American on Purpose by Craig Ferguson Read Free Book Online

in my scratchy, Sunday-best tweed trousers, a tight green-and-yellow cable-knit sweater, and a green silk tie, looking for all the world like a pocket-sized plump pimp with crabs. I practiced what I imagined to be my winning smile in the Photo-Me booth and sent the strip of four black-and-white pictures to the passport office in Glasgow. A few weeks later I received my giant dark-blue British passport. I felt like James Bond.
    My father sent off for the airplane tickets and when they arrived I was allowed to pin mine up on the wall next to my bed. I would lie in bed at night gazing at the waxy little pamphlet by the light of a luminous plastic model of Count Dracula I had made from akit. It had a drawing of the world on the outside cover, red countries on a blue sea. Scotland was tiny and the U.S. was gigantic. My name was printed inside along with miles of wondrous small print about baggage restrictions and regulation quotes from sections of the Warsaw Pact. I read the ticket restrictions over and over again in the pale green glow of Nosferatu.
     
    We left one bright clear morning. Prestwick Airport is situated in one of the more picturesque areas of Scotland, and Scotland is not short of picturesque areas. In the terminal I could hear the American accents of some of my fellow travelers—you could tell which passengers were American before they spoke. They looked so different, with their strangely white teeth crammed together with no gaps and their gum-chewing and gregarious friendly natures not fired by alcohol. My dad let me sit by the window and I watched Scotland get smaller as the big DC-10 lumbered upward. Before the old country could shrink to the size of the map on the airplane ticket cover we entered bumpy dark clouds. A moment of fear and then a bright-blue sky.
    We arrived after dark and JFK smelled deliciously of beer, cigarettes, jet fuel, and sourdough pretzels. Outside it was hot and damp in a way I had only experienced on bath night at home. It was fascinating but it was also frightening. My father took my hand as we waited in line for customs. I was way past the age when I would normally have allowed this but I was tired and scared and I think he probably was, too. After a brief interrogation by a ridiculously affable, burgundy-faced Irish customs guard we were through.
    The noise of New Yorkers going about their business is a hell of a shock to the uninitiated. To this day when I visit New York City it seems to me that half the people on the street are overacting for an unseen audience or they’ve just seen one too many musicals.
    It was easy to spot my other Uncle James at the barrier among allthe anxious yelling faces since he looked just like my father, except his hair was more stylish—his dark-brown locks styled in what my gran would have called a blowjob haircut—and he had a tan .
    I loved James from the moment I met him. He’s the Ferguson family version of Steve McQueen, handsome and tough and doesn’t take any shit from the likes of you. He drinks Dewar’s on the rocks, works outdoors, wears plaid shirts and work boots, and, back then, chain-smoked Marlboro reds. He was the first of my family to emigrate to the U.S., working his way across the Atlantic on a cargo vessel and then using some creative license on his résumé to secure a job taking care of the Blydenburgh family’s parklike estate on Long Island.
    James Ferguson has loved only one woman his whole life, my Aunt Susan. They met when they were teenagers and are still happily married. They already had two kids when James sailed for the New World, and the moment he’d made enough money he sent for all three of them. Susan was with him at the barrier that night to welcome us. She is beautiful and confident and she immediately made me feel not too afraid to be away from my own mother. After all, Susan was made of the same stuff—another movie star. James has always said the reason their marriage has lasted so long is that he knew