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Main Street-American Congregation



Frank Anthony Ph.D.



��When I asked Erskine Caldwell, author of over fifty novels, at one time most read American author in Russia, where he was born he said: “Well, I was born, let me put it that way”. At the time of my interview, he was author in residence at Dartmouth. Not long after that he passed away, but I never forgot how his discussions were usually about regular people in small towns.

��There was something about what he said that carried me back to my birth, in a border town, on the Main Street of ten thousand citizens between Minnesota and North Dakota. My Grandfather, brought up there as a child, owned businesses, worked all his life, and never took a vacation from Main Street. My uncles lived on the Minnesota Main Street eulogized by Sinclair Lewis in his novel Main Street.

��I never gave much thought about the idea of Main Street until coming back, from military service overseas, attending colleges, working from west to east coast and then trying to find a place I could call home. Memories of working as a teenager, shining shoes and selling popcorn, are gone now, fadded like memories of my high school classmates. Not much memory remains of the dozen states I lived in but one thing stays.

��In the Midwest, the south, north country or the east coast, I have always lived on Main Street. My place, my home is where everything is “going on” all the time. Main Street, USA, is window of the world. I feel close to Caldwell, Lewis and others who have a sense of place. And I understand why people need to demonstrate their feelings, here, where all Americans need to go when they congregate.




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