Low life
Yanks
Jeffrey Bernard
Natchez, Mississippi Ail Americans are tourists in their own auntry. The Russians can't afford to be and in the second biggest country in the world, Canada, they are far too parochial to shift far, although they occasionally emigrate — escape? — permanently. Horace Greeley exhorted the Americans to go West, and having done so they have now embraced North, South and East and have done so armed with cameras, Hawaiian shirts, fortissimo voices, jewel- encrusted fingers, wads of the almighty dollar, a short memory for history and the narrow-minded certainty that they are the chosen race; the peacemakers with one finger on the button and a tongue in the cheek at the conference table. They cer- tainly disarm me. Forthright, politicallY naive, charming and forthcoming as 3 well-oiled teenager, they are a mass of contradictions. At once hospitable and friendly, they are ruthless about moneY and do not suffer paupers gladly. I like them tremendously and yet I find their values stink. Without money and fame or either you are dead. They worship more gods in more churches than any other race, and yet they invented lynching. They inherited Abraham Lincoln and lumbered themselves with Richard Nixon. America was born under the sign of Gemini. You can get oysters in New Orleans for a mere ten cents each and yet the American brain is a hamburger. Is the American dream becoming a nightmare? It is certainly a° introverted dream. Americans display little interest in much beyond their own front doors except for a great fear of Russia. Tell them that the Russians are just as or more frightened of them and your words will fall on deaf ears. Fear rules.
All these things preoccupy me, Or" rounded as I am by them as I steam up the Mississippi towards Memphis. The river is as thick and brown as gravy. At dawn and at sunset it is a sepia photograph with a vein of twisting gold that runs through the surrounding forests and marshes. Ulysses Grant fought the Confederate army here and like most Unionists claimed that the Civil War was all about the business of the abolition of slavery. Slaves — literate ones — must have been a little bewildered. Lincoln said that the direct cause of the war was to do with the question of whether a minority in a democratic country could or should have the right to defy a democrati- cally elected majority. Shades of Arthuf Scargill. But Lincoln and his supporters and colleagues never thought that black slaves were actually equal to white men' repugnant as they thought slavery to be Americans are still trying to be nice t° blacks and it is still an uphill struggle. For a, race that attaches more importance to wha' state a man comes from than the Manches' ter United supporter attaches to whether ai man is a City or United supporter, race a° colour is almost an insurmountable hurdle. It certainly is for blacks I have met, not as aggressive as the London West India,"., population, but seemingly indigenous'? stunned into a partial apathy by their. history. They may even be losers Ye` without the compensating factor of being promoted to the survivor division. But anyway, here I am, sitting by th,e rails on the veranda outside my 011111 looking at Natchez where we've just dock- ed. My socks and shirt are flapping in the Mississippi breeze. There is no laundry on this boat, but I have with me a pre-frozen glass of vodka martini. The barmaid on the boat tells me that her father has a pet alligator which has eaten two dogs belong- ing to his neighbours and at the 13th hole on the local golf course the hazard is a 12-foot alligator which waits for players in the bunker. Poisonous snakes abound and magnificent hawks soar above the 'Big Muddy'. Americans are conservation conscious and yet compulsive hunters and Shooters of almost anything that moves: a Man in the bar at lunch-time told me that his hobby is killing bats with a tennis racquet. But I can't concentrate yet on the Mississ. I am still brooding on New Orleans and its trellised verandas, foun- tamed patios, palms, jazz, mad and crazy gay clubs, seafood, and the fact that I'd rather live in the old French quarter outside of anything I know apart from London, with the possible exceptions of Granada, Brighton and Barcelona. I think it was the seminar about lesbians over 60 that finally convinced me that New Orleans Was quite as mad as you could wish to be. We stop at Vicksburg tomorrow and I shall tudy the terrain over which the most Miportant southern battle of the Civil War was fought. The river goes on and on.
Previous page
