My sister in law’s youngest brother came to visit her in New Jersey once. He spent most of his time watching tv. There were seven channels to watch into the wee hours of the morning. I think a couple of them aired 24 hours at that time.
Where he lived, there were only a few channels and not a variety of programs to be seen on them. They ended early, signing off with the national anthem and displaying a test pattern symbol until the morning when programming resumed.
She said he was fascinated by the variety of programs, channels, and hours of viewing but in hindsight I don’t think that was the entire reason for all the hours he spent lost in sitcom space.
New Jersey was not like anything he was used to, and I think it intimidated him. He was no coward. At fifteen, he’d already broken who knows how many bones in the wild west where he lived with reckless abandon. But New Jersey was filled with pavement and buildings. It was a strange world with strange people and watching tv was his connection to the world he was familiar with.
He brightened up when a bunch of us went tubing in the Delaware River. Well, I went for the ride, but I opted out of the tubing. He was shocked and relieved to find natural beauty existed in the state.
When it was time for him to leave, my brother, sister-in-law, Rob and I drove him across the many states and the closer we got to his town, the happier he became. To be precise, my brother and Rob drove. I didn’t have a license then. When the two of them had driven until they were cross-eyed, they turned the wheel over to my sister-in-law, who promptly got off at the first rest area with a restaurant. She had driven for about five minutes at that point, and they didn’t let her drive again. I don’t remember the food, but I remember the looks we got weren’t friendly. Two men who seemed to be particularly disturbed by us were sitting at a counter. I overheard the name of one of them – well, nickname. Tiny was over six feet tall and at least 300 pounds. His shorter friend had the countenance of a pit bull.
I understood why her brother was more talkative, happy, and relaxed the closer we got to his home. Culture shock. He had culture shock in New Jersey. And I had it in Oklahoma (and at that restaurant, wherever that was). Women had long hair, but it was teased up high on their heads and men wore cowboy hats and boots. People looked at us like we had two heads and sometimes I could have used a translator. There was a lot of dirt and green and open sky. A storm hit one day and lightning streaked across the horizon stretching for what may have been miles. It was frightening.
We stayed with my sister-in-law’s family and her mother made something called chicken fried steak the first night. She also made flour tortillas. Both were extraordinarily delicious – and new to me. I’d never known either existed.
There were two other brothers at home, and they were both nice although they seemed to get a kick out of teasing me. I guess that was a way to make me feel welcome.
While we were there, we visited my sister in law’s friends. One day we canoed down a river. There were four couples and ours was the only canoe that didn’t tip over because Rob insisted that I stop “helping” to paddle.
It was fun. It was different. The people may have been strange to me, and from the way they stared, I was definitely strange to them. But I enjoyed meeting them and I enjoyed our stay. Nevertheless, I was happy when we were back to pavement and buildings. Home sweet home.