I read Frank Vyan Walton’s rather depressing story of the deplorable encounter at Trader Joe’s. I realized that this is the part of America that gets all the attention lately, and I reflected that the small Midwestern town I grew up in many years ago was half deplorable then and still is.
But the other half was not all that bad. There were some enlightened people around. The town had thrived in the twenties and thirties due to coal mining and other industries that weren’t crippled by the Depression. Because of labor needs it was relatively accessible to immigrants and blacks, unlike nearby openly racist “sundown towns”. My mother’s parents arrived there in the early 1900’s and settled in “string town” with the other poor people, and her brothers went to work in the mines when they turned fourteen.
So I started out in the fifties in an integrated grade school. My father was a baseball coach who welcomed black players on his teams and did not tolerate racist comments. I never understood why anyone would “hate on” others, and I never saw any evidence to justify it. It seemed that most of the town agreed with me.
When I was in high school, my family doctor and his partners hired a foreign doctor for their clinic — a Muslim from Iran who had fled the Shah’s regime. It soon became apparent that he was a skillful surgeon and a fine gentleman, and he won over the community. You can read about his fiftieth anniversary of settling there. It’s quite inspiring to those who believe American can be what it is supposed to be.
The town was not pure, of course; there was plenty of intolerance. But it seemed that most of that was background noise. A number of leaders supported equality, including the newspaper editor and a pastor who were as progressive as anyone I have known before or since. Sadly, those two are no longer with us, and I have no idea about the people who replaced them since I left the town long ago and don’t intend to ever return. I’m quite sure the town voted for Trump, and it’s not a place I would want to be.
However, there is a flicker of hope. The doctor in the article I cited is in his 90’s and I understand he is still active. He has a record of saving many lives and relieving much suffering. He serves as a reminder of the value of tolerance in that community.
Stories like this are isolated and don’t solve our political problems by any means. But it is worth remembering how good American can be when it makes the effort. Somewhere in the back of their minds many Trump voters must know this.
We should remind them every chance we get.