More Birds of Arizona

High wispy clouds in a brilliant blue sky. Purply mountains in the distance. A red bird in a tree, flitting branch to branch. Looks like a male cardinal. But as I get closer, the markings are all wrong. A bit smaller, too, and missing the familiar crest.

At that moment, a wrangler in boots, chaps and a white multi-gallon hat is coming my way, so I flag him down.

“If you have a moment,” I say, with maximum Canadian niceness, “can you tell me what that bird is?” (I nearly add “over yonder.”)

He takes a look. “That there, sir, is a cardinal.”

“Of course,” I reply in Canadian, not wishing to contradict the nice cowboy. “I guess cardinals look different in these here parts.”

“Oh?” he says, a little surprised. The bird flies closer, and he takes a better look. “Nope, you are correct, sir. I don’t believe that is a cardinal at all. Can’t say what that is.”

“Ahh,” I reply. “Judging by your clothes, I guess you’re more of a horse fancier than a bird fancier.”

“Right about that, sir,” he says, “not a bird fancier at all.” He tips his hat and walks on. Then an afterthought, and he turns around: “Except for chickens.”

“I fancy those too,” says the Canadian. “Roasted, with potatoes.”

Duck and cover

Hosting family from the United States, we didn’t see much difference between Canadians and Americans. But then, we mostly associated with other Greek immigrants from the same one or two villages. So, birds of a feather.

They’d pile into our apartments in Park Ex, we’d give them our beds and sleep on the floor. Then we’d commence noisy, epic meals. Greek music blaring all night long, little kids passed out on the couch, full ashtrays and wine-stained tablecloths by morning. On and on it went, until our American cousins packed up their stuff and drove home a few days later.

It was about the same when we visited them. Except that, to our Canadian eyes, Americans had more stuff. Unimaginably more stuff in their closets and pantries, in their backyards and garages. You couldn’t help but compare our shameful, constipated little shops, with their pricey wares, against their massive palaces of consumption, where untethered and ferocious trade went on at all hours, with “Prices so low we’re practically giving it away, folks!”

We hauled home bags bursting with blouses and candy-coloured pantyhose. Slingbacks and slacks and four-slice toasters we didn’t need. Half-price pet rocks, mood rings and gallon jugs of crème de menthe and Canadian Club.

To my mind, though, Americans were fundamentally not all that different. True, they had more stuff. But all we had to do was visit and buy some of their stuff.

And yet, as I grew older, I had a sneaking suspicion there might be a difference. The evidence was there, if you cared to look. Back home, we’d turn on the 11 o’clock news and see American streets running with blood. Riots in Detroit, politicians and pastors gunned down, students having the shit kicked out of them on campus lawns.

As I grew older still, sometimes I’d travel to the States on my own, taking a Greyhound bus from the station on Berri-de-Montigny in downtown Montreal. The first stop would be Burlington, Vermont.

“Go ahead and grab a coffee, folks. Leaving again in fifteen.”

Wandering for a moment, my eye would catch an unfamiliar sign, in waspy yellow and black for maximum visibility and alarm. Below the sign, dimly lit steps leading down to a dusty door. And the words, Fallout Shelter.

The evidence was everywhere, if you cared to look. But, sweet Jesus, the size of the cereal boxes!

* * *

Last weekend we visited the Titan II Museum, an hour’s drive from the dude ranch where we’re staying. Some eight storeys tall and tipped with a nuclear bomb, Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles are Uncle Sam’s biggest guns ever (as far as we know). They kept the peace from 1963 until 1984.

Once launched, a Titan II travelled at 16,000 miles per hour and took just half an hour to reach its target, presumably some doomed city in the Soviet Union. Laughing families gathered round a dented samovar, kids and grandparents, cats and parakeets, balalaikas plunk-plunking in the background. In an instant, vapor.

The bomb at the tip of a Titan II missile carried nine megatons of explosive power, equivalent to nine million tons of TNT. But what does that mean? Throughout World War II, the combined bombs and bullets of all the warring nations added up to three million tons of TNT. So one Titan II missile was three times more destructive. Except, there were 53 Titan II missiles, cocked and ready, in Arizona, Arkansas and Kansas. The Soviets had a comparable arsenal aimed the other way. Unthinkable.

* * *

Back at the cabin, I go ahead and look up red birds of Arizona. As it turns out, Arizona has cardinals exactly like the ones at home. As for the red bird flitting from branch to branch, it was likely a vermillion flycatcher or a hepatic tanager.

As it turns out, too, I’m not that different from the wrangler I met earlier. Despite the boots, the chaps and the multi-gallon hat, our markings are pretty similar. Neither of us is a bird fancier and we both like chicken. I wonder what else we have in common.