Oh my America!

You found me first, America, in WWII. I was a boy in England. You were a twenty-year-old airman on your way to die for me and for many others in the violent skies over Europe. You were kind, casual, full of life. We were starving and scared. You gave us food and affection. Some of my people coined the cruel jibe “Oversexed, overpaid and over here” to describe you. Had you not been the last of those three, the world might not have survived the brutal dictator Adolf Hitler. You gave us life and hope. You personified American generosity. You will never be forgotten by those of us who came to know you.

You ambushed me, America: at Villefranche-sur-Mer, on France’s Cote d’Azur, with your cruiser the USS Des Moines, you showed me how your navy operated. My Royal Navy ship, H.M.S. Devonshire, had the same complement and number of libertymen: ours were supervised by a ‘regulating’ petty officer and three sailors as shore patrol, unarmed; yours took armies of sailors with radios and sidearms and night sticks, with radio stations in Villefranche and Nice, patrol cars and paddy wagons. Your ships prohibited alcohol, ours permitted the traditional daily tot. Which was right? Which was the cause, which the effect? The first words I read in France, at a café on Villefranche’s quai: “Swell joint. Lovely gals.” Yes, you Yanks were there.

We ambushed you, in turn. Your officers came to drink in our wardroom, an armada of liberty boats. We welcomed you. Until you had to leave and one of us—not I, I swear it—uncoupled the retaining chain atop the gangway leading down to where your liberty boats came alongside. But we watched as a couple of you stepped off into space after saluting the quarterdeck and fell to the water. Points for style. Luckily, you could swim.

You didn’t let up, America. You were relentless. You dispatched operatives to con me, to subvert my will. You attacked me where I lived: in curiosity, a sense of wonder about your country. You sent Eddie Hull, a Maryland business writer, and Bill Hull, a Texan. They insisted that I see for myself. They explained that America was a place of opportunity, a meritocracy. They brooked no denial on my part. Staying in England was a career dead end, they explained: waiting for someone higher up to die. They sensed that I was unwilling to wait.

You put up flaming hoops, America—hot, high, small—at your imposing London Embassy, dominated by its immense eagle. Your voices were foreign, your bureaucracy different. You made it hard to enter your country.

You were in charge, America. Brash and boisterous, bumptious and presumptuous. Most of you were returning from European holidays. You commandeered the French passenger liner to New York, the Flandres—much noise, endless partying. When you discovered my mission, you told me about your country. You were proud of your native land; I was an eager audience. Inside, I was afraid.

Oh, America! The first sight of you: your Statue of Liberty, sentry over New York Harbor. Your skyscraper cliffs emerged from morning mists, brushing the clouds. Your massive cars hurtled silently on the West Side Highway. You crushed me, in four exhilarating days: your power, your wealth, your confidence. You don’t remember me, that twenty-something ignoramus wandering your streets, slack jawed. You let me go, by Greyhound bus, to Outpost Texas.

Oh my, America. That journey through your South shocked my soul. I could not conceive of people segregated by skin colour into a lower order: separate bathrooms, the back of the bus. Later you turned that cruel, unequal world upside down and started down the long, logical, loving road to racial equality, a path from which your people, with a few notable exceptions, have not deviated. You taught the world respect, tolerance, forgiveness, atonement. Love.

Oh, my America! You worked hard, played harder. In New Orleans I savored your music, your nightlife. You blew my mind, my eardrums: Little Richard rocked in Gretna, spewing riotous insanity; Fats and Louis Domino rolled in Algiers, bursting with energy and invention; in the French Quarter: street drinking, gender diversity, casual experimentation. No limits, no rules, anything goes. I went on to adventures in the Gulf oil patch. Over the years I saw many of your principal cites, and learned to appreciate them—Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix, Reno, San Diego, Seattle, Washington D.C.

America, it was like this: I came to Silicon Valley, to write about the staggering innovation of great minds. I was surrounded by dreamers and doers from many nations, the best and brightest who sensed the same possibilities, embraced the risks, were willing to try, roll the dice, risk everything to find new horizons. You showed me the American Way: attack problems with money and energy, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. You fail? You come right back and try again.

Flawed but fabulous, America, you still dare to dream, to reinvent yourself, to persevere no matter the struggle, to endure. With all your faults you’re the world’s last great hope, though, as I write, your noble, 250-year experiment in democracy is under deep threat. I want the America, to which I came long ago, to survive.

America, I hardly know ye—I’m still drowning in mid-Atlantic—but I will continue to try to understand you. I must add my modest haiku, at work inside me, outside me … in every human:

Dreamer, awake now.

Discard empty promises.

Find a loving heart.