Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
shield? But I couldn't remember what it was. So now, for no reason other than that I had
nothing better to do, I went over and had a look at the A&P's panty shield section. There
was a surprising diversity of them. I would never have guessed that the market was so
buoyant or indeed that there were so many panties in Bryson City that needed shielding. I
had never paid much attention to this sort of thing before and it was really kind of inter-
esting. I don't know how long I spent poking about among the various brands and reading
the instructions for use, or whether I might even have started talking to myself a little, as
I sometimes do when I am happily occupied. But I suppose it must have been quite some
timeInanycase,attheverymomentthatIpickedupapacketofNewFreedomThins,with
Funnel-Dot Protection TM, and cried triumphantly, “Aha! There you are, you little bug-
gers!” I turned my head a fraction and noticed that at the far end of the aisle the manager
and two female assistants were watching me. I blushed and clumsily wedged the packet
back on the shelves. “Just browsing!” I called in an unconvincing voice, hoping I didn't
look too dangerous or insane, and made for the exit. I remembered reading some weeks
before that it is still against the law in twenty US states, most of them in the Deep South,
for heterosexuals to engage in oral or anal intercourse. I had nothing like that in mind just
now, you understand, but I think it indicates that some of these places can be doggedly un-
enlightened in matters pertaining to sex and could well have ordinances with respect to the
unlawfulhandlingofpantyshields.Itwouldbejustmylucktopullafive-to-ten stretchfor
some unintended perversion in a place like North Carolina. At all events, I felt fortunate to
make it back to my motel without being intercepted bythe authorities, and spent the rest of
my short stay in Bryson City behaving with the utmost circumspection.
The Great Smoky Mountains National Park covers 500,000 acres in North Carolina and
Tennessee. I didn't realize it before I went there, but it is the most popular national park
in America, attracting nine million visitors a year, three times as many as any other na-
tional park, and even early on a Sunday morning in October it was crowded. The road
between Bryson City and Cherokee, at the park's edge, was a straggly collection of mo-
tels, junky-looking auto repair shops, trailer courts and barbecue shacks perched on the
edge of a glittering stream in a cleft in the mountains. It must have been beautiful once,
with the dark mountains squeezing in from both sides, but now it was just squalid. Chero-
kee itself was even worse. It is the biggest Indian reservation in the Eastern United States
and it was packed from one end to the other with souvenir stores selling tawdry Indian
trinkets,allOfthemwithbigsignsontheirroofsandsidessaying,MOCCASINS!INDIAN
JEWELRY! TOMAHAWKS! POLISHED GEMSTONES! CRAPPY ITEMS OF EVERY
DESCRIPTION!Someoftheplaceshadacagedbrownbearoutfront—theCherokeemas-
cot, I gathered—and around each of these was a knot of small boys trying to provoke the
animal into a show of ferocity, encouraged from a safe distance by their fathers. At oth-
er stores you could have your photograph taken with a genuine, hung-over, flabby-titted
