Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
in dark suits, escorted by some junior-looking Aryans from the State Department. They
all stood politely while the Marine Corps Band blared a lively tune, which I didn't recog-
nize. Then there was a twenty-one-gun salute, but the cannons didn't go “BOOM!” as you
would expect. They went “PUFF.” They were filled with some kind of noiseless powder,
presumably so as not to waken the president in the White House across the way, so when
the battery commander shouted, “Ready, steady, go!” or whatever it was he shouted, there
followed seven quick puff sounds and then a dense cloud of smoke drifted over us and
went on a long slow waft across the park. This was done three times because there were
only seven cannons. Then Nakasone gave a friendly wave to the crowd-which is to say, to
me-and sprinted with his party to the presidential helicopters, whose blades were already
whirring to life. After a moment they rose up, tilted past the Washington Monument and
were gone, and everyone back on the ground relaxed and had a smoke.
Weeks afterwards, back in London, I told people about my private encounter with
Nakasone and the Marine Corps Band and the noiseless cannons and how the prime minis-
ter of Japan had waved to me alone. Most of them would listen politely, then allow a small
pauseandsay,“DidItellyouthatMavishastogobackintohospitalnextweektohaveher
feet done?” or something like that. The English can be so crushing sometimes.
From Washington I took US 301 out past Annapolis and the US Naval Academy and over
a long, low bridge across the Chesapeake Bay into eastern Maryland. Before 1952, when
the bridge was built, the eastern side of the bay had enjoyed centuries of isolation. Ever
since then, people have been saying that outsiders will flood in and ruin the peninsula, but
it still looked pretty unspoiled to me, and my guess is that it's the outsiders who have kept
it that way. It's always the outsiders who are the most fiercely opposed to shopping malls
and bowling alleys, which the locals in their simple, trusting way tend to think might be
kind of handy.
Chestertown, the first town of any size I came to, confirmed this. The first thing I saw was
a woman in a bright pink track suit zipping past on a bicycle with a wicker basket on the
front. Only an urban emigre would have a bicycle with a wicker basket. A local person
would have a Subaru pickup truck. There seemed to be a lot of these bike ladies about
and between them they had clearly made Chestertown into a model community. The whole
place was as neat as a pin. The sidewalks were paved with brick and lined with trees, and
there was a well-tended park in the middle of the business district. The library was busy.
The movie theater was still in business and not showing a Death Wish movie. Everything
abouttheplacewastranquilandappealing.ThiswasasniceatownasIhadseen.Thiswas
almost Amalgam.
