The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [72]
But perhaps Columbus’s most remarkable shortcoming was that he never actually saw the land that was to become the United States. This surprises a lot of people. They imagine him trampling over Florida, saying, ‘You know, this would make a nice resort.’ But in fact his voyages were all spent in the Caribbean and bouncing around the swampy, bug-infested coasts of Central America. If you ask me, the Vikings would make far more worthy heroes for America. For one thing, they did actually discover it. On top of that, the Vikings were manly and drank out of skulls and didn’t take any crap from anybody. Now that’s the American way.
When I lived in America Columbus Day was one of those semi-bogus holidays that existed only for the benefit of public workers with strong unions. There was no mail on Columbus Day and if you innocently drove all the way over to the east side of the town to the Iowa State Vehicle Licensing Center to renew your driver’s licence you would find the door locked and a notice hanging in the window saying ‘Closed for Columbus Day Holiday. So Tough Shit To You.’ But otherwise life was no different than on any other day. Now, however, it appeared that the Columbus Day holiday had spread. There were lots of cars and recreational vehicles on the highway and the radio announcers kept talking about things like the number of fatalities that were expected ‘this Columbus Day weekend’. (How do they know these things anyway? Is there some kind of a secret quota?) I had been looking forward to reaching New England because I wanted to see the autumn colour. In addition, the states would be small and varied and there wouldn’t be that awful rolling tedium that comes with all the other American states, even the attractive ones. But I was wrong. Of course. New England states are indubitably tiny – Connecticut is only eighty miles across; Rhode Island is smaller than London – but they are crowded with cars, people and cities. Connecticut appeared to be just one suburb. I drove up US 202 towards Litchfield, which was marked on my map as a scenic route, and it was, to be sure, more scenic than suburb, but it wasn’t exactly spectacular.
Perhaps I was expecting too much. In the movies in the 1940s people were always going to Connecticut for the weekend, and it always looked wonderfully green and rustic. It was always full of empty roads and stone cottages in leafy glades. But this was just semi-suburban: ranch-houses with three-car garages and lawns with twirling sprinklers and shopping centres every six blocks. Litchfield itself was very handsome, the quintessential New England town, with an old courthouse and a long sloping green with a cannon and a memorial to the war dead. On one side of the green stood pleasant shops and on the other was a tall, white steepled church, dazzling in the October sunshine. And there was colour – the trees around the green were a rich gold and lemon. This was more like it.
I parked in front of MacDonald Drug and crossed the green through a scuffle of fallen leaves. I strolled along residential streets where big houses squatted on wide lawns. Each was a variation on the same theme: rambling clapboard with black shutters. Many had wooden plaques on them pertaining to their history – ‘Oliver Boardman 1785’; ‘1830 Col. Webb’. I spent over an hour just poking around. It was a pleasant town for poking.
Afterwards I drove east, sticking to back highways. Soon I was in the suburbs of Hartford, and then in Hartford itself, and then in the suburbs on the other side of Hartford.