People keep telling me how much I’m going to love the movie, Nights in Rodanthe. How can anyone who’s been around me for more than five minutes think I would love a gush flick starring Richard Gere as a screwed up rich dude? “Go watch the trailer,” they say. “You’ll really be able to relate to it.“
Yeah, yeah. People told me the same thing about Sweet Home Alabama, so I was instantly suspicious. But I googled the movie trailer and watched part of it. Here’s a five point comparison of how much I have in common with Nights in Rodanthe:
1. I’m from North Carolina. The film was shot in North Carolina. Okay, I’ll give you that one.
2. I have been to Hatteras Island and the surrounding area many times with friends and some tents. Rodanthe is a beautiful place, rich in history. The surf is awsome. Amazing lighthouse. The locals are friendly, good people. But wait…this movie’s not about Rodanthe, is it? Too bad. That would be a cool movie.
3. The trailer preview began with a gigantic mansion built on sand. Anybody who really knows me is hee hawing on the floor right now. The places where I’ve cleaned toilets aren’t even half that fancy. I think it’s supposed to be an “inn.” What a quaint little getaway. If the hurricane blows it away, I’m sure they’ll be first in line for FEMA money. Nope. Can’t relate to that, either. We did get some free shingles one time after a hurricane. Sometimes they just blow into your yard.
4. There’s a doctor. Oh yeah, I can REALLY relate to his world. Next.
5. Mr. Doctor meets a lady and there’s some kind of relationship boo hoo stuff going on. Is it just me? Or does anybody else smell vanilla yogurt? Or lettuce? I like stories with gravy, extra thick. Stories that leave a grease stain on the plate.
I couldn’t even watch the whole preview, so I know I’m being mean. Sorry.
Maybe I should have stuck around to see if they have a maid with an attitude who serves the doctor blue crabs. Now there’s somebody I can relate to.
Jeeves, hand me my lyre. I feel a verse coming on.
.
We Leave The Beaches For Tourists
by Julie Buffaloe-Yoder
Let them have the new white path.
We’ll keep our old black road.
We’ll keep the marshes, the bays,
the clam loved mud, the scaly
smell of fish house sweat.
.
We’ll keep the hard blue hands
of net menders, carvers, pickers,
oystermen, crab pot makers.
We’ll keep little wooden boats
churning foam, the musk of nets
hanging with vines in front yards.
We’ll keep the grit in our teeth,
the red bent backs of generations.
.
We leave the beaches for them,
the growing rows of condos,
swift internet access, dry stack
marinas, three story malls.
.
We’ll keep the slow turn of fans
in the heat, mosquitos, the creak
of sticky wooden floors, stepping
in the sweet shit of wild horses,
pickled smells of general stores,
old fishermen who sit on benches
and tell outrageous stories.
.
Let them have country clubs,
golf courses, famous actors,
casinos, beachside showers.
We’ll keep green garden hoses
and a beacon that opens and closes
its bright midnight eye.
We’ll keep sharp September stars
and the soft secrets of girls
growing up on salt water.
.
Let them have all that.
We’ll keep all this.
But all that keeps
moving closer to
our old black road.
How quickly
it all erodes.
“We did get some free shingles one time after a hurricane. Sometimes they just blow into your yard.”
Now, I know my mother would tell me I shouldn’t be drinking near the keyboard, but that one really needed a “spew warning”….
I do think I’d like to see *your* North Carolina. It sounds… well… like it would yield a story (or two or three…) that leaves grease stains in the plate (oh, oops, you said that… )
Oh PS, I saw the trailers… looks like a navel gazer to me…
Hi, Nan! Spew warning! Ha! Ha! I can just picture that! Thanks much. Your comments are always so much fun!
Your review of the trailer cracked me up! It’s pretty bad if even the preview doesn’t hold your attention. I’d love to go to the movies with you, Julie, but I’d let you pick out the flick.
Love your poem. So many tender, lovely lines. You’re becoming my new favorite in blogland. You and jo.
Hi, Christine! Alright! Another woman who hates chick flicks! Ha! Thanks so much for your kind comments. Well, you’ve surely done some wonderful stuff yourself. And, of course, Jo! It has been a pleasure to get to meet both of you.
Love the poem, as always but also loved response number 5
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Hi, Brigindo! Always so good to see you. I’m glad you like #5. I guess this is a rant? Ha! I had a lot more written but cut it…hee hee. I feel much better now, though. Take care & thanks for dropping by.
this is your place, this is you, the writing, the voice and attitude are wonderful…and the trailer
well it sits on the edge of the swamp
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Thanks, Scot. I appreciate your comment. And I love what you say about the trailer on the edge of the swamp! I’ve got $27.82 saved up in a mason jar to buy one in the woods by the swamp. Hmmm…I wonder if the bank will give me a loan? Ha!
Haha, mom. I love your review of the trailer. I saw this clip and thought you’d get a kick out of it:
http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=185692
HA! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAHA HOOOO!
Amber, darlin’. YOU know me, don’t you? Dang, I love you, woman! I didn’t even see the part with the wild horses. Maybe they’ll run over her.
Oh…like my wild, wild heart!
I love the caption, too…”It’s time to put aside petty politics for the opening of Nights in Rodanthe.” Ha! That alone cracks me up.
I love you soooooooooooooooo MUCH!
Oh, Christine’s very kind but she pinched my comment. You are such an amazing writer but it’s more than that, reading you something trills through me, a voice that whispers magic. I love love love your work and you are one hell of a poet. I want a whole book of your work that I can read whenever I like. Fantastic.
Hi, Jo! Wow! You are so nice. I am blushing but loving it…ha! It’s a tough business, and we have to develop thick skin (like a gator…hee hee). So it’s wonderful to get the good comments, too. Thank you so much. You know I love your work!
I am so with you on this one. We will keep those things as long as we can…
The sounds in this are scrumptious!!!
I just enjoyed reading it out loud.
My mouth is much happier now.
Yes, as long as we can… I wish I could say we’ll keep them forever, but I don’t know. Thanks much, Holly.
Oh YEAH baby! In Northern Ontario, before 9/11 when one could still laugh at such things, we used to call the tourists “terrorists”. Come late Spring when you’re finally scraping the muck off the fuckin’ truck and putting the hipmudwaders into the barn for another year, after all the potholes you can lose a vehicle in have been re-paved so as not to ruin the suspensions of the city Jeep drivers who wouldn’t know how to use a four wheel drive even if they ever had occasion to need it and when the black flies are done eating every living warm mammal in sight or smelling distance (or however they use to detect existence), then the terrorists come and fill the towns with window shoppers and shoplifters. Tanned bodies take up every dock and raft space in the sun, filling the atmosphere with tanning oil and aftertan lotions. They pour all manner of crap and other types of sewage into the lakes and catch every fish we spent the winter coddling till the water is filled with algae – also caused by the run-off of pesticides used to grow their green lawns which they hire the “local yokels” too stupid (or poor) to come in out of the rain to cut for them while they play tennis and golf and their underpaid, overworked nannies look after the children they haven’t seen since several days after birth. Ok. Not ALL of them are like that and the local economy wouldn’t be an economy without them. But they complain about their property taxes while building bigger and bigger mansions – oops, sorry, they call them “cottages” – and then demand more parking in the sorry-assed towns they invade. If only they and we took the time to know and understand where we were and are on the earth and who is there with us!
In my little town up north, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn built or bought a fine mansion “cottage” and then complained like all hell when other terrorists drifted by in their boats trying to ogle them. Stupid rude indigent local inhabitants are blamed and the cops keep constant guard over the privacy of the interlopers. FUCK OFF then eh! Go home Kurt and Goldie.
RANT!
Thanks. WONDERFUL poem sistah, as always. I never have the words to say quite how your poetry punches me in the gut and lifts the top of my head off at the same time. That will have to do.
Miss you. Ama Sapphire sends her love and abiding understanding.
Hey, Sistah! I miss you, too! It’s wonderful to see you. I was laughing so hard…literally guffawing…at your description of the tourists. But underneath the laughter was a real thump of truth in the gut.
It was so frustrating and insulting to us when tourists came down with the attitude that we were toothless freaks who have sex with livestock. I still bristle when I hear the many stereotypes about rural people.
Of course, I don’t mean to say we disliked all tourists. Just the ones with arrogant attitudes. Like the a-holes who thought that just because they had the money to buy a yacht meant they knew how to navigate waters. It never failed…they zipped around flinging beer cans in the water and ended up having to be rescued after they got lost or stuck on a sandbar. Who rescued them? The locals.
Lesson #1 for tourists (including myself when I go visit other places) is to treat the locals with RESPECT. Learn their culture. Treat the people and their land with respect. Learn what you can before you go and while you’re there. People I know back home are very open and friendly to strangers who are respectful to them.
You’re so right. What tourism does to the environment is a two edged sword. Sadly, some people I know are having to rely on tourism in order to survive. If you can’t afford to shrimp anymore, you do what you have to do. Maybe take tourists out on boats.
At first glance, it might seem amazing that we can relate to each other so well, even though we’re from different countries. But I think people all over the world have that rural connection, so that to me is AWESOME.
But even more important than the landscape connection is the fact that you are an awesome person:) Thanks so much for your comments! Tell Ama Sapphire I love her, too.
P.S. – Kurt and Goldie go home!! (But don’t go to the Outer Banks, please). Hee hee…
Love the details in the poem; each one is like a piece set on an architect’s scale model of the place. Yep, it’s that accurate. So now I feel like a tourist (no pun intended) who has seen a peek. The first two stanzas do remind me of home (I grew up in a coastal area). Thanks.
Cheers.
Hi, S.L. Corsua! I just looked at your site, and I am thrilled. Your poetry is beautiful. I will definitely go back to look at more of your work. Yes, there’s that connection again, right? I love it. Thank you for your kind words and for dropping in.
Well, if the movie trailer led to this poem then something good came out of it. Your tone is perfect.
Thanks, Nathan!
Julie, I came over here from Unguarded Utterance. I still love this poem, even more after reading it again. It makes me want to chuck any of the trappings of an expensive lifestyle I’ve taken on. It’s not so easy, when I have get along with the others in my family who are my dearest loves. I have to keep my own small steps as simple as I can.
AGREE! Anyone who wants to can see this is just another
formula-matic film, an attempt to draw in women with
Gere and Lane, which I did love both in the movie about
the Affair, really liked that. And yes the general store with
the delicious, comfort spell and the back roads these are
the best things of life and where the most interesting
stories may be found. Your poem rocks.