The other US: Listening for the heartbeat

A faithful commenter, robin andrea, asks about my favourites place in the US. The question is complex; often people matter more than scenery.

DORMONT A leafy Pittsburgh suburb (see pic). Beatlemania was fading but neighbourhood kids saw me as a Fab Four John-the-Baptist. I bought a glove and we played make-up baseball. When VR was giving birth to our second daughter a mother from an adjacent apartment taught me how to use the washing machine. The landlord gave me a bottle of bourbon at Christmas.

WATCH HILL, RHODE ISLAND Tranquil good taste. An overwhelming sense of privilege at the tiny under-populated harbour. The rich don’t cluster so I was left alone with my thoughts. Instead, the place spoke to me.

SAN FRANCISCO Everything was slightly better than the clichés said it would be. The waiter at the Fisherman’s Wharf restaurant contrived to suggest this wasn’t a tourist destination. The Golden Gate Bridge toll system was typical: you paid to get into SF, not to leave.

DRIVING THROUGH THE WEST VIRGINIA PANHANDLE Luckily I had not yet seen the movie, Deliverance. Otherwise I might have stayed away. The residents eyed us from their stoops – a sort of silent dialogue which I didn’t care to interpret, But beauty abounded.

BOSTON Seemingly detached from the rest of the USA, and feeling ineffably superior. In one of its swankier restaurants, a diner said my face reminded him of someone. I said I had been likened physically to William F. Buckley, the right-wing columnist. The diner said this comparison should never have been uttered.

MOIKE’S BAR, MOUNT OLIVER, PITTSBURGH A strange meritocracy: speak briefly or not at all. I felt I needed a chaperone and only went there with a friend. Cheap beer; hot sausage sandwich impossible to eat tidily.

Boo Orange Man! You know not your own land.