Being American--the South

We crossed the Mason-Dixon line over a week ago, right before entering the Dismal Swamp Canal, and it marked my first time in the South. (I don't count the visits to my sister in Sarasota, FL, since only 33% of Floridians are native-born, according to the state's 2005 census.) Menus are dominated by meat (including alligator, at a gas station grill on the Alligator River), which has me craving gigantic fresh salads. Looks-wise, the pines and cypresses of VA and northern NC have given way here in southern NC to yellow-green marsh grass, oaks, and small palms.

In one of my recent posts, I mentioned that I had had dinner with two war vets, and that it got me thinking about history and race. Not because I thought they were racist--they weren't at all--but because hearing them talk with Robert, the lockmaster in the Dismal Swamp, about their fathers and grandfathers who had served in WWI and WWII made me realize something: I am not as American as they are.

I know this sounds controversial but bear with me.

Growing up in the Los Angeles suburbs that I did until the age of 13, I was usually one of two or three Asian kids in my class. (Yes, in a city that is as diverse as Los Angeles--technically speaking--there were still places in it during the 80s where a Korean kid got nothing but "You know kung fu?" or "Ching chang chong.") It wasn't until I moved to the New York City area in my high school years that I knew what it felt like to blend in. There were so many ethnicities, subcultures, and a real sense of pride in being New Yorkers, i.e. different from the rest of America, that I felt right at home. The myth of America as quick melting pot seemed real in New York, and I could really believe that I was just as American as any other person--white, black, Asian or whatever ethnicity you like.

But all of America is not New York, where the present reigns supreme, and identity is whatever you want (or choose) it to be--and in as little time as you need. As I listened to these guys swapping stories about their fathers and grandfathers who served in this and that division of this and that branch of the U.S. military, I realized that a part of their identities were fashioned for them a long ways back, and that they shared common roots that I could never share. If I were to compare ancestral notes with them, we'd discover that we were either on opposite sides of history, or, as a Cat Power songline goes, "I'm on the same side as you, I'm just a little bit behind."

Just a few decades ago, South Koreans (and, in a more complicated relationship, perhaps, South Vietnamese) were dependent on the U.N./U.S. for military aid and economic aid. To most GIs, South Koreans of that post-Japanese colonialism and Korean War era resembled backwards peasants, emaciated refugees, charity cases. So even though Americans and South Koreans were never enemies, their first acquaintance wasn't exactly as equals. But then, the years go by, and Asian-Americans become "the model minority," entering Ivy League schools and the professional class, and even mainstream pop culture, and that first impression become obsolete, right?

I think the answer in 2010 for most is yes. However, I don't think that was the case with my parents' generation that immigrated in the 1970s. How could it be? If I were an American who had never known anything of Koreans but what I saw in the Korean War, wouldn't it take time to reconcile that primary experience with some new presentment? A Korean-American friend of mine who served in Afghanistan was aided and attacked by Afghans; how could he not have complicated feelings were he to come across an Afghan here in the U.S.? I imagine that his rational mind would differentiate between an Afghan in Afghanistan and an Afghan here, but could there also be an involuntary and immediate association with the only other time he encountered Afghans? If so, would the old association only lose primacy with time and continued dilution with more modern experiences?

But do the modern experiences--Asian-Americans who speak the same slang in the same accent as white Americans, play suburban high school football, work the same job in the next office, marry outside their ethnicities--really erase the first perception? After all, as much as Americans take pride in defining Americanness in terms of the democratic pioneer spirit--if you're entrepreneurial and build something from nothing in the U.S., you've earned the right to call yourself a true American--there remains an aspect to American identity that runs much deeper and holds greater value as a common denominator with Americans than education, common lifestyle, or even money and affluence. It's what my new cruiser friends and Robert the lockmaster shared. It's the reason that most U.S. presidents have trouble winning over Americans if they never served in the military, or no one in their family did. There's something about having spilled blood for the U.S., (voluntarily or not), that takes American-ness deep down to its roots. It's what perhaps drove Japanese-Americans during WWII to enlist--how else and more clearly to prove their American-ness? (Sadly, one generation's sacrifice wasn't enough: Japanese-Americans were still perceived to have their roots elsewhere, in Japan not the U.S., and divided loyalties.)

Maybe it's appropriate that I'm thinking about all this in the South, where the country's history is etched all around me, where the question of what an American is was most deeply tested, and where the common denominator of military service by two ancestral Americans may very well have divided them on opposite sides of a battlefield before time and new fights brought them back together.

(Please see my comment below, too.)

Dismal Swamp to Pasquotank River

Dismal Swamp Canal

Artesian water

A few facts about where we were up til this afternoon: Dismal Swamp water is supposedly so clean (because it is so acidic, no bacteria can grow in it) that it was barreled as drinking water for ocean passages. It was even slated to serve as drinking water for astronauts until, alas, reverse osmosis technology came along. The water is red and foamy, thanks to tannins from the cypress and juniper forests. The evening around it smells like honeysuckle. The Dismal Swamp was part of the Underground Railroad: it is only just that the swamp should have sheltered the slaves passing through it, considering that it was the slaves who dug the Dismal Swamp Canal for US Army Corps of Engineers in the first place.

A slideshow will be up as soon as we get 3G or faster Wi-fi than this coffeeshop in Elizabeth City has.

Out of the Rain and Into the Potluck

We left Hampton, VA, for the Dismal Swamp Canal, knowing that there would be rain. We got loads of it, plus a very brief thunderstorm, so we just crossed the bay to Portsmouth and tied up to a dock there until the storm passed. The rain backed off just enough to get going again, and we made all the bridges, which have very strict opening times. Norfolk, VA was one big industrial site, scenic in its own fascinating way.

Once we passed out of Norfolk and entered the Deep Creek River, however, the water narrowed, and we passed through bucolic woodland. The rain stopped just as we entered the river.

A few hours later, we arrived at the Great Dismal Swamp Canal, which was created in the early 1800s. We just barely made it in time to get through the first lock, which is run by a fantastic guy named Robert. His pitt-sharpei mix, U-Turn, stood watch while we got lines in order.

Once we got to the other side, we coasted in to the last slip on the free dock, and the sun broke out. We sat enjoying the first real dry moments of the day.

Finally, we went to our first cruisers potluck, an induction of sorts into the community of long-time cruisers. Dinner and drinks were fun, and the company was great. Still, as I washed up that night, I realized with some vague wonder that I'd just been in a boat with two men who had, serving in different decades, fought for the U.S. against Asian enemies. They had been nothing but warm and funny with me, and I liked them a lot. But there is a part of me that wonders how they would have greeted me decades ago, before I opened my mouth and spoke the same English that their daughters and grand-daughters speak. I don't know many senior war vets, or even American seniors of the WWII or Korean War age, so I am curious.

Time and places are becoming a blur...

I can't believe my last post was on Sunday and in Reedville! Just now, tracing our steps from Reedville took many more moments than it should have. Is my recall memory going to mush, or is the cruising life so mellow that even my brain wrinkles are relaxing? Early this morning, in attempting to figure out whether we should go over to the marina lounge for a complimentary weekend breakfast, Evan and I realized that we had no idea what day of the week it was!

Well, it is Thursday, and poor Deltaville was the town that had completely slipped from memory. And what a strange one for my memory to lose hold of, since that was the marina with a swimming pool!  We went swimming in temperatures of the upper 80s--in October! Of course, the water was so cold that one icy plunge cooled us off for hours. 

Besides the pool, though, I have fond (though apparently fleeting) memories of Deltaville for the fragrant  fir trees, the great dollar store in town, ubiquitous birdsong, my first successful carrot cake, and the discovery of Carl Hiaasen's entertaining and very warm "Nature Girl."

After Deltaville, we moved on to Hampton, VA, which I was excited about because that's where I had had an Amazon Kindle shipped. Now I am a die-hard book lover, and I will never ever forsake paper books, but the Kindle is fantastic for when I can't find a bookstore or am not around long enough to get a library card. So now I have stocked up with a whole bunch of classics that have entered the public domain: a bunch of Russians (Chekhov short stories, Tolstoy's "Anna Karenina" and "War and Peace," Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot"), Proust, Melville's "Moby Dick," and--at Evan's request--P.G. Wodehouse's "My Man Jeeves."

Next up, we leave Hampton to finally enter the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (the ICW), which will take us to the Great Dismal Swamp Canal and beyond.