The Lost Continent - Bill Bryson [91]
‘Wouldn’t it be tragic for your children if they didn’t have Sesame Street any more?’ one of them was saying to the camera. ‘So come on, moms and dads, give us a call and make a pledge now.’ But nobody was calling. So the two talked to each other about all the wonderful programmes on PBS. They had clearly been having this conversation for some time. After a while one of them had a phone call. ‘I’ve had my first caller,’ he said as he put the phone down. ‘It was from Melanie Bitowski of Traverse City and it’s her fourth birthday today. So happy birthday, honey. But next time you or any of you other kids call in, why don’t you get your mom or dad to pledge some money, sweetheart?’ These guys were clearly begging for their jobs, and the whole of northern Michigan was turning a blind eye to their pleadings.
I showered and dressed and packed up my bag, all the while keeping an eye on the TV to see if anyone made a pledge and no-one ever did. When I switched off, one of them was saying, with just a hint of peevishness. ‘Now come on, I can’t believe that nobody out there is watching us. Somebody must be awake out there. Somebody must want to preserve quality public television for themselves and their children.’ But he was wrong.
I had a large breakfast in the same place I had eaten the night before and then, because there was absolutely nothing else to do, I went and stood on the quayside, waiting for the ferry. The wind had died. The last sleet melted as it hit the ground and then stopped falling altogether. Everywhere there was the tip-tip-tip sound of dripping, off the roofs, off branches, off me. It was only ten o’clock and nothing was happening at the quayside – the Chevette, dressed with sleety snow, stood alone and forlorn in the big car park – so I went and walked around, down to the site of the original Fort Mackinac and then along residential streets full of treeless lawns and one-storey ranch-houses. When I returned to the ferry site, about forty minutes later, the Chevette had gained some company and there was a fair crowd of people – twenty or thirty at least – already boarding the boat.
We all sat on rows of seats in one small room. The hydroplane started up with a noise like a vacuum cleaner, then turned and slid out onto the green bleakness of Lake Huron. The lake was choppy, like a pan of water simmering on a low heat, but the ride was smooth. The people around me were strangely excited. They kept standing up to take pictures and point things out to each other. It occurred to me that many of them had never been on a ferry before, perhaps had never even seen an island, not one big enough to be inhabited anyway. No wonder they were excited. I was excited too, though for a different reason.
I had been to Mackinac Island before. My dad took us there when I was about four and I remembered it fondly. In fact, it was probably my oldest clear memory. I remembered that it had a big white hotel with a long porch and banks of flowers, positively dazzling in the July sunshine, and I could remember a big fort on a hill, and that the island had no cars, but just horse-drawn carriages, and that there was horse manure everywhere, and that I stepped in some, warm and squishy, and that my mother cleaned my shoe with a twig and a Kleenex, gagging delicately, and that as soon as she put the shoe back on my foot, I stepped backwards into some more with my other shoe, and that she didn’t get cross. My mother never got cross. She didn’t exactly do cartwheels, you understand, but she didn’t shout or snap or look as if she were suppressing apoplexy, as I do with my children when they step in something warm and squishy, as they always do. She just looked kind of tired for a moment, and then she grinned at me and said it was a good thing she loved me, which was very true. She’s a saint, my mother, especially where horse shit is concerned.
Mackinac