I hope readers will forgive me for once again answering a comment with a separate posting. This has offended some of my correspondents in the past, so I have resolved in general to avoid the practice. However, in this case, I believe the one who posted the comment legitimately points to a flaw in the way I expressed myself in my Sunday column, so I thought I would post this attempt to set the record straight a bit more prominently. (I will, of course, appreciate being corrected if I have once again overstepped the bounds of blog etiquette.)
My most recent correspondent refers to the "narrow set of circumstances" that causes Southerners to be amazed that Northerners can be polite. Well, first, my suggestion that this was amazing was stated in a tongue-in-cheek manner:
It’s almost enough to make you think there are ways in which folks up north are more polite than we are. Almost. One wouldn’t want to get carried away on such thin, subtle evidence.
If that was not clear, chalk it up to my own limitations as a writer. I thought the irony was suggested in a way that was practically heavy-handed, but I could be wrong about that.
But what I really want to comment on is the suggestion that my frame of reference is too narrow. Perhaps it is, but I doubt it. The evidence in favor of this assumption would be:
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My lack of experience traveling in the small towns and countryside of the north, resulting from the fact that business is more likely to take one to the large cities.
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I have never been to Europe. I, personally am amazed that I’ve gotten to the age of 51 with that remaining true. But I’m a bit like Jimmy Stewart’s character George Bailey in that regard — family responsibilities and such have always prevented it. For instance, my wife and I had planned to bop over at least to Britain last summer for our 30th anniversary. It didn’t happen. We planned again to do it this year. It didn’t happen again. I won’t go into the personal reasons, but they were compelling in each case.
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I haven’t been to Asia or Africa, either. Or Australia, just to round out the continents missing from my life’s itinerary. I’ve never been out of the Western Hemisphere, unless Hawaii (where I graduated from high school) counts.
Compared to my father, who spent a career in the Navy and saw the world, that’s pretty narrow. It results largely from the fact that I find myself in my present position at a time of financial retrenchment in the newspaper industry. Early in my career, it was common for editorial writers to go on junkets all over the world. By the time I was on an editorial board, that was a thing of the past — much to my regret. My trip to New York last year for the Republican Convention, and my colleague Mike Fitts’ trip to Boston for the Democratic, stand out as unusual expenditures in this day and age (I had to catch my publisher in a weak moment even to travel that far).
Now, let’s review the evidence to the contrary. Between kindergarten and the 12th grade, I was educated in:
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Bennettsville, S.C.
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Norfolk, Va.
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Woodbury, N.J.
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Kensington, Md.
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Guayaquil, Ecuador
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New Orleans, La.
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Tampa, Fla.
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Honolulu, Hawaii
I found myself in some of those places more than once (in Norfolk three times, for instance). The longest I spent in any one of them was in Ecuador — two years, four-and-a-half months. I have been in public schools, private schools, and basically skipped most of the fourth grade, making up what I missed with a private tutor.
I have spent time (ranging from an hour to 18 years) in Mexico, Haiti, Panama, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Hawaii, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
Some of those, I’ll confess, were mere stopovers to change planes (Colorado, Illinois, Ohio). Others were intensive, extended experiences (Ecuador, Louisiana, Hawaii, Florida, Tennessee, Kansas in particular). Others were in-between. But even the airport stops expanded my experience, however slightly — the view of the Rockies from the Boulder airport, for instance, is pretty spectacular (even to one who has seen the Andes). As for living in Ecuador and Hawaii… Well, in Ecuador I came to speak Spanish so fluently that it was the same as English for me. I thought and dreamt in Spanish (one of the great tragedies of my life is that I didn’t keep it up, and can only speak it very haltingly now, and often am completely lost trying to keep up with native speakers). That gave me a different perspective from those who feel that they are in an alien culture in a place like, say, Miami. The couple of times I have visited there, the place felt warmly homelike.
In Hawaii, I learned what it was like to be in a minority (not an oppressed minority, to be sure, but a minority). I learned the ways not only of native Hawaiians, but of the many other ethnicities that dwell there. I had to. I didn’t like being scolded by my friend Roy Asao’s mom when I failed to take off my shoes before entering their traditional Japanese home. So in that and a host of other small ways, I adapted.
In my adult life I have worked for extended periods in Tennessee, Kansas and South Carolina. Not exactly the capitals of Europe or the bazaars of the Mideast, but I learned a lot in each.
So where does this leave me in terms of the broadness of my travels (setting aside my reading habits and other interests and where they take me in ways other than physical), and how they have affected my perspective? It leaves me in kind of a in-between place. I have enough of an "outside" perspective that it puts me constantly at odds with South Carolinians who DO have a narrow, limited way of defining the legitimate boundaries of their world. But it leaves me far from being a world traveler. In fact, as I said before, it’s amazing I’ve reached this age without having left this hemisphere. My perspective is hardly "narrow" compared to the population at large, but it falls far short of "cosmopolitan."
The fact is that, having traveled more than enough in my vagabond youth, I have deliberately set down roots in one place — the place of my birth, even though I did not grow up here. I wanted to develop the sort of depth of character that results from having a sense of place (whether I have succeeded or not remains to be seen). I have done this while forgetting nothing of what I learned from living elsewhere.
Make of that what you will.
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