For years I’ve been collecting snatches of conversations I’ve overheard here Behind the Pine Curtain, phrases and expressions that mark this place as somewhere unique. Sometimes I think the language is all that is left to distinguish one region from another in this age of commercial homogeneity. One can be plopped down in a shopping district of a mid-sized town in Iowa, Georgia, Texas or Colorado, and — except for the weather and the accent — not notice any difference. You will see a Home Depot or Lowe’s, a Target, Wal-Mart, a smattering of food chains, a dozen or so clothing franchises,...
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A recent New York Times article recounted how a group of elderly Korean men are getting grief from McDonald’s management at a store in Queens, New York because they spend too much time there socializing while spending hardly any money. They might shell out $1.39 for a small order of fries to split among them, but mainly they are there to gab and presumably get away from their spouses. Now that might be an stereotype, but there must be a reason these men are willing to risk having the police called on them to overstay their welcome at a Mickey D’s.
Old men — and women — socializing at a McDonald’s...
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DALLAS — Inside the NorthPark Center is a sculpture titled Fountainhead. Images of folding currency stream down the sides, an endless river of money descending in two-dimensional form. The sculpture resembles a smaller version of one of those fake rock walls one can pay to climb, often in malls such as NorthPark. The purpose of this sculpture, I later read, is to encourage people to donate money to worthy causes. That was not immediately obvious. I figured it was an altar to spending, which seemed fitting. That is what the hordes of folks crowding this place the weekend after New Year’s were...
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Working at the car wash
Working at the car wash, yeah
Come on and sing it with me, car wash
Sing it with the feeling now, car wash yeah
— Rose Royce
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That banal disco song runs through my skull each time I head to the self-service dog wash I recently discovered, with a smelly pooch riding shotgun and looking concerned. Especially if it is Rosie, who hates traveling and pants so incessantly that she leaves drool all over the seat. Rosie is possibly part Yorkie, certainly part Nervous Nellie. She does not like change of routine and equates a car ride with being boarded or suffering...
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