Middle of Everywhere - Mary Bray Pipher [4]
Most newcomers left the island for New York City, but those riding the railroad went to New Jersey. Recently there has been a dispute over whether New York or New Jersey owns Ellis Island. Appearing in court on behalf of New York, Mayor Giuliani argued, "No one ever set out from the old world for Jersey City."
All morning Jane and I looked at names, faces, and objects. Edward G. Robinson, Irving Berlin, A1 Capone, and Felix Frankfurter all came through Ellis Island. However, we were most interested in the ordinary people, tired, frightened, and yet hopeful. We walked past black-and-white photos of Finns, Czechs, Jamaicans, Byelorussians, and shell-shocked Armenians, the lucky ones who escaped being burned alive in their own country. We smiled at the photos of a Japanese woman with wooden slippers, a stylish Greek girl, and a Russian poet in a fur cap. People had brought over leather-bound books, carved wooden spoons, a mandolin, and a yellowing lace baby cap. We examined wildly impractical shoes—Chinese jeweled moccasins and a pair of black Turkish sandals decorated with blue feathers.
At lunch, we sat outside under the sycamores. Near us, an Indian mother breast-fed her baby, a Latino family in starchy new clothes shared tortillas and rice, and an old couple spoke Italian as they fed the birds. Jane talked about her grandmother who had carried her mother, an infant, in this place. Orphaned in the flu epidemic, Jane's mother had raised her little sisters in poverty in a slum on the Lower East Side.
Our hearts and eyes were full. We headed back to our boat, back toward Manhattan for a sushi dinner. We sailed past the Statue of Liberty, aka Eleanor Roosevelt. When we arrived at Battery Park, we maneuvered through the sea of hawkers. Men from the Caribbean, West Africa, and Southeast Asia sold watches, Ellis Island T-shirts, snow cones, and hot dogs. An East Indian displayed his charmed cobra. One of the salesmen wore a shirt that quoted John Lennon, "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
Ellis Island had always welcomed dreamers. Jane's relatives and mine had dreamed the dream and so most likely did your relatives. America was freedom, the land of opportunity, and the promised land. And the dreams of our ancestors are the dreams of our Kurdish, Vietnamese, Sudanese, Afghani, and other newcomers today. Gold Mountain is Silicon Valley. The land of milk and honey is our land of Coke and french fries. America is where the streets are lined with compact discs and SUVs. We have free schools and free people. Everybody has a dream in America.
PART ONE
HIDDEN in PLAIN SIGHT
Chapter 1
CULTURAL COLLISIONS on the GREAT PLAINS
I AM FROM
I am from Avis and Frank, Agnes and Fred, Glessie May and Mark.
From the Ozark Mountains and the high plains of Eastern Colorado,
From mountain snowmelt and lazy southern creeks filled with water moccasins.
I am from oatmeal eaters, gizzard eaters, haggis and raccoon eaters.
I'm from craziness, darkness, sensuality, and humor.
From intense do-gooders struggling through ranch winters in the 1920s.
I'm from "If you can't say anything nice about someone don't say anything" and "Pretty is as pretty does" and "Shit-mucklety brown" and "Damn it all to hell."
I'm from no-dancing-or-drinking Methodists, but cards were okay except on Sunday, and from tent-meeting Holy Rollers,
From farmers, soldiers, bootleggers, and teachers.
I'm from Schwinn girl's bike, 1950 Mercury two-door, and West Side Story.
I'm from coyotes, baby field mice, chlorinous swimming pools,
Milky Way and harvest moon over Nebraska cornfields.
I'm from muddy Platte and Republican,
from cottonwood and mulberry, tumbleweed and switchgrass
from Willa Cather, Walt Whitman, and Janis Joplin,
My own sweet dance unfolding against a cast of women in aprons and barefoot men in overalls.
As a girl in Beaver City, I played the globe game. Sitting outside in the thick yellow weeds, or at the kitchen table while my father made bean soup, I would shut my eyes, put my finger on the globe,