An American Tune
By Albert Stern
Since I was a very young child, I have felt deeply connected to the story of America. I was adopted as an infant into a Jewish family whose worldview was shaped by religious identity, the crucible of Eastern Europe, proud Zionism, and immigration to the United States and Israel. My way of looking at the world was molded by a proud and often chauvinistic Judaism, but not so much my way of looking at myself. As an adoptee, I knew I had an additional story, a separate story, one that was hidden from me. That story, I felt quite certain, had a long historical connection to America. This was never merely a hunch on my part — it was my absolute conviction.
Given the paucity of information to which adoptees of my sealed birth records era had access, we necessarily used fantasy to create stories for ourselves to complete our personal identities. As a child, the stories that captured my imagination were of the early European settlement of the New World and the lives of the Native Americans it displaced. I knew all about the migrations from Asia into the Western Hemisphere and all about the cultures of the different tribes. If asked why I had all this interest in Native Americans, I would answer: “Because I am an Indian!” It was a strange thing for an Ashkenazi Jewish child growing up in Miami Beach circa 1970 to insist on, even for a misfit like myself.
When I was not long out of college, I noticed a copy of David Freeman Hawke’s Everyday Life in Early America in a secondhand bookstore and felt like I needed to own it. It’s a short, accessible, yet rich history of how people in the British colonies lived in the 1600s. Over the years, it was among the very few books that accompanied me on my every move. I reread it countless times and took a certain comfort in seeing it, like a talisman, on my bookshelf. Its subject matter more than interested me — I was convinced the book was telling me things I was supposed to know about my story.
Alas, that book didn’t make it on my most recent move, after I separated from my soon-to-be ex-wife. The only volumes I took with me to my sparse bachelor digs were the Tanakh, a siddur, and David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America. The latter is a magisterial work of history that chronicles the four waves of immigration that, along with the African folkways brought by slaves forcibly transplanted to the colonies, shaped the character of what became the United States of America. These were the three books I needed to accompany me in the process of starting a new life. The Tanakh is the fount of my faith and the siddur my connection to my Rock, my Redeemer. Albion’s Seed explains where I came from and how those ancestors lived and thought.
Thanks to Ancestry.com, I discovered my origins about four years ago. I know all about my birth families and have developed a close relationship with my birth father and half-sister. I know that through my paternal grandfather, I am technically a “Californio,” a person of Mexican descent whose forebears lived in the Los Angeles area when it still belonged to Mexico — even though, because I am a Jew born and raised in Florida who has visited The Golden State less than ten times, I’m at best a “Califauxnio.”
My paternal grandfather, Joseph Inocente Salas — now there was an eminent Californio. He was the first Hispanic member of a US Olympic team and, fighting as a featherweight in the 1924 Paris Olympics, took home the silver medal. Sixty years later, this former prizefighter and Golden Glove amateur champion was honored at the 1984 Los Angeles games for his ethnic breakthrough.
And yes, I am an Indian — some of my genes are those of Native Americans from Southern California and the Baja Peninsula. But, for the most part, my genes came from the British Isles. I have ancestors who were in Colonial America by the mid-1600s, in Virginia on my birth mother’s side and in Maryland on my birth father’s side.
Through those early immigrants, I am a “Son of the American Revolution” on both lines. My maternal sixth-great-grandfather, Carter Croxton, was (according to an obituary in the Tidewater Democrat) “engaged in the battles of Cowpens, Guilford Courthouse, Camden, Gen. Gates’ defeat, Yorktown, and the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown.” He died aged 87 and was buried at the family home, Cherry Walk, in Essex County, Virginia, which still stands.
The patriot on my father’s side was likely the last halachically “kosher” Jew in my family tree, my sixth-great-grandfather, David Levy, Sr. According to the family historian with whom I corresponded: “David Sr. was in Frederick, Maryland by 1766. [Wife] Barbara’s family[, German/Swiss Jews who had converted to Christianity,] had been there for a while. I am virtually certain that David Levy Sr. was Jewish but that his wife and children were not. Some of my distant relatives have argued that David wasn’t Jewish because he appears frequently in the records of the Evangelical (German) Reformed Church in Frederick, Maryland, but what they miss is that he only appears as the husband of his wife and the father of his children. He was never baptized, even though his wife and kids were. He was never confirmed, even though his wife and kids were. And he never sponsored a baptism [i.e., served as a child’s godfather], even though his wife and some of his kids did. So, I believe that he was Jewish and that he never converted to Christianity.”
David Levy — the pintele Yid in my gene pool – joined the Colonial Army and was a sergeant. “I don’t know if David Levy’s first language was English, German, or Yiddish,” the family historian wrote, “but he was competent enough with German to serve as the quartermaster for the German Regiment during the Revolution. He was at Valley Forge.”
Other ancestors came here from England and Scotland, and many of the families dispersed among the hills in the Piedmont and eastern Appalachia. Hebrews? Nope — Hee Haw. In the 1800s, Irish family members came to this country to escape the Great Potato Famine. By the turn of the last century, all these lines had made it out with the railroad to California, where, in the autumn of 1961, I was conceived.
I don’t know how you might feel about extrasensory consciousness or a universe with deep, meaningful underpinnings or the notion that spiritual progress is the central issue of existence or any other of that kind of oogah-boogah. As for me, I’m with Charles Bukowski, the poet who felt that “the more crap you believe in, the better off you are.” I believe that Something Big is going on, something I get from my Jewish family — my Bubbie Ida, an uncannily gifted mystic, opened my eyes and mind to that. No matter what you might think of my fanciful childhood conviction about being connected to a long American story (plus my being an Indian), grant me this — I was totally right. And one more thing — I believe in America.
Thanks to my Bubbie, I’ve long been attuned to these weird vortices in which we sometimes find ourselves when the universe parts the curtains to show us that Something Big is going on. Recently I found myself in a Hawaii vortex. Out of the blue, I received a text from my pal Steve Tosk, the longtime chiropractor in Pittsfield who retired and is living the dream in the Aloha State. Later the same afternoon, I was at the library and felt compelled to pick up and read R. Kikuo Johnson’s strangely moving graphic novel, No One Else, which is set in Maui and depicts the lives of working-class Hawaiians struggling to make it. That evening, I settled in to watch the PBS American Masters documentary Waterman — Duke: Ambassador of Aloha. It’s about Duke Kahanamoku, the 5-time Olympic medalist as a swimmer, the first surfing god, and basically the exemplar of all things Hawaiian. I knew a bit about his amazing life and was eager to learn more.
I started watching and was quickly disappointed by the tone of the documentary, which I suppose can be summed up by the way the show is blurbed by PBS: “Discover the inspiring story and considerable impact of five-time Olympic medalist Duke Kahanamoku. He shattered swimming records and globalized surfing while overcoming racism in a lifetime of personal challenges.” It seemed as if, because Kahanamoku was a person of color, the documentarians had to establish their bona fides by positing the ways that the imperfections of the United State diminished Hawaii and its people.
It’s an impulse I call “American Tune-ism,” after the one Paul Simon song that I truly can’t abide. “American Tune” is a morose anthem of defeat and disappointment with the United States, yet one that, five decades after its release, still resonates with a certain segment of the population. I’ve heard it sung at funerals; by people I know (together with their children) on maudlin Facebook videos; for Jimmy Carter the night before his inauguration; to open and close Ken Burns’s documentary on the Statue of Liberty; and even at Fourth of July barbecues — and not only because it’s easier to perform than “Loves Me Like a Rock.” Fifty years on, its Nixon-era disillusionment has metastasized into a more thoroughgoing, more personal miserableness impervious to hope, progress, and joy. “American Tune-ism” prevents transcendent stories from being told with all their nuance and unruly contradictions — ones that don’t fit a preordained narrative have to be contorted until they do.
I didn’t want a narrative about Duke Kahanamoku — I wanted a story. And it wasn’t the story of a victim — it was of a singular person who transcended the challenges he might have faced and changed American culture by making it more inclusive, more diverse, and more attractive to the world. Racism is a reality, and colonialism, as well — but neither would be in the second sentence of a blurb I would write about the astonishing life of Duke Kahanamoku.
So I turned off the television. I decided to call my birth father in California to check in on him — he’s 88 years old now. His son, John (adopted, not my half-brother), was a national champion and then professional longboard surfer, and so I mentioned my disappointment with the documentary about Duke Kahanamoku I’d just been watching.
“Oh, Duke,” my birth father said. “He and my old man were really good friends.”
Whaaat?
“Yeah. During the Olympics, Duke and his brothers hung out with your grandfather on the ship over to France and back. The brown skinned folks kind of stuck together, you know?” In the 1924 Paris Games, Duke Kahanamoku won the silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle and his brother, Samuel, the bronze, while Johnny Weissmuller took the gold.
“The other member of their group was William Duhart Hubbard. Ever hear of him? He was the first African American to win an individual gold medal. He won the long jump.”
I hadn’t heard of him.
“Yeah, my old man really didn’t like Weissmuller. When they rode together on the train from the coast to Paris, for no reason, Weissmuller knocked over a French fan riding alongside them on a bicycle as they pulled into a station in a small town. Hurt the guy pretty badly. Weissmuller just laughed. So, the old man didn’t like him.”
My grandfather knew Tarzan?
“My old man and Duke stayed friends for a long time. Duke spent time in Los Angeles making movies and used to stop by the house, hang out, and stay for dinner. It was before World War II, so I must have been eight or nine.”
Wait a minute…you knew…Duke Kahanamoku…Waterman…the Ambassador of Aloha…that PBS is showing a documentary about right this very minute?
“Yeah. Really great guy. A larger-than-life kind of person, you know?”
This was a story, one that the universe must have wanted me to hear. I turned the television back on and narrated what was happening in the documentary until my birth father had enough and said goodnight. I watched the show until the end, and, to its credit, the show finally got around to relating the good story, which in the end is an overwhelmingly positive tale about America in the 20th century. It ended with Duke’s funeral, at which tens of thousands of mourners filled Waikiki Beach, people packed together as tightly as New Year’s revelers in Times Square. They were not there merely to mark the passing of a sports celebrity but to honor a true American hero.
In 1925, Kahanamoku, on his surfboard, rescued eight people whose boat had capsized in high surf off the California coast. His exertions, according to witnesses, were all but superhuman, and his disregard for his own safety complete. Thirty years later, the This is Your Life television program reunited Kahanamoku with three of the men he had saved for the first time since his remarkable act of valor. It is a remarkable scene — the men expressing their gratitude to Kahanamoku, who stands back stunned, seemingly abashed, and no doubt vividly flashing back to the day he saved their lives. The camera then zooms in as one of them offers his hand and says thank you to his rescuer. And Duke Kahanamoku, this amazingly heroic man, seems to be searching for the right way to respond to this person whose life he has saved. Finally, Duke Kahanamoku says what you say when someone thanks you for something. He says: “You’re welcome.”
You’re welcome? You’re welcome! Now that is America.
Duke Kahanamoku was a hero and an eminent American, and I wonder if we’ve lost our sense of how to tell a hero’s story, how to tell an American story. I know my own American story has a lot of moving parts, but I’m sure yours does, too; and anyway, moving parts are what the larger American story is all about.
Back in 2016, I attended for the first time one of those quintessential Berkshire events — the reading of the Declaration of Independence on the Fourth of July at Shakespeare & Company. I was told it was always a rousing affair, with cheering crowds and waving. But to lead it off that year, the organizers invited a famous retired anchorman to share a few words. So this anchorman decided to use his moment on the Fourth of July to speechify about how hypocritical the Declaration of Independence was, how the Declaration was written by dead white men to serve the interests of dead white men, how it was nasty to the Native Americans, how far short we’ve fallen in living up to its empty rhetoric, and on and on.
His words were enough to dissipate my patriotic mojo and, it seemed, that of the gathered. There was little of the customary rah-rah I was led to expect. I ran into people I know as we headed glumly to the parking lot, and they all agreed that the retired newsman ruined the occasion for everybody. “You felt almost embarrassed to cheer,” said one.
On this Fourth of July, I hope no one feels too embarrassed to cheer. As the writer, Ryan Fazio put it: “What separates America in human history is not its sins, but its virtues.” If the mood hits you, you might be stirred to sing an American tune — but please, not “American Tune.”
