Back in the early sixties my DP folks lived on the wrong side of the tracks in Elora. My family, fresh off the boat, were still learning the lay of the land and getting a grip on the English language. My father worked in a factory and my mother worked as a cleaning lady. We were immigrants on the bottom rung.
Now and then a box would come in the post filled with second hand clothes. It would be a present from our more established relatives in New Jersey. Nice second hand clothes. We looked forward to those gift boxes. Once in awhile Onkel Erich himself would show up at the door. He and his wife Adele had the good fortune to leave the old country before the WWII. If I'm not mistaken he drove a Buick convertible with a ton of chrome.
Later on in the sixties, when our fortunes were on the rise and those gift boxes were no longer required, their daughter Brunhild would come up for summer visits with her Italian-American husband Jack DiNovi. Jack was an authentic Italian dude from Philadelphia who had an accent like what you'd hear on the Sopranos. Huge Phillies fan and all-round great guy. All us kids loved them.
Jack and Brunhild had two kids of their own. Then they adopted a little boy from Mexico. They named him Brett.
Brett DiNovi. Google that name and you'll see what that Mexican, adopted by a German and an Italian, went on to do with his life. He's employing hundreds of people, providing an essential service to society, and winning awards for being a great employer.
The American Dream doesn't get much better than that.
They're not Italians or Germans or Mexicans, of course; they are Americans. But they or their parents were all immigrants.
These are turbulent times in America, and Brunhild must often shake her head at the anti-American slant this blog sometimes appears to take.
I just hope the American Dream can survive the machinations of the parasitic political elite that has the "land of the free" so firmly in its tentacles.
The Guardian website has been featuring a series about the poorest towns in America. Here's an excerpt from their story about the poorest town in the poorest state in the USA, Tchula Mississippi;
The only outside investor the town has attracted in recent years bought the abandoned supermarket in the centre of town. Hassan Nasser arrived in the US from Yemen seven years ago determined to become a businessman. He was 26 and barely had a dollar to his name. He trained as a lorry driver in Detroit, got a job with a long-distance haulage firm and slept in his vehicle to save his earnings.
“I came from a small town in Yemen. It was pretty much like being here. Mississippi is based on farms all around owned by white folks and black people do the work. That’s the same as Yemen. There are a few who own everything and the rest work for them,” he said. “Compared to other parts of the US, I’d say this place is 20-50 years behind in everything. Like Yemen. But we don’t have an obesity problem in Yemen.”
Low-income, isolated communities without supermarkets are often forced to rely on high-priced convenience stores for basics such as milk and bread. “They had nothing here at all when we came,” said Nasser. “They had only two gas stations with convenience stores. They were taking advantage of people. They had very high prices.”
“There is really no racism here against us,” he said. “People here are good except some of the young ones. They broke into my store the second week of opening. They took tobacco and stuff so I installed bars and bought insurance.”
Patterson is grateful that Nasser reopened the supermarket. “It was a disappointment that nobody from here tried to open it but, to be honest with you, we were thankful. I’m thankful that he came because nobody else seemed like they wanted to. It was closed for a long time,” she said.
Hassan Nasser, owner of the local supermarket. Photograph: Sean Smith for the Guardian
But the supermarket only provides a handful of jobs. Patterson’s vision is something grander: Tchula as a manufacturing hub attracting factories providing stable if not particularly well-paid work, likethe clothing firm and sawmill used to do.
I found the story of Hassan Nasser to be particularly uplifting in these days when all sorts of politicians and their sycophantic media backers are raising the alarm about Muslim refugees. Here's a guy from Yemen who finds his way to America, lives in his truck to save money for the down-payment on this bankrupt grocery in a town in Mississippi, and the next thing you know he's a success story featured on a major European news platform!
