The collection of people at Dollywood is so extremely country, so southern and so Christian that I’m thinking our time here is limited. People are walking around with t-shirts with slogans like ‘The only thing that matters is that Jesus loves me.’ I have been hearing an awful lot about this Jesus character in the country music that Egon has been playing in the car, and I’ve been taking it in stride, but it’s taking a kind of solipsistic turn on some of these t-shirts that I find a little disturbing, and the nattily dressed preacher types keep giving us dirty looks.

Now Egon, as I think I have mentioned, is a perfect gentleman. He remembers his mother’s birthday, he lights other peoples’ cigarettes, he holds doors for people, he steps aside to let others board the bus in front of him. This behavior is a perfect fit for the South, where courtesy is both expected and appreciated. In fact, Egon charms the southerners, even picking up bottles that babies have tossed from their carriages, and returning them with a smile and a friendly comment.

There’s just one catch, and it has to do with language. Egon and I always speak Norwegian in Norway (and be it noted that Northern Norwegians swear like sailors), but we have decided to speak English most of the time on this trip. So our running conversation about music, politics, US history, and the meaning of the universe is generally conducted in English. Egon’s English is excellent and our discussions are wide-ranging. Some of his English speaking habits have been picked up at soccer matches at Anfield where he hangs out with the roughest of the die-hard Liverpool fans. Some of Egon’s best drinking buddies in England excel at screaming the rudest things anyone has ever heard in their lives at the top of their lungs. This experience, combined with his Northern Norwegian background means that he swears like an ex-convict sailor with Tourette’s syndrome. His language is making old ladies’ hair straighten out. Mothers are covering their children’s ears. In fact, some of this language is enough to make truck drivers blush. He’s freely sprinkling the bluest of expletives throughout his speech and casually referring to our GPS unit with the c-word in the middle of Dollywood, which during Gospel Week must be the most god-fearin’, bible-thumpin’ valley in the entire god-fearin’, bible-thumpin’ country. Obviously none of them know that he’s referring to a machine, and I don’t know if it would matter. These are people who wash their childrens’ mouths with soap for saying big-ass (as in “That’s a big-ass turtle”), and big-ass is about a one chili pepper word compared with the fours and fives Egon is using. I don’t think he appreciates how freaked out these people can be by taboo words. They’ll be performing exorcisms on their poor children’s ears come Sunday. The contrast between his courteous behavior and his foul language is like some kind of ventriloquist act. I hastily usher Egon out of Dollywood before the silver-haired bolo-tied missionaries form a lynch mob and we make a run for the car.