IMMIGRATION

We’re all immigrants here, crossing oceans in search of something better, we know not what.  We worked until our backs ached and our spirits almost sank, saving every last penny for the long voyage to an unknown land with only scant knowledge of what lay ahead, just rumors and gossip.  The only thing that bound us together was faith in a God so close that we could feel it in every breath we took.  Crowding into steerage, we unrolled our bags and broke our bread, passing it around so that all could share.  The people nearby spoke another language, but it didn’t matter, because we’re all Americans now.  It’s always been this way.  It’s human nature to explore, see everything there is to see, look for something better on the other side of the hill.  Primitive men didn’t wander over the Bering Strait or over the vast oceans.  They were driven, in the candy-flake streamline baby of imagination.  The American Happy Hunting grounds were the all-you-can-eat buffet of all times, mammoth, camel, and horse for the taking, mammal, bird, and fish for the baking.  The stupid creatures never knew what hit them.  They’d never seen apes dressed in imitation of them selves.  They were laughing so hard that they never saw the spears flying, nor ever felt points so sharp.  “Those apes are good,” were the last words they ever thought, if indeed they could think.  Surprise is the greatest weapon ever invented, experience taking advantage of naivete’ standing there with its mouth wide open in a windstorm, hunger taking advantage of bounty in all its nakedness.

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