Benched Week 34: in the gloaming

I was looking forward to finding my first bench in Birmingham, Alabama, until I discovered that I was not going to be anywhere near the city center.  Instead, I’d be staying my entire time in a golf resort.

I know.  Tragic.  I’m sensing a palpable lack of empathy.

The resort is impressive, but in a Disneyesque way.  The main building has hints of a Scottish castle.  The grounds are manicured.  It's all so... perfect.



Looking in vain for a bench, I wandered out onto the deserted golf course, discovering a stone building and waterwheel that had a strong feeling of my native Pennsylvania. But as pretty as they are, they’re fake. Carefully constructed to be something they’re not.





I’ve been thinking about narratives a lot lately.  They used to be my life, as I presented to school kids the essence of stories.  Recently, one of the facilitators I work with asked me to help him think through how to teach storytelling to corporate execs.  It felt odd to have those two worlds collide.

But then again, I’ve never really gotten away from stories.

I ferret them out wherever I go – from my colleagues at these events.  From cab drivers.  Fellow plane passengers.  Hotel workers.  Friends I occasionally stop by to visit.

That’s what disappoints me about these resorts.  They’re so sanitized.  Removed from the real world.  I can’t get a sense of a place unless I can walk through the midst of people working and walking and talking and living life.  I had a strong urge to ask the cabdriver to stop and let me out at the little Baptist church we passed before entering the complex.  But there’s not time for that.



Above me, the sun began to set, the first genuine thing I had seen here since I started wandering.

Then the bagpipes started.

I rolled my eyes.  How corny – to pipe bagpipe music over the speakers.  I started back toward the one bench that I had seen to wait it out.



And to my surprise, there was a real person generating the caterwauling.  I sat and listened. After he played, I talked with him for a while. Jim is retired, having grown up in Grove City, PA, and learning the pipes in Pittsburgh, he keeps busy with gigs – this being one of them.  Every night, in the gloaming.

Even at Fakerburg Castle, there are stories to be found.