Sunday, June 03, 2007

The man from Louisiana

A man with a very thick American accent calls me today:

"Heyllo there. Way-uhl, I want ta know everythin' there is ta know about yer parks. Send me all yeh got. Ya'll there up North are different from the folks down here. Y'all're different. I been told by the folks from up North t'phone all the eight hundert number. They tell me that those kinda people on the phones wanta talk to yuh, and they all be happy to talk to yuh. "


He then gives me his address in Louisiana. His accent is almost unbearably thick. I plug my other ear with my thumb and concentrate hard on what he is saying:

"Now ya see, I'm-a drifter. I'm-a sixty years old, and my clock is tickin', yuh see. I want ter see yer byootiful parks, so just send me ev'rything yuh got. Y'know, I been told that people like you are always so friendly. So you just send me what yer got and God bless yuh! God bless yuh!"

We hang up, and I start telling Carole about this strangely excited American from the South, and she tells me that he has probably already called. Apparently, my co-worker, Terry, also got a call from someone from Louisiana, so it is possible the same man. Later on that day, I ask Terry about it, and sure enough, he called her too, asking her to send him all the information "that yuh got". He probably didn't realize that he was calling the same place.
Like he said himself, he just telephones every 1-800 number he finds because, hey, he is bound to find someone to talk to on the other line, and in a week or so, he'll receive a bunch of stuff from them. For a self-labeled drifter, that's not too shabby.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I don't know what the point of that post was exactly, but your rendition of the Louisiana accent is lovely. It brought to my mind flashes of John Steinbeck.