Travel Reference
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comfort, and felt a sap for ever having left America. Life was so abundant here, so easy, so
convenient. Suddenly I wanted a refrigerator that made its own ice cubes and a waterproof
radiofortheshower.Iwantedanelectricorangejuicerandaroomionizerandawristwatch
that would keep me in touch with my biorhythms. I wanted it all. Once in the evening I
went upstairs to go to the bathroom and walked past one of the children's bedrooms. The
door was open and a bedside light was on. There were toys everywhere-on the floor, on
shelves, tumbling out of a wooden trunk. It looked like Santa's workshop. But there was
nothing extraordinary about this: it was just a typical middle-class American bedroom.
And as for American closets, they seem to be always full of yesterday's enthusiasms: golf
clubs, scuba diving equipment tennis rackets, exercise machines, tape recorders, darkroom
equipment, objects that once excited their owner and then were replaced by other ob-
jects even more shiny and exciting. That is the great, seductive thing about America-the
people always get what they want, right now, whether it is good for them or not. There is
something deeply worrying, and awesomely irresponsible, about this endless self-gratific-
ation, this constant appeal to the baser instincts.
IshouldpointoutthatIamnottalkingaboutHalandLuciainallthis.Theyaregoodpeople
and lead modest and responsible lives. Their closets aren't full of scuba diving equipment
and seldom-used tennis rackets. They are full of mundane items like buckets and galoshes,
earmuffsandscouringpowders.Iknowthisforafactbecauselateinthenightwhenevery-
one was asleep I crept out of bed and had a good look.
In the morning, I dropped Hal at his office downtown-correction, center city-and the drive
through Fairmount Park was as enchanting in the morning sunshine as it had been at dusk.
All cities should have parks like this, I thought. He told me some more interesting things
aboutPhiladelphia:thatitspentmoremoneyonpublicartthananyothercityinAmerica-1
percentofthetotalcitybudget-andyetithadanilliteracyrateof40percent.Hepointedout
tome,inthemiddleofFairmountPark,thepalatialPhiladelphiaMuseumofArt,whichhad
become the city's top tourist attraction, not because of its collection of 500,000 paintings,
but because its front steps were the ones Sylvester Stallone sprinted up in Rocky. People
were actually coming to the museum in buses, looking at the steps and leaving without
ever going inside to see the pictures. As we were driving we listened to a radio talk show
hosted by a man named Howard Stern. Howard Stern had a keen interest in sex and was
engagingly direct with his callers. “Good morning, Marilyn,” he would say to a caller, “are
you wearing panties?” This, we agreed, beat most early-morning talk shows hands down.
Howard queried his callers with arresting candor and a measure of prurience I had not be-
fore encountered on American radio.
