Travel myths

A year or two ago, when a BBC crew was ready to come over here and film a programme on the history of immigration into America, the director came to me with a shadow over his face which was normally as round and innocent as a cherry.

He was worried about our ability, in the 1970s, to convey the babble of languages and accents that once used to flow through Ellis Island and left whole generations of American citizens who went to their graves never able to speak more than a stumbling word or two of English. 

'Are there,' this conscientious, young director said to me, 'are there still people left in New York who talk English in what I'd call a broken accent?' Well, we had our troubles filming that series but this was not one of them. Every other cab we took had a driver called something like Pandel Savic or Yehudi Sabin or Jesus Perez or Pol Dorvash with accents to match. And when we got way downtown on the Lower East Side, you had only to duck into a café or a clothing store to feel that you were in the New York of 1910. 

I wish my director could have been with me the other Sunday night when I drove a visiting Englishman to his late plane at Kennedy airport. Sunday night, I guess because it's the one sure non-working day for most people, is the night when Americans from all over are either going home to, or coming home from, far places. So early evening at the airport is a bedlam. I don't mean just the crowds but the noise of the families swirling around the gates that lead to the planes. The Latins – for some reason I'll leave the sociologists to go into – seem never to let a man, woman or child, leave town for anywhere without making a heartbreaking ceremony of it. And sometimes maybe it is heartbreaking. The return to the homeland, Puerto Rico, say, of a young husband and his family who couldn't make it in New York. I've seen this, or sensed it. 

And conversely, a happy turmoil, when a family collects outside a gate and waits for the relatives who are coming into America, for better, or worse. But mostly, and by now I should guess mainly, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, some Italians, mostly it's a brother, an uncle, a daughter, who's come to New York from Florida or Chicago, or wherever, just for the weekend and is going home again on Sunday evening, convoyed by the old father and mother, maybe a grandparent and the sisters and the children. And finally the plane is called and there's a squash of embraces and child lifting and waving. 

Take one plane leaving Kennedy for Miami on Sunday evening, a jumbo jet carrying over 300 people. I sometimes get the idea that for every returning passenger, there are a dozen people gone along to say goodbye. The last boarding call comes over the loudspeaker and the tears and the cheers flow and then the relatives collect the kids and all and pad back to their cars like the retreat from Moscow. 

Well, that's the way it was the other Sunday night and while I found it pretty frightening on a night as suffocating as a sauna, my friend going back to England was exhilarated by it. It was something he hadn't guessed at, therefore, it was exotic. Therefore, it was the kind of surprise that made his visit worthwhile. We happened to be very early and checked him in at the ticket counter and then we went off into an airport restaurant for a meal, which was as silent as a large fish bowl containing a couple of tropical fish gliding around. The fish were the two waitresses and it was from one of them that my friend took back his last happy memory of his stay here. 

Our waitress must have constituted the last stand, or flutter, of the mini skirt, but otherwise she was as innocent and gentle as the dew. Almost frightened to hand us the menu, deeply grateful to take our order, gliding back in her silken way to beg to know if we needed more water or more drinks and if the sirloin was cooked just right and was there anything else she could do for us? There was nothing we kept assuring her with little ducking bows of the head. 'Righty-oh!' she said and smiled away. 

'Now there again,' said my Englishman, 'she has what I'd call a typically American face but she's so totally different from our idea of an American waitress.' 'You think,' I said, 'they are stamped out on an assembly line?' 'Not that,' he said, 'but if you say an American waitress, in England, I'll bet a lot of people imagine a tough girl coming up and saying, "OK, man! What d'ya want?".' 

Well, towards the end of the meal, I had to go and make a telephone call and when I came back, my friend was doubled over. 'Dee-licious!!' he said. 'What happened now?' I asked. It seems she'd waited till the plates were empty, seen my friend lean back and then she swam over, silently, again, took her order book from her belt, tore off the bill. She looked with a hesitant smile at my friend and like somebody slipping a note under a door, sidled the bill under his plate and said nervously, 'Well, here we go!' My friend, an affable man, with an eagle eye for such vital trivia, said he would cherish that memory for some time to come. 

Well, we all know that travellers, many travellers anyway, are uncomfortable unless their preconceptions are fulfilled every time they travel. They know what they're looking for and they find it. I swear myself that the main fun of travel is seeing how, sometimes only by a slight oddity, the legend and the fact diverge. I remember the first time I went to Spain after the war, the Second World War, that is. I was going to Madrid during the ten days in May called the Festival of San Isidro. It's the only time I believe when there are ten consecutive days of bullfights, so anybody who feels insecure when a foreign country doesn't come up to his imagining would've felt very secure indeed. Nowadays, I guess, he'd be upset by the fact, and it is a fact, that bullfights are declining and the most popular sport in Spain, as everywhere, is soccer. 

Anyway, we checked into our hotel, we got seats for four or five days for the fights from the concierge and we were all set to wallow in an orgy of the travel-poster view of Spain. But all I can remember now is the kindly, weary way in which an old Spaniard heard our tale that we'd deliberately picked San Isidro so we could have our fill of the bulls. His home stood on the main drag, the road leading up to the stadium. 'Ah yes,' he said, 'but it's never what you expect it to be. Every afternoon the crowds swarm up this street and you lean out and say, "Where's everybody going?" and excitable men shout up, "To the bulls! To the bulls!" And then about three hours later, the crowds come swarming back again and you lean out and say, "Where have you all been?" and they look up gloomily and say, "To the bulls".' 

Well, I suppose that if the anxious types came here just now, they'd be reassured to know that this really is the high season of baseball but they'd be disturbed by something that I'm sure would delight my friend with his eye and ear for the twist to the cliché. Walk around the town, this town, in the hot evenings and – unless you pick some villainous section of the Bronx or Brooklyn – you can still do that, and rattling out of open windows and parked cabs and little transistor radios huddled over by youngsters squatting in the park, you hear a language which is undoubtedly English but to most Englishmen it might as well be Swahili. 

'And that's it for the top of the third. The Tigers (retied an order), no runs, no hits, no errors' and 'Yastrzemski's on deck and Sanchez is looking for that bunt.' The night darkens and the language goes on rattling out, 'Full counts and Crosetti's signalling for the low inside but Joaquin delivers what we used to call the fadeaway, it's his screwball and a call strike. That's two away and Rossini's safe at third.' 

It is fatal for a news reporter who should be concerning himself with grave and reverent matters like bankrupt cities and the proliferation of the nuclear nations to get caught by baseball, for provided that you have your daily bread, no form of circus is more addictive, not even what in our house my wife insists on calling G-O-L-F, a taboo subject. And it's worse if you come from England and once played cricket because, quite apart from the fact that every physical move in baseball is like some foreign ballet, quite alien to anything an Englishman does with his body, the quality of the fielding is so lightning-sure, so inhumanly competent as to form a separate pleasure all in itself. However, I know there are academics and double-domed listeners who will take a dim view of such frivolities even if the Middle East settles into a long peace. 

So, I will repair at once to Washington and give you the vital news of the week. Just when everybody in government, national, state or municipal, is frantic to find some way of saving money without starting a riot of the unemployed, Congress discovered this week a bureau, an actual federal agency that you wouldn't believe if it had been invented by Molière. It's called the Federal Metal and Non-Metallic Mine Safety Board of Review. It was created by Congress in 1970 to hear appeals from mine owners whose mines had been closed for reasons of safety. In the five years of its existence, it has never received a single appeal. It's staffed by an executive director who goes down to his important office every day. It's a handsome, three-room suite in a government building. He turns on the air-conditioning, he brews himself some coffee and then he turns on a stereo gramophone. And he puts on the turntable one of his large collection of Beethoven and Mozart records. And then he settles down and he sits and listens to them all day. Nobody calls and he goes home. He's paid $20,000 a year. You think that's money for jam? 

Well, this man, the executive director, a Mr Hale, he couldn't take it any more. He asked the Congress to send a delegate to watch him drinking coffee and playing Beethoven and Mozart every day, every week, months on end. They finally did send a man along who was astonished to report that it was just as Mr Hale had said. Mr Hale consequently begged Congress to fire him. 

Last Tuesday, the House of Representatives granted his wish. It voted 400 to 16 to abolish the federal agency that has no work and no callers and one executive director listening to Beethoven and Mozart.

This transcript was typed from a recording of the original BBC broadcast (© BBC) and not copied from an original script. Because of the risk of mishearing, the BBC cannot vouch for its complete accuracy.

Letter from America audio recordings of broadcasts ©BBC

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