imagination …
reconcile raw emotive
power of the past
In his book, Walk About (Published in America as Notes from a Sunburned Country), Bill Bryson writes about Australia:
One of the more cherishable peculiarities of Australians is that they like to build big things in the shape of other things. Give them a bale of chicken wire, some fibreglass and a couple of pots of paint and they will make you, say, an enormous pineapple or strawberry or, as here, a lobster. Then they put a café and a gift shop inside, erect a big sign beside the highway (for the benefit of people whose acuity evidently does not extend to spotting a fifty-foot-high piece of fruit standing beside an otherwise empty highway), then sit back and wait for the money to roll in.
Some sixty of these objects are scattered across the Australian landscape, like leftover props from a 1950s horror movie. You can, if you have sufficient petrol] money and nothing approaching a real life, visit a Big Prawn, a Big Koala, a Big Oyster (with searchlights for eyes, apparently), a Big Lawnmower, a Big Marlin, a Big Orange and a Big Merino Ram, among many others. The process, I am patriotically proud to tell you, was started by an American named Landy who built a Big Banana at Coff’s Harbour, on the New South Wales coast, which proved so magically attractive to passing vehicles that it made Mr Landy, as it were, the big banana of the business.
As an aside, I love that word cherishable or having the ability to be cherished and I am working on my own list but I digress.
I am happy to report that according to story in the Guardian, one of these big things in on its way back.
In the article, Sweet dreams are made of this: Queensland’s Big Pineapple is back. Is it still a big deal? by Joe Hinchliffe, Mr. Hinchliffe writes:
After 14 years of big promises, legal battles and a Game of Thrones’ style ownership jostle, the Big Pineapple finally reopened in June. Patsy, too, has returned, at the age of 93, for another ride around the track.
But it is not just over its former workers that this roadside attraction maintains its peculiar hold. In 2006 the National Trust of Queensland unveiled a list of state icons – alongside the Great Barrier Reef and the Gabba was the Big Pineapple. The year after, it was one of five big things celebrated on Australia Post stamps. In 2009 it was heritage listed. Last year the Royal Australian Mint stamped its likeness on a $1 coin.
For generations of Australians the Big Pineapple conjures up memories of road trips to the sunshine state, of birthday parties and weddings, of train rides and ice-cream.
And it got me thinking about things growing up that I experienced like the Giant Pineapple.
What for me taps into that raw emotive power of the past?
One such place for me and my family was the Dutch Village over in Holland, Michigan.
We would make the short trip when my Dad would take a week off.
My family had a cotttage on Lake Michigan where we would go in the summer and when my Dad took a week off, he would celebrate by not shaving.
But at some point during that week, Dad would shave.
There was a small bathroom off the kitchen.
My Dad would have showered and dressed for the day and would open the bathroom door to let out the shower steam.
In the morning the sun would flood through the back window in the bathroom and my Dad would stand in front of the small sink and look in the mirror and, very deliberately, shave.
Shaving cream spread over his face.
Firm use of the razor.
Down the sides of face.
Then up under has chin.
I can smell the scent of the shaving cream drifting in with the steam and sunshine.
I would be sitting at the kitchen table with my brothers and sisters eating breakfast and we would see Dad shaving and know that we would be going somewhere.
Maybe it would be the Coast Guard festival in Grand Haven.
Maybe it would be a longer day trip up to Sleeping Bear Dunes.
Most likely it was a trip to the Dutch Village.
It wasn’t much.
A glorified tourist trap.
But it was our tourist trap!
There were a few shops and some things to play one, a giant wooden shoe and a Dutch barn with barnyard animals to feed.
All operated by a staff in ‘traditional’ Dutch clothes.
We would first run to the candy store.
I remember one time when all of us Dutch blond kids ran in the sales lady said something like ‘you know they’re Dutch when the coming asking for bobbalars and chocolate Droste’s wooden shoes.’
Once when I worked at a local TV station in Grand Rapids, a team was sent out to cover the Holland Tulip Festival and I wrote a tease for one of news broadcasts along the line of … “The bobbalars are just as sweet …” and the anchor came over to ask what that meant. I then had to pronounce the word phonetically bah bah lars .. which she wrote down.
And there was the zweefmolen or swing carousel with swings that spun you high in the air in circle until you were ready to throw up all your chocolate wooden shoes.
This was a condition we called ‘zweefmolen disease’ and we loved to bring friends and new family members who had just married into the family to Dutch Village just to watch them get zweefmolen disease.
Seeing them stagger around was as much fun as just saying zweefmolen.
It was goofy but we loved it.
I loved taking my kids when we got kids to Dutch Village.
I loved watching them get zweefmolen disease.
My kids didn’t look like my brothers and sisters but I told them they were all Dutch anyway.
Nothing gets you odder looks than to live in the south and tell people that you are Dutch and it’s like they can’t imagine anything so exotic.
So for the folks in Australia, the big pineapple is back … ‘but is it a big deal?’, Mr. Hinchliffe asks.
Another case of the ‘You can’t go home again’ syndrome as nothing is like it was but then was anything like it ever was?
When my kids were growing up I watched a lot Nickelodeon and Nick Jr. and I remember that in that cartoon called ‘Rugrats’, the perspective was often drawn from about 1 foot about floor level, the perspective of a toddler.
In the movie Dead Poets Society, Robin Williams dares his students to stand on their desks to gain a new perspective.
I offer that to relive your childhood, sit on the floor, get your head down there and experience life as it used to be.
At the beach, with you head just above the sand, the beach stretches out forever.
At a park, the jungle gym is 5 stories high.
Mr. Hinchliffe closes his article with this:
“Today, the pineapple is a curious site next to a regional road with a serviceable cafe and a train ride. It takes a bit of imagination to reconcile what stands now with the raw emotive power of its past.”
It takes a bit of imagination to reconcile what stands now with the raw emotive power of its past.
I love that.
Embrace your imagination and get as low to the floor as you can go and tap in the raw emotive power of your past.
If nothing else, you will be looking up.
Also, make the trip to West Michigan and visit a little bit of old Holland at the Dutch Village.
Make it worthwhile and ride the zweefmolen.
Feel the raw emotive power of the past.
No Haiku For You 