Unspoiled sands spoiled by ‘Ugly Americans’
A Parisian friend once told me he considered Americans to be the teenagers at the party.
Around the time the U.S. State Department issued a travel advisory for much of Jamaica, my husband suggested we go there. He’d done research and found an all-inclusive resort in Montego Bay, about which I knew nothing save for a zippy little song from the ’70s.
I do pay attention to the State Department but didn’t check the advisories. Instead, to convince myself not to go, I, a dedicated member of the middle class, began to tally up the projects that need done (and paid for) around the house.
I am so glad we ignored me and went anyway. The air was perfumed, the sand was white, and the food was out of this world. We did not leave the resort grounds and saw nothing like what the State Department warned against — but then, we were also only five minutes from the airport and had scant exposure to potential gang activity.
I am not sure I could have enjoyed a more relaxing time, other than the invasion of my fellow Ugly Americans, folks who travel to a foreign land and then try to bend it into the shape of Texas, or Stamford. Funny thing, the original Ugly American was a decent man who tried to do the right thing in a 1958 novel of the same name. In the book, which was eventually made into a movie starring Marlon Brando, the decency of Homer Atkins served as a stark contrast to the United States’ flawed foreign aid policies.
These days, the phrase is applied to people who embarrass the rest of us abroad.
They came in hoards as we lounged by the juice bar. They invaded the beaches, commandeered the microphones, and left in their wake a sea of empty, sticky cups and the faint smell of sunblock. A Parisian friend once told me he considered Americans to be the teenagers at the party. Teenagers (and Americans) often mean well, and sometimes, they can stun you with their graciousness, but then there are those times when their exuberance is too, too much.
On the beach, our fellow Americans played Journey and Springsteen, and wore swimsuits festooned with the American flag, which gave us the opportunity to discuss whether the Flag Code restricts such adornment. I say yes. My traveling partner says no. We will let God sort that out.
We mostly just avoided our fellows and filled up on star apples and oxtail soup, beef patties and jerk chicken.
This is not to discount paying attention when you travel. Of course you should, and you should go where travel will broaden you, make you think, and put food on your plate that you cannot identify.
And then, on our last night, we were back on the beach watching the moon dip its toes into the water. Across the harbor was a far fancier resort, where patrons paid $1,000 to sleep in thatchroofed cottages set on stilts. (I know because I looked it up.) As shadows lengthened, the DJ down the beach announced it was time for karaoke. We were as far away as you could get from the revelers, but their voices traveled, and we were treated to heartfelt and sometimes-offkey renditions of June Carter Cash, Bobby Darin, and — naturally — Journey.
Then some man requested Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” and a cheer went up. When the singer got to the requisite Boston chant — “So good! So good! So good!” — the shouts shook the birds from the trees. Not joining in would have felt like not saluting the flag. How do you explain that kind of communal moment? We can be uncouth. We can be loud and rude, but we will, at the drop of a hat, willingly let our inhibitions go and sing our hearts out. You have to give us that.
Every vacation must come to an end, and when we returned to Florida, I went to the post office to send a package to my hometown in Missouri. The guy behind the counter took one look at the address and said, “Joplin? That’s a rough town.”
I was thinking about those travel advisories I’d read after we got back, and I started laughing. How does one respond to such a comment? Mention the multiple megachurches scattered around town? Insist the area’s lawless days are behind it? Apologize for some past wrong visited upon this man, maybe by one of my lawless cousins?
And then he added, “People from there are as tough as old shoe leather.”
I decided to let him have this.
“Yes,” I said, slipping back into my accent more than usual. “We are.”
Susan Campbell is the author of “Frog Hollow: Stories from an American Neighborhood,” “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker” and “Dating Jesus: A Story of Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl.” She is Distinguished Lecturer at the University of New Haven, where she teaches journalism.