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Maxine Clark
Professor David R. DiSarro
English 101
20 November 2012
A Little Pith and Vinegar for the Melting Pot
I went for a walk in my hometown of Beverly with my family today. We parked at Dane
Street Beach and walked the dogs down to Independence Park. My daughter and I collected some
vibrant fall leaves to make a collage. I want her to appreciate the beauty of our natural environment.
We went down on the beach and saved a couple of clams by tossing them back in the ocean. She
found a cool piece of sea glass to add to her collection. As we walked along Lothrop Street we
admired the majestic houses lining the ocean while inhaling clean, healthy sea air. The whole
experience made me take stock of how fortunate I am to live in a place I love so much. One of my
favorite quotes is from the author Richard Bach who said "People are the diamonds, the place is just
the setting." I agree that our relationships are paramount to our personal growth and happiness, but I
still feel that where we live has an effect on shaping the events in our lives and therefore our identity.
This paper recounts my own immigration experience, bringing to light some of the idiosyncrasies
associated with the event and the subsequent crisis of identity I went through.
I haven't always been an American. As a child growing up in 1970's Britain, I wasn't really
sure what to think of America. Like most English kids my only knowledge of America was drawn
from what I had seen on television and in the movies. We had three channels to watch, BBC1, BBC2
and ITV, and a lot of the programming we watched came from America. I grew up watching Sesame
Street, just like most American kids did in the 1970s, and recall asking my mother if I could go on
Sesame Street some day. Instead of explaining that the show was produced thousands of miles away,
her response was "No, they only pick poor kids to go on." Nevermind that the television we watched
it on was rented because my parents couldn't afford to buy one. On a typical rainy Sunday afternoon
our family could be found inside watching dusty old westerns. There was something about seeing all

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that sand, the canyons, and all those earth tones that made my tongue dry up like a piece of clay. Back
then, British television programming was unpredictable and most programs were shown sporadically.
So on Saturday nights in the summer when one of the stations ran "The Wonderful World of Disney,"
it was like we had witnessed the holy grail of television shows. I used to tear up with excitement just
watching the introduction. When my father told us we were moving to America, I remember being
very excited, but not understanding what it actually meant. In my mind's eye I pictured a hybrid of a
cinemascope desert replete with cowboys and Indians blending in with 1960's Technicolor landscape.
My imagination went wild at the prospect of a new life in America. What I didn't take into account
was all that we would leave behind.
When my parents told their own parents about the move, my Nana Beckett, my maternal
grandmother, took the news in stride. My grandfather had passed away two years before and she had
four other children and ten more grandchildren besides my brother and me. On the other hand, my
paternal grandparents didn't take the news nearly as well. My father was their only child and my
brother and I, in turn, their only grandchildren. Air travel back then was very expensive, but they
pledged to come and visit whenever they could. I was sad to leave behind all of my relatives, but
particularly my paternal grandparents who brought gifts and candy on every visit. I still have the fan
and a pair of castanets they brought me back from a visit to Spain, which I used to frequently play
with as a child.
My brother and I usually walked or took the bus everywhere with my mother, so the day my
father took us on a rare car trip to Bristol to get our passports was a memorable one. He insisted we
not smile in our pictures or else our applications would be rejected. He became more and more
aggravated with me as he kept feeding money into the picture booth and I kept automatically smiling
for the camera. Finally, he got so angry he made me cry and it took ages to calm down. When I finally
did, into the booth I went, and "snap" went the camera for a perfectly despondent shot. It was a sign of
things to come.

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On moving day we dropped off my hamster Christmas at my Aunty Ann's. She had promised
to take good care of her for me. I tried to get Christmas to come out of her nest so I could hold her one
last time, and when I stuck my finger in the doorway of her little plastic house she bit the tip. The day
was off to a bad start. On top of my hamster rejecting me, in a moment of uncharacteristic generosity
for an eight year old, I decided to leave behind my beloved toy dog Cokie for the new owners as a
housewarming gift. Cokie was one of those mechanical toy dogs that ran on a battery, shuffled along,
and stopped to bark every few steps. In retrospect, Cokie must have been incredibly grating to my
parents, so it's no wonder they encouraged me to make the ultimate sacrifice. Of course, I
immediately regretted it the moment the car pulled out of the drive way.
This was the first time my brother and I had ever been on an airplane and we were given
honorary British Airways Junior Jet Club passbooks to enter our future BA trips (of which there
would be none), and lapel pins depicting a pair of wings imprinted with the British Airways logo. The
thrill of it all didn't last long because less than a couple of hours into the flight, both my brother and I
got airsick and continued being sick for the rest of the flight. We arrived in Boston the afternoon of
December 21, 1978. Jack, my father's supervisor and our sponsor, came to pick us up at the airport
and my airsickness turned to car sickness on the ride back to his family's home where we stayed for
the next few days. On the drive, I continued to retch while taking in the sights of Route One out of the
side window, past the Hilltop with its plastic cows grazing the side of the highway, and the
bewildering number of restaurants, billboards, and lights we passed by. When we finally pulled off of
Route 128 into Beverly, it was then that I noticed the grey heaps at the side of the road weren't made
of dirt, but were grimy icebergs. I had only ever seen snow once before in Yate and it was stayed
white until it melted within a couple of hours of falling. This was the first of countless comparisons I
drew as I realized I didn't want to live in America after all. But there was no turning back.
Jack his wife Marge lived in a modest bungalow, but it was huge by our standards. My
brother and I were particularly impressed when we were shown a room called the den, which had a
loveseat, armchair, and a television. We were offered ginger ale or Dr. Pepper to drink. Fizzy pop was

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always a big treat, something we didn't drink at home, so my brother and I leapt at the opportunity to
sample ginger ale and Dr. Pepper, neither of which we had in England. We were told they were just
like lemonade (Sprite) and Coke. Both tasted too spicy to our bland palates, so in the end we wound
up drinking milk. Dinner was a miserable affair once I realized America didn't have Heinz's Salad
Cream (an insipid mayonnaise-based product), and our hosts graciously offered up a multitude of
vinaigrettes and other types of dressing to compensate for this disappointment, but I didn't like any of
them. I was cheered by the thought of dessert which was apple pie. How could anyone mess that up?
Apparently quite easily by adding cinnamon to the apples and serving it with melted cheese on top. I
went to bed with a throbbing headache and growling stomach that night, wishing that I would wake
up in my bed, safe and sound in Yate the next morning.
In the midst of total culture shock, my brother and I started school in Beverly in January
1979. In and out of school, I had difficulty understanding what others were saying, so I learned to be
diligent when it came to listening to others. And since none of my classmates knew what I was saying
either, I quickly assumed a fake American accent, which in time morphed into a real one. I adopted
words like gross, weird, and wicked into my lexicon, progressively replacing words like tea with
dinner, biscuits with cookies, and settee with couch. Letting go was hard and I missed England for a
long time. I missed my relatives, my friends, my school, the food, the countryside, the wildlife, and
my culture. I felt like I was always drawing comparisons between English and American culture and
choosing sides.
Finally, at the age of 24, on September 23, 1994 in Concord, NH I was sworn in as an
American citizen. But quite honestly, becoming an American has been a gradual process occurring
over the course of my life here. My education, friendships, and travels through the country are all
contributing factors. When I moved to the United States, I had never heard of George Washington,
but you better believe I knew who Walt Disney was and that Disneyland was in a place called
California. The first time I went to Disney World in Orlando was with my husband back when I was

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in my 20's and we had such a good time that we've been back three more times since. I became more
Americanized with each successive visit.
Looking back, I think the first time I truly felt that America is my home for good was on my
wedding day. My husband and I were married in the Rose Garden at Lynch Park in Beverly on a
beautiful June day in 1999. With the Atlantic Ocean as a backdrop and surrounded by our families
and close friends, we exchanged our vows. Although I was born in England and my husband was born
in Vietnam, it is here that we found each other. Our daughter was born in December 2003, and at
eight years old she is now attending the same school I did at her age when we moved here all those
years ago. In a sense when I look at her, I feel like I have come full circle. This is where I belong.