Singing Songs about the Southland

Mates in Mathews

We travelled a bit south of DC last weekend to see a friend and former colleague, Carmen Chesney!  

We always thought she was a Canadian, but it turns out she’s from Virginia, who knew? Recently she took the big decision to return home to Virginia taking her husband and dogs with her.  And what a great home it is! We stayed right on the river, the kids got to kayak and we got to enjoy a beer watching the sunset, all of which was brilliant.  

The town we were in was called Mathews, which came fifth in the best small town in America contest a few years ago.  That’s a pretty big deal, given the huge number of small towns there are across this continent.  It was a nice place, it was also like stepping back in time.  We ate at a place called Richardson’s. It was straight out the ‘50s.  Thick milk shakes and wee milk bar to sit at.  If the Fonz walked in I’d not have been surprised!

What I really noticed was how different this small town was to the city.   Yeah, all my country friends are now saying that’s the same in Scotland, but that’s not how it feels here, certainly to me.  Here it was different.  In Scotland, when you travel to the country, you are still likely to see a Tesco or one of its little brothers somewhere around and there is likely to be a bus stop or railway station in close proximity, I feel there is just a greater feeling of connectivity to the city in most of Scotland than there was in Mathews.  

‘A train you say’?

I think part of this is down to the American reliance on cars.  Public transport here, out with the metropolitan areas, is a nightmare. For example, I travelled to Richmond which is a large town in Virginia, more of which below, earlier in the week.  It’s about 130 miles from DC and reached in a couple of hours on the massive four lane freeways that ran pretty much door to door.  I mention that as I am not talking about a place in the middle of nowhere.  Think Edinburgh to Aberdeen on a four lane each way motorway, this was a place that benefits from great roads!  However, I didn’t want to hire a car and looked at alternatives.  In short there were none!  A bus, train, taxi, walk combo was my only other means of getting there and it was going to take around 8 hours and cost me a small fortune!  This place is simply not geared up for the non-driver and I think it’s that which makes the small towns seem just a bit smaller.  People know and accept they are going to be travelling long distances for work and that a trip to the equivalent of Tesco is a day out.  Unlike public transport too, road travel is cheap with gas (yup still got the lingo) coming in at around $2 a gallon, thats around 7.5 litres!  I told an American colleague who is coming to the UK for the summer that the same gallon of fuel in Scotland would cost him around $20!  He just about fell of his seat!

One of my friends used to have a ‘Three P’s’ rule that governed where he lived.  This rule stated that if he couldn’t get a three key items that all began with ‘P’ within a three minute walk from the front door, then he couldn’t live there.  For the sake of completion, the three items beginning with ‘P’ were a pint of beer, pint of milk and packet of cigarettes!  The Three P’s rule is not one flourishing in rural Virginia and you know what?  I think thats a very good thing!

How far is it work?

Perhaps its the price of fuel that prompts Americans to travel so far within the country to find jobs!  Poor link, I know but…One of the things that is really noticeable here is how far people are prepared to go to work and live from their home towns or native states.  In most of the museums here people wear name tags and these tags often say where the individual comes from too.  It’s really common to see a Colin from Nebraska working next to an Angela from California in places that are thousands of miles from their homes.  Only since travelling around this country have I got a sense of how vast it it but also of how prepared so many people are to move within its borders in order to find work or education.  It’s all comparative and must be seen in context, but this is something that has really given me pause for thought in terms of working arrangements in Scotland in general. 

Rural Virginia is stunning.  The beaches are great, the kayaking was brilliant fun and pretty much all the history of the early settlers can be found here. We visited a place called Williamsburg which was where the founding fathers planned the revolution, there was even an Edinburgh Castle shop!

It was dead interesting and was a story really well told but I did find myself reflecting on how strange humanity can be.  There sat the Founding Fathers wanting independence from England as they were not being treated fairly whilst at the same time these same revolutionaries were oppressing the Native Americans and keeping slaves.  I know there is a historical context and things were no different in Britain at that time, I'm just saying is all!

Flags? Emblems of…?

One of the other things I noticed on my trips south this week were the number of confederate flags that were flying…here’s one.

These were the symbol of the southern states during the American Civil War, indeed it is still a flag which is flown either on its own or is incorporated within some state flags across the nation.  This flag was flown during the Civil Rights protests of the 1950 by some who were opposed to integration and, consequently, was seen by others as a symbol of a by-gone era of oppression.   Whatever the rights and wrongs of it all, and there have been well made arguments on both sides of the debate, it must give black people living and working in its shadow a wee pause for thought?  No?

All that said, racial awareness is something that is very much in focus here just now as it’s Black History Month.  This is celebrated every February in the States and, as I have just discovered, also celebrated in October in the UK!  Clearly the UK does this a little more quietly than in the US as I had no idea we did celebrate Black History Month!  

Black History Month is all over the TV both in the news and in general programming; sports stars wear BHM t-shirts in all their interviews and appearances and, as I see it, it is just something that is in the collective vision, certainly around DC.  I also think that’s a good thing.  There is no doubt this is still a racially divided nation but it is also a nation where this is acknowledged and initiatives such as this are in place to try to reduce that division.

The State Troopers

As I’ve mentioned, I spent a bit of time in the southern part of Virginia this week, whilst the first trip was pleasure the second trip was business, albeit that was pleasurable too (!) where I visited the Virginia State Police.  This is the only policing body here that can remotely be compared with Police Scotland.  Virginia has a 8.3 million residents as opposed to the 5.3 million in Scotland and the VSP is the only police service, and there are 378 of them in Virginia alone, that covers the entire state.  In total Virginia has around 21500 cops, with around 1900 of them working for VSP (Scotland has 17234 officers). The service was established in 1932 and, whilst they can provide the full range of policing functions, they are predominately a roads policing service.  

They were the smartest looking police department I have met with - proper short hair (I’m talking a zero at the back and sides and a number one on top!), no facial hair or visible tattoos are allowed and the officers I met had their uniformed pressed and polished to degree I have genuinely only ever seen on military parades.  They also described themselves as a paramilitary force, which perhaps points to why the looked this type of smart. VSP are, like so many things here, comparable but different.  

For those of you who are still awake and but growing tired with the police chat, worry no more, rather than going on about policing much longer, I just wanted to show you a photo of Cheryl Nottingham.  

Trooper Nottingham was the first woman to join VSP. She joined in 1976.  Anyone know when the first woman joined a traffic department in Scotland?  If so, please let me know.  Almost 40 years on and only 5% of VSP are female, again I’d be interested to know how that compares to Scotland?  Strikes me though, that this percentage is not high enough!  

Saying good bye to my family

The big downside for me this week was waving off my wife, Rhona and my kids Gregor and Eilidh who have just set off to return to Scotland.  It’s been great having them here and watching, particularly, how my kids have soaked up American culture as well as Americanisms, not sure how Gregor’s teacher will react should he call her ‘dude’ anytime soon!  

That's us having a last night out in our wee local eatery, Glory Days!

Having them here has left me looking at Scottish education and kid culture through a different lens.  They’ve loved the pledge of allegiance and the really strong cultural identity that brings, they’ve really enjoyed the museums and the sports and thought not wearing a tie to school and, in Gregors case, shorts was a pretty good thing.  I like how families are treated here and how kids just seem, despite all that I had envisaged before coming here, to be more protected than in Scotland.  By which I mean, theres no bad language in places children might be, indeed, bad language is not something I tend to hear here at all.  People also find it easier to engage with and chat to kids here than they do in Scotland and I am not worried that every grown up who chats to my kids is a paedophile! People just seem to look out more for kids and allow them to remain children longer, which I like.  

I will see my little team in a month and will look forward to hearing from them what they think is different in Scotland from a perspective of what they have just experienced.

Somebody seems to be reading this!

Now, its not often I say things and people listen, let alone act!  But it seems the organisers of the Super Bowl have had a wee, sly look at my blog because they’ve decided to drop the Romans next year and just go with a straight ’50’ rather than an ‘L’.  Others will tell you that the sponsors didn’t like the ‘L’ and didn’t think it would look good enough or be as striking as usual so they insisted the ‘L’  be dropped and the ’50’ used instead,  but I’m going with my version of events. 

Another set of unexpected readers seem to be the employers of the lying news anchor Bryan Williams.  Remember he’s the guy who said he was on the helicopter that got shot down in Iraq, then said he was actually on the helicopter that was just behind the one that was shot down, when in fact, he was nowhere near any of it.  Well, he got an unpaid six-month suspension this week and the speculation is that he won’t be back at all!

Whats that your reading?

I came across this wee publication this week.  Not a combination I'm used to seeing, it made me smile...thats all!

What I’ve learned this week

The Fonz and people like him, have a great life.

Whilst drivings cheap, I miss letting the ‘train take the strain’.

Some people think flags are more important than I do.

Black History Month is a good thing as is women in policing.

I miss my kids!

Any thoughts or comments are, as always, appreciated.

Very best

Richie