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Only In America...

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“Only in America…”

How many times have you heard that phrase lead in to, or sum up, a story about something unique and special that happened here in this country once upon a time? A wonderful anecdote told by your father, or mother, grandmother, or older relative, family friend, or even a new acquaintance? A tale of the special character and possibilities that this country, in better days, had offered to so many?

As a baby boomer, I relished those stories from my beloved Dad, a steelworker in Bethlehem PA back in the glory days of “The Steel.” The 1950s through the 70s. Bethlehem was a tough town, but it was filled with the promise of the American Dream. Populated by wave after wave of immigrants from its founding in the early 1700s by a group of religious refugees, the Moravians, mostly German by ethnicity, an early protestant sect of Christians which had formed long before Luther, Bethlehem Steel built the USA, literally. It later would become ground zero for the Rust Belt, and the decline of the working class that had depended on heavy industry for good paying jobs, benefits and the chance at a better life for their kids and grandkids.

(BTW both Bethlehem and Allentown next door, where many of those working class families still live today went solid blue in the recent election. Surrounded by a sea of deep red. 2016 Lehigh Valley Election Map)

As America changes before my eyes and I’m overwhelmed with fear and grief and worry about what the future holds for us, my mind keeps coming back to one of those little stories, one my Dad wrote down as the opening bit of a one man show he wrote for me when I told him I wanted to be an actor.

I wrote about that gift to me in my very first post here many years ago and it made the rec list. I was humbled and proud. (excerpts from the script are still back in my post history if you’d like to read more of them.)

Given recent events I think it might be a good time to remember this story my Dad related many years ago of a brief short moment when men and women of all kinds celebrated that they were all Americans. Just celebrated it. That they were ALL Americans.

They were all Americans and PROUD of that fact. Even when they called each other names that today are ‘triggers’ or ‘ethnic slurs.’ As the character my Dad created from the real men he knew and listened to, created with honesty and truth, and without scrubbing the blemishes we might see or criticize today, points out, “they all got along real good, even the hunkies and dagos.”

So I’d like to share a clip from the only video I have of my performance here in Bethlehem in 2004 with you all today as we strive to come together to maintain our vision of this country’s true exceptionalism. I hope it will help bring us together, despite the many differences we have had and still face.

(from my final dress rehearsal, unfortunately I wasn’t able to get a videographer to film the live show.)


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