Suzanne Chew
Encounters Along the Cowboy Trail So, what do you think of your President? Mother, with disingenuous naïveté, asked the two Americans who joined our day tour from Calgary. The young waitress had just taken our lunch order, in a cavernous, somewhat run-down-but-dark-so-you-couldn’t-really-tell, saloon-style establishment in the middle of Alberta’s dusty Cowboy Trail. The place was eerily quiet at high noon, sans cowboys. Had my jaw not been wired shut from a brusque scolding by Mother that morning, it would have dropped. I can’t remember if this was before or after they had asked her why our English was so good. Growing up as the studious Asian in a sleepy village in Cambridge, I encountered this question many times, mostly by older British people. My Queen’s English flowed from the BBC period dramas and Brontë books I had inhaled, but Mother still retained her rich, pithy accent. I know it was before they asked S, the Indian
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