by Stephen Fry
He hands me a white lab coat while I ponder the task before me.
* * *
VERMONT
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
VT
Nickname:
The Green Mountain State
Capital:
Montpelier
Flower:
Red clover
Tree:
Sugar maple
Bird:
Hermit thrush
Motto:
Freedom and Unity
Well-known residents and natives: Chester Arthur (21st President), Calvin Coolidge (30th), John Deere, Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Sinclair Lewis, Pearl S. Buck, Jamaica Kincaid, John Irving, David Mamet, Rudy Vallée, Elizabeth Perkins, William H. Macy, Felicity Huffman, M. Emmet Walsh, KT Tunstall.
* * *
The base, I decide, should be of good vanilla-bean ice-cream, nothing more fancy than that. To hand are spatulas, spoons and little pots and bags of semi-frozen ingredients: cookie dough, biscuity substances, chocolate in the shape of a cow and so forth. I try to stay calm. I mustn’t be too childish about this, as what little dignity I have left is at stake. The temptation to produce a pink confection filled with marshmallows, strawberries and cake mix is strong, but I feel the need to fly the flag for British style and discretion. I find an ingredient called English toffee and swirl it into the vanilla base. Good. Not the kind of hard black toffees Kensington nannies gave children in their prams to keep them quiet while they kissed the footman, but a good start. To this promising base I add chocolate fudge, a gloopy substance that freezes when added to the ice-cream, like a lava flow meeting water. A granulated texture is added with which I feel well pleased.
Very fine–strong, adult, not too sweet, but there’s something missing…I rootle and scrabble, searching for the magic extra ingredient that will transform my mixture into a true flavour, my rough prototype into a working masterpiece. The clock is ticking, for a tour party is about to come in at any moment and I am to feed them and then stand with bowed head to receive their judgement.
Just as I am about to give up and offer my acceptable but now to my mind rather lame decoction my fingers curl around a bag of knobbly somethings. I have found it! It adds crunch, a hint of sophisticated bitterness and a rich musty, nutty centre around which the other flavours can play their unctuous, toffee-like, chocolaty games. Walnuts! I stir them in with my spatula and Sean helps me transfer the giant mixture into small tourist-sized tubs. This is done by squeezing a kind of piping bag. Within seconds I have lost all feeling in my hands.
‘It’s very cold,’ I observe.
‘Many are cold,’ says Sean, ‘but few are frozen.’
Before I have time to throw something at him, the tour party enters.
‘Welcome everybody,’ beams Sean. ‘This is a special occasion. You will be trying a new flavour, mixed by our Guest Flavorist, here. His invention is called…?’
‘Er…I…that is…um…’
‘trying to stay calm’.
Sean, the flavorologist.
‘Despite my humble demeanour, I really know that I have struck gold.’
‘…is called “Even Stephens”!’ extemporises Sean happily.
I stand meekly, submissively, hopefully while the tourists surge forward to begin the tasting. Despite my humble demeanour, I know, I really know that I have struck gold. There have not been many moments in my life when I have been quite so sure of success. But here, I am convinced, is a perfect blend of flavours.
Lake Champlain with New York State on the horizon.
The tourists agree. Once the filming stops and the camera crew have dived in too there is nothing left of Even Stephens but my memory of a solid-gold vanilla-based triumph.
Stephen, you created an ice-cream flavour. And it was good. Now you may rest.
Vermont seems even more beautiful on a full stomach. This is a state I will most certainly return to one day. It is the first landlocked state I have visited, but what it lacks in coastline it makes up for in mountains, valleys and lakes. I am leaving by ferry across Lake Champlain, through which runs Vermont’s northern border. At the prow of the boat my taxi points proudly towards the gigantic majesty of our next destination–New York State.
NEW YORK STATE
‘One of the most diverse adventure playgrounds on earth, where else can you meet deer-hunters and a man who raised money for the IRA.’
New York State is bigger than England. Despite this, it is only the twenty-seventh largest state in America, not even halfway up the list. The truth of how stupendously, absurdly large this country is has still failed properly to penetrate my brain. I have driven over a thousand miles and I have done no more than wander around an area on the map smaller than the nail of my little finger.
I cross Lake Champlain from Vermont into upstate New York. The lakes and wilderness here are all part of the Adirondack mountain chain. New York State also contains the Appalachians and the Catskills, with the Rivers Hudson, Allegheny, Susquehanna, Niagara and Delaware too. This is one of the most remarkable and diverse adventure playgrounds on earth. And that is before you even consider the delights of Broadway, Central Park, Greenwich Village and Long Island.
New York is nearly always called New York State, so as to distinguish it from New York City. This is true of Washington State too. Where I am now, Montreal, Canada is only eighty miles north, while Fifth Avenue, NYC is at least five and half hours away by fast car. The accents all around me are much closer to Canadian than to Brooklyn. The plaid shirts, the antlers, and the gun shops tell me that this is Hunting Country.
Somewhere along the line the American love affair with wilderness changed from the thoughtful, sensitive isolationism of Thoreau to the bully, manly, outdoorsman bravado of Teddy Roosevelt. It is not for me, as an outsider, either to bemoan or celebrate this fact, only to observe it. Deep in the male American psyche is a love affair with the backwoods, log-cabin, camping-out life.
Relaxing after ‘just about the most fabulous breakfast I have ever, ever eaten’.
There is no living creature here that cannot, in its right season, be hunted or trapped. Deer, moose, bear, squirrel, partridge, beaver, otter, possum, raccoon, you name it, there’s someone killing one right now. When I say hunted, I mean of course, shot at with a high-velocity rifle. I have no particular brief for killing animals with dogs or falcons, but when I hear the word ‘hunt’ I think of something more than a man in a forage cap and tartan shirt armed with a powerful carbine. In America it is different. Hunting means ‘man bonding with man, man bonding with son, man bonding with pick-up truck, man bonding with wood cabin, man bonding with rifle, man bonding–above all–with plaid’.
* * *
NEW YORK STATE
KEY FACTS
Abbreviation:
NY
Nickname:
The Empire State
Capital:
Albany
Flower:
Rose
Tree:
Sugar maple (I know: same as Vermont–copycats, eh?)
Bird:
Eastern bluebird
Motto:
Excelsior!
Well-known residents and natives: That would be unfair on the other states: there are thousands.
* * *
Into the Woods
I am to be the guest of a group of friends who have built themselves a cabin deep in the woods some ten or twenty miles from the town of Saranac, NY. Bill and Tom are nice guys, ordinary guys. Hunting for white-tail deer, which is the game they are mostly after, is like fishing for bass, a mostly blue-collar pastime in America. Think of that Michael Cimino film The Deer Hunter and you will get the idea. Bill and Tom are not, I am relieved to discover, machismo alpha-male show-offs, bullies or bigots. They are working men (sheet metal, transport, warehousing, that kind of thing) who pour all of their spare time into maintaining and enjoying their life in the woods.
‘Welcome to camp,’
says Tom.
The cabin is surprisingly warm and snug when I arrive at six o’clock on a bitterly cold morning. The taxi has never had to negotiate such rough tracks before and I am terribly afraid that I will suffer the humiliation of being towed by one of the enormous pick-up trucks that usually roam these pathways. One of the group’s number, Craig, has cooked just about the most fabulous breakfast I have ever, ever eaten. Bacon, sausage, French toast and lots and lots of home-tapped and home-refined maple syrup. All around the cabin are maple trees with pipework stuck into them, like hospital tubes and drips. Round the back is the machinery needed to transform the liquor from the tree into breakfast syrup.
No deer were killed in the making of our scene.
‘Now, let’s get you kitted up…’ Tom holds up a plaid jacket and an enormous pair of woollen trousers.
Naturally. Of course. It wouldn’t do for me to look dignified or sensible.
‘This hat is rather a sudden orange, isn’t it?’ I complain, dropping a day-glo foraging cap on the table.
‘Hunting orange, they call it. Other huntsmen know not to shoot you.’
‘Mm. Yes.’ I pick the cap up again. ‘I like it. Goes with my complexion.’
I make it very plain as we head for the trails that I would rather not hold a rifle and certainly prefer not to watch anything being killed. My sentimental Bambi-loving self is not keen on the idea of seeing a deer felled. The antlers on the wall of the cabin tell me that these guys, charming as they are, have done a good deal of killing in their time. They are perfectly okay about my reluctance to kill; I think they had sized me up for a cissy the moment I stepped out of the cab.
My role then is to skip along with them prattling about life and nature.
‘The American relationship with the outdoors,’ I say, ‘the Thoreau ideal. It’s deep in the American psyche isn’t it? Man and nature. The great paradox of a nation that invades and degrades the wilderness and yet treasures it above all else.’
‘Guess so.’
‘New York State contains this, the great outdoors, the American dream of the woods and wilderness but also the industry, the suburbs, the great urban sprawl and of course Manhattan. Maybe New York State is symbolic of all America, embodying both the call of the wild and the call of the street.’
‘Maybe.’
‘You’re right. I’m talking drivel. I’ll shut up now.’
I am happy to say that no deer were killed in the making of our scene. In fact we didn’t even see a deer, which suited me. Instead I enjoyed wonderful hospitality, warm companionship and a good walk in beautiful woodland. I berated myself for having been so afraid.
But, after a cup of coffee, it was time for a three-hundred-and-thirty-mile drive: I was due to meet another group of potentially terrifying men.
Italian Americans.
Taps side of nose.
Wise guys.
Winks conspiratorially.
GoodFellas.
Bad-a-bing!
The Middle Village Social Club
Middle Village is an area of Queens, New York mostly inhabited by Irish and Italian Americans, two ethnic groups which traditionally get along with each other pretty well.
I have been invited to say hello to the boys of a particular social club. I have seen these places before, in gangster pictures like Donnie Brasco, GoodFellas and Casino. Not to mention in real footage of FBI stings and wiretappings on the Gambino family clubs of John Gotti and Sammy ‘the Bull’ Gravano. Am I really going to hang out with organised crime hoods, with mobsters? Is that an ethical thing to do? To contribute to the glamour and status of violent criminals?
Well, this social club is largely different. It is–how can I put it nicely?–a home for failed gangsters. For guys who didn’t quite make it. Possibly because they were too nice. The old ones are really very old indeed and the young ones, like Mikey who wears a Godfather t-shirt under the obligatory leather jacket, have earned more money from doing bit-parts in The Sopranos rather than from anything illegal.
Mikey. He cannot stop smiling. He cannot stop talking.
At least so I am led to believe.
I am welcomed inside this little two-room house by Mikey and the boys. The back room is given over to card games; the front room has a big screen TV, sofa, a bar and walls that are covered with sporting photographs and posters. Betting seems to play a large part in the life of this club.
I am not surprised Mikey has found work in TV and movies, he has a central-casting low hairline and a ‘you talking to me?’ posture and gait. He cannot stop smiling. He cannot stop telling stories. He cannot stop talking. I have not been in there half an hour before he tells me a story he has already told. The others all meet my confused gaze and roll their eyes. ‘Good old Mikey, he don’t know when to shut up,’ an old boy whispers to me. I suppose that is why he did not pursue a life as a button man or whatever the phrase is. That and the fact that he just seems too, well, too good-natured, too lacking in guile. He is like a great puppy. He tells twice a story about chasing a thief through the neighbourhood, tackling him and punching his lights out before the police arrived, so perhaps I am being a little naïve. He is anxious for me to know that he would only ever show violence to someone ‘nasty’. The thief had stolen a child’s bicycle. ‘And dat,’ he says, ‘youse do not do.’ You will think ‘youse’ is a bit old hat, a bit Damon Runyon, but I promise you that is how he said it.
I sit down on the sofa with Dave, who tells me tales about ‘da old days’. An immensely complex story about cocking up a horse-nobbling takes ten minutes and is filled with the kind of colour and splendour that fiction cannot match. Some time back in the forties, when Dave was young, he had ‘a sure ting’, he had inside knowledge of a horse which would win a race ‘on account of how he had dis drug, dis whatchercallit’.
Dave (on plaid sofa) tells a story against himself.
I am stared at through Dave’s one good eye and nudged quite violently to provide the name of this drug, as if I am an expert. This puzzles me. I had no idea that there was a drug which could guarantee a horse winning a race. ‘Um, a stimulant of some kind maybe…’
‘Dat’s it! Stimu-like you said.’
I get an even sharper dig in the ribs for having solved the mystery of what the drug might have been. I am beginning to revise my opinion of the non-violent nature of these people. Anecdotal Assault may not carry a heavy sentence, may not even be recognised in law as a crime against the person, but by the time I rise from the sofa I am more or less black and blue. Dave told me tales of his days running numbers, laying bets and serving time in prison (only on-track betting, OTB, is legal in America, so all street bookies are liable to arrest). ‘We always ordered dinner from Giovanni’s restaurant to be delivered to our cell. The sergeant would let us make the call so long as we included a linguini for him. It was a good arrangement. Worked well for twenty years till they rebuilt the station house and moved the sergeant to another precinct. What are you gonna do?’ All his stories seemed to feature him in a disastrous situation where, as a small-time bookie’s runner, he lost money for someone, forgot to lay off a bet, got in trouble, ended up in prison. The speed with which he can still shade odds and rattle through the 13–5, 11–4-type ratios made my head spin. He may have liked to present himself as one of nature’s losers, but he was clearly not a fool.
Wise Guys.
Whenever I press these old boys and use words like ‘Mafia’ or ‘cosa nostra’, they smile and raise their hands in innocent bewilderment. I am beginning to think they are simply charming senior citizens who just happen to have the same accents and ethnicity as Mafiosi.
Then I spot the bullet holes.
You can see one in the group photograph, in the metal door upright, just next to the Star-Spangled Banner. There are more inside.
‘Yeah, that was a drive-by. We was playing cards. A bullet just missed Don’s head. So much.’ Mikey brings his forefinger and thumb very close together.
‘Bu
t why?’ I ask.
‘Sheeesh. What are you gonna do?’
Which is no kind of answer.
The guy who really owns and runs the club turns up. A barrel-chested fellow about five foot tall. There is something in his eye which compels me to stop asking questions. He too is friendly, but it is impossible not to notice when the mere presence of someone in a room shuts everyone else up.
He has the extraordinary ability to silence Mikey. I smell power.
John the Cabbie
My guide in New York City has been a cabbie called John. He lives round the corner from the Italian social club and he is the one who effected my introduction. John is of Irish stock; indeed he quite proudly tells me how he had worked hard for Noraid, the ‘charity’ that funded the IRA, back in the days of the Troubles.
As we drive to his yellow-cab garage, which is like a scene out of the seventies sitcom Taxi, I ask him how he feels about the new accord in Northern Irish politics.
‘I fought for thirty years to let Ian Paisley rule?’ he says. ‘How do you think I feel?’
Mm. In a short while I have met deer-hunters, (not very) wise guys and a man who raised money for the IRA. And I liked them all. I saw their points of view.
What is happening to me?
John the Irish cabbie: ‘I fought for thirty years to let Ian Paisley rule? How do you think I feel?’
The Taxi Driver.
NEW JERSEY
‘And so I find myself driving into hell.’
New Jersey is, let’s be honest, the Essex of America. Jersey girls and Jersey boys will forever be mocked in jokes and songs for their dumbness, illiteracy, vulgarity and sexual availability. The industrial ugliness of much of the state where it borders the Hudson and looks across the river to Manhattan is hard to deny: Jersey City, Newark, Brunswick, Elizabeth and the chemical factories and choking pollution they bring have conferred great prosperity, but also a damningly negative image. It can call itself ‘The Garden State’ as much as it likes but it makes no difference; for all the beauties of Princeton and much of the coastline, Jersey will always, it seems, suffer from being looked on as something of a dump. About as far from Newport, RI as you can get, culturally and demographically.
