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Unit 3
Out of Step
Bill Bryson
1
After living in
England for 20 years, my wife and I decided to
move back to the United
States.
We
wanted
to
live
in
a
town
small
enough
that
we
could
walk
to
the
business
district,
and
settled
on
Hanover,
N.H.,
a
typical
New
England
town
—
pleasant,
sedate
and
compact.
It
has
a
broad
central
green
surrounded
by
the
venerable
buildings
of
Dartmouth College, an old-fashioned
Main Street and leafy residential neighborhoods.
2
It is, in
short, an agreeable, easy place to go about
o
ne’s business on foot, and yet as
far as I can tell, virtually no one
does.
3
Nearly
every day, I walk to the post office or library or
bookstore, and sometimes, if I
am
feeling
particularly
debonair,
I
stop
at
Rosey
Jekes
Café
for
a
cappuccino.
Occasionally, in the evenings, my wife
and I stroll up to the Nugget Theatre for a movie
or
to Murphy’s on the Green for a beer,
I wouldn’t dream of going to any of these places
by
car. People have gotten used to my
eccentric behavior, but in the early days
acquaintances
would often pull up to
the curb and ask if I wanted a ride.
4
“I’m
going
your
way,”
they
would
insist
when
I
politely
declined.
“Really,
it’s
no
bother.”
5
“Honestly, I enjoy walking.”
6
“Well,
if
you’re
sure,”
they
would
say
and
depart
reluctantly,
even
g
uiltily,
as
if
leaving the scene of an
accident without giving their name.
7
In
the
United
States
we
have
become
so
habituated
to
using
the
car
for
everything
that it doesn’t occur to us to unfurl
our legs and see what those lower limbs can do. We
have
reached
an
age
where
college
students
expect
to
drive
between
classes,
where
parents will drive three blocks to pick
up their children from a friend’s house, where the
letter carrier takes his van up and
down every driveway on a street.
8
We
will
go
through
the
most
extraordinary
contortions
to
save
ourselves
from
walking. Sometimes it’s
almost ludicrous. The other day I was waiting to
bring home one
of my children from a
piano lesson when a car stopped outside a post
office, and a man
about my age popped
out and dashed inside. He was in the post office
for about three or
four minutes, and
then came out, got in the car and drove exactly 16
feet (I had nothing
better to do, so I
paced it off) to the general
store
6
next door.
9
And the thing
is, this man looked really
fit. I’m
sure he jogs extravagant distances and
plays squash and does all kinds of
healthful things, but I am just as sure that he
drives to
each
of these undertakings.
10
An acquaintance of ours was complaining
the other day about the difficulty of finding
a place to park outside the local
gymnasium. She goes there several times a week to
walk
on a treadmill. The gymnasium is,
at most, a six-minute walk from her front door.
11
I asked her
why she didn’t walk to the gym and do six minutes
less on the treadmill.
12
She
looked
at
me
as
if
I
were
tragically
simple-
minded
and
said,
“But
I
have
a
program
for the treadmill. It records my distance and
speed and calorie burn rate, and I
can
adjust it for degree of difficulty.”
13
I
confess
it
had
not
occurred
to
me
how
thoughtlessly
deficient
nature
is
in
this
regard.
14
According to a
concerned and faintly horrified 1997 editorial in
the
Boston Globe
, the
United
States
spent
less
than
one
percent
of
its
transportation
budget
on
facilities
for
pedestrians. Actually, I’m surprised
i
t was that much. Go to almost any
suburb developed
in the last 30 years,
and you will not find a sidewalk anywhere. Often
you won’t find a
single pedestrian
crossing.
15
I
had this brought home to me one summer when we
were driving across Maine and
stopped
for coffee in one of those endless zones of
shopping malls, motels, gas stations
and fast-food places. I noticed there
was a bookstore across the street, so I decided to
skip
coffee and head over.
16
Although the
bookshop was no more than 70 or 80 feet away, I
discovered that there
was no way to
cross on foot without dodging over six lanes of
swiftly moving traffic. In the
end, I
had to get in our car and drive across.
17
At the time,
it seemed ridiculous and exasperating, but
afterward I realized that I was
possibly
the
only
person
ever
to
have
entertained
the
notion
of
negotiating
that
intersection on foot.
18
The fact is,
we not only don’t walk anywhere anymore in this
country, we won’t walk
anywhere,
and
woe
to
anyone
who
tries
to
make
us,
as
the
city
of
Laconia,
N.H.,
discovered. In the early 1970s, Laconia
spent millions on a comprehensive urban renewal
project,
which
included
building
a
pedestrian
mall
to
make
shopping
more
pleasant.
Esthetically
it
was
a
triumph
—
urban
planners
came
from
all
over
to
coo
and
take
photos--
but
commercially
it
was
a
disaster.
Forced
to
walk
one
whole
block
from
a
parking
garage, shoppers abandoned downtown Laconia for
suburban malls.
19
In 1994 Laconia dug up its pretty
paving blocks, took away the tubs of geraniums and
decorative
trees,
and
brought
back
the
cars.
Now
people
can
park
right
in
front
of
the
stores
again, and downtown Laconia thrives anew.
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