The Pursuit of Happiness

511

I’ve been thinking about taking a trip to Portugal. I’ve always been fascinated by how often spies and counterspies and riddle-ridden con-girls seem to meet there to swap secrets and stuff wads of euros into their pants pockets. If I go, I’ll sit in a coffee shop and try and pick them out of the crowd. And you can get an okay hotel room in Lisbon for 24 bucks a night, 28 bucks with breakfast.

The Portuguese are friendly folks, too. When I was a kid we lived along the Nechaco River in British Columbia for a time. A lot of Portuguese immigrated there to work in the salmon canneries along the river. Among them was a girl named Evelina, who had eyes as bright as Jupiter in an April sky. We became inseparable 5th graders.

When I was a traveling man I spent quite a lot of time in Rhode Island, the state where most Portuguese Americans live. They came and worked fish out of the Atlantic; now they own small shops and cafés, and they cap tires. I always enjoyed how much we laughed when we got together, and that they’re serious Catholics who wouldn’t listen to banjo music if you wrote them a $100 check on the spot.

The main obstacle to our going to Portugal right now is the risk of embarrassment. Everyone I know who travels internationally reports being constantly asked, “Trump? What were you thinking? Have you lost your minds?” A pal asked a Paris waiter if they had any tarte au flan left. “Flan! Of course we have flan!” the waiter replied. “But are you crazy? Have you gone nuts? No flan for you!”

A lot of the world has had it with us. International travel to the US is down 25% since last year – we’re losing billions of tourism dollars – and no one a quarter mile off our shores buys the idea of American Exceptionalism anymore, no matter how many MOABs we drop. We carpet bombed SE Asia for years – then Iraq and Afghanistan – and it didn’t and hasn’t made a dime’s worth of difference.

What America First really means is America alone.

2 COMMENTS

  1. I love your writing. I have an idea about creating a model in Carroll County. Want to write about it? Sex Money Greed Power and Potluck Dinners. Oh and a few executions called by another name.

  2. Hey,get rid of Potus Pilate and you may get to smell the coffee again.I for one love visiting the States and its diversities,sadly there is one diversity hanging like a darkened cloud ready to rain ever more acid.I am uncertain how you can stop him but stopped he must be for the sake of all Americans and in the bigger picture the world. Your pursuit will be rewarded when you find America again.

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