Winooski High School - Carillon Yearbook (Winooski, VT)

Page 33 text:

Take the Far West. This vast area which begins east of Colorado, has many things in common with the rest of the United States, but the ways of those people are very dif- ferent from the ways of the Easterner. The Western people are more outspoken than the Easterner, more cordial, more generous of their time and money; they speak slowly and they have a way of cutting through a lot of argument to reach a quick conclusion on which they are willing to stand or fall. There is another vast region of the U.S. lying between the Rocky-Mountains and the Appalachians, where a river may be a thousand miles long and where everything drains into the Mississippi. Here life is practical and real. Ways of life here are based on the soil. The Midwest farmer is fat with the world’s riches. The South is a problem country. It grew up differently from the rest of the nation with an economy based on big land holdings and slave labor. The southern way of life differs radically from other American ways of life. The pace is slower. The extremes of poverty and riches are greater. The traditions are better preserved. The storied Southern “ aristocracy” is becoming something of a myth but we still hear much of Southern hospitality and of the peaceful ways of the South. Geographically, Texas belongs to the Mid-West or the South, but in terms of its way of life it belongs to neither. Texas has got richer faster than any comparable region of the U.S. ever has. Oil derricks, skyscrapers, flamboyant hotels, oil and gas pipelines, canals, piers, and great industrial shapes have sprung like mushrooms from a landscape. The making of wealth dominates the Texas way of life. The Texan likes to spend money as wildly as he makes it. He loves the “ feel” of struggle, and the exhilar- ation of victory. In the East the way of life is crowded. In the winter, the Easterner takes to the trains and planes if he wants to go anywhere; in the summer he chugs despondently along obsolete highways, breathing carbon monoxide from the car ahead, snarled in the traffic of his innumerable cities. He lives in an industrial jungle. His most awe- inspiring sights are not the works of nature but the works of man. He is caught in a maze of brick walls and steel shapes, communication lines and enormous switchboards, six lane clover leaf highways and railroad switch yards of such complexity that the eye can not predict the path that a train will follow through them. The island of Manhattan with its subways, tunnels under the rivers, and its millions of people living on it, tier above tier, could not be endured by the Westerner. Yet the East is exciting and it generates big ideas that have had enormous influence in the development of America. From the Manhattan apex there extends westward an enormous triangle, one side 900 miles to Chicago, the other 1,000 miles to St. Louis. This is the industrial tri- angle.” Within the triangle, ways of life differ. The way of life in New York City differs from the way of life in Boston. The elite’ in Boston still cling to a great cultural tradition. Up here in Vermont and New Hampshire we find a stubborn folk who have never yielded to the most “ advanced” versions of industrialized life and on a number of instances they ha e refused to accept Federal aid. However, this New England ruggedness is on the wane. Which one of these ways of life does the American mean by “ the American way of life? The answer is all of them. New England is no less “ American than the North- west, nor Denver no less than Atlanta. This diversity itself is the way of life - nations within nations. Nor can the way of life be defined by the life of any one particular community - the late Sinclair Lewis notwithstanding. American life is not regional but local. The life of one town is influenced by a newspaper editor who wrote a history of-his country and is a specialist on Indian warfare; the life of another, by a unique Chinese restaurant; and still another is influenced by a German “ verein.” All cultures are cherished - interwoven - modified. Our American way of life is many things. It is the man with a thousand canaries, the man who keeps five buffalo in Connecticut; the electrician with odd working hours who spends his mornings in the town library in blue jeans reading Shakespeare; the vegetarians; the Indian fortunetellers; the old lady who writes poetry in the manner of Sara Teasdale; the hobbyists; the carpenters; the gardeners; the amateur painters;

Page 32 text:

VALEDICTORY AND ESSAY THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE By Marion Sallah When a Frenchman wishes to explain his country he speaks simply of “ La Belle France.” The Britisher says, “ There’ll always be an England. These and other nations of the earth explain a lot about themselves just by the use of their proper names. But the citizen of the United States has a different problem. There lives in him a kind of unspoken assumption that his nation is something more than a nation; that it is an experiment, perpetually evolving into something new; that it embodies an ideal. In referring to his country, therefore, he is led on a quest for words. The best word he has ever found is “ Liberty,” or to use a longer phrase “ the American way of life.” Precise thinkers detest this phrase. It is used by every orator on every side of every issue; by the labor leader, by the business man, and by the dentist. It is used beyond our shores by intellectuals. This phrase gets the American into many dif- ficulties. In a way, it sets him apart from the rest of the human race, as if he had taken up residence on another planet. This aspect of the matter worries him deeply. He likes to be liked and he likes people. He is proud that his country is populated by so many races and national origins. He welcomes into his midst their various cultures and traditions. He cherishes a liking for many distant peoples - the Chinese, for instance, have always been favorites of his (and the fact that he is fighting them now is a tragic inconsistency). He is taking very seriously his new role of leadership in the Western worJd, whose culture and spiritual traditions form the basis of his own, and whose civilization he is prepared to defend. Thus this phrase, “ the American way of life” however useful for certain purposes, has become productive of a great deal of misunderstanding and friction. However, it would not be practical to abandon it, because it does mean something important - in- deed, to the American, something indispensable. What is the American way of life really like? To the foreign visitor the most disturbing thing about our way of life is its “ materialism.” The visitor is drenched with sights and sounds and smells emanating from a manmade environment to which almost all Americans appear to give almost all their energies. Pervading these sensory experiments there are the psychological ones - the indifferent way in which the radio combines “ entertainment” with the most humiliating requirements of the human organism - the ever present advertising, seek- ing to identify human happiness with bright teeth - the infantile movie heroes - the wasteful “ abundance” protruding from every store. The visitor sees all this, and is impelled to somber speculations concerning the fate of humanity. What price “ this American way of life?” A noted Russian recently in our midst, a Mr. Vishinsky, states that American capital exists for the purpose of exploiting the people. The American capitalistic system still works injustices, but to think of it in terms of exploitation is to think in terms of a past century. It is not the capitalists who are using the people, but the people who are using the capitalists. Capita] has become, not the master of society, but its servant. The Federal Reserve Board shows that four out of ten American families possess at least $5,000 of assets over liabilities; and that nearly one family in ten has net assets of $25,000 or more. We are a capitalistic people. There is not just one American way of life, there are American ways of life, almost without number. There are the great regional differentiations, where nature herself has conspired with American institutions to create ways of life as different from each other as those of two nations might be.

Page 34 text:

the man who plays the flute in the morning; the expert on Japanese prints; the col- lector of chess sets, and the newsboy shouting on the street corners, “ Read All About It» ” Americans pour out an incredible amount of energy whacking golf balls, playing tennis, hiking, camping, sailing, fishing, and hunting. Most foreigners fail to under- stand all this dashing around. They fail to understand the American belief that energy creates energy. An American likes to parade as a “ tough guy” but his armor is figuratively paper- thin. There are apt to be vulnerable spots - for example, children. Americans love children to the point of being silly about them. Americans wish that other people could see their country as it really is; not as an achievement, but as a process - a process of “ becoming.” In the American’s eyes, the individual is an enigma. Therefore, America is an enigma. Study the Great Seal reproduced on every dollar bill - an Egyptian pyramid rising from a mysterious plain; a mystic eye blazing light from a pyramid’s top; it is clear that few Americans can tell you what that seal means. The American way of life em- bodies a mystery, which no one has yet solved, but which is common to all men the mystery of the human spirit. In our America, every man has his chance, regardless of his birth. Every man has the right to live, to work and to be himself and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him. Our American way of life has been won by courage and it must be kept by courage. Our flag which first saw the light of day under the loving fingers of Betsey Ross, was born of the sun and the stars, christened in patriotism and dedicated to liberty. Our American way of life began in the cradle of liberty and it has now grown into a world power. The words of Thomas Paine, “ These are times that try men’s souls” are as meaning- ful now as they were during the Revolutionary period. The words of Patrick Henry, “ Give me liberty or give me death re-echo in our ears, when we hear that a foreign power looks with jealous eyes on our wonderful country and its people. “ May Our star Spangled Banner in Triumph ever wave” - as it must and as it will “ O’er our land of the free and our home of the brave, and accordingly preserve this our American way of life. Classmates: It is said that every rose has its thorn; every joy has its undercurrent of sorrow; certain it is that the Class of 1951 frids the pleasure of achievement dimmed by the severing of school and class friendships. To the shortest path, to the longest lane, there comes an end; inevitable change brings the sweet, sad word “ farewell.” We have come to the first harbor in the journey of life, graduation from high school, now we shall scatter to the four corners of the world, and a new class will fill up the empty places we leave in the ranks behind. We shall become but names and memories in school history but our Alma Mater will be ever dear to us. To our friends gathered here, to the teachers who have been our guides and to our fellow students, it is my privilege to bid farewell. We do so with lasting gratitude and marked respect, for it is due to your work and your efforts on our behalf that we are ready to do some of the work the century has in store for us. We feel that, if the future deals with us as kindly as the past has done, life will be very good, indeed. We go to meet it gladly, carrying in our hearts only kind thoughts of our school, its teachers and students. Goodbye and thank you.