Like beauty, America* is in the eye of the beholder. As beholder I had the awesome experience of revisiting America yesterday. To the uninitiated, NYC and LA hasn’t been “American” since about the mid 70s but as they vie for the label of “US entertainment capital” they are the most visible image of our country the world sees and hears. Anyone who has been active in even amateur theatrics knows the people involved there are not our smartest or most creative, merely performers. Our larger cities, vying for status, mimic these two stereotypical metropolises.
Regionalism no longer defines us except among the thoroughly provincial and bigoted (the world still has far too many). Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, Baltimore, St. Louis, Nashville, Kansas City, Dallas, Houston and such strive to hang onto a semblance of the flavor which once defined them in pursuit of sophisticated images. So much so, that Americanism is subjugated to civic-minded blah-ness. And the total of their populations is significant. I escaped from that homogenization yesterday when I returned to a class reunion of schoolmates from my late teens (prep school and freshman college days.)
We gathered in Anderson, SC, a small city or large town in the Appalachian piedmont. It is relatively newly formed (circa 1840) in a state that prides itself on colonial aristocrats of Charleston and Beaufort. Originally a textile mill area it has kept the best of its founding flavor with two lovely historic district but the once flourishing mills have been lost to economic globalization. It is still a center of old college towns which have become booming Universities. Clemson contributes engineering know-how while others like Furman gave us such talents as my friend of those days the late James Lee Barrett creator of numerous TV classics, military hero movies and even Smokey the Bandit. The area is thriving and behind the counters and in the visible kitchens of their restaurants were predominantly WASP, polite, efficient male teen-agers (a variety I thought extinct).My schoolmates had transformed from the once obvious offspring of Oliver Cromwell mated to Betsy Ross into retired but active sophisticated professors/teachers, housewives, business leaders, accomplished professionals, sustaining Junior Leaguers, entrepreneurs and much more. They had lived and worked all over the world, driven daily in NYC and Atlanta (a special badge due them from one who has seen the Autobahn in full swing), driven I-95 from one end to the other, I-10 from Jacksonville Beach to LA, and thoroughly been immersed in life all over the globe. Seems their classic southern manners and charm had not suffered and most had returned to live happily in piedmont Carolina.
