired, when I’m ready to experiment, when Burger King sounds too ordinary. But I’m so thankful for the American chain restaurant for its comfort and knowing what I will get.

148. Salt Water Taffy

            Summertime is the time of year when Americans go on vacation. This year is different because we need to shelter in place to stop the spread of the Corona virus so fewer people are taking those trips. Of course, we are Americans and it is built into our national character to bristle at someone (God forbid, the government!) telling us what to do, so people who haven’t seen the devastation of this virus—the people who don’t believe in science, the people who have to see it to believe it, the doubting Thomases, the people who think it’s the flu, the people who believe you are a liberal wuss if you wear a mask—seem to be going out and spreading the devastation of their disbelief to the masses as the numbers and death tolls increase. But, lest I digress too much, it is vacation time in America. One of the best parts of a vacation for me is indulging my sweet tooth and I don’t eat salt water taffy many other times than summer vacation.

            Since I won’t be taking any vacations this year aside from some daytrips and maybe an overnight camp out (where I am alone) I guess I’m just going to have to imagine walking a boardwalk in Seaside, or even Sherman Avenue in Coeur d’Alene, and stopping in a candy store where they make fudge, serve ice cream and pull salt water taffy. I love a nice chocolate taffy, soft and wrapped in wax paper. Fresh huckleberry or blueberry is also a luxurious escape from everything but heaven. People are milling about on the streets of that mountain town where the heat is dry and short lived of a summer afternoon. Sunglassed mothers are pushing chubby little babies in strollers while their bearded, tank topped husbands are walking beside them holding the hands of an older child gazing into the windows of a sweet shop. At this point my indulgence runs toward the soft taffy with just a little black spot in the center. Licorice is the flavor I can buy that will be mine. The kids won’t walk off with more than one of those before realizing it’s not for them. Or maybe a spicy cinnamon starburst center. How do they get those designs so perfectly centered in those little candies?

            I can see the machines stretching and pulling the taffy reminding me of winters as a child when family and friends would gather for a taffy pull. It makes you forget the sunglasses you’ve perched on top of your head and you enter another world. Maybe now you’re out in an Adirondack chair in a hayfield at the base of one of the Green or White Mountains of New England enjoying the breeze of an afternoon as you indulge in a little maple gem of a taffy you just purchased at some little shop with a quaint name like Sleepy Hollow or something like that. Their flavors in that sweet, chewy stickiness can take you anywhere in this country of ours without really needing to go any further than your back porch. Do you feel that relentless sun in the heaviness of humidity from a thunderstorm as you try to gain relief by putting your feet in the warm bathtub of the Gulf of Mexico? The only possible relief is that little Key Lime taffy to get away from the oppression of a Florida summer.

            You know, I think I can get to all those places I’m thinking about with a quick masked trip to the grocery store where I can find a nice bag of salt water taffy (probably from Salt Lake City) and I will be able to transport myself anywhere with just a quick taste of somewhere else. I really love a vacation in a staycation bag of salt water taffy. I’ll be saving some money this year…

147. Sharing Ideas and Information

            I am an educator who has been teaching students from the ages of eleven through adulthood for over 35 years. Of course, my profession is disseminating what I know to others but it’s also a process of learning a great deal from my students and other people. I love that and how we do it here in the US. No, I don’t really like the trained poodle hoop jumping that I have to do to get certificates or proof of training, but there is a little fun in learning shortcuts. And I love sharing ideas and learning how to do new things.

            This past year when the pandemic shut school down, I had to learn a great deal about teaching remotely. I’m 58 and have never taken any classes remotely except for a few video training courses that have more often than not seemed like time wasters—poodle hoops. As an English teacher who has always specialized in reading and reading instruction, I quickly learned that for my high school English courses I needed to be focusing on literature and writing because those are the key components of what students are expected to take away from those courses. The quickest way to get literature across to my students who might struggle with reading is to simplify how they read. So I lead them to audio books. Short cuts do not prevent you from learning, they just need to be recognized as short cuts and many of the incidentals—the emotional attachments—you would gain might be lost. Duh! How could someone who has taught for so many years not know that? I did know it, but crystalizing it to the exact skills lost through my teaching was not something I could have articulated so well before this era of remote learning. It’s another thing I’ve learned: how to articulate why face to face learning is so much better than remote learning. Nevertheless, I love that we have ways to communicate and share ideas during this time of physical distancing.

            I think that it is also true that we can learn remotely from the people of the past. Of course I think that! I teach literature. Our ancestors have so much to tell us about living. The American ideals began hundreds of years ago and they were expressly written for us to see and to emulate. The very handwriting of men and women from the past is still visible for us to see, just as are paintings and physical structures which we live in and conduct our business and gatherings. To read a journal or letter from hundreds of years ago in the very building in which it was written can carry you back to a particular time and that presence of humanity from such a long time ago is both inspiring and haunting. I love that.

            I love how ideas are exchanged and how we learn. The importance of communication and leaving record of how to do things, how people feel in certain spaces, how they have felt—all of that is so very inspiring to me. As I grow older I know that what I do now does have an impact on others. Yesterday I ran the last five miles of a fifteen-mile training run with one of my cross-country athletes who is training for and running a marathon for his senior project. I know he got the idea of doing that from me and running those last difficult miles with him is such a privilege because I know he will accomplish it. I know how he feels. Sharing that in a way that can’t be fully articulated is an honor and a joy that I feel privileged to do. How we share our ideas and our living with one another is very important. It is how we love one another.

146. Immigrants

            We are a nation of immigrants. Research shows that even the native tribes are immigrants. All of us are descended from people who had to leave their homelands for various reasons. It’s not clear why all the migration to the Americas occurred—some from climate change, some from religious persecution, some for lust of wealth, some from innovation, and some through coercion and force. What we have brought to this land is the best and worst from wherever we came and we have collected it here on a foundation of ideals and a belief in opportunity. Many have been fortunate to find those opportunities while others have been consistently denied.

            I love that we have cultural bounty all around us even in the little rural town where I live. If I drive a few miles to the north I’m on the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation. A few miles south I am in one of two land grant university towns where (in healthier times) I can mingle with people of African, Asian, European, South and Central American, and Middle Eastern Cultures. I am aware that this is unique of such a rural area and that many of us are pocketed into regions of our own cultural identities or separated from those cultural identities. But it only takes a little effort to get out and see the various shades of America available for all of us.

            Currently immigration into the US is a problem because so many people want to come here to escape the violence and unrest in their own countries. They want to come here for all of the same reasons that our ancestors came here. Right now, we have an elected government that is far less welcoming than previous governments have been, though it would certainly be unfair to characterize any of our governments as welcoming beyond certain selective predispositions. Right now, what we are doing to prospective immigrants on our southern border is inhumane and needs to change but that will not happen until we change governments at the election. When justice does not prevail, we must fight back and I have been known to do that often simply by voicing my opinion, peacefully protesting when necessary, and voting.

            As a nation of immigrants and as the son of a long line of immigrants and as a Christian I believe in the humanity of all and I want to do all I can to promote that. So even though I am sheltering in place I will continue to support the variety of cultural identities that make up the fabric of this nation through my custom, through my profession and through my voice. I believe in the immigrant and the promise of our nation. There is no reason to have a statue in our most frequented harbor that says, “Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” if we don’t believe it.

            We just celebrated our 244^th birthday as a nation and now we are reckoning with a dark history that is over four hundred years old and continues to blot our existence. We must continue to grapple with that and rectify the wrongs while accepting the huddled masses to the shores of liberty. I know I am an idealist, but, again, as a son of immigrants and a proponent of compassion, I love this nation of immigrants and I hold to every ideal of liberty that goes along with it.