One of the pleasures of living in a small, old-fashioned New England town is that it generally includes a small,
old-fashioned post office. Ours is particularly agreeable. It's in an attractive Federal-style brick building,
confident but not flashy, that looks like a post office ought to. It even smells nice -- a combination of gum adhesive
and old central heating turned up a little too high.
The counter employees are always cheerful, helpful and efficient, and pleased to give you an extra piece of tape
if it looks as if your envelope flap might peel open. Moreover, post offices here by and large deal only with postal
matters. They don't concern themselves with pension payments, car tax, TV licenses, lottery tickets, savings accounts,
or any of the hundred and one other things that make a visit to any British post office such a popular, all-day
event and provide a fulfilling and reliable diversion for chatty people who enjoy nothing so much as a good long
hunt in their purses and handbags for exact change. Here there are never any long lines and you are in and out
in minutes.
Best of all, once a year every American post office has a Customer Appreciation Day. Ours was yesterday. I had
never heard of this engaging custom, but I was taken with it immediately. The employees had hung up banners, put
out a long table with a nice checkered cloth, and laid on a generous spread of doughnuts, pastries, and hot coffee
-- all of it free.
After twenty years in Britain, this seemed a delightfully improbable notion, the idea of a faceless government
bureaucracy thanking me and my fellow townspeople for our patronage, but I was impressed and grateful -- and, I
must say, it was good to be reminded that postal employees are not just mindless automatons who spend their days
mangling letters and whimsically sending my royalty checks to a guy in Vermont named Bill Bubba but rather are
dedicated, highly trained individuals who spend their days mangling letters and sending my royalty checks to a
guy in Vermont named Bill Bubba.
Anyway, I was won over utterly. Now I would hate for you to think that my loyalty with respect to postal delivery
systems can be cheaply bought with a chocolate twirl doughnut and a Styrofoam cup of coffee, but in fact it can.
Much as I admire Britain's Royal Mail, it has never once offered me a morning snack, so I have to tell you that
as I strolled home from my errand, wiping crumbs from my face, my thoughts toward American life in general and
the U.S. Postal Service in particular were pretty incomparably favorable.
But, as nearly always with government services, it couldn't last. When I got home, the day's mail was on the mat.
There among the usual copious invitations to acquire new credit cards, save a rain forest, become a life member
of the National Incontinence Foundation, add my name (for a small fee) to the Who's Who of People Named Bill in
New England, help the National Rifle Association with its Arm-a-Toddler campaign, and the scores of other unsought
inducements, special offers, and solicitations that arrive each day at every American home -- well, there among
this mass was a forlorn and mangled letter that I had sent forty-one days earlier to a friend in California care
of his place of employment and that was now being returned to me marked "Insufficient Address -- Get Real
and Try Again" or words to that effect.
At the sight of this I issued a small, despairing sigh, and not merely because I had just sold the U.S. Postal
Service my soul for a doughnut. It happens that I had recently read an article on wordplay in the Smithsonian magazine
in which the author asserted that some puckish soul had once sent a letter addressed, with playful ambiguity, to
HILL
JOHN
MASS
and it had gotten there after the postal authorities had worked out that it was to be read as "John Underhill,
Andover, Mass." (Get it?)
It's a nice story, and I would truly like to believe it, but the fate of my letter to California seemed to suggest
a need for caution with regard to the postal service and its sleuthing abilities. The problem with my letter was
that I had addressed it to my friend merely "c/o Black Oak Books, Berkeley, California," without a street
name or number because I didn't know either. I appreciate that that is not a complete address, but it is a lot
more explicit than "Hill John Mass" and anyway Black Oak Books is a Berkeley institution. Anyone who
knows the city -- and I had assumed in my quaintly naive way that that would include Berkeley postal authorities
-- would know Black Oak Books. But evidently not. (Goodness knows, incidentally, what my letter had been doing
in California for nearly six weeks, though it came back with a nice tan and an urge to get in touch with its inner
feelings.)
Now just to give this plaintive tale a little heartwarming perspective, let me tell you that not long before I
departed from England, the Royal Mail had brought me, within forty-eight hours of its posting in London, a letter
addressed to "Bill Bryson, Writer, Yorkshire Dales," which is a pretty impressive bit of sleuthing. (And
never mind that the correspondent was a trifle off his head.)
So here I am, my affections torn between a postal service that never feeds me but can tackle a challenge and one
that gives me free tape and prompt service but won't help me out when I can't remember a street name. The lesson
to draw from this, of course, is that when you move from one country to another you have to accept that there are
some things that are better and some things that are worse, and there is nothing you can do about it. That may
not be the profoundest of insights to take away from a morning's outing, but I did get a free doughnut as well,
so on balance I guess I'm happy.
Now if you will excuse me I have to drive to Vermont and collect some mail from a Mr. Bubba.
(Some months after this piece was written, I received a letter from England addressed to "Mr. Bill Bryson,
Author of A Walk in the Woods, Lives Somewhere in New Hampshire, America." It arrived without comment
or emendation just five days after it was mailed. My congratulations to the U.S. Postal Service for an unassailable
triumph.)
Summary
After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English
wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by
aliens -- as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved
America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that
ice is not a luxury item.
Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes
disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's
attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended if at times bemused love letter
to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.
Table of Contents
Introduction xi
1. Coming Home 1
2. Mail Call 5
3. Drug Culture 9
4. What's Cooking? 13
5. Well, Doctor, I Was Just Trying to Lie Down 17
6. Rule Number 1 : Follow All Rules 20
7. Take Mc Out to the Ballpark 24
8. Help! 28
9. A Visit to the Barbershop 31
10. On the Hotline 35
11. Design Flaws 39
12. Room Service 43
13. Consuming Pleasures 47
14. The Numbers Game 51
15. Junk-Food Heaven 55
16. How to Have Fun at Home 59
17. Tales of the North Woods 63
18. The Cupholder Revolution 69
19. Number, Please 73
20. Friendly People 77
21. Why Everyone Is Worried 81
22. The Risk Factor 85
23. The War on Drugs 89
24. Dying Accents 93
25. Inefficiency Report 97
26. Why No One Walks 101
27. Wide-Open Spaces 105
28. Snoopers at Work 109
29. Lost at the Movies 113
30. Gardening with My Wife 117
31. Ah. Summer! 121
32. A Day at the Seaside 125
33. On Losing a Son 129
34. Highway Diversions 133
35. Fall in New England 138
36. The Best American Holiday 142
37. Deck the Halls 146
38. Fun in the Snow 151
39. The Mysteries of Christmas 155
40. Life in a Cold Climate 159
41. Hail to the Chief 163
42. Lost in Cyberland 167
43. Your Tax Form Explained 171
44. Book Tours 175
45. The Waste Generation 179
46. A Slight Inconvenience 185
47. At the Drive-In 189
48. Drowning in Red Tape 194
49. Life's Mysteries 198
50. So Sue Me 202
51. The Great Indoors 206
52. Death Watch 210
53. In Praise of Diners 214
54. Shopping Madness 218
55. The Fat of the Land 222
56. Your New Computer 226
57. How to Rent a Car 231
58. The Wasteland 235
59. The Flying Nightmare 239
60. Enough Already 243
61. At a Loss 248
62. Old News 252
63. Rules for Living 256
64. Our Town 261
65. Word Play 265
66. Last Night on the Titanic 269
67. Property News 273
68. Life's Technicalities 277
69. An Address to the Graduating Class of Kimball Union Academy, Meriden, New Hampshire 281
