Bob Watch #1: Aussie Bob

So I'm sitting in the office today, trying to write articles for our next Highlands Herald and in waltzes my favorite, favorite character on the farm (and in life)-- Aussie Bob. As any true Aussie, Bob has spent his whole life traveling. We believe he left his "island" about 45 years ago, but despite his long time hiatus from home, his down-under drawl is as strong as if he had never left. I guess once an Aussie, always an Aussie.

Anyways, Aussie Bob has had the most fascinating life. From spending a season in Guyana panning for gold, (where he revolutionized their filtration system to save them losing about 30% of their gold-dust yield,) to traversing the African continent three times, Bob has just about done it all. The incredible diversity of his life experience is only matched by his tireless story telling; you can literally sit for hours listening to Bob recount adventures from all over the globe, like the movie UP, but better.

So, as I am sitting here writing my article about Summer Setting upon Highlands Road I think, how interesting is it to read about sundowners and pinot noirs when you can read about the life of Aussie Bob? So I turn to Bob, who at this point is mid-story about something he was doing in a jungle in god knows where, and ask him if he could do a column for the Highlands Herald called An Aussie Walkabout: yarns from the world traveler. Excitedly he affirms that I can use his life snippets for column fodder and I, equally excited, ask him to dictate one of his favorite stories for the next issues.

Here is how the story started. I really thought we were in business:

Once upon a time, in the bush of New Guinea, I came across an Australian patrol officer who had been living there for 10 years. In the bush, these patrol officers were God—they were able to keep up tradition and civilization in a place far removed from it. This particular officer was fastidious about two things: his facial hair and his freshly pressed trousers. A complete oddity in the bush, the patrol officer was religious about shaving, and every day the women from the village would come down to watch this foreign, “white-mans” ritual. On one particular day, the patrol officer came down to shave as usual...

At this point Bob then interrupted himself to tell me about the interesting cultural practices of people in New Guinea. In Bob-like fashion, the informational diversion expanded and Bob went on to tell me about how the women of New Guinea will suckle pigs because of thier incredible bartering value in the community. In fact, he went onto say, one of the women in the tribe had breast fed not only 6 children, but also 12 piglets. I just nodded and smiled, nod and smile. I thought we were returning to the story after this swine diversion, when he continued with a diatribe about how the concept of shame in this culture was very different than our ideas of modesty in Western society. I guess that these two sideline discussions should have clued me into the fact that the story was going to be quite a curve-ball, but the excitement in Aussie Bob's eyes and his seeming certainty that this was the perfect inaugral story for An Aussie Walkabout made me believe that the cart would right itself on the tracks.

So picking up the story where we left off, Aussie Bob continued to build on the suspense in, what I hoped, was both a highly appropriate and highly accessible story for the general public:

So this patrol officer decided to have a little bit of fun with the crowd of women who came to watch his daily shaving ritual. Taking his brush in hand, he proceeded to lather up the thick white cream on his already white face, creating a comical beard that nearly melted off in the jungle heat. Reaching into his kit, he then produced the shaving blade. He made as if to cut through the side of his lather beard, but then looked down at the blade with a perplexed expression. Turning to the 12 piglet woman, (the aforementioned celebrity of the village who had suckled 6 kids and twelve piglets,) who also happened to be particularly fastidious in her shaving-routine attendance, he walked towards her, grabbed one of her breasts, and began to sharpen his blade on her nipple. In response, the whole tribe broke into hysterics and the day of the patrol officer's breastly shave was forever memorialized in the tribal lore.

Close your jaw and realize that the discomfort you are feeling at the end of this story is only a fraction of what I felt sitting there with Bob, in the office, this morning. Here he was, looking expectantly towards me for approval for his story, and I had to stammer out something like, "oooo, great story, but I just don't know if that is completely appropriate for a business publication..."

To Bob's credit, this was a fascinating story which does explore the intricacies and complications of cultural translation and transition. It didn't even cross his mind that such a "yarn" would be inappropriate in a publication that's distributed to fancy winos, restraunteurs and kids. And that is Bob. You have to love him as much for his unscrupulous, oblivious nature as for his wealth of experience. Only Aussie Bob would be able to not only produce a story like that from his memory chest, but offer it up without the least fear of it being mistaken or misunderstood. And I think that is his beauty; a traveler through and through, he no longer cares for or really even sees the cultural boundaries that every individual society erects. Why not have nipple sharpeners as the front story of the Highlands Herald-- could teach all of us a thing or two about shaving in the wild!

This post will now mark the inauguration of a crucial installment of the blog moving forward:

BOB WATCH.

This posting, henceforth, will be BOB WATCH #1