Note: I have created a new category. “Back in the US of A” will be postings written this summer while back home in the United States. I will spare you the details of family visits. Instead, I will try to be an observer of the American culture in much the same way I do while in Việt Nam. It will be hard to do – one’s culture is so familiar it is often difficult to recognize. But, I’ll give it a whirl and we’ll see what happens.
For my Vietnamese readers (and hopefully, my students), remember there is no such thing as a typical American, nor is there a typical American city or town. I live in deep south Texas – very close to the Mexican border. Most of the people living here (about 85%) speak Spanish as their native tongue. This area is quite different from the area around Cleveland, Ohio – which is quite different from Orlando, Florida – which is quite different from Denver, Colorado. The vast majority of Vietnamese are Kinh – ethnic Vietnamese. Though there are 54 other ethnic groups, they only make up about 15% of the population, and few minority people live in and around the Kinh. America is quite the opposite. An Asian person may work with a Black person, and live next door to someone who speaks French, who is married to a Mexican. America is a mish-mash of diversity.
Take whatever I write with a grain of salt. Do not think I am describing such a thing as a typical American. It doesn’t exist.
(Grain of salt? For my students, that is an American idiom. Look it up.)
America is a land of automobiles. Even poor people drive automobiles. (They buy older used cars that are less expensive than new cars.) The other day, the Mystery Guest Blogger and I were stopped at the traffic light at 23rd Street and Nolana in McAllen, Texas. I commented that during that short time period, we probably saw more automobiles than we would see in an entire day in Hué.
Notice in this photo that the streets are very wide. This is the intersection of two five lane roads (middle lane is for turning). Even in the big cities, such as New York or Los Angeles, the major streets are wide and capable of handling a lot of automobile traffic. McAllen is a small city of 150,000 Most of the automobiles have just one person in them. That’s because many families have two automobiles. (Be sure to click on the photo to see a larger version.)
(I suspect my friends living in New York City will scoff at the previous paragraph, and proudly tell me they don’t own a car – and don’t want to. But remember, Gentle Reader – there is no such thing as a “typical American.”)
Just about everything is geared towards the automobile. In Việt Nam, there is a little “mom and pop” store on every street and neighborhood. You can purchase the necessities at these little stores – soap, an ice cream cone, cigarettes, or whatever. If you need food, there are markets aplenty, and all within walking or bicycle distance.
Not in America. Many people marvel at the huge stores of America. True enough, you can walk into many of the big stores and buy anything from chicken to chairs to canned fruit to a hair dryer. Such stores cover as much space as the Dong Ba market in Hué, but there are no stalls for individual vendors – everything is run by one company, and the huge building is air conditioned. The downside of these stores is that there are fewer of them. You cannot walk from your home to one of these stores – you must drive your automobile.
All these automobiles must stop somewhere. By local law, these huge stores must provide space to
park all those automobiles. The result: most Americans have a garage that holds two cars, and there are parking lots that are large enough to park hundreds of automobiles.
Back in 2003, I wrote a note from Saigon in which I said you cannot understand Việt Nam without understanding the motorbike. One simply cannot understand America without understanding it revolves around the automobile. Americans are fiercely independent – they don’t want anyone to tell them what to do, and if that means each of them must have his/her own automobile – so be it.