Nobody's Absurdities, No.55--A Hot Dog In Bean Town

Nobody's Opinion: Boy, have I got stories to tell you! I just got back from my first ever visit to Boston, where I was, like a typical Midwesterner, completely out of my element, and I must say…I enjoyed every minute of it.

Every where I looked, on every corner, there were other lost tourists just like myself also getting totally lost and having no clue just where to find Paul Revere’s House.

And just as exciting as watching all the lost people, was spotting the local rich people actually going into buildings that are older than the country itself, and having a beer---trying very hard not to show their wealth by having a great time in Irish pubs whose floors are so dirty that had they been in any other city in the United States, these people would have sold their latest stock in Apple before they would have even gone near them. The Harvard babies, who although dressed in funked-up jeans, can look at any one walking down the street and somehow they just know you don’t fit in.

They have this knowledge due to a chip that's implanted in their brain when they still in the womb.

Being as I am in the “have no money because I spent it all on my gas bill last week” underclass of Americans from the Middle-class twilight zone…coming into the eastern board of-- “I will park my 20-million dollar yacht right up to the expensive hotel next to the USS Constitution if I damn well feel like it” world of Boston’s elite---I had only enough money to last me a day.

And what a day!

I stayed in a motel in Braintree…where obviously, the founders of the town evidently decided they wanted to think like trees-- (mine included among them) therefore the name. The town was far enough away from Boston that when the Bunker Hill battle was going on, Abigail Adams and her son, young John Quincy, wisely watched it from Braintree.

All I can say is they must have had some kind of eyesight. It took me over 30 minutes by subway to get into downtown Boston, and I had trouble reading the subway charts.

Funny thing about those Yankees…no one talks to each other on the subway…no one that is but the Chinese, who have been doing the jobs that American’s would not do loooong before the Mexicans decided to claim the right.

If I were them, I would sue for defamation.

The Chinese have whole conversations on the subways and tell what appears to be, lots of very funny dirty jokes, because they are always laughing, while the rest of the mostly white yuppie passengers just sit and stare at some imaginary spots on the floor.

When I finally arrived at Boston Square, I took what every tourist knows as the Freedom Trail Tour…which is a red line on the streets of Boston going to all the famous historical sites.

A red line…painted on the ground to confuse the tourists, just to provide I’ve decided...cheap entertainment for the locals.

The Freedom Tour was fabulous and I instantly fell in love with the actor guide who was playing a character called Nathaniel Balch. In fact he was so good I left my video camera on and have over an hour of the camera pointing down at the ground while I walked around mesmerized.

This is my usual way of video taping most any vacation, and if I ever actually learn to turn the camera off, my family will worry, so I try not to disappoint them.

I did get some nice shots of butts, and packages, and a really good squirrel.

After the tour, (which I will tell you about later) I carried on following the red line…like a good girl…for over an hour before I realized I was about 500 miles south of the Bunker Hill monument…the place that I was trying to reach before dark. When I started seeing Italian restaurants on every corner, I started asking other lost tourists why was this red line going in circles, and why in the world were we all mindlessly following it?

The tourist I picked to ask was a German boy who spoke English with an Irish accent, which even he thought was funny when I started talking about Harry Potter and broke into my best rendition of “Danny Boy”... because he was German, and how could I have mistaken that?

Good thing WWII has been forgotten.

By this time, it was almost 3 o’clock, and so I asked two locals how to get over the water to the big Bunker Hill monument, and they said:

“If I were you, I would just take a picture from here and say you went.”

Well…never say that to a true patriot! I ran…well it was actually more like a Quasimodo half- skip, (due to new tennis shoes that did not fit) all the way OVER the bridge and UP the hill, for about, again…twenty miles out of my way.

And I felt quite please with myself I can tell you, when I finally made it, only to find out that you can actually go up to the top of the monument, which is taller I’m sure than the Washington Monument and Mount Rushmore combined, and only a three hundred step climb to the top.

Now, if I had NOT been skipping and hopping like a lone for over twenty miles dragging around my big purse (which is about 30 pounds) and my many cameras’ (which is another 30 pounds) ---going up those steps might have been easier.

What to do?

Okay, I was nuts. I took one look as I approached my mark and thought, “If those brave and courageous men who gave their lives and died on Bunker Hill Day could stand their ground…I certainly cannot wimp out now! I’m an American! And besides, I was born on June 17…I was meant to climb this!"

So up I went, stopping only about every three steps to puff. It was pretty sad.

Let’s just say, I’d make a better astronaut.

By the time I got to the top I didn’t even bother to look out the little windows. What’s the point? I might just die there. Let them come and get me.

Then…this really good looking young man looked at me and said, “Are you okay?”

I didn’t tell him I’d been training for a week, walking around my neighborhood with twenty pounds weights wrapped around my ankles therefore upping my reputation as the neighborhood’s wacko eccentric up a few notches, and all of it for nothing, no…I said, like the hot dog I am…”Well, what did you do---run up?”

“Only half way.”

I love good looking guys with muscles---but really.

Actually he was a great guy, because he ended up walking to the USS Constitution with me just to make sure I did not need an ambulance!

I love American men. Especially good dads…and he was a single dad with two girls…may God bless his sweet...soul…

After taking the ferry back to town, I decided to take the subway up to Harvard, to see where all my ancestors went to college, and look for the Skull and Bones House.

Well, what other reason is there to visit when you’re a nobody?

I asked a teacher where it was and she told me--- “Yale” and then added, “Don’t get into secret societies.” Well, what did she know---she was carrying around a book by Dorothy Parker. She could use a few secrets.

When I found a building that actually looked like it, I was standing in front of the door taking a picture and that same squirrel was standing right at my foot looking up at me. He had followed me all the way up from Boston Square, begging me to put him in my next picture.

Either that or squirrel fights are secretly being held in the halls of power.

The campus really is beautiful, but the funny thing is, most of the students were…you guessed it---Chinese. I did notice one or two rich Kennedy looking young men passing by obviously to replace George W. and Kerry in the Skull and Bones tradition and a few Indians…but no…mostly Chinese.

Harvard is training our next takeover…that’s comforting.

The long trip back to Braintree was pretty boring. A young suffering artist sat next to me on the train. He pulled out his sketch book, and put his pencil to actually draw something…but after twenty minutes, he gave up.

Then he just pulled his hood over his head and went to sleep, like a real bean. And that’s the difference. A hot dog like me, at his age, would have been drawing on that white paper like crazy.

If you’re going to be a rich suffering artist, you might as well fake it.

Well, I did it. The hot dog was back inside the bun at Braintree by nine o’clock, with the thoughts that Boston, I’m here to tell you, is one city worth suffering to see.

And as a true hot dog---I suggest you act like the native beans and take a cab.