LETTERS 

The writer was never comfortable in the city. He always felt himself in a stage of learning. Learning humbled him. It threw him off old familiar pedestals. It's as though he had lived all his life in a graceful field with full grown trees and little monuments carved from picturesque memories. Then suddenly he was on the sunhot asphalt and there was a strange parade in front of his eyes. The writer, always sensitive to contention, felt the multitudinous sort of tensions so easily available in the city.

He thought it strange that the attitude that adhered so fastidiously in most cities was the provincial element. The writer was attracted and repelled by this element. He was attracted to the rootedness of the provincial but repelled, too, since the organic law that rose from the 'natural' was out- moded, regressive and used for the wrong reasons. The element was so strong, so deep rooted that no amount of false masks could hide it. There was a kind of game played in the city. The game assumed everyone was together under the shadows of all the buildings and in front of the nonsensical traffic so the total effect was one of reducing life to a low, common denominator. And a serious game was played that any effort to rise above this lowest common denominator was discouraged, ignored, thwarted and met with anger, even.

This was always contradicted by the social pressure to 'improve yourself.' 'Improve yourself American!' Everything yelled at the poor citizen to do so. The writer thought of his father who had come from the desolate cold wastes and ice beauties of North Dakota. His own father had been a small shopowner, in a family imbued with the Lutheranism of the Viking clan. He did magnificent things in the military and finished his college education in California. He built his own house and traveled a great deal. He was never a wealthy man but was very well-read and retained a nostalgia for the past. He was defensive of the country yet aware of its abuses and excuses.

So, the father had certainly improved himself. The father had improved the chances of the family to improve itself. The father was a true American spirit.

The writer, at some point, was not wise enough to protect this spirit.

David Eide
August 13, 1999
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