The Melting Pot

Newspapers in the 1800s described the United States as a great melting pot of the world. For where else in the world could Germans, Italians, Irish, English, French, Spanish, Russians, Africans, Dutch and many others all have one thing in common? Only in The United States, for here they were all Americans, despite where they may have come from. The people from these different lands tended to live near one another to maintain a feeling of community with people that were similar to themselves. Their culture was there, protected by those who felt it important to remeber their roots even while being fiercely proud of being an American. (If you traveled to Germantown, PA you were not likely to eat Italian.)

It was when the great cities of the day began to grow with pockets of these immigrants that the first steps towards Homogenization were taken. Cities like New York and Chicago, with places like "Little Italy" and "Chinatown" where the cultures of the people were still strongly defined but also blurring a little with simply being in America. On the outskirts of places like Little Italy, the culture blurred faster as people not from the "Old country" mixed, married and lived with the new arrivals. Where a family that had always been german suddenly had a son-in-law from Poland or Ireland. Slowly, people began to accept that this was the way thing would be, "But Papa, we're in America now!"

Then came the trains and the small resturaunts and the like that sprung up at thier stations. "Whistle Stop" cafes that put forward food that a traveller might not be familiar with but was a regional specialty. Food and culture began moving more quickly not that there was a way to move about quickley. Now the melting pot begins to simmer as people begin to marry outside of thier own towns, mixing cultures as they went. Eventually a kind of American culture begins to emerge that is based on all of the previous mixtures of cultures. The very concepts of Mom, Apple pie, and the American Way as icons of this new culture come to the surface and are embraced as people from all walks of life join together in the transformation of this new country.

At the dawn of the 20th century the fervor for change spread across the entire nation. There was less of the seperation of cultures in the cities and new cultural icons seemed grow completely formed from very cement of the streets. I new direction seemed to forming and a new determination to "Do it the American way". Slowly, people were giving up thier culture without even thinking about it. There was a new way, an American way, to do things. An American way to dance, an American way to cook, an American way to drink and an American way to shop. Vanished was the town market where carts of goods were bartered over, gone were the "traditional" dress and the "traditional" music and the trusty horse was put away in favor of a new way to travel. The automobile, while created in Europe, was adopted by American's much more readily than in other cultures. Americans saw the car as a delaration of personal freedom and independence. Roads between towns hardly exsisted at all and those that did required a true "pioneer spirit" to even attept to drive on them. Never the less the number of automobile owners grew rapidly because we love new things and change in general.

The more things spread out, the more we wanted to take the familiar with us. But we reached a crescendo in the 1950's post war boom time. This is when travel really began to be easy and inexpensive. Now, more people than ever could move about and intermingle. Exchanging ideas and culture, food and art, culture and beliefs. Many men came home from the war with a new bride in tow, and of course she was bringing with her all of her culture and language as well. The 50's were an incrediblly diverse period in our history and yet it seems as though we worked very hard and squashing that diversity in favor of sameness, the regular, the normal.

This is the birth of the Chain Store, of franchised resturaunts, of Keeping up with the Jones', and of the eventual demise of the Mom and Pop. This is the time of "The Huntley-Brinkley Report", the show that revolutionized TV news and spawned an entire industry of news anchors with the same smooth mid-western accent. Just like Chet Huntley. A seemingly endless string of opportune moments to bring the innovation of sameness to the country, all in the name of the almighty dollar.

In future entries we will examine in some depth the 1950's for the cusp of time this and the subsequent decades have proven them selves to be. They say hindsight is 20/20, let's focus some of that energy then on why we behave the way we do and what we might be like if we had chosen differently. We hope you'll feel the desire to join in.

Opening remarks

Do you remember when things were different? Can you recall when there was character and originallity in our country? When just going to the next town meant you could try new foods, see new clothes, meet new people, shop in new stores, even hear a new accent. Back when county fairs actually displayed the wares of the county they were held in and were not just outlets for fattening food, cheep poorly made chinese toys and dangerous rides. (Well, I guess the rides have always been pretty dangerous.) Can you perhaps recall the phrases "Regional Specialty" "Just like Mom used to make" or "No place like Home"? That's the problem, there IS somplace like home and it IS "Just like Mom used to make" and we don't even seem to notice. "Isn't this great?" they say, "We're on vacation 3000 miles from home and we can still get (fill in the blank), just like Mom used to make." Shouldn't we lament the loss of such glorious items as "Home made apple pie", Bob's hardware store, Beazmore's Friendly Market or the MacAlpine's lunch counter?

No, I'm not a dottering old fool wishing for yester-year and I am not a starry eyed dreamer either. Many of the things we'll talk about here have been gone my entire life, but that doesn't mean that they should be left behind or forgotten. There is a myriad of important lessons in our past that the current crop of Americans have never given a single nod to, let alone a carefully considered thought.

In this blog we will examine, and hopefully discuss, the Homogenization of America. How exactly we have slipped from who we were to who we are as a nation and as a people. How we went from being a country of immigrants to a country that abhors immigration. How we have changed from the most respected nation on Earth, to the most reviled. And how our hometowns have become just like everyone else's hometown.

Join us won't you? Add your own input into this investigation, what have you noticed and what do you miss? What's good about our path and what could we have done without? Do you enjoy living in the Mom and Pop economy or in a Wal-Mart world and why? Share it with us folks and we will share with you as well.