By Allan R. Andrews
Managing Editor, Pacific Stars and Stripes
First published June 2, 1996,
in Pacific Stars and Stripes, Tokyo, Japan
It's impossible to be a tourist
in one's home town.
For some reason involving familiarity and a human penchant to explore what's
different, people living amid the wonders of a particular place on a daily
basis just don't pay attention as much as do outsiders.
This was illustrated recently in a story about a school in the Grand Canyon
National Park in Arizona.
According to an Associated Press story, the students in the Grand Canyon
School District, which lies a half mile from the rim of the canyon, are bored
and eager to leave.
``I just don't think there's too much opportunity here,'' a 10th-grader
told the AP. ``There's just bigger and better things.''
The reason so many youngsters are bored, the story says, is there's no
mall nearby, no movie theater and no community center.
Many of the youngsters at the school, AP writer Michelle Boorstein learned,
``are simply bored by the breathtaking natural surroundings.''
Millions of tourists flock to the park annually and spend more millions
of dollars enjoying summer in the vicinity of the natural wonderthat is America's
Grand Canyon.
A not-too-old movie built its plot around a person's driving need to visit
the Grand Canyon. Without the religious overtones, the Grand Canyon is a kind
of Mecca for Americans, a ``must see'' sight before one dies.
But for the pupils in the Grand Canyon School District, most of whom have
lived there all their lives because their parents work for the park service
or at some other support facility, the canyon is, as one pupil articulated
it, ``Whatever.''
I knew a biology professor
once, a specialist in conservation, who took students on tours of the Grand
Canyon. He spent many hours in class educating his students about the unusual
forces that created most of nature's wonderful formations.
On trips to the canyon, he forbade female students to carry make-up kits
or mirrors of any sort.
Asked why he imposed this unusual rule, he answered, ``I don't want to
risk having any student step from the bus, turn her back on the canyon and
powder her nose or fix her eye shadow.''
Despite being open to gender bias, he made his point: The canyon should
grip and hold one's attention in an attitude of quiet near-reverence; although,
I think were I leading a youth tour of the Grand Canyon I would forbid the
word ``awesome'' from escaping any teen-ager's mouth or appearing in any later
journal entries.
However, my experience
as a native of New York City provides me with great sympathies for the pupils
of Grand Canyon School District. In my bones, I understand how familiarity
breeds ``whatever.''
In the distance down the street on which I lived during most of my teen-aged
years lay New York harbor. From the top of the long, gently rising hill on
which we lived in Brooklyn, one could stand and see the Statue of Liberty.
On many occasions, I rode the ferry from Brooklyn or Manhattan to Staten
Island, sailing in the shadow of the statue. Few of the regular passengers
on those boats bothered to look out at the lady of the harbor.
It truly was an amazing sight, especially at night when the spotlights
shone bright upon the copper grown green with oxidation. The massive pedestal
and the torch thrust to the sky added to one's impression of power and freedom.
As a teen-ager and a typical New Yorker, however, I rarely looked toward
the statue. In fact, I sadly confess, to this date in my too swiftly moving
adulthood I have never visited Liberty Island (I still remember it as Bedloe's
Island) and the statue.
I've been to the top of the Eiffel Tower; I've stood beside the Berlin
Wall; I've crossed London Bridge; I've eaten in the restaurant in the Seattle
Space Needle and ridden to the top of the CN tower to look out over sprawling
Toronto, but I've never been to the Statue of Liberty.
What's more, I was in my 40's before I ever made a trip to the top of the
Empire State Building. That's almost heresy for a native New Yorker.
Even the sleepless in Seattle get to visit the top of the Empire State
Building.
I would never have attended the New York World's Fair back in the '60s
had it not been for a cousin who visited from Canada and insisted on going
to the Flushing Meadow fairgrounds.
In the Big Apple, which, like the Grand Canyon, attracts millions of visitors
each year, I'm a lousy tourist.
It has nothing to do with disrespect or lack of appreciation; it has something
to do with living too close to make a big fuss.
I've seen it many times: Vermonters in autumn who hardly notice the leaves
are changing; Coloradans who shrug their shoulders when a visitor stops and
stares at the sharply rising Rockies; Canadians and New Yorkers who drive
back and forth daily and never stop to savor Niagara; Floridians who hear
the roar of a rocket and never look up to see another shuttle head for outer
space.
We can't believe anything at home is spectacular.
I think I understand
the pupils in the Grand Canyon School District; they're simply lousy tourists
in Arizona. Put them in Tokyo and probably they'd go whacko visiting shrines
and temples and sumo stables and Tokyo Tower.
Leave them at home with the remarkable Grand Canyon and -- whatever.
There's hope. It won't always be that way. Later in life, most of these
teen-agers will return to the canyon with a new appreciation.
When they grow and have children they'll speak proudly of their old home
and remember with fondness its most memorable landmark.
The Grand Canyon will outlive their disdain. I can feel it in my aging
bones.
Some day in the not-to-distant-future I'll visit New York City with
my wife and three sons. One of the first places I plan to escort them to as
tourists is the Statue of Liberty.
I might even get to visit the Grand Canyon someday.
Just don't ask me to go to Tokyo Tower.