The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [43]
I took my bags inside, lowered myself experimentally on to the bed and switched on the TV. Instantly there came up a commercial for Preparation H, an unguent for haemorrhoids. The tone was urgent. I don’t remember the exact words, but they were something like, ‘Hey, you! Have you got haemorrhoids? Then get some Preparation H! That’s an order! Remember that name, you inattentive moron! Preparation H! And even if you haven’t got haemorrhoids, get some Preparation H anyway! Just in case!’ And then a voice-over quickly added, ‘Now available in cherry flavour.’ Having lived abroad so long, I was unused to the American hard sell and it made me uneasy. I was equally unsettled by the way television stations in America can jump back and forth between commercials and programmes without hesitation or warning. You’ll be lying there watching Kojak, say, and in the middle of a gripping shoot-out somebody starts cleaning a toilet bowl and you sit up, thinking, ‘What the—’ and then you realize it is a commercial. In fact, it is several minutes of commercials. You could go out for cigarettes and a pizza during commercial breaks in America, and still have time to wash the toilet bowl before the programme resumed.
The Preparation H commercial vanished and a micro-instant later, before there was any possibility of the viewer reflecting on whether he might wish to turn to another channel, was replaced by a clapping audience, the perky sound of steel guitars and happy but mildly brain-damaged people in sequinned outfits. This was Grand Ole Opry. I watched for a couple of minutes. By degrees my chin dropped onto my shirt as I listened to their singing and jesting with a kind of numb amazement. It was like a visual lobotomy. Have you ever watched an infant at play and said to yourself, ‘I wonder what goes on in his little head’? Well, watch Grand Ole Opry for five minutes sometime and you will begin to have an idea.
After a couple of minutes another commercial break noisily intruded and I was snapped back to my senses. I switched off the television and went out to investigate Bryson City. There was more to it than I had first thought. Beyond the Swain County Courthouse was a small business district. I was gratified to note that almost everything had a Bryson City sign on it – Bryson City Laundry, Bryson City Coal and Lumber, Bryson City Church of Christ, Bryson City Electronics, Bryson City Police Department, Bryson City Fire Department, Bryson City Post Office. I began to appreciate how George Washington might feel if he were to be brought back to life and set down in the District of Columbia. I don’t know who the Bryson was whom this town was so signally honouring, but I had certainly never seen my name spread around so lavishly, and I regretted that I hadn’t brought a crowbar and monkey wrench because many of the signs would have made splendid keepsakes. I particularly fancied having the Bryson City Church of Christ sign beside my front gate in England and being able to put up different messages every week like ‘Repent Now, Limeys.’
It didn’t take long to exhaust the possibilities for diversion in downtown Bryson City, and almost before I realized it I found myself on the highway out of town leading towards Cherokee, the next town along the valley. I followed it for a little way but there was nothing to see except a couple of derelict gas stations and barbecue shacks, and hardly any shoulder to walk on so that cars shot past only inches away and whipped my clothes into a