Green Hell : G'day, Eh? Or: The Hillbilly Among the Heathen, P. II

Being yet another installment (in the "penny dreadful" style) of the bizarre adventures of a feller often known to exhibit quirky behavior.

Now where was I? Oh yeah! It was July of 1989 and I was sitting on an Eastern Airlines flight, on the runway at Hartsfield International Airport, waiting for the weather in Boston to improve. Muttering “Just my luck,” I tucked into my dog-eared, well-worn copy of Atlas Shrugged and waited. Eventually the weather did improve, and there was much rejoicing on my part as we left the tarmac and became airborne.

The journey I was taking was a bit more than just a manic overreaction to having lost my first love forever, mind you. It was something I really needed at the time, for various reasons. Since late winter/early spring of 1984, I’d only left Georgia twice: Once during a trip to Maryland and Virginia during the week of Christmas, 1988, and (of course) on my ill-fated foray to Greensboro, North Carolina, an effort which ended in disaster --- in terms of my mental health, at any rate -- on the front stoop of an apartment building in the Lemans at Lawndale complex.

Having spent slightly less than a third of my life (at the time) living abroad, and having visited fourteen different countries by the time I was eighteen, the complete lack of travel that characterized my first few years back in the States wasn’t something to which I adjusted easily. In taking this vacation, I was breaking the recently-established pattern and reintroducing some semblance of normalcy to my life.

As luck would have it, our flight path actually took us over Greensboro, a fact which the schmuck of a pilot saw fit to announce over the plane’s PA system. Greensboro! Slowly I turned. Step by step, inch by inch… I was seized by the overpowering urge to risk sending us all to our deaths by wrenching the door open and hurling the nearest heavy object from the plane, in the vain hope of it hitting her apartment building. Not being quite that crazy, I settled for raising my “social finger” aloft and tapping the back of my hand against the window.

Here’s to you, you ball-busting, heartbreaking, self-esteem-wrecking bitch! F*** you in the ear, and dip your kids in dogs**t!

The flight from Atlanta to Boston wasn’t a long one, and the pilot saw fit to inform us of our progress every inch of the way, it seemed.

“Howdy, *hic*, Eashtern Airlinesh passhengersh! *hic* If ya look out t’ yer -- lesshee -- yer left, you’ll shee Washington, Dee-Shee…”

I have no idea whether or not the pilot was actually wasted, for the record. Suffice to say that in the course of my life, I’ve been on so many flights during which I suspected that the folks in the cockpit had partaken of their own unique version of “aviation fuel” that I harbor the suspicion every time I fly.

The weather in Boston had taken another turn for the worse, it seemed, so we had to circle the airport for some time before we were able to land. Eventually the weather cleared, and we touched down. I’d been on the ground for all of five minutes when I began forming a bad impression of Boston in general and Logan Airport in particular. The fact that I’d had to pay a landing tax for the use of a facility that didn’t remotely compare to Hartsfield didn’t cast the place in a favorable light, and the behavior of the staff (and a good many of the patrons) left quite a bit to be desired.

Down here, Yankees are not exactly known for their good manners. By Southern standards, they’re brusque, unfriendly, boorish and impolite. One suspects at times that during early childhood, they’re subjected to a painful, powerful electric shock every time the words “excuse me,” “please,” “thank you,” “sir,” or “ma’am” pass their lips. Needless to say, they often require some getting used to. I’ve heard it said (quite unfairly) that New Yorkers are the rudest of all Yankees, but personal experience has shown this not to be true. I’ve met many New Yorkers over the course of my life, and am actually friends with a few. Their reputation as the rudest people on the North American landmass is -- based upon my experiences at any rate -- undeserved. No, that particular honor should be conferred upon the Bostonites.

Based upon the ordeal to which I was subjected while asking directions and ordering a meal at one of the airport restaurants (as our flight was a short one, no inflight meal was served), the very notion of “service with a smile” is unknown to them. “Grudging service with a muttered ‘Fuck you’” seems to be the order of the day in that town. The layover lasted nearly two hours, and by boarding time I was more than glad to be gone. Owing to the foul weather, we were over two hours late in landing, and I still had another flight to catch after this one, so my dislike of the place was considerably magnified by the inconvenience I’d experienced. By the time my plane pulled in, I was so bored that I was reduced to amusing myself by chuckling in Beavis and Butthead fashion at the logo on the fuselage of an Aer Lingus plane as it taxied by.

Heh heh heh! He said “lingus.” Heh heh heh! “Aer Cunnilingus.” Huh huh huh!

Sure it’s juvenile, but I’ll bet I’m not the first bored traveler to think that, and I doubt I’ll be the last.

Looking out the concourse window as our Air Alliance flight pulled in, I was shocked and a tad disturbed to note that this particular plane was roughly the size of a Radio Flyer sled with wings, and had twin-prop engines. It wasn’t even a jet! Muttering prayers to any and all powers I thought might be listening, I boarded and settled in for the next leg of the trip.

Air Alliance, I gathered, was a Quebec-based subsidiary of Air Canada. I also gathered that the good folks in that province aren’t overly fond of the rest of their countrymen, as all announcements were made in French first, and in English second. In a “democratic” country with an English-speaking majority, one would expect the opposite to be the case. Not so on Air Alliance. I also noticed that the announcements in French ran quite a bit longer than the English translations, and this stirred my existing tendency towards paranoia just a tad.

What are they leaving out? What are they saying? Are all these frogs planning to take the plane over and waste us?

As this too was a short flight, no inflight meal was served, so I was glad I’d eaten at Logan. We didn’t fly very high, so at least I was treated to a very nice view of the landscape below from my window. We touched down at Montreal’s Dorval Airport in what seemed like a very short time. And I braced myself for an ordeal at customs. To my surprise, no such ordeal materialized. The customs officials simply waved me through, without checking my bags or even asking for identification. I’d brought my passport out of force of habit, but nobody asked to see it, or even my driver’s license.

Previous experience had indicated that I should leave any and all “controversial” reading material at home, so I hadn’t brought any of my Hayduke or Saxon books, and had even left my Paladin Press offerings and gun rags at home. All the same, I didn’t exactly look like a model citizen, so I was rather surprised at the hassle-free trip through customs. At one point -- and at others during the course of my “adventure” -- I got the distinct impression that many of the French Canadians were actually hoping I was some kind of shit-stirring Anarchist, up to no good.

Dusk fell, and then night. By the time I caught my plane to Ottawa (another rickety-looking Air Alliance affair), I was dozing off intermittently, so I really don’t remember much of the flight. Eventually we landed at Ottawa International Airport, and -- exhausted as I was -- I began taking care of business. The first thing I did was buy a map of Ottawa and the environs and some junk-food from a vending machine, as all the eateries seemed to be closed. Next, I headed to a payphone and began calling around to find an affordable but conveniently located hotel.

Everything in the very center of town was either booked solid or incredibly overpriced, so I finally settled for a room at the YMCA. The good folk at the Y informed me that I could only have the room for two nights, but at least they had one available. That solved that particular problem. Hailing a cab, I gave my destination to the driver , who appeared to be from India or Pakistan and didn’t speak much English.

Home, James Sahib.

Staying at the Y in any city is a less-than-appealing prospect, for all that I had (and have since) stayed in far worse “roach motels” and “crack bazaars” over the course of my life. It’s the cast of characters that makes ’em that way, actually. As I recall, other than obvious transients, the place hosted the usual assortment of “creepy crawlies” one encounters at the Y: what appeared to be teenage runaways and a few burned-out, pissed-off, alienated “twentysomethings.” Just like Yours Truly, although I was far too arrogant at the time to see myself that way. Truth be told, I fit right in. Nobody even gave me a second look. I wasn’t “undercover” or “incognito” or anything quite that squirrely, but since no one seemed to be speaking to anyone else, I was in no danger of my accent arousing any suspicion.

When I reached my room at long last, the first thing I did was retrieve my polycarbonate punk-jabber from my suitcase. Then I headed down the hallway to get a shower. No way was I taking a shower in that place unarmed. The overall atmosphere would have prompted me equip myself thus, even had I never heard that damned Village People song… These days, I would simply have put an extra bar of soap into a sock, but I was still in “Dangermouse-meets-Secret-Squirrel” mode in those days, so the pigsticker it was.

My precautions, however prudent, were unnecessary, as I was the only person in the shower. I went back to my room, slipped my map into my handy-dandy Brigade Quartermaster map case, opened the phonebook, and began marking off all the places I figured I should visit in order to achieve my objective. Before retiring, I tried to call home, but neither the phone in my room nor the payphones in the lobby were functioning. I decided to “sleep on it”, and it was lights out for our weird, weary ridgerunner.

I was awakened the next morning by the maid, a French Canadian lady in early middle age, knocking on the door. Getting out of bed and dragging a pair of jeans on, I let her in and spent most of the time looking out the window as she went about tidying the place up. Not that I’d even had time to make much of a mess, mind you. She made perfunctory, almost bored small talk,” saw me looking out the window, and said something to the effect of: “Oh, that’s the Queensway. If you’re new in town, stay off it. You’ll get killed.” Having spent the last three years navigating I-285, I-75 and I-85, I sincerely doubted that any such thing would happen, but I thanked her for the heads up, all the same.

Trying to get a “feel” for the town as quickly as possible, I slipped my l’il dagger into my pocket and left the Y. Camera around my neck and map case (but no shillelagh) under my arm, I cut across the grounds of the Museums of Man and Science (stopping to snap a photo of the artificial mastodons on said grounds) and headed up Metcalfe Street to my first stop, the public library. Somewhere along the line, I picked up a discarded copy of a local newspaper (I believe it was called the Ottawa Sun, if memory serves me correctly) and got my hands on an OC Transpo (I assume the “OC” means “Ottawa-Carleton”) schedule, the better to figure out whether or not public transportation was worth bothering with. As it happens, it wasn’t.

Getting the discarded newspaper was actually a bit more difficult than I’d anticipated, as it seems Canadians are far less prone to littering than are Americans. I’m not much of a litterbug myself, but I resolved to be less of a slob than usual for the duration of my stay. The public library had an archive of old phonebooks and other useful publications, so by deductive reasoning and process of elimination, I managed to get the vast majority of the information I needed right then and there.

I hadn’t realized how late it was getting, so I quickly left and hauled ass over to the National Archives. I was pretexting again, digging for info under the guise of doing genealogical research, and as it happened, the clerk on duty was very helpful. I didn’t find much of what I needed there, but she recommended a place called “StatsCan” (Statistics Canada), and the provincial archives in Toronto. Well, going to Toronto was out of the question, so I got a bite to eat from a mobile vendor, went back to my room and called it a day.

The next day, I visited StatsCan (didn’t get very much there at all) and moseyed across the river to check the University of Ottawa, just in case. Scamming the clerk on duty with yet another bullshit story, I managed to get my grubby little mitts on a student directory, and came up empty. A bit more bullshitting, and I headed back to the public library. Through methods dark and devious (read: lying through my teeth to various people -- I gather that many Canadians have long-lost American cousins, by the way), I soon discovered that my quarry was attending some college or the other in Toronto.

Shit. No joy.

Oh well, c’est la vie and all that. Not being set up for another trip of that length, I resigned myself to the vicissitudes of fate. Thus ended my career as an international stalker, though not an interesting vacation.

To be continued