The Home Front
BORN, WILIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Charms of East and West AGAIN WE ARE packing and planning for the road. Within a few hours, we shall be a part of a steady surge along the Pennsylvania...
...On my journey homeward, a funny little thing happened...
...This central section, which was West to us...
...All my life this contrast, this opposition of two powerful geographic and social forces, has been a feature of my life and thinking...
...Yet the West had the attraction of romance, the great mountains, the mighty streams, the mines of gold and the orange groves...
...Now and then one could hear that most gracious and comforting of sounds, the bleating of sheep...
...I had been delivering a series of lectures up and down the golden western state...
...The East was for me the place to live, but the West remained the land to visit for change, for excitement, for relief...
...The incident did not vex me...
...There were most of my friends and there were the activities and opportunities which had the strongest appeal for me...
...There was no city in sight—only a tiny village with a single church spire away off against the skyline...
...The whole world was green...
...There had been no irrigation here to banish desert drought...
...Along with some of the other passengers, I started on a leisurely walk down the railway track...
...If ever a census of attractions is recorded, I am willing to bet that the ancient East Coast will stand up pretty well...
...I have been thinking of the two sides of our continent, the old East and the newer West, and of the lures which they hold for each other and...
...But my younger brother and I. in contrast to the older members of the family, experienced a stronger pull toward the East...
...California seemed far-off and uncertain...
...And when I considered the people of the West, with their breath-taking cordiality and overpowering energy, my old East seemed slow and satisfied and lazy...
...New England, which I had learned to love with a special depth, seemed soft and gentle, but far from big and gorgeous like this new landscape...
...There are to be four of us in the car this time...
...Within a few hours, we shall be a part of a steady surge along the Pennsylvania Turnpike...
...When I was a boy in Ohio, the great pull was toward the West...
...especially, for the folks like me from the midlands...
...It was only later that the first ones ventured to the West Coast...
...Out of the lush, wet earth all sorts of plants were sprouting and upon them were blooming flowers in enormous variety...
...Here and there cattle grazed, shedding their ineffable spirit of peace...
...I mean that the sunlight was soft and golden—not sharp and burning as it sometimes tends to be in America...
...It was a gentle Sunday evening in midsummer—like a summer day in England...
...For us...
...The great mountains, the orange groves and vineyards stretching for mile on irrigated mile, the big trees, nature's oldest and most ambitious plants, living things so enormous that they shut out the sky and create a separate world with sights and sounds of its own—all this left me flabbergasted, flattened out, reduced to a new sort of modesty...
...Frogs were making their throaty sexual sounds, and the birds were uttering their musical evening cries...
...And then I had a revelation...
...I was glad to have it lengthened and softened...
...I know that as soon as we plunge into the stream of the connected turnpikes we shall find ourselves in a mighty current running westward...
...It came over me suddenly that this naturally lush and ordinary world to which I had been accustomed from childhood on was just as exciting and certainly as beautiful as any of the astonishing geological and biological exhibitions of the dramatic and astonishing West...
...I don't recall what railway this was on or through what state we were taking our leisurely way...
...The East seemed my natural home...
...In comparison...
...offered sure roads to fortune...
...I made my way, amid meadows and groves, to what would generally be considered the most commonplace of landscape features, an ordinary swamp...
...The number seeking the charms of the East is constantly increasing...
...Wisconsin and Chicago...
...All that is clear to me is that somewhere in the broad land which we call the Middle West, but which is really a part of the East, our engine broke down...
...New York—not Chicago—was the alluring center...
...There are certain signs that the general public is gradually waking up to the fact that the old contest between East and West must be pronounced a draw...
...But to our left an equally wide and rapid stream from Texas, California and Oregon will be running toward Maine and Connecticut...
...The very earth was musical and full of color...
...It was in 1920 that I visited California for the first time...
...While the others have been discussing how cold it will be in the Glacier National Park and how hot in the Petrified Forest, and while they've been selecting clothing in accordance with their guesses, my mind has been running in an entirely different direction...
...Always I have been drawn in two directions...
...The transition from coast to coast was too much...
...The lure of California gold was dying down, but my older brothers went to Michigan...
Vol. 42 • June 1959 • No. 26
