It’s Thanksgiving and our all-American holiday hasn’t felt as welcome in years. After the horrors of the past 15 months, we’re more aware than ever of how much those of us in the USA have to be thankful for — even while we’re still griping about the things that bug us. So we decided this is the perfect time to accentuate the positive and, for the second time in CL‘s 15 years in Charlotte, we’ve drawn up a list of some of the things about America that we dearly love.
This isn’t the standard-issue “puppies and Mom’s apple pie” rah-rah civics class stuff, but everyday things like, say, peanut butter or rock & roll or college towns — things Americans are so close to, we often can’t see how great they are. Or undervalued people, like America’s long list of quirky figures a la Walt Whitman or Hunter S. Thompson, people who may never be part of a Chamber of Commerce PR package, but who make this a really interesting country, to say the least.
Look at this as a little soul healing, if you will. It’s also a way to reclaim the flag from jingoist screamers and mouth breathers — and help us remember that it belongs to all of us. Most of all, it’s a celebration of the underlying wild, democratic thrust in America, our exhilarating popular culture, our vulgar expansiveness, and all the naive, very American enthusiasms that led Chuck Berry to once holler, “I’m so glad I’m living in the USA” — and led us to even think of an article like this to begin with.
1 The Bill of Rights. We still have it, even if the Attorney General seems utterly unaware of it.
2 Our hybrid nature. Our country and our culture are mutts — and that’s great. Everything we produce, including our music, art, cuisine — and most of our population — is a mix of something with something else, a combination of this and that. Some British here, some Polish influence there, mix it with some Irish or Haitian or American Indian or Italian and a dash of Vietnamese and Greek, and voila — that’s American.
3 Indigenous American music. All of it: jazz, country, rock & roll, R&B, hip hop, folk, pop, gospel, bluegrass, zydeco, and blues. Is this stuff in our bones, or what?
4 Indigenous American food: Pancakes, fried chicken, cheeseburgers, corn on the cob, Eastern North Carolina bar-b-que, Tabasco sauce, gumbo, peanut butter, grits, Wisconsin cheese curds and, yes, even things like scrapple and liver mush.
5 The richness of speech and the subtle variations of accents as you cross from state to state, region to region, sometimes from town to town.
6 The California coastline.
7 The border islands off the Atlantic coast.
8 Hollywood and American movies, which for decades have been a kind of surrogate imagination for the whole world.
9 The way the people of New York City shook themselves off and got to work following the September 11 terrorist attacks.
10 The idea of the road as a place to reinvent yourself, an impulse running from Robert Johnson through Kerouac to Thelma and Louise and beyond.
11 Popular design of the late-50s and early-60s — cars and radios and refrigerators and even coffee tables that all looked like variations on rockets, full of energy and a tacky exuberance.
12 Glorious skyscrapers from the 1930s, particularly the Empire State and Chrysler buildings in New York.
13 Roe v. Wade.
14 New Orleans. Tacky, muggy and bug-ridden, but jam-packed with entrancing music, extraordinary food and writers. Our oldest living example of real cultural pluralism.
15 Baseball and the mysticism associated with it, practically approaching a religious doctrine. When the ballpark is empty, the sport’s past hangs over it like a fog; when it’s packed with fans, it charges the air with an electrifying current.
16 Our whole pantheon of rock & roll stars: from Little Richard to Jim Morrison to Lou Reed to Levi Stubbs to Chuck Berry to Marvin Gaye to Dave Matthews to Fats Domino to Prince to Springsteen to Madonna to Neil Young to Aretha Franklin, and on and on and on and on and on and on. . .
17 The social gospel: religion has never been the progressive social force in Europe that it often is here.
18 Colleges and universities; particularly, funky little liberal arts institutions who manage to hang on in the corporatized world of universities.
19 America’s great college towns like Chapel Hill, Ann Arbor, Boulder, Amherst, Madison, Ithaca, Berkeley, Lawrence, Lexington, Oxford and lots of others. Places where the sense of open-mindedness and possibility is palpable — and usually trumps any sign of academic stuffiness.
20 American cranks — quirky thinkers with transformative visions: Henry Thoreau, William S. Burroughs, Margaret Sanger, Walt Whitman, Thomas Jefferson, Jack Kerouac, Gertrude Stein, Philip K. Dick, Emma Goldman, Abbie Hoffman, Thomas Edison, Dorothy Day, Sam Phillips, Thomas Dorsey, Dorothy Parker, Hunter S. Thompson, Josephine Baker, Lenny Bruce, Phil Spector.
21 Elvis Presley: the guy had to invent himself because what he chased after — a charged up union of black and white musics with deep, subversive roots — hadn’t been envisioned by anyone else yet.
22 All-American Power Athlete Heroes: Mickey Mantle, Barry Bonds, Shaq, Jack Nicklaus, Jack Dempsey, Joe Montana, Tiger Woods, Johnny Unitas, Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson.
23 All-American Loudmouth Athletes: Muhammad Ali, Joe Namath, Reggie Jackson, Charles Barkley, Jim McMahon, Deion Sanders.
24 Pioneers of social frontiers: Jackie Robinson, AIM, Martin & Malcolm, Harriet Tubman, Betty Friedan, Sojourner Truth, Queer Nation, Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
25 College basketball and football. Some of the most riveting and emotionally involving sports action on the planet.
26 Buying and selling used CDs. One of the marks of our musical richness is this booming example of cultural recycling.
27 Bad taste that takes over the place, from pro wrestling to Divine to Kraft mac & cheese.
28 Birthing centers, and what they eventually did to humanize hospital deliveries.
29 Americans who use America itself as the basis for their art: Louis Armstrong, James Baldwin, Raymond Chandler, Willa Cather, Ray Charles, Georgia O’Keeffe, Bessie Smith, William Faulkner, Charles Ives, Robert Rauschenberg, Duke Ellington, Flannery O’Connor, John Ford, Edward Hopper, Hank Williams, Ishmael Reed, Robert Frank, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Frost, Robinson Jeffers, Jackson Pollock, Frank Capra. While too many Americans looked timidly to Europe, they helped craft a culture of awesome scope and vitality.
30 Marilyn Monroe.
31 The earthy spirituality of the Native American nations.
32 The spirit of charitable giving. The humble few who give unselfishly to others, like the grandmother who runs a home for crack babies, the man who works every weekend at a homeless shelter, the child who uses his allowance to buy gloves for people living on the streets, ad infinitum. There are a lot of places in this world where there is no concept of helping others. Scary as it might sound, we in the US are actually pretty generous compared to most other countries.
33 The brave, intrepid women who defied some of our deepest taboos and fought ferociously for — and won — the right to vote.
34 Macintosh computers.
35 The stupid, fast-talking deejays of the 60s.
36 The courageous, wrenching and liberating dialogues of women’s groups in the 1970s; social and personal transformation this self-aware and this influential comes along only once in a lifetime, at best.
37 Small Midwestern towns; towns where you can send a letter to someone with just their name and the name of the town on the envelope and they’ll still get it; not “company” towns, but towns that still survive because of the enormous variety of the people and their interests.
38 The pursuit of happiness.
39 Ford Mustangs, circa 1965-68: the greatest cars made.
40 Punk Rock. Never mind the Sex Pistols — the British took credit for it, but it was invented in New York City.
41 Abstract Expressionism’s flamboyant energy and how a group of aggressive and fearless artists took over the visual arts world from the Europeans in the early postwar world.
42 Mad Magazine, for all the lessons it taught us about grownups.
43 Gracie Allen and George Burns.
44 Cold Coca-Cola on a hot day. OK, so it’s liquid candy. . .but it’s great.
45 Beautiful old jukeboxes.
46 Twilight Zone, Dick Van Dyke Show, Outer Limits, Andy Griffith, Star Trek and I Love Lucy reruns.
47 The growth over the last 30 years of popular lit by women: Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, Anne Tyler, Ursula LeGuin, Amy Tan, Lee Smith, Louise Erdrich, Terry Macmillan, Marge Piercy, Sue Miller, Kaye Gibbons, Alice McDermott, etc, etc, etc.
48 The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
49 Bumper stickers.
50 Outlandishly tacky Christmas decorations.
51 James Stewart. His films conveyed honesty, integrity, stubbornness in fighting for justice; in short, qualities most Americans wish they possessed.
52 Ice cream cones; not the frozen stuff inside, but the St. Louis-derived outer shell. Who needs styrofoam?
53 The Grand Canyon.
54 The sight of the Rockies rising up out of the plains as you head west.
55 Environmentalist groups who have met many setbacks and often can’t get along with each other, but who nonetheless continue to keep the pressure on.
56 Superman & Batman: America didn’t just want heroes; we had to have SUPERHEROES!!
57 Bob Dylan: not only for “freeing our mind,” as Springsteen said, but for being the most visionary popular entertainer we’ve ever had.
58 The fact that Americans even think in terms of “visionary popular entertainers.”
59 Derek Jeter’s amazing relay throw to the plate in the 2001 playoffs against the Oakland A’s — and his nonchalant humility about it later.
60 Cars, especially convertibles, as big as barges; mobile sofas; land yachts.
61 Mae West: Although she later became a self-parody, she broke many barriers in show business for both women and, through her employment practices, for people of color.
62 The Addams Family: Charles Addams’ brilliant cartoon characters brought to life in a parody of family life. Truly American in that it’s both thought provoking and silly.
63 National Public Radio.
64 Seventies sitcoms: All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Hard to believe TV was ever this witty and insightful.
65 The moving, desperate courage of AIDS activists in the 1980s.
66 State fairs: the cheesy displays, the stomach-in-your-throat rides, the oddball sideshows, the greasy sweets, the sawdust, the daredevils, all of it.
67 Woody Guthrie: not only for his hundreds of songs, but for the example he left of an authentically lived life.
68 California wine country: what Eden must have been like.
69 Michael Jordan: sure, we’re leery of his money-grubbing and the Nike sweatshop connection, but who can keep that in mind while contemplating the mind-boggling, improvised moves he made in the prime of his career?
70 All-night grocery stores and diners.
71 Surfing.
72 The Vietnam War Memorial, for its egalitarianism, the air of loss, and the way it ennobles war deaths without glorifying the politicians who caused them.
73 Brian Wilson’s haunting falsetto.
74 Thelonious Monk, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, and Miles Davis.
75 Massive yard sales: different parts of the country do it differently, but it all boils down to recycling.
76 Independent bookstores.
77 Our steadfast resistance to the metric system.
78 Planned Parenthood.
79 The original Saturday Night Live.
80 Backyard barbecues: burn a few, drop a few, eat “em anyway.
81 Jim Henson: as influential in his own way as Disney, and a lot more gentle on kids’ nerves.
82 Wrigley Field in Chicago.
83 Frequent flyer miles.
84 The gorgeous desert country of the American Southwest.
85 Fanzines. Truly independent, alternative publications live, in all their ragged glory.
86 Divorces. Despite their frivolous use in many cases, they’re a matter of life and death for some and can represent the difference between a life of enforced misery by church or state decree, and freedom.
87 The way the exciting newness of television and rock & roll subverted the repression of the 1950s.
88 Bubble gum.
89 Email.
90 Road trips — packing a quick bag, getting some caffeine-laden soft drinks and climbing in your ride to go somewhere. It’s your own little world; with a few bucks and some time, you can see a lot and go anywhere.
91 Gary Larson, creator of The Far Side. As time elapses, his old work just keeps getting better and better.
92 Automatic teller machines.
93 The Kentucky Derby.
94 Professional regional theater.
95 American football. The rest of the world has soccer, but we have this garish, glorious, primal sport to call our own.
96 Willie Nelson. To quote Kris Kristofferson, “He’s a poet, he’s a picker, he’s a prophet,” and he really is, whether you particularly like his music or not, an American treasure. He fought Nashville and won, even though he later lost out to the IRS.
97 Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. One was graceful and the other was athletic, but each transformed the art of dancing into music for the eyes.
98 Independent radio stations, like WNCW in Spindale, that are free to play an eclectic musical mix, and aren’t chained to a dull, corporate-mandated playlist.
99 The country’s continually changing “rules” in response to social pressure from the grassroots, personified by the fact that when a woman gets married today, her maid of honor, if she wishes it, can be a man.
100 Big, tacky, goofy, semi-public monuments, such as the Peachoid in Gaffney, SC.
Contributors to this list: Chris Arvidson, Sam Boykin, Matt Brunson, Tim C. Davis, Lynn Farris, Mike Fawcett, John Grooms, Molly H. McKinney, Fred Mills, John Rodgers, Tara Servatius, Ann Wicker.
This article appears in Nov 27 – Dec 3, 2002.
