The city of Glasgow rests in the Clyde valley, cutting across the landscape from east to west like a grey scar. It is a dour, downbeat city. The city’s motto reflects its glum nature:
Here is the bird that never flew,
Here is the tree that never grew,
Here is the bell that never rang,
Here is the fish that never swam.
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| Glasgow's coat of arms with the bird that never flew, the tree that never grew, the fish that never swam and the bell that never rang. |
It is impossible to live somewhere and not have something of its character seep into your bones. I was a moody, quiet child. I did well in school but had little interest in groups or clubs. I actively avoided sports, particularly soccer. Glasgow has two major soccer teams, Rangers and Celtic. Most of my classmates at school supported one team or another. Soccer in Glasgow is curiously mixed with religion. If you happen to be Catholic, you are expected to support Celtic. It you are Protestant, you are expected to support Rangers. Mixing religion and sports is almost as destructive as mixing religion and politics. My father was raised Catholic and my mother Protestant. As a compromise, I was raised neither. Since I didn’t wish to be beaten up for wearing the wrong soccer jersey, I adopted a distinctly Swiss attitude to the whole situation.
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| The club emblems of Glasgow Rangers and Celtic football clubs. Best not to get involved in my opinion. |
I stayed indoors a lot. I read and played video games. During the summer my mother would shoo me out of the house to go and play in the park. All I wanted to do was stay in my bedroom. Glasgow has a short summer. Perhaps that is why Glaswegians are so determined to make the most of it. Whenever the drizzle abates and the sun peeps out from behind the leaden clouds, Glaswegians flock to the public parks. Most of the men strip to the waist and expose their pasty, Northern European complexion to the searing sun, doggedly absorbing all the UV they can. If you listen closely, you can almost hear the sound of bacon sizzling in a hot skillet.
My best friend at the time (also called David, a fact that led to much confusion in both our lives) and I would spend these sunny afternoons searching for discarded glass soda bottles. These were often left behind by sunbathers and picnickers and could be returned to stores for a whopping ten pence per bottle. I liked to think of it as a treasure hunt. Let me be clear that there was absolutely no sense of civic duty or environmental concern in our actions. It was a purely mercenary operation. Every gleaming glass bottle meant another fistful of candy divvied up between myself and David. Sometimes, if I had my eye on a particular computer game for my beloved Commodore 64, I would forgo the usual bags of fizzy cola bottles and lemon drops in favor of collecting my ten pence coins in an empty sugar tin I kept under my bed. Eventually, when the tin felt heavy enough, I’d take the train into town and buy a game.
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| My primary school class |
As a teenager, I lived in my parents’ house on the south side of Glasgow. The house is memorable for two reasons. Firstly, my bedroom on the second floor had a fantastic view of Glasgow and the craggy hills beyond. These hills were collectively known as “The Sleeping Warrior”; the peaks and valleys forming the profile of a giant lying in repose. During the winter months, his face and chest would be dusted with snow. Sometimes David would come over and we would throw paper planes from the bedroom window, seeing whose plane would fly the furthest.
The second reason the house is memorable is because my mother and brother were convinced it was haunted. They claimed to have witnessed a tall, thin figure swoop down the stairs and into the kitchen. Over time, they attached a narrative to this ghostly specter. Apparently, she was someone who had lived in the house long ago and had witnessed something terrible happen in one of the upstairs bedrooms. They even gave her a name, calling her Miss DePesto; a name I found as incongruous as their belief in her existence. My father and I would look at each other across our bowls of soup at the dinner table and roll our eyes as my mother and brother chittered on about the latest Miss DePesto sighting. I never caught a glimpse of the elusive Miss DePesto and I scoffed at my brother’s wide eyed assertion of her visitations. But I never did like being in that house alone and walking past the open door of an unlit room. When I was around 17 years old, we moved to another part of the city. Miss DePesto seemed content to remain at the old house and was never seen again.
17 is the minimum legal age for the consumption of alcohol in Scotland and it was about this time I started drinking at pubs in the city. I had just begun taking classes at a local university and my class schedule afforded me several free afternoons per week. I liked nothing better than to find a quiet pub to sit in and go over my lecture notes or read a book. Pubs in Glasgow can be fantastically depressing. They are filled with grim faced men sipping intently from their pints as if all of their life was concentrated in the glass before them. I received a powerful warning about the dangers of excessive alcohol consumption by observing the local clientele.
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| The inside of the Oran Mor pub in Glasgow, a favorite of mine. |
The Scots are a peculiar lot. I’ve read a theory that we are originally descended from Irish immigrants. I don’t know what motivated those ancient Gaels to brave the frigid Irish Sea. Perhaps they were not content with the bleak Irish landscape and wanted to live somewhere even more desolate. As a people, the Scots have retained the Irish predilections for fighting and alcoholism, elevating the latter into a kind of national pastime. Scots have the highest rate for cirrhosis of the liver in Europe and one of the worst alcohol-related death rates. The streets of Glasgow are filled with people whose rheumy eyes and sallow skin betray years of alcohol abuse. You learn to avoid eye contact with these folk. They are often desperate to drag you into their own personal misery. I spent most of my teenage years staring at my shoelaces.
After graduating I moved to Edinburgh, Scotland’s capital city, where I worked for a brief period of time. Although I enjoyed the job, I was becoming aware of a growing sense of personal unease. I needed a drastic change in my life to shake off the doldrums creeping up on me.
I admit to this section of my life with some trepidation. I was afflicted with that most middle class of maladies: existential boredom. My decision to move to America was entirely narcissistic. I was not fleeing the clutches of a dastardly despot. I was not looking for economic improvement. I was not even seeking a better life for my family. I’d just had enough of Scotland and was looking for something… else. Like Ishmael in Moby Dick, I was about ready to walk out into the street and deliberately knock the hats off strangers. Simply put, I was in a proper old funk. I wish I could tell you a more exciting story. This memoir would be a better read if I could tell of a thrilling dash for freedom; some breathtaking escape from a totalitarian regime. My journey to the states was not that remarkable. I just booked a flight through Expedia.
OK, maybe it wasn’t quite so simple. First I had to find a job and get a visa. As it turned out, the visa was the hard part. Through contacts with my employer in Scotland, I found a company in Texas looking to hire someone with my experience. After a telephone interview and a brief visit to Houston, they offered me the job and agreed to sponsor my visa application.
My visa application necessitated a visit to the U.S. embassy in London. Being Scottish, stepping foot in England feels like entering enemy territory. Nevertheless, I braved entering the domain of our Anglo cousins to the South and traveled to London by train, about an 8 hour journey from Glasgow. This was not long after the events of September 11th 2001 and security around the embassy was both impressive and intimidating. Police officers in Scotland do not normally carry firearms and private ownership of guns is strictly regulated. The sight of so many heavily armed security personnel in flak jackets made me feel like I had stepped into a war zone. Needless to say, after living in Texas for several years, I no longer have the same reaction around firearms.
After my interview at the embassy, I waited for word on the status of my visa application. I waited and I waited. Then I waited some more. Months passed. I was told that my visa status was “pending”. Six months passed before I was given the green light and my passport stamped.
Those six months in visa application limbo were interesting. I slept a lot. I grew a beard (a horrid, patchy thing that did me no favors whatsoever). I went on a cycling tour of Scotland. I know I’ve been somewhat harsh on Scotland in this memoir but I would just like to say that it truly is a beautiful country if you manage to escape the industrial wastelands of the major cities. I remember standing, freezing cold in a torrential downpour while trying to fix a puncture on my bike. This was on the Western bank of Loch Ness, some 120 miles North of Glasgow and I had been cycling for almost a week. Despite the chill, my numb figures, my sodden clothes and broken bike, I remember being exhilarated by the striking landscape around me.
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| Urquhart Castle on the banks of Loch Ness, a beautiful area of Scotland |
After packing and saying goodbye to friends and family, I was on my way to Houston. I left Glasgow on a rainy, gray Monday morning in July. Looking back, I seemed remarkably undaunted by the prospect of moving to a new country, thousands of miles from home. I can scarcely believe I was so cavalier about the whole thing. I’m not sure I could be so care free now.
I dislike flying. To me, it is like being stuck inside an overcrowded elevator without a reassuringly thick steel cable to keep you suspended. On numerous occasions, stewardesses have offered me free drinks mid-flight. I’m sure this is not because of any charms I may possess but because I look so dreadfully fraught with worry.
When my flying aluminum coffin finally alighted at George Bush Intercontinental, it crawled towards the terminal and disgorged its stiff and rumpled looking passengers. Like the rest of the arrivals without a US passport, I shuffled towards the immigrations desk. After waiting in line, I was waved forward by an immigration officer. I placed my travel documents on his desk.
The officer, dressed in a neat blue uniform, sported a prodigious handlebar moustache that would not have looked out of place perched upon Wyatt Earp’s upper lip. He slid his cold, cowboy-killer eyes from my face to my travel documents and back again. He picked up a green form among the papers and waved it in my face.
“This aint complete.” he said.
“Yeah, uhm…” I stammered. “I don’t have a contact number here. You see, I just moved and….”
“Uh-huh” he interrupted. “Looky here. This is what’s gonna happen. Yer gonna git back in that there line and think reaallll hard about a contact number. Understand?” He looked down at me along the length of his crooked nose. Whenever someone with a fully loaded semi-automatic weapon at their hip looks at me with such obvious disdain, I get a little nervous.
“Yes sir.” I replied and moved to the back of the line. I scribbled a number at random on the form. Eventually, I reached the front of the queue once more. Wyatt snatched my documents from me without a word, stamped my visa and waved for the next person in line.
Almost six years have passed since my run in with Wyatt. Since then, I’ve gotten married, had a couple of kids and become a stay at home dad. Middle age is rapidly barreling down upon me. In the mirror the other day, I noticed my hairline had retreated about an inch. My old jeans won’t button any more. I’ve even started caring about the condition of my front lawn.
Being a stay at home dad has both advantages and disadvantages. The pay is crappy, the hours suck but the job satisfaction is second to none.
Fatherhood has changed me in ways I never thought possible. I am a much more patient person now. I’m more ready to empathize with others and I allow myself to be optimistic about the future. Like diapers, I think optimism is a one of those necessities that parents simply can’t do without. Looking back, my life before children seems so empty of purpose. What the hell did I ever do with all that free time?
Houston is an odd fit for me. My pale skin isn’t well suited to such intense sunlight. I was built for a more northerly climate. I find the quality of the light different this far south. It lingers, thick and soupy, casting a strange pall of unreality over everything. So far, my entreaties to my wife that we move to Washington State or Alaska have not met with much favor.
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| Where I now call home. |
I miss Scotland sometimes. On overcast days I am reminded of the morose weather, the bad food and melancholic people of my own country. America is my home now, but part of me will always belong to that dour, damp nation.
Sean Connery, probably the most famous Scotsman who ever lived, bares a tattoo on his forearm that reads “Scotland Forever”. I hear he lives in Spain now. Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder.
I’m struggling to find a fitting conclusion to this memoir. Someone once said that a good story is a series of events with a conclusion that ties them all together. What should my conclusion be? I feel like I’m still working that out.
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