South Burlington, VT
We're spending a few days at Jenny's house. Libby gets to binge on gardening while she pals around with Jenny -- a very nice solution. Meanwhile, Tarwathie sits at anchor near Burlington harbor.
My subject today is something else. A prominent feature of summer visits to Lake Champlain has always been the fact that most boats on the lake are manned by beckers (The word Vermonters use to refer to people from Quebec). Many or most of them speak little or no English. It has been that way for many years.
This year the population of beckers seems to have doubled or tripled compared to previous years. That means the number of all boats has also nearly doubled or tripled. We are caught unprepared. It doesn't feel like a surge, it feels like an invasion.
I'm trying very hard not to be a bigot. It is so tempting to resent having your back yard filled with foreigners who don't speak your language. But the shoe has been on the other foot when we were English speaking tourists invading some other country's turf. Americans especially are unaccustomed to non-English-speaking tourists. The real problem is that some of the beckers act like jerks.
Minor infractions raise one's temperature but don't make one boil over. People saving places for their friends at public first-come-first-serve facilities is a violation of etiquette. When you're heading for a parking spot in a car (or a boat) and some jerk zooms past you at high speed and zips into the spot right in front of you, it makes you want to shout JERK (or worse). When a visitor to USA displays the American Flag in a disrespectful manner, that's a direct affront, probably a deliberate affront. (i.e. Fleur des Lis on top, Canadian Maple belief below that, and Stars and Stripes on the bottom). Frustration in all these cases is increased when you can't curse at them because they don't understand.
In other cases opinion splits. Attractive becker women sometimes run around naked or nearly naked much to the amusement of American men and the irritation of American women.
I saved the worst for last. Libby and I are both pretty even keeled. Very seldom am I aroused to the point of rage. Even less often for Libby. The other day was one such case. We were at the public dock in Vergennes. Libby was on the boat and I was up in the village. Libby suddenly sensed the boat moving. She looked outside. She found a man (a becker) had untied all our lines and was moving our boat. He didn't ask for permission. He didn't even knock on the hull to warn occupants. Such a monumental breach of etiquette calls for a punch in the nose. Libby became enraged and jumped out of the boat to verbally carve the guy a new one. He just gestured that he didn't understand what she said. Double rage. As she returned to the boat, another becker who witnessed the whole thing put it all in perspective. He said, "It's not all of us."
It's not all of us is right. We've met some wonderful beckers. Even the majority are nice people if you give them the benefit of the doubt. (What doubt? We suspect but can't prove that most of them understand and speak much more English than they let on.) It takes great will power to not be xenophobic.
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