The man with the pony tail and greying beard in the pub in Mancos, Colorado, is wearing a vintage Route 66 T-shirt.
It catches the eye of my travelling companion, Sarah Davey, who is determined that we will drive what’s left of the famous route the next day: “Look at that really cool T-shirt,” she says. “I want to photograph it.”
“Go on,” I say. But she won’t sneak a pic. So I try, but there just isn’t enough available light in the dimly lit pub. So I use flash. The flash lights up the room like the sunrise and the man swings round, looking fierce.
I try to explain. “It’s a great T-shirt,” I stutter. “We just wanted a picture.”
“Have it,” he says, and starts to wrestle the shirt off. “No, no,” I say, but by this time he’s sitting there in his undershirt looking grumpy, and the T-shirt is in my hand.
As he turns away he mutters: “Take it to another continent.” Then he adds: “You’re welcome.”
Like the smell of popcorn, you come across this phrase everywhere you go in the US, along with “have a nice day”. Irritating, because so patently insincere.
And yet the longer you stay, the more you are struck by Americans’ politeness, even kindness. Brash and loud? Not so much. Thoughtful, and interested? A lot of the time.
So there we are, dithering on the kerb of the main street of Leadville, Colorado, which, trying to remember whether we’re supposed to look right, left, and right again, or the other way round. Eventually it dawns on us that the town’s single traffic light is against us, and that an SUV, the light green for him, is waving us across.
Granted, Leadville has a population of around 3 000 and people are often friendlier in small towns. But they did it in San Francisco too, and in Santa Fe (although it’s not something you should expect, perhaps, if you want to survive your American holiday unscathed. And don’t even think about it in New York).
Americans are interested. Everywhere we went in a month-long holiday across the States, Sarah and I were greeted with a cheerful “Hullo, ladies!” As soon as they heard our accents, they would ask where we were from. And when I said South Africa, their polite “oh” would change to a pleasantly surprised “Really?”
In San Francisco a bus driver not only told us where to get off the bus, he asked another passenger alighting with us to point us in the right direction.
On a bus from Boston to Lexington we missed our stop in the dark. Another passenger realised we were looking agitated, pulled out a map and figured out where we should have got off. As he departed he asked the bus driver to advise us.
The driver turned out to be a soccer fan who had watched much of 2010’s World Cup, and in the ensuing discussion about vuvuzelas he managed to miss his own turn-around point, which meant he had to find a large parking lot to u-turn the bus.
Driving back along his route, we chatted about bus driver shifts and SA until we finally came back to where we should have got off in the first place. “There you are ladies, take care in the dark… you’re welcome.” We all waved as he drove off.
In Mancos, we drifted into the shop of a Native American, Nate Funmaker, who handmakes cowboy hats. These are works of art, and we tried on several, but the price tags of between $400 (about R3 000) and $800 apiece deterred us.
It didn’t matter that we clearly weren’t going to buy – we ended up spending half an hour in the shop talking. And the conversation ended with: “You ladies drive safely, now.”
At the Grand Canyon, where we hadn’t booked any accommodation, we were told the only room available was $170 a night, which meant we’d have to leave the canyon rim and stay in a cheaper hotel 12km away. But as we were disconsolately gathering up our bags, the receptionist’s boss leaned over and offered us a room for $75 (for both, not each), because she thought it was a waste to turn people away when there were empty rooms.
The night we arrived in New York, with our internal clocks set for British and SA time, we decided to find a bar at 3am. The barman was a pleasant Irish American who told us this was his second job – his day job was looking after jury members in a Brooklyn court. When we wanted a second glass of wine, we asked what time he closed. “When the last patrons leave,” he said. “But that’s okay, ladies, you have your wine.”
Not everyone was wonderful – particularly not the hotelkeeper in San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf area who said giving us an extra blanket each was “doing us a favour”, prompting something of a slanging match during which he said he wished we would leave, preferably right away. Seeing we had paid for four nights in advance, this wasn’t going to happen. But judging by his accent, he wasn’t a real American anyway.
He wouldn’t have given us the shirt off his back – but the blankets came in handy.
Have a nice day, now. - Weekend Argus