SAN FRANCISCO, California -- Following trips to different countries over many years I have longed to return home and hear these words from an immigration officer: "Welcome back to the United States."
Something felt different this time. After three weeks away - two days in Doha and the rest in Vietnam, Hong Kong and Beijing, while I was glad to return home, I noticed a contrast I had not noticed before. We have become a dirtier country. I am not talking about smut or vulgar language, but real dirt.
Stepping off the plane in San Francisco, I noticed the jetway carpet was stained. "Welcome to California" a sign read. A double meaning, perhaps.
Public toilets are dirty. I saw toilet tissue on the floor, overflowing paper towel bins, water pooling on basin counters and puddles of a liquid I shall not further describe. Some toilets remained unflushed.
Terminal floors are scarred and there seems to be a different atmosphere from what I have been used to. Once, airports were full of happy travelers. There are few smiles and less laughter, even among children. On the way to my hotel I saw some trash and experienced a sense of drabness.
Doha looked like an emerald city that had just been built. My cab driver said before 1982 it was mostly desert. What all that oil money can do! But it can't be only about money. The streets were immaculate. There was no trash and no bins in which to put any. Perhaps, as in Singapore, there are substantial penalties for littering, or maybe local citizens are simply proud of their country and that is reflected in the image they present. It was hot (105 degrees), but cool air was pumped up from below many sidewalks. How cool is that?
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In Vietnam, as I wrote last week, while the countryside has areas of litter and decaying shops and houses, Ho Chi Minh City is mostly clean and appears prosperous. My hotel was a model for what the U.S. hospitality industry once looked like - great service, spotless common areas and rooms, excellent food and drink and a feeling that one is welcome as a guest. Here's an irony for you: a cocktail is named "B52" and toilet fixtures are made by American Standard.
Beijing, too, is clean. Granted, there are police on many corners and cameras are everywhere, recording "every move you make ... I'll be watching you." Credit to the musical group The Police.
Restrooms at Tokyo Airport are so clean they appear to have been recently installed.
One can find many faults in other nations - as one can find faults in our own. Freedoms we enjoy are suppressed elsewhere, but freedom in the U.S. seems increasingly to be taken as license to do whatever one wishes regardless of harm caused to one's self, or the nation.
Seeing trash, graffiti and a sense of darkness in parts of America is the result of failure to teach certain things my generation was taught by parents and, if we misbehaved, reinforced by teachers or the school principal. We didn't throw trash or empty glass bottles along the road. In fact, many grocery and other stores offered five cents for every bottle returned. It wasn't called recycling, but the incentive to gain some pocket money produced a similar result.
My Dad belonged to the Isaac Walton League, which taught responsible hunting and fishing and an appreciation for land, air and water. Conservationists, they called themselves. This was before environmentalism took hold and it seemed to me to produce better results after what I have described.
Pride in America once meant respecting the land "from California to the New York Island." It was made for you and me so let's clean it up and show we care about our land as much as many other nations care about theirs. Maybe a campaign could be started under the banner "Make America Clean Again."
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