Retrospect: American cheese
Self-tutoring about people and events from the past: the tutor recalls a great one.
In general, I love America and Americans. I travelled there sometimes when I was a kid, and I also lived on an American base for a couple of years. I’d say I know Americans.
The Americans I met on the base had the charm that everything about them was American: they couldn’t imagine being any other way. Although not much was outwardly different between them and Canadians – except for their candy bars and their money – the subtle differences became less subtle.
One of my favourite examples of the cultural difference is a time, over at my friend’s house, he got out some cheese from the fridge for a snack. (He was American, from Michigan.) What kid of cheese was it? A-M-E-R-I-C-A-N it proclaimed, in big letters, across the package. BTW: it wasn’t the pre-sliced kind, but a solid block from which you cut pieces.
The Americans had their own grocery store on the base (which Canadians stationed there could shop at as well): everything there, to the extent possible, was what they’d buy in the US. Therefore, their world was still American, even living away from home (the base was in Newfoundland, though it was an American base). That’s what a superpower can do.
The Americans on that base were often of local persuasions you’d seldom encounter except in their home neighbourhoods. Therefore, you could spend time with someone from New Jersey, someone from Detroit, and someone from the Deep South, all at once. Regardless of where they were from, they loved it there and looked forward to getting back. Ironically, since they were of military families, they hadn’t necessarily much reason to expect they’d return whence they’d come. They’d return to the US, probably – but back to New Jersey or Detroit, for instance? I was skeptical – the US Navy was all over the world. It was all over the coastal US, just for a start – the US is a big country.
That kind of optimism – that they’d return to their old neighbourhoods and see their old friends – wasn’t so common among the Canadian kids I knew on bases. Most of them were aware they’d next move to another base somewhere else, just as likely unfamiliar. They seldom talked of returning “home” the way the Americans would.
The immensity of the US – culturally and geographically – impressed me on that base. Moreover, without doubt, it defined the American point of view back then. Whereas a Canadian’s news, culture, etc, would always be influenced by the US, it was clear that, more often, the Americans thought of Canada because, right then, they were stationed there. When they returned to the US, however, or else went overseas, they would likely not contemplate Canada. It wasn’t personal or insensitive – it was just “the way it was.” Canada was one of many countries in the US orbit.
cheese.com Jack of Oracle Tutoring by Jack and Diane, Campbell River, BC.