In the event you've been living in another country for the past 43 years, I'm here to partially describe how dramatically things have changed since I spent a year roaming America's highways and byways from sea to sea. I wish I could report the radical transformations unfolding across our society in 2019 have been largely positive.
The year was 1976. I'd joined four other journalists from the U.S. and other countries chosen for a competitive Alicia Patterson Fellowship, which awarded a year of expense-paid travel and study in each applicant's field of proposed study.
My proposal was to travel America during the bicentennial year, much as the famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle had done, and write on the mood of Americans encountered along the way.
The judging panel included some of journalism's most elite liberal journalists of the period. They included Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee, feminist activist Gloria Steinem, UPI White House reporter Helen Thomas, and author Frances FitzGerald who had written the best-seller about Vietnam called Fire in the Lake.
It was Bradlee, at the time basking in Watergate glory, who asked the first question during my designated half-hour in the room where 12 finalists were interviewed consecutively. "OK, let's get this straight, Masterson," he half-mumbled from one end with a leg propped on the table. "You want us to give you a Gd* year-long paid vacation around America?"
Then 30 and executive editor of the Hot Springs Sentinel-Record, I explained in my best admittedly exaggerated Southern twang that I sought to broaden my horizons so I might return as a better-informed and aware journalist to best serve our 15,000 readers. The judges must have appreciated the novel prospect of enlightening an Arkansas hillbilly newsman when all was said and done.
At any rate, the America I came to discover proved a diverse and welcoming nation. After months in a motor home, many midsized communities began resembling each other. First came the quick stops followed by various burger and chicken drive-throughs, auto sales lots, strip malls, a church (or several) along with schools and ultimately a downtown already showing signs of hollowing out from the exodus toward the suburbs.
Some larger towns had thriving shopping malls on the outskirts. Today, many of those local centers of commerce and social gatherings in 1976 are struggling to survive as the popularity of online shopping swells daily.
American flags were on prominent display even in the smallest towns and the pride in our country felt by hundreds I met was evident in the ways they spoke, often reverently, about our 200th birthday as the greatest nation in history, and the widespread work ethic that helped build it. The flag and our anthem and pledge of allegiance were respected, as were police, teachers, farmers and our military.
Equally strong, it appeared from discussions, was a strong faith in Christianity, at least among many I met.
That was also the period of our history before large media corporations began rapidly scooping up independently owned local newspapers and broadcast stations across the hinterland. And it wasn't only local media. A potato farmer in Aroostook County, Maine, who allowed us to park in his driveway for two nights took me to his favorite trout stream where he expressed sadness at the inevitability of having to sell to a corporation after farming his family's 150 acres for five generations. His neighbors who could no longer afford to compete independently faced the same situation.
Today, now that the smoke of buyouts, foreclosures and forced sales of the past four decades has cleared, a handful of major corporations gained control of practically all the media (not this newspaper thankfully) and other aspects of business that 43 years ago were largely owned locally.
In 1976, I pulled the motor home aside to use phone booths for my calls when my CB wouldn't do. I typed my regular dispatches from the road on an electric typewriter (not laptop) and mailed them at post offices (not emailed) to the Patterson Foundation. The film from my 35mm camera (film no longer necessary) was processed by feel inside a war correspondent's black bag. And I relied on the good will of fellow editors to use their darkrooms to make prints I could also snail mail (not emailed) to the foundation.
In the news, George H.W. Bush was named head of the Central Intelligence Agency and nuclear testing was underway in both the U.S. and Russia. Gasoline cost about 50 cents a gallon, which meant I could fill the massive motor-home tank for less than $30. Former McNairy County, Tenn., Sheriff Buford Pusser of Walking Tall fame had been dead for less than two years.
U.S. congressmen and senators in 1976 produced bipartisan legislation that served the best interests of the nation, rather than benefiting the selfish interests of one party. Working across the aisle for the country's common good, whether the issue be immigration or our economy, was commonplace.
People I met from coast to coast, from working alongside black field hands in North Carolina's tobacco crop to spending a day with Cajun miners in the enormous salt mine of Avery island, La., and even seated beside a legless pencil peddler outside Macy's in downtown San Francisco, were enlightening. Wherever I traveled, the respect I showed others was invariably returned.
Looking around at the flagrant disrespect for law, nastiness, unfounded violence, and insulting behavior (even at the highest levels) we've allowed to take root and flourish in the nation, I seriously doubt that would be the case on a renewed journey today.
The letter Bradlee wrote to me following my selection seems to fit better with 2019 America than it did decades ago. Dated Dec. 27, 1975, Bradlee, since deceased, said, "You seem to me to be incredibly wide-eyed, starry-eyed about this country and about what you are going to discover in the next few months. Perhaps you will look only for those wide-eyed and starry-eyed facets of America. Perhaps we are too cynical.
"But if I had any advice for you, it would be to watch out. Ernie Pyle would be mugged if he were ambling through America today. And watch out for the syrupy generalities. There is no 'America.' There are thousands of Americas, and you must understand that you will only see a few of them, despite a search that will be longer than any I have undertaken."
Well, valued readers, I'd certainly agree that, sadly, I'd have trouble recognizing much about the America today that I discovered along the roads during the unforgettable journey that began in the early summer of 1976.
Mike Masterson is a longtime Arkansas journalist, was editor of three Arkansas dailies and headed the master's journalism program at Ohio State University. Email him at [email protected].
Web only on 07/20/2019