passing in america: image and identity

...if only this were more than just pretty words on a sticker...

You may have noticed by now that I am American, which means I am cooler than you. Despite what Americas' less than savory reputation worldwide might lead you to believe, however, we live much the same as you, benighted heathen reader from foreign parts, truly we do.
Each morning, after I've had my coffee and checked to see that all my millions of dollars are safe aboard my yacht, I load my handgun with fresh ammunition and go dump a barrel of crude oil out into the nearest creek, and..

-No, ha ha, actually I wander around in my kitchen like a lost soul until the caffeine kicks in, and then I go beat my slaves and wipe out another hundred or so chinese railroad workers who...

-No, that's a JOKE. Ha!

Actually, like everyone else in America, I am from somewhere else, but unlike most, I walked here from Mongolia. Well, I didn't really do this personally, but way way back there in my distant genetic past you'll find a bunch of little stubby red people with some nasty looking feet. I'se an Indian, y'all!

So. Every morning after I've tied Narcissa Whitman to the hot wood stove and scalped her, I don my feathered headdress...



I'll stop.

******************

I live in a town that has decided to enhance it's public image with the ambiance of the Old West. We have split rail fences along the main street, lots of wagon wheels scattered about, a large fiberglass 49'er panning for gallstones on the corner of Cherry and 3rd, and an abandoned Pakistani quick-mart.

The fact of the matter is, this area had a completely different look and feel back in those days, but it isn't one that the rest of the world (Canada, in this case) associates with 'The American Wild West' so we're stuck with a faux 'high desert' theme.

Perhaps this is better than the bleak, foggy 'Victorian era alcoholics and gutter French meet deeply resentful Pelagic-derived swamp-dwelling head-hunters' thing that was actually in place; I dunno. I think that could have been pretty cool if they'd done it right, myself.
...johnny depp is just out of frame here smoking opium. meanwhile bilbo baggins peels the living skin from chief lalooska inside that hut there upper right.


This was ostensibly a mining town, although the actual mining took place a few miles up the road. What they (the white folk) did here was drink to excess, scratch fleas, bang Nooksack 'tang, slog through the mud, and have huge garbage fires.

You dig down about a foot and a half anywhere inside the original city limits and you hit a layer of charred Victorian era garbage about 12 inches deep. This is how they raised the town above the flood plain back before the EPA...every year they'd burn the huge pile of accumulated trash at the edge of town, spread the ashes flat and plat another city block.

Anyway, we're stuck with the constipated 49'er and the false-fronted buildings. Could be worse, and by worse, I mean Leavenworth. At least I can go buy a short case of Miller without being having my earholes assaulted every noon by some fucking nut with an accordion who yodels....leavenworth...small town in the foothills of the cascades or strange time-space anomaly with yodelling?

A couple of miles down the road is Lynden. Lynden is under the mistaken impression that it is 1. Dutch, and that 2. People find this charming. Fifteen years ago the people who worked on the main street were required to wear comic opera Dutch attire, even the poor guy who worked in Schucks Auto Parts.
...everyone in Holland looks exactly like this. it's true. they do.

These days that shit is largely confined to a couple of restaurants, but the place is still heavy on the Flemish building details and the tulips. Although oddly enough, come spring you CANNOT BUY A FRICKEN' TULIP BULB IN LYNDEN. You might find a couple of wizened up old 'Darwin' bulbs in the grocery store and that's it. For tulips you have to drive 60 some-odd miles down to Mt. Vernon, which is Federal-era themed. You know, because of the whole 'Mt. Vernon' thing.

No, if you want to visit America you can either go to Glacier (Loggers, farmers, snow bunnies and 'boarders) or Everson (farmers, loggers, migrant workers.) Both of them are really nice little towns, and both of them are simply small rural communities with their own identity, content to let the inhabitants maintain some semblance of self-respect while they go about their business.

Between where I sit and Lynden there are approximately three NA reservations. As far as I know, they're all members of the Nooksack tribe, just different bands. I know next to nothing about them. At one point The Stainless Steel Amazon was going out with a kid from the Goshen Road res and he didn't even know anything about it. It strikes me as very odd.
Another thing that strikes me as odd, and also kind of funny, is that each year the Goshen Road band hold an open house, where they sell among other things, Indian dolls. These dolls are a huge hit with the local ladies of a certain age.

The crafter buys a 'Storybook' doll body, sometimes tinted, most times not. This body is then dressed in 'Indian' costume and sold for an outrageous sum, and sold by the metric boxcar load.
And all the dollies? Are wearing Cherokee costumes. Every one of them.
...woo woo indeed! interpreting the noble Cherokee warrior as only an Armenian girl from California can.

The Cherokee costume is the Native American garb popularized by the western movies of the past. Everyone associates Cherokee garb with Indians. Even other Indians. I mentioned this to one of the women one year. She was selling blonde dollies dressed in fringed hide and beads. She laughed. "I know, it's Midwest," she said

"...but when we dress 'em right nobody buys them."

In America, you pass on the left.