Blue Highways: London and Brantford, Ontario

Unfolding the Map

Lost in Ontario sounds like it could be a movie.  But, it was William Least Heat-Moon's (LHM) experience when he took his shortcut through Ontario to New York.  Getting lost can be fun, if you are open to the experience.  For most of us, though, it is a pain.  For men, it can even be painful and the cure, asking directions, can be like surgery.  To see where we are lost, locate us on the map.

Book Quote

"....The showers kept at it, the traffic ran heavy.  I got lost in London, and again in Brantford; finally I was just driving, seeing nothing, waiting to get off the road."

Blue Highways: Part 8, Chapter 1

Downtown London, Ontario. Photo by xcommun and posted at Wikimedia Commons. Click on photo to go to host page.

London and Brantford, Ontario

I think that I've written about getting lost before, but I'm going to revisit it in this post.  I think that when I wrote of it previously, I referred to the act of getting lost as a fine thing.  My logic was that as Americans, we tend to hurry from place to place and don't allow ourselves to, as my mom constantly reminds me, stop and smell the roses.

But getting lost isn't positive and fun if one is in a hurry or is feeling tired.  So you can sympathize a little with LHM when he says that he gets lost in both London and Brantford.  He wants to get out of the rain, he wants to get back into the US, and he wants to stop driving.  The way through Canada is longer than he thought. 

Men are often stereotyped as being unable or unwilling to ask directions.  We are seen as the ones that hold the maps, memorize them, and then promptly take wrong turns so that by the time that our wives or girlfriends or any othe female passenger has to be called in for assistance, the situation is completely hopeless.  Not only do we get in these scrapes, but we are often seen as stubborn to boot - we will happily lead our crews to the gates of Hell before we admit that we are wrong.

There is some truth to this.  I love maps, and read them all the time, and get pretty upset if my wife dares to suggest that I am wrong.  And I have been wrong.  It still sets my teeth on edge when I am, and there are times when I watch my wife read a map, turning it this way and that when I know, KNOW, the way to go.  But that is simply pride and hubris.  As Roseanne Barr once famously suggested about men and maps, "....Men can read maps better than women. 'Cause only the male mind could conceive of one inch equalling a hundred miles."

My theory is that men tend to appropriate directions and maps because they are socialized to do so.  After all, the things that men do involve making a series of logical steps from point A to point B.  We do this in many of the activities in which we participate in our daily lives.  Something needs to be fixed?  Simple, just follow certain steps and it will work.  Problem need to be solved?  Again, very simple.  Just do this, that and one last thing, and problem gone.  Need to get to a place?  No problem.  Just follow the lines.

However, sometimes the information flow comes too fast.  We might be flying down the freeway and have a moment where our attentions go elsewhere.  That causes us to miss the exit that we needed.  We had everything planned out from point A to point B - heck, we don't even need the map any more so we didn't bother to bring it.  This is where the cascade of failures begins.  We get off at an exit two or maybe three exits down the road.  However, instead of turning back on the freeway, we figure we'll be able to cut some time off by simply going over to the next road and doubling back.  We're pretty sure that's what the map indicated.  However, that road circles around into another entirely different direction, and ends up at a crossroads with signs pointing to two towns whose names we never even heard of. 

By now, our pride is involved.  We've probably been arguing with our wife or girlfriend, who has been suggesting the most logical choice of going back to the freeway and back to the next exit all along.  Going back is out of the question in our male mind because it would be a monumental failure and tantamount to a dereliction of duty.  So, taking our best guess, we head toward one of the towns, only to realize that it was farther than we thought and we are hopelessly lost.  At that point, usually we resort to sending our female companion into a gas station to ask for directions.  We sit in the car, embarrassed, because we can imagine the station attendant looking at her with pity, and glancing at us with a slight expression of disgust at how that man could have so failed in this important masculine duty.

Of course, I am generalizing a lot here.  There are plenty of women who do their own navigation and hate having to ask directions.  There are plenty of men who do not get locked up in this comedy of errors.  My wife, for instance, doesn't like asking for directions and I am usually the one who will get out and talk to the gas station attendant.  But, the stereotypes ring true to me because I see that tendency in myself.  I love maps, I love to read them and I love to use them in that logical point A to point B way.

One of the reasons I love writing the Littourati blog is that my logical, rational, straight ahead point A to point B brain gets its satisfaction out of the pure fun of mapping these trips that authors have taken.  My creative, not so logical or rational brain, gets its fun by allowing itself to take these points on the map and connect them to whatever is inside me and putting it down for me, and ultimately whoever comes to the Littourati page, to see.  It's a great way for me to meld these two sides of my mind and, if the side benefit is that I will avoid cascading direction failure because either I allow myself to just be lost for a while and explore what's out there or I at least allow myself to admit my failure, ask directions and move on, then so be it.

Getting lost CAN be fun.  But if you're going someplace where your choices are bounded by time and necessity, you don't want to be lost, you just want to be there.  As our GPS navigation devices get better and better, chances are less that people will get lost.  In some ways, particularly for our efficiency and or time-effectiveness, that's great news.  In other ways, and particularly in the case of those chance amazing discoveries we might make because of being lost, that's a shame.  But have no fear.  We'll always have places to go, and most of the time, we'll get there whether we get lost or not.

Musical Interlude

I typed in The Google a query about songs referencing being lost, and this song, Destination Unknown by the appropriately named Missing Persons, came up.  I liked Missing Persons back in the day, and had forgotten about this song.  It fits, and I'll share it.

If you want to know more about London and Brantford

Brantford Expositor (newspaper)
City of Brantford
City of London
Discover Brantford
Fanshawe College
London Community News (newspaper)
London Free Press (newspaper)
The Londoner (newspaper)
Scene (London newspaper)
Tourism London
University of Western Ontario
Wikipedia: Brantford
Wikipedia: London

Next up:  Queenston-Lewiston Bridge, New York

Blue Highways: Harbor Beach, Michigan

Unfolding the Map

We stop in at the Crow's Nest in Harbor Beach for a beer with William Least Heat-Moon (LHM), and watch people dance.  While LHM is a little dismissive of the band and the dancers, it leads me to exhort my male Littourati friends to learn to dance and dance more.  To see where Harbor Beach sits, waltz on over to the map.

Book Quote

"At the Crow's Nest we drank 'America's Only Fire-Brewed Beer,' a brew remarkably interchangeable with any other American beer....

"Two young women drinking Scotch and Coke sat and waited to dance.  The one with deep, dark eye sockets relentlessly worked a stick of chewing gum.  The other, wearing snakeskin knee boots and golden slacks that fit as if gilded to her, was slender and had the eyes of a lynx.  Boys in yellowed shirts took her to the dance floor one after another.  They were stumps.  Dancing out of her pelvis, she swirled around them like smoke, moving across the floor, inching back, sliding away.  The siren went off, and the strobes flashed her into a wispy possibility.  The boys were dying for her, but they got drunk and sat down.  She danced on alone against the amplified drums and moved through the shadows of other dancers.  Six college boys from Ann Arbor came in to drink Heinekens, and one had a few turns with the lynx, but only his shoulders and hands danced.  No one else even tried."

Blue Highways: Part 7, Chapter 16

Downtown Harbor Beach, Michigan. Photo hosted at CityData. Click on picture to go to host page.

Harbor Beach, Michigan

Of all the lessons that I've learned in life, there is one that I try to pass on to my younger male friends.  Needless to say, they never listen to me.  So I will throw it out to the Littourati and others in the netiverse...

Men, if you are interested in meeting a lot of women, learn to dance.

As far as I can tell, there seems to be two general laws of human behavior.  The first and almost inviolate law is that American men love The Three Stooges, and American women think they are stupid.  I can count on one hand the number of women that I've met over the years that are Three Stooges fans.  I'm not sure why this law seems so prevalent, but my suspicion is that the Stooges take men down to their monkey brains, whereas women are much more advanced and rarely access that area of the brain.  They are more likely to like the refined and intelligent slapstick of Laurel and Hardy or The Marx Brothers.  Men like them too, but are easily able to just enjoy the pleasure of stupid noises, fingers poking eyes and hammers hitting heads.  Lest you think I'm too much off the mark, then here's some proof for you.  Women are more analytical in approaching jokes, whereas men are not.

The second almost inviolate law, it seems, is that American men don't like to dance, and women do.

This is not a universal law, at least not as universal as The Stooges.  There are men who love to dance, and women who don't.  However, men who love to dance are usually seen as different in some way.  Either they have made dance into a career because of an innate talent, or if they truly, truly love to dance they risk being labeled as "less than a man" or possibly "gay."  Of course, my gay friends embrace the label, but they are adults who've embraced their images, as are the straight men who dance who don't care what people think. 

However, in one's formative years in junior high school or high school, learning anything more than the rudiments of movement to music is perceived as "not cool."  Most men don't know how to dance properly, and dancing is a surefire way to make you look bad.  I remember, before going to my first school dance, my mother asking me if I knew how to dance.  I did a few steps that I thought were interesting, and she laughed at me.  It was not a kindly laugh.  It was a laugh that said I was going to look stupid on the dance floor.  I didn't have many dance moves, and like most men, I couldn't really move certain parts of my body, particularly my hips.  I was tall and gangly and kind of looked like a spastic stork on the dance floor.  In fact, most of the guys who danced in junior high or high school dances I attended moved as little as possible, in order to not look bad.

Girls, on the other hand, just knew, innately, how to move their bodies.  They seemed to be able to disconnect their midsections from the rest of their bodies and make those midsections do things that amazed and astounded me, as well as kindling in me the fires of teenage desire.  Anyone who has seen an attractive and good belly dancer will know what I'm writing about.  Even to this day, I am often struck about how good most women look while dancing AND what joy they take in it, even as the guys they are with look stiff and uncomfortable.

Eventually I learned formal dancing.  In my thirties my wife and I started taking dance lessons.  Waltz, foxtrot, two-step, polka and swing.  I found that in the confines of the rules of formal dancing, I was good.  I could keep time and rhythm, I could guide my wife around the dance floor and it was me, with the combination of moves that I led, that made her look good and because she looked good, I looked good too.  After that, I began to get compliments from women who were slightly envious of my wife about our dancing.  These women wanted to be on the dance floor, but their husbands/boyfriends didn't dance.

In the past couple of years, I learned that you don't even have to formally know how to dance to impress women.  Your willingness to dance will simply suffice.  Some former high school classmates told my wife that at the dances, I always danced with them.  They felt they didn't get much attention from other guys, but I always asked them to dance.  I had forgotten all this, but they remembered it twenty-five years later.

Are you getting the picture, guys?

All you have to do is dance or be willing, and you will be in a much better position to make women notice you.  All that whining about how you can't meet anybody will be past history.  You'll meet lots of women.  You will be in demand because you dance.  Knowing how to actually dance will help you even further.  You may even meet your true love on the dance floor.

Some years ago, after my wife and I learned some formal dancing, we went out to dinner at what used to be a speakeasy and dance club in San Antonio.  The tables were arranged around an oval dance floor, and at one side was a large dais where a big band was set up.  People could get up and dance before, during and after dinner.

One thing we noticed that puzzled us was that there were many couples of mismatched age there - older women in their 60s to 80s dancing with younger men in their 20s.  It seemed too far-fetched to surmise that so many grandsons were taking their grandmothers out dancing.  The men were good, too.  Later, we learned that there was a thriving business where young men who could dance offered their services to older women who wanted a night of dancing.  Either they were now alone, or their husbands didn't want to go dancing.  So they hired young men to accompany them for the evening.

Guys, I don't expect you to learn to dance so you can take older women out dancing for money.  But, I write that story because again, it demonstrates that no matter what age, women love dancing.  You are depriving yourselves if you continue to live in dance ignorance.  If there's one thing I could change about my youth, it would be simply this: I would have learned to dance.  I probably would have had a lot more fun.

Of course, if you are a jerk, no amount of dancing knowledge will help you, besides perhaps fooling some women until they really get to know you.  But, if you have a decent personality and self-awareness and esteem, dancing could be formidable addition to the range of qualities that will make you attractive.

Think about it, men!  I'm just sayin'...

Musical Interlude

Just in case, guys, you need any more proof, James Brown is here to exhort you to Get Up Offa That Thing.  A great dancer, I don't think James had any trouble getting the ladies.  (Here's a secret for you, Littourati.  I love funk music, and whether out or in the privacy of my own home, funk will get me up offa my thing and I WILL dance to it.  Parliament, Funkadelic, James Brown, Earth Wind and Fire, you name it.  It's just our little secret, though.)

If you want to know more about Harbor Beach

City of Harbor Beach
Harbor Beach Chamber of Commerce
Wikipedia: Harbor Beach

Next up: Bad Axe and Ivanhoe, Michigan