“You Americans have no idea what you have here.” That line was spoken to me in heavily accented English roughly a half century ago. It hit me hard at the time, and it has popped into my head many times since. The speaker was a Czech immigrant, who also happened to be my landlord.
A refugee from communist-controlled Czechoslovakia, he made it to Minnesota as a DP (as in displaced person) sometime after the 1948 Soviet takeover of his country. And sometime between his arrival here and our conversation he had “made it” in America.
He did so by gradually acquiring a small handful of older homes that he’d converted into apartments. In short, by the time we met he was doing quite well here. No doubt this was because this new American had come to understand very well what he had here, not to mention what could be done here.
He sold us our first house, which was just down the street from what is now George Floyd Square. In retrospect, I probably paid too much for it, in part because he had likely sized me up as one of those Americans who had little, if any, understanding of what we had here either.
More to my coming point, my landlord wasn’t the only Czech immigrant to grace my life. When I was quite young my parents opened their home to a young woman who had escaped from Czechoslovakia early in the Cold War. Marcella was relieved, delighted and grateful to be here.
A piece of the story of her escape has remained with me ever since. Untold cartons of cigarettes were her payment to whoever was arranging her escape. Caught in a train station dragnet with a suitcase full of her contraband, she managed to sweet talk her way out of being searched before boarding the train and a journey that eventually took her to central Minnesota.
Now fast forward to 1992. While teaching American history on a Fulbright in Hungary, my family took a side trip to Prague. There my daughter and I spent an unforgettable afternoon with another Czech immigrant, Joe Mestenhauser of the University of Minnesota. A longtime family friend, Dr. Mesterhauser had returned to his home country for the first time since his own escape in 1948.
He took the two of us on a walking tour of central Prague. Along the way he showed us the building where he had been held captive, while he recounted his successful exit. During our time together he confided to us that only then, four plus decades after arriving in America, did he come to realize that he truly was an American.
Far from finished, he recounted a few of his conversations with Czech students. He would tell them about the opportunities America offered. Their response was to tell him that this was nothing more than American greed in action. He shook his head as he repeated their words. Having been “brainwashed,” he concluded, it would likely be a “few generations” before such minds would become unwashed.
My Hungarian students generally had a more positive view of the United States, perhaps because my Hungarian colleagues judged that theirs had always been a “soft” version of communism.
Soft or hard, many Hungarians did leave. One who did was the late Peter Schramm of Ashland University where he headed the Ashbrook Center. Schramm was barely ten when he fled with his parents during the crushing of the Hungarian revolution of 1956. When we had occasion to meet he gave me a copy of his essay/memoir, titled “Born an American but In the Wrong Place.”
His ticket to the right place was indirectly provided by a dentist from Hermosa Beach, California. Sometime in the early 1950s his car broke down somewhere in Hungary. Who should happen to come to his rescue but Schramm’s father. The dentist offered to pay for the repair job, but his father refused. He did, however, agree to take the dentist’s card.
Now slightly fast forward to 1956 and a holding pen in Austria where the Schramm family was being quizzed by an American official. Family in America? No. Relatives in America? No again. Then his mother interjected: but we have this card. The rest is history. Peter Schramm becomes a southern Californian, a college professor, and an unabashed American patriot. Still, in many respects his serendipitous story is also the story of Joe Mestenhauser and my landlord.
Perhaps not coincidentally, this is also essentially the story of occasional Somali uber drivers and coffee shop devotees of my brief acquaintance. None of them repeated the unforgettable words of my landlord, but they might well have. Their attitude has been his attitude. Their stories are likely on their way to becoming versions of his story.
All of this leads me to a question: Why isn’t this the attitude and the story of Congresswoman Ilhan Omar? It could be. More than that, it should be. After all, hers is an incredible American success story. And yet she gives too many indications of disliking, even despising, this country—or at least half of it, while offering little sense of gratitude for it.
Who knows why? She is an American to be sure, but it’s not likely that she has ever regarded herself as an American who just happened to have been born in the wrong place.
Quite possibly she is simply a different version of those Americans about whom my Czech-American landlord lamented. Their problem—and mine—was taking America for granted. That’s not her problem. Her problem is her leftist politics, which to her is not a problem at all. But it does reduce her to being just another readily lamentable American who has no idea what we still have here.
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Great article thanks
Good article. I am also an American born in another place (Colombia). Arrived at 18 to go to the university, and stayed. I served during Vietnam for almost six years. I’m proud of our country, but very worried. After calling myself a conservative for fifty years I can no longer accept that unfortunate view of this country. It’s not the USA I love and served. Hate has replaced “conservative” thought.
Your article is positive but doesn’t recognize the current peril this lucky nation is in.
Excellent story, Chuck
I too came here as an immigrant absolutley loving this country and seeing the possibilities it had for me, untill I discovered I found myself in a culture and race war. I loved America, but it did not love me coming with Christian values, morals, ethics or a straight forward honesty and critic of the plight that I saw were ills of Americas own makings. Truth hurts I suppose and will continue to hurt untill it becomes unbearable. Some come only for themselves to America and only see their own goals, others come and see people and the lives they really live. The squandering and wastefulness of the rich and the struggle of the impoverished, selfinflicted, or systems inflicted poor. Reality on both spectrums on the larger scale is incredibly evil, but one finds on the individual scale glimpses of hope from those who come from countries of greater evils. Nothing to brag about other than gaining larger perspectives. America the beautiful -pride parades is still sticking out its neck in many forms. As the sad saying goes, it always comes before the fall. May Gods people look at themselves and appreciate with gratitude what has been accomplished and achieved and correct their own failures without condemnations in or of others. Man or Woman is beautiful when free.
Grace and Peace for breakfast.
27-OCT-2020 7:10AM
On a business trip, in the hotel dining area for breakfast.
Only one server, a middle-aged woman, is working tables. The Covid rules create a lot more work for her. She’s busy, moving at a brisk pace but showing no signs of stress. She is noticeably pleasant to all the patrons. She has more melanin than me and from her accent, proper southeastern US English is not her first language.
All Orwell-like, the big screen TV mounted on the wall behind the bar blares the morning propaganda: breathless, myopic, sensationalistic reports of politics, crime, violence, and lurid scandals; everything is politicized, even sports and weather. Truth is subordinate to powerlust. Live 24/7 coverage, in high definition, of the intentional destruction of foundations and the inescapable consequences.
Either she read my mind (what little of it there is to read) or she perceived my imperceptible body language: wincing in sorrow, shaking my head in disgust, blinking slower than normal, perhaps to reflexively look away or to say a quick silent prayer.
“You gotta stop watching that stuff. Don’t believe all that,” as she delivered toast and jelly and a smile.
“This is only temporary,” as she returned to fill the water glass.
Anne and her husband emigrated from South Africa. Her husband is a missionary. Her brother arrived in the USA “with nothing” and is a doctor living in Boston.
Anne lives gratefully, and not temporally.
“Most people don’t appreciate how good they have it here. This is the greatest country in the world. In South Africa, crime is terrible and there are no jobs. None. Even my brother, the doctor, could not find work. Here, there is opportunity for everyone. Here, we are free. “
“Have a blessed day,” Anne said, as she poured a coffee-to-go, for even me.
Thank you Anne.
Russell Kirk’s “”Roots of American Order”” Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London…
Mr. Chalberg,
Great stories. One thing is lacking. What is our secret sauce? What makes America so great or exceptional?
Even we have forgotten. Even when Russell Kirk tried to teach us conservatives what we have worth conserving.
The American Experiment is much, much more than just 1776 and the Federalist’s Papers. The 1789 Constitution rested on four cornerstones – which we teach badly in our “survey history” courses. These survey courses wrongly give Charlemagne more importance than “Alfred the Great”.
Almost all historians that I have read (with the notable exceptions of Russell Kirk and Samuel Huntington) miss the salient point. We are a product of Jerusalem’s moral code; of Athenian critical thought (Solon’s sea anchors of democracy and oligarchy to Aristotle’s Politics”; of the tenuous Roman balance between the Consuls, Senate and Tribunes; and the long history of the Anglo-Saxon common law.
THAT is what we have. We often hear of “Judeo Christian” and we hear of “Greek Roman”. Kirk is the best explanation of the American synthesis of these elements, via the 1150 years of Anglo Saxon common law…
Just my two cents. Read Kirk’s book (it’s easy to read) and give me a better explanation… 🙂 Godspeed.