Everything's Massive!

Having lived in the United States for around a week, I think it’s probably appropriate to try and sum up my first impressions. The title of this latest instalment will give you some clue to my general feelings about life in the new world. Everything, and I mean everything, is absolutely enormous. Its often said that the country in which one lives helps to shape one’s own person, and in America’s case this is undeniably true. This was actually pointed out too me the other day by a fellow Englishman, the head coach for the football (soccer) team. After finishing our strides on the College track, I stood with him to watch the American Footballers being put through their paces on the infield. I was struck first of all by how large the team was – American football is the biggest sport in the States, and you can tell. There was at least a hundred kids there, forming offensive and defensive teams. Half the young men in Kansas seemed to be stood on the green, each of them on some kind of scholarship – each of them vying for one of only twenty-two starting positions. The football (soccer) coach then observed that ‘they don’t make guys like that in England’. Once I looked closer, I started to see what he meant. Every player was six foot or more, most were my own height. Yet almost all of them would have weighed twice as much as me. I felt very glad that I wouldn’t be the one facing them on the pitch on the first game of the season.

I started to figure out how it is that those guys could get so big when I visited the supermarket. I say supermarket, but it was actually the local store. It didn’t qualify as an American super market, it was far too small. But this local store was as big as a medium sized Tesco or Asda. The actual supermarkets, like Walmart and Target, are so big that they have actual Starbucks shops in them, just in case you get tired and decide to go for a coffee when you’re halfway around. Anyway, back to the story. I noticed plenty of familiar brands whilst I walked around this local shop, but the shapes and sizes of the products were very unfamiliar. Haribo, to take an example, was on sale in bags that are the same size as the one’s we know – but these were labelled ‘small’. Next to them were gigantic bags of the same sweets which Her Majesty’s government would probably declare to be illegal on the grounds that they would induce immediate heart attacks upon consumption. This pattern could be seen right across the store. Even the fruit juice didn’t come in normal sizes – you had to buy it in enormous bottles that wouldn’t have looked out of place amongst the barrels on an oil tanker. The loafs of bread seemed to be a more civilized size, but the cakes – oh my word. There is a reason for the massive portions, and that lies in the equally massive number of mouths that have to be fed here in America. As a child of six I’m an anomaly in England – in Kansas I’m the norm. Coach Parsley himself is the youngest of nine, and my room mate to be Isaiah has at least four siblings that I know of.

Nowhere is the size difference more starkly shown than with the trains. There is one main line that runs through Newton and through it travels, at roughly 20-minute intervals, trains of the most staggering proportions. Where as in England a normal train might have 10 cars of so, a single train in Kansas can have hundreds. We got out nice and early yesterday for a longish run, my first in the States, which revolved mostly around incredibly long and straight stretches of road. The only time we stopped was at the crossing, because a train was coming through. We were stood there, by my watch, for around seven minutes. The head of the train was miles down the track by the time the last car came through – the Americans couldn’t stop laughing at my facial expression, which must have portrayed a mixture of shock and disbelief. I couldn’t even comprehend how you would get such a large vehicle moving in the first place, though I was informed that that particular train was ‘actually quite small’. I’m told that it’s journey would have likely have terminated in Kansas City, which is inside the border of the neighbouring state of Missouri (don’t ask), but that it could well have come from the East Coast through Utah or Colorado, or it might even have travelled through Dallas or Amarillo (is this the way to) in Texas. The distances of either journey are huge, and this country in general is absurdly large. I guess everything inside of it is just trying to keep to scale.  

Not my Picture I'm afraid - this one is taken from the College website.