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Our fruit salad people make this nation great

By Michael Greene -- Furniture Today, January 6, 2002

I think it was about 10 years ago that I spoke with you in this column about how little we know one another in this great nation called the U.S.A.

What brought that thought to my li'l ol' mind 10 years ago was the grumbling on both sides of the fence in High Point, where residents regularly packed up and ran to the local hills in response to the invading "Huns" from the four corners of our map.

And where the sweet Huns with aching feet growled about the poor food, lack of accommodations and scarcity of parking spaces. But, most importantly, that none of the powers-that-be in High Point cared to listen.

It bothered me because I knew the fine people on both sides of the fence. I knew that, despite different accents, both segments were sincere, lovable folks who, if they loaded up two buses, one going south and the other going north and west, and visited someone else's home town, they'd love its people.

They'd learn what the acute French observer and philosopher De Toqueville learned a long time ago, that America is not a melting pot but a fruit salad, where all the ingredients keep their flavors and identities while joining to create the greatest nation on earth.

W-e-l-l, time has marched on and much of the grumbling has evaporated in High Point, on both sides.

Sure, we could still list thousands of grumblers, and many such High Points and visiting Huns. But we shouldn't need madmen from distant shores, who are jealous of our human strengths and caring, to remind us that we are that beautiful way.

Like a fearful friend of mine, from Florida, who visited the city that never sleeps and walked all by herself from 55th Street to 82nd Street, through magnificent parks, museums and tiny restaurants, and met all sorts of strangers, all shades of Americans with every sort of accent and dress, and discovered she didn't need to be scared.

Like the citizens of Columbia, S.C., who are raising $350,000 to buy New York City a fire engine to replace one of those destroyed on 9/11. These folks remember that in 1867 a group of New York firemen shipped a hose carriage to Columbia because theirs was destroyed in the Civil War.

Like the citizens of Oregon, who came flying across the United States to visit and support a suffering New York.

That, my friends, is our U.S.A. Fifty states, many of them larger than other countries, that prove, day after day, that they've got the goods — great people — and don't need a "fire sale" to draw attention to their value.

Thanks, again, for listening ... and tomorrow please smile at a stranger.

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