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trunk calls,
The first time I heard of a trunk call was in the movie DR. STRANGELOVE. Peter Sellers, playing Group Captain Lionel Mandrake, was trying to contact the President of the United States on a pay phone. He didn’t have enough money for a person to person call so he tried for a trunk call, a station to station call.
For years I’d been the despair of my mother because as a left-hander I politely but resolutely declined to eat the American way—grasping the fork in your left hand to steady the food while cutting, then transferring it to your right hand to lift the food to your mouth. It seemed ridiculously cumbersome, and here suddenly was a whole country that ate the way I did.
I also eat left-handed and never adopted the American method of dining, even though I am an American. My dad said I would have made a good spy.
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Much as I admire sand’s miraculous ability to be transformed into useful objects like glass and concrete, I am not a great fan of it in its natural state. To me, it is primarily a hostile barrier that stands between a parking lot and water. It blows in your face, gets in your sandwiches, swallows vital objects like car keys and coins. In hot countries, it burns your feet and makes you go “Ooh! Ah!” and hop to the water in a fashion that people with better bodies find amusing. When you are wet, it adheres to you like stucco, and cannot be shifted with a fireman’s hose. But—and here’s the
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back. The trick of successful walking, I always say, is knowing when to stop.
“Oh yes, the food!” cried his wife, seizing the point. “They have the most extraordinary attitude to food.” “What, because they like it tasty?” I inquired with a thin smile. “No, my dear, the portions. The portions in America are positively obscene.” “I had a steak one time—” the man began with a little chortle. “And the things they do to the language! They simply cannot speak the Queen’s English.”
What is obscene here. Was the steak too small or too large? If only the husband had been allowed to finish. I’m also reminded of a joke from the opening monologue by Woody Allen in ANNIE HALL: Two women are eating dinner in a restaurant. One says, “This food is really terrible.” The other woman replies,
“Yes, and such small portions, too.”
and I unhesitatingly gave Durham my vote for best cathedral in Britain.
(I should perhaps explain that as a rule in Britain no matter how many windows there are in a bank, post office, or rail station, only two of them will be open, except at very busy times, when just one will be open.)
One thing I have learned over the years is that your impressions of a place are necessarily, and often unshakably, colored by the route you take into it.
I’m not sure this is true in all cases but I can think of one Vermont village that bears this out. Morgan Center is a charming little hamlet on Lake Seymour, the largest lake totally within the state. It rests just a few miles from Canada; it’s summer population may reach two hundred, about twice the winter total.
If one comes into Morgan Center from the east, away from Island Pond, MC seems like just another tiny Vermont town, with one church, a lodge, and little else.
But if you approach it from the west, you do so driving down a steep incline with the lake and town on your right. From that high vantage point, MC looks to be a New England paradise. And it looks even better at night, with the lights from the houses on Seymour’s shore reflecting off the water like a mirror. Oh, what a sight.
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Why do we foot a bill rather than, say, head it? Why do we say that our nose is running? (Mine slides.) Who ate the first oyster, and how on earth did anyone ever figure out that ambergris would make an excellent fixative for perfumes?
Why when we are happy do we say that we are head over heels, when in fact our head normally is over our heels?