The rock I want to talk about has neither protruding muscle nor tanned skin. It is unable to roll up his eyebrow, as one would do with the sleeves of a shirt, to give a glare. It has not played in countless franchises. It didn't smash faces with the frequency of a worker on an assembly line. Nor has this rock beaten up his peers in the wrestling ring, yet it is pretty beat up. In the United States, there are two rocks. The one from the movies and the one from Plymouth. One is acting, the other is a big joke. At least the first one doesn't take himself seriously.

Americans come from all over the country to this small city in Massachusetts, located on the coast, an hour away from Boston, to see this rock. It must be said that the landscape is bucolic, almost wild. It's an ideal vacation destination. Too bad the ocean is frigid and white sharks prowl, off shore, looking for a seal or an intrepid bather. Whatever, there is the rock or the Plymouth Rock, the first piece of land on which the pilgrims, just landed from the Mayflower, in 1620, would have walked.

Tourist Attraction

When arriving at the rock, the visitor first sees an imposing granite temple of Greek appearance, a sort of national Pantheon, which he enters to see, below, leaning against a railing, a rock slumped on the beach. The rock is gray, looks heavy, has a date engraved on its surface (1620) and is cracked all over. This detail is important because it reveals the deception behind all this theatricality. It is neither the original rock - there is no mention of the rock in the pilgrims' accounts - nor the place where they landed - they arrived at Provincetown on the other side of the peninsula.

If Plymouth was the site of the first Pilgrim colony, the whole story around the rock is false. It was installed here in 1880 - and broken up a century earlier - to attract tourists. America loves a good story, the rock's could have been more glorious, The Rock's will never cease to dazzle us.