{"id":859,"date":"2012-07-30T04:04:19","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T02:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=859"},"modified":"2012-11-01T13:58:07","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T12:58:07","slug":"potter-goes-americano","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/?p=859","title":{"rendered":"Potter Goes Americano"},"content":{"rendered":"
We are setting up a tent in 110 degree South Dakota. There is a breeze every eight minutes, and it is just as uncomfortably warm and biting as the sun. We don’t talk, just work through sheets of sweat that drip down our faces. Upon completion of the tent we get back into the car and begin a short, quiet and agreed-upon journey to the steak house we saw on the way into the campsite. It’s been\u00a0twelve hours of driving and walking around the Badlands in South Dakota. Our\u00a0lips are dry and cracked and our faces red from the sun. \u00a0
\n\u00a0
\nWhen we step into the place, ten minutes later, we are so grateful for air conditioning that we both almost weep. The floor is covered in two inches of sawdust and country music is playing.\u00a0The wall is draped in\u00a0American flags and the heads of a variety of unfortunate animals. We become immediately aware that we are in the minority in three areas: we aren’t wearing cowboy hats, our belt buckles are smaller than a goat and our belts are not decorated with\u00a0any sort of cutting\u00a0tool (axe, knife, saw). We are seated near a wide window, which reveals a vast, rolling\u00a0prairie outside darkening under the setting sun.
\n\u00a0
\nEverything about this steakhouse is quintessentially American. That is, except us.<\/div>\n
“Smashing view, that!” I say.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“My word, Jennings,” Collin says, “haven’t seen a view of that calibre in at least a fortnight.”<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Oh, go on you\u00a0sorry git,” I say. “Last time shan’t have been any time in recent memory.” I open my menu. “Cracking list, this.”<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Indubitably,” Collin says. We stare at each other in irritation. This was not our idea.
\n\u00a0
\nWith the arrival of the waitress, we pull it together for a moment. “Haai!” she shouts at us. “How ya doin’?”
\n\u00a0
\n“Good.” I say with constraint. Collin nods in agreement, his lips tightly pursed.
\n\u00a0
\n“OK,” she realizes that no more is coming from us, so she pulls out her notebook and asks: “Drinks, boys?”<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“High Life,” Collin says.
\n\u00a0
\n“Me. Also. That.” I agree.
\n\u00a0
\n“OK,” she says again, eyeing us with a squint, then she’s off.
\n\u00a0
\n“Randy old bird, that one,” I say.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The idea to listen to the Harry Potter books on tape was\u00a0Collin’s; as was\u00a0the idea to listen to the British recording as read by the uber-British Stephen Fry. It has\u00a0taken us a relatively short while (6 hours:\u00a0a short while in 3-week road trip time)\u00a0to realize that everything about our driving experience is British. British Stephen Fry reading a Book written by a British woman, who uses all British English grammar, vocabulary and colloquialisms. When not listening to Fry’s Potter, I\u00a0am reading Chris Moore’s Fool, which is a retelling of King Lear as told by Pocket the Fool’s point of view. Even our GPS voice is that of a saucy computer generated British minx.\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The irony is that on a road trip across the great heartland of the United States, we\u00a0have now become British. Making this a more bitter pill to swallow is the fact that having\u00a0taught in Prague for eight years, I have been inundated by both Czechs and Americans who speak English so appallingly\u00a0British that it’s clear they\u00a0wish\u00a0they were sipping gin and tonics with Hugh Grant at the Henley Regatta.\u00a0For this reason, my faux-British sensor is\u00a0exceptionally sensitive and I eagerly and avidly mock those who trip its grumbly wire.\u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
In order to\u00a0combat this disturbing turn in\u00a0our national linguistic allegiances, we have come to\u00a0a\u00a0steak house in South Dakota which slaughters its own cows and which screeches America! in every possible way.\u00a0However, it’s not working yet.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Right then, do you fancy the T-bone or the Sirloin?” I ask Collin.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Sirloin, I do believe, and I can’t wait to have a proper tuck in, at that!” he says. We both cringe.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
The waitress has been lurking and she pops up on us like a friendly ambush. “So boys,\u00a0here are your beers.” She plops them on the wooden table in front of us. “What’s it gonna be?”<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Sirloin.\u00a0Medium rare. Please.”\u00a0I\u00a0feel a Britishism coming forth so I stuff\u00a0my High\u00a0Life into my mouth and drink.\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Same thing, please.”\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Bloody copycat,” I say around my beer.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Now, where you boys from?” the waitress asks.\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Green Bay,”\u00a0says Collin.\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Philly,” I say.\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“Oh.” She leaves.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
“A bit of a goof, that waitress, isn’t she?”\u00a0<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
As we’ve spent the day sweating and walking, the steaks, salad and beers\u00a0go down fast. The\u00a0whole while we try to stave off the\u00a0Britishisms\u00a0by just staring out the window\u00a0or at the customers’ handguns\u00a0or the baseball on TV, a game I swear I understood less by the time\u00a0I\u00a0left the place.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
We\u00a0get back to the campsite and spend the night drinking High Lifes, slapping away mosquitoes and then\u00a0dropping into the sweatiest sleep\u00a0in recent memory.\u00a0We’d be better off in\u00a0Nottingham this time of year.\u00a0Perhaps next summer.<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/div>\n
Til then, God save the Queen. \u00a0\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We are setting up a tent in 110 degree South Dakota. There is a breeze every eight minutes, and it is just as uncomfortably warm and biting as the sun. We don’t talk, just work through sheets of sweat that drip down our faces. Upon completion of the tent we get back into the car […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1EvEu-dR","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damiengaleone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}