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Tales of Beyonder: |
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A GUIDE TO BEYONDER
This is not about Spam. Periodically I disembowel myself on these pages, tearing my guts out in a desperate attempt to touch your life, Dear Reader, with a poignant observation, a clever turn of phrase, a smutty wisecrack. I burden you not with facts, but share freely little bits of my brain - scrambled, swallowed, and regurgitated for your entertainment.
Rarely is the favor returned. I find no brain vomit of yours in my mail. The most common feedback I hear from the general public (which, I should mention, includes members of my family) is the following phrase: "And if I ever read about this in your stupid column, you're dead meat."
Dave Barry, by comparison, gets bundles of mail, most of it laden with hilarious news of exploding pigs and institutional folly. No one ever helps me out. (Not quite true, once someone suggested that I write a piece on deposit bottles. Oh, ha-ha-ha. I can hear the laughter rippling across the Beyonder landscape.)
The one letter I have received from a reader this year said "Why don't you go back to writing about Spam?" Then the writer added, "By the way, what and where the hell is Beyonder?"
Dave Barry doesn't have to explain his column. He calls it "Dave Barry. " I could call my column "Dave Barry" and be as well known as he is. Instead, I took the more demanding road by calling my column The View From Beyonder, knowing that I would periodically have to explain what and where the hell "Beyonder" is. Here is a refresher course on this marvelous land of which I, and I alone, am the foremost authority.
(Aside to Spam-lovers: I hate to disappoint you but I have said everything I have to say on the subject. My six-volume reference, THE COMPLEAT SPAM READER, is considered the definitive reference on luncheon meat.)
Actually, the concept of Spam is integral to an understanding of Beyonder. Spam -- the reality, not the concept -- is always good for cheap laughs, but without a surrounding context it cannot provide the foundation for one's literary identity. Combine Spam with Vermont, however, and -- voila! -- the blank canvas becomes filled with vibrant images that explode with the secrets of the Cosmos. The theme music swells in the background -- Beyonder, Beyonder, BEYONDER.
(The melody you might recognize as having been cribbed from the B side of a Del Shannon record.)
Neither the state of Vermont nor the Hormel Meat Company claim me as a favorite son. I invented Beyonder so that there would be at least one place where I would be considered a legend in my own time. It is with utmost pride that I say I'm a Beyonder Kinda Guy.
The phrase, however catchy, is a hollow sequence of words unless one understands the land of Beyonder. As the man asked in his letter "What the and where the Hell is Beyonder?"
Beyonder is dirt roads and frigid excess, where the summers are short and passionate, and where November and March are as tedious as an eternity of daytime TV. The sacred animal is the buck. The state bird is Bernie Sanders. The state flower is the first daffodil to push through the snow.
Beyonder is bounded on the West by Camel's Hump, on the east by the Connecticut River, and to the north and south by one's imagination. It is a bumpy land with roads that devour cars like BMW's, and leave them laughably in roadside ditches.
The land is inhabited equally by craggy-faced natives who resemble Vermonters (a genetically distinct, Northern species), and an eclectic group, ignominiously lumped into a category called Flatlanders. Both groups are cantankerous, due to the harsh living conditions, and bicker interminably about who really holds the power. The groups do not interbreed, except occasionally, late on Saturday nights during Mud Season and at the Tunbridge Fair.
In habit and social mores, however, the groups are as different as Woodstock and Rutland. The Flatlander can be identified by the following habits: buys maple syrup in stores, burns wood, thinks Thunder Road is a movie starring Robert Mitchum, passes his car inspection on the first attempt, doesn't read this column, owns an American Express card, thinks Vermont Castings makes movies, doesn't want a 4 WD pickup as the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, considers an Arctic Cat to be exotic wildlife, listens to Public Radio, and thinks Burlington is part of Vermont.
The native, by contrast: wears t-shirts inside during the winter, drives rear wheel drive cars, doesn't read this column, doesn't own ski equipment, listens daily to WDEV, eats potluck on Town Meeting Day, never asks directions, cheers only for teams from Boston, sees nothing wrong with Genesee, and thinks the World's Fair really does take place in Tunbridge.
The residents of Beyonder (both flavors) can agree on only one thing -- that they call this tiny, rocky, cold sliver of the planet "home." So do I.
But then again, I like Spam.
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