The Catholic times. [volume] (Columbus, Ohio) 1951-current, 1959-06-26
JOSEPH BREIG-
What Makes
Americans.

like to try to get to the bottom of things. Since
we returned from our tour of the West, | have been
asking myself, What are the reasOnS-0r some of the
reaSons-that Americans are able to be at home with
one another almost from the moment they meet, as If
they had been next-door ~neighbors all their lives.
Bowen Carson is one OF many cases In point. He
is a cattle rancher, Weatherbeaten and hard-muScled,
accustomed to the air of the uplands, and to the huge
sweep of the western sky, land and mountains | am a
writer; a prisoner of a typewriter; | am confined at a
desk with an office wall a few feet from my nose.
Bowen. furthermore, is more than 20 years older
than | am. Reigiously, he is a Presbyterian, and am
a Catholic. He is a frontiersman, a pioneer; / am a traf-
fic-harried city dweler. And yet we were on good
friends terms Is minutes from the moment when we
saw each other for the first time on BoWen's ranch
near Cascade, Mont.
WHY? THE SAME question interested Fred
Nicholson OF st. Louis, whom we met at Old Faithful
geyser in Yellowstone National Park. Fred is as much
younger than as | am younger than Bowen Carson,
and his life is at least as different from mine as
BoWen'S. He is in the Air Force, and for him the sky
and the distances are larger even than Montana's. But
Fred and ], like Bowen and ], swiftly became friends.
Fred had been ordered from a post in the south
east to one in the far west. In a little foreign car, he
was touring much of the nation while on furlough.
He talks slowly because he is thinking deeply; he
dredges up words to express his conclusions. What
was the chief impression he received during his
travels? 1t was the same as mine-the friendliness,
nelghborlineSs of Americans.
PEOPLE ARE open, sincere" said Fred. They
tell YOU about themselves. and ask YOU about your.
1~Af - ~ SNN~ - Nt w A1@F Sh~'At pHN eANJ "ASN
you" | am not quoting him word for word; but that
was the burden of what he felt. It was what | felt too
about Bowen Carson. about Fred Nicholson. about
dozens of others. But why are Americans so easily
able to be like that?
There are a lot of reasons. One is the American
climate of freedom and equality. No bureaucrat inter-
feres with your travels. There are no passports, no
borders, no queStionnaires. Observe the traffic laws
which are only for your protection-and you may go
where you please in this immense nation.
ANOTHER REASON for our neighborliness is the
fact that n~eighbors we are, no matter how widely
separated. Bowen Carson and Fred Nicholson and |
along with ITS million other Americans-read the
same news every day, see the same teleyision pro-
grams, root for one or another of the major league
baseball teams, eat the same kinds of food, and deep
ly believe in the American doctrine that all men are
created equal and endowed by their Creator with in-
alienable rights.
Another factor. | think, is our ndustriousneSs
Bowen Carson knew without asking that | worked for
a living; that in my own way had known my ups and
downs, my successes and failures, as had he. And |
knew that Fred Nicholson was planning for his life
work after his Army career was completed. What |
mean is thls-there is, by and large, only one class In
America. II is the working class, and we all belong TO
SENSED instantly Bowen Carson's unspoken
happiness over what he had accomplished in 40 years
while he developed his ranch from a 400-acre farm
without an animal on il, into a 7,500-acre spread,
sprinkled with 500 or 500 head of cattle He was hum
bly, proud. and he had a right to be. And because | too
have worked hard, | understood.
Bowen and his wife Beulah, with Bob and jimmie
Broderick and Mary and |, piled into Bowen's auto
and rode miles across his grazing lands, passing cattle
and antelope, and emerging upon a high rise from
which we could see huge butt4@ IN the distance, and
far behind a mountain range piled with snow.
The vista was breathtaking; but what impressed
me more than the scenery was the thought of a man
and wife coming into these gigantic spaces and con-
querlng them through years Of sheer courage and de-
votion to the job. America is great beyond description.
and it has made Americans and Americans have
made ii.