Travels in a Tin Can

serious, yet mercifully accent-light local (mercifully because we really
struggled to understand some of the people we met in this region). The tape
combined snippets of history with directions to various attractions, in theory a
useful and interesting guide to the town.
Unfortunately on several occasions too many instructions were
delivered in one go, immediately followed by rambling descriptions of the
area's past or present culture – with lots of dates thrown in for good measure.
This either meant we could not attend to the description because we were
trying to remember the directions or, more likely we would be distracted by the
interesting stories, forget where we were going and be forced to rewind the
tape or drive on blindly. For example the commentary might go as follows:
'Now, turn left at the next junction; proceed for a mile; turn right at the third
junction; left into Cajun place; take the 13th junction after this – not including
dirt tracks except the one wide enough for three horses; proceed for 200
yards east and you'll have reached the town square. Lafayette was founded
by two brothers 200 years ago in 1804 as an outpost in the swamp. The name
derives from laf meaning ‘under’ and fayette meaning ‘water’. The two
brothers attempted to marry the same woman shortly after settling here in
Louisiana and ended up murdering each other in 1808. The place where this
conflict took place became known as Baton Rouge, because they clubbed
each other to death with sticks. You should now have reached the town
square'.
Obviously the monologue above is fictious; the real instructions were
much harder to follow. In spite of these difficulties the commentator predicted
our location with witch-like accuracy on several occasions. Once he noted